alt_fen | AK

I really enjoyed reading the game (except, omg, I couldn't help but think how much more fun it might have been if Ron's player had been able to participate -- I miss Ron! [I'm making an assumption here, obviously, and hope that all is well with Ron's player]). I hope that the students will play this again or play other games. It's fun to see them being kids, and it was a great vehicle for letting them express their personalities. I enjoyed Draco's attitude about the game, and Padma's hesitations (which her player expressed with a nice touch -- not too heavy-handed, though it would have been so easy to have overdone), Lavender's girly reservations and boy-motivated reconsiderations, Millicent's disdain.

I'm guessing that not all the players were available to participate actively, but it was good fun, nonetheless.

I especially appreciated that this game was something Megan excelled at. (How much do I love Megan's self-censoring, cautious personality -- she is emerging as a really well-crafted example of what this society's disdain for half-bloods causes. Sally Anne, too, but Megan is only now blossoming, and I appreciate that each of them has a different set of issues as a result of her upbringing and semi-marginalized place in this AU.)

I also appreciate the way AK produced two kinds of winner (as Quidditch sometimes does): the last-standing and the points-winner. Cool.

Some good Percy-baiting and Weasley twins mischief... but I confess surprise that the twins did not win. I thought that over the break they had surely liberated the Marauders' Map, which would have been dead useful in this game (both for hunting and evading other players). Perhaps they haven't yet figured out how it works?

I loved Neville's decision to abstain. I'm so pleased that someone had a principled objection to the nature of this sport -- and it makes sense to me that it would be Neville who would have this scruple (despite the fact that in this game he lacks his canonical reason for being appalled by the Unforgiveables). Also. This is one time where I especially missed Hermione's presence in the ranks of the students and missed the Gryffindor trio, who might have squabbled over the ethics of this game.

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I LOVE Megan. I enjoy the peeks we get into her upbringing (http://alt-sally-anne.livejournal.com/13743.html?thread=116911#t116911). I imagine her guardian being like one of those old ladies who takes a miniature dog everywhere, dresses it up, has tea with it, and so on. Only instead of a dog, she has Megan. I'm not saying that she treats her literally like a dog, just that she seems really out of touch with what children are about. She seems to have tried to bring up Megan to be a miniature version of a proper old lady. But of course, Megan is a kid with a lot of personality of her own, and now that she's at school she's getting to really blossom. And yeah. It's great.

Yes! I loved that comment. And her descriptions of her Christmas gifts (robes that didn't fit, a necklace that she can't really have yet because she might damage it). And her terrible New Years experience (hunting for her few belongings which weren't still in her room when she returned from school, finding interesting stuff in her guardian's attic that has been packed away and is not to be shared with young Megan).

What do you suppose Megan found in the attic? She was fairly vague about it. Was it something that was potentially incriminating, or just private? It seems as though her guardian is a bit extreme in terms of how she reacts to misbehavior, so I guess it just could have been that she wasn't supposed to be up there... but I wonder.

Also, AK in general was fun. I like how the older students got excited about it as well.

That's a good question. Certainly in the Lord Protector's realm, it's easy to imagine all kinds of things one might wish to keep secret -- perhaps Megan's guardian herself once had a relationship with a Muggle or a Muggleborn. But maybe it's just that she's a sad old lady, who, despite her loneliness, won't let her half-blood ward close enough to be a real part of her life.

Even if there is no larger, plotty significance to Megan's prying in her guardian's attic, it was a great bit of story-telling for showing us Megan's character and how she grew to be so careful and self-censoring.

I agree. It's really interesting learning about Megan's fostering experience, and Sally-Ann's too. Interesting, and a little sad. I do think that the AK game went a long way towards helping Megan come out of her shell a little -- maybe she'll be more confident around Susan's family in the future.

I find it interesting to see how Neville is played in general. I read somewhere as I was trying to get up to speed on the HP universe that people assumed that one of the reasons he had trouble with schoolwork was that he was using his father's wand for the first several books. But we were told in game that he bought a wand for himself.

I do think that his Gran would have brought him up to have those kind of scruples - the comment about lighting a candle for travelers was quite touching.

It would be very interesting to explore the ways in which Neville's experience differs in game and in canon. In both he seems to have manifested his magic relatively late so that his family suspected he would turn out to be a squib. I always suspected in canon that Neville's gran promoted that notion, secretly hoping that it would protect him. I'm amongst those who think a lot of his early trouble with Charms and other wand magic had to do with the fact that he was made to use his father's wand, which I suspect was not a result of his Gran's tightness with money or her sentimentality about her son -- I think she hoped her grandson would fly beneath the radar if Neville himself and everyone else thought him a bit of a bumbler. She'd lost her son and daughter-in-law to Wizardom's dangers, and I think she had no intention of losing Neville, too. That, of course, does not explain Neville's canonical problem with remembering things; I take that as a sort of hysterical symptom he suffered sympathetically as a result of his parents' complete loss of mental capacity when they were Crucio'd beyond recovery. (I can't remember if we have any reason to suspect that Neville was present when that happened or whether he'd just been raised with that as his formative trauma.)

"Our" Neville shares a lot with his canonical counterpart: he needs a Remembrall and thinks himself a dunce. He was a late bloomer magically speaking, and he has little confidence in his innate abilities. He's loyal and honourable, and that means he is also principled enough to oppose his peers if they do something he thinks they shouldn't. Like his canonical counterpart, he's been raised by his gran in his parents' absence, but his parents were not attacked by the Lestranges, so he doesn't have that horror in his past. "Our" Neville has a little sister, too, which means he has not been the sole focus of his grandmother's grief and protectiveness. I'd forgotten that we'd heard from him about buying his wand, but now that you mention it, that sounds right. If our Neville's bad a Charms and Transfiguration, his wand is probably not the reason. (I like the way Snape's role as Neville's intimidator has been transfered to Carrow: that makes perfect sense to me.)

I do think that his Gran would have brought him up to have those kind of scruples - the comment about lighting a candle for travelers was quite touching.

I agree. I love it when the players give us these little glimpses into their characters' families or remember the shaping moments and stories of their characters' childhoods. Sometimes this game is so rich in its storytelling!

Alice mentions it here: http://alt-alice.livejournal.com/
And I was sure Alice and Neville meet in comments somewhere, but I can't find it.

AK

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