The CAST of Alternity

[alt_moderator]

Well, there we are, folks! Seven Years. What a long trip it's been.

As we said Monday night, the game may have reached its conclusion, we are not exactly done! We have some fun and exciting extras planned for you. In the coming weeks, we'll unveil some additional "bonus content," host some AMAs from player- and character-perspective, talk about the process, and of course, celebrate the achievement that this story represents for all of us, and we hope, all of you.

Before we get to that, though, allow me to introduce OUR CAST.

In the course of seven years, players come and go, some characters work or don't, and often characters have changed hands. Some have remained constant since the beginning (shown with an * below). Of course, we've also killed a lot of them (ahem), but that doesn't change who played them, only that those players retired the character in service to the plotline. Pretty soon, we'll be opening our wiki (because how ELSE do we keep all this information straight?), which has a complete list of who played which character, including past role assignments.

In the interest of privacy, we're not revealing details, but the players are encouraged to post below in the comments with bios, tales of how they joined Alternity, and any other creds they would like to provide.

And now, here is the list of our current players, and the characters they played as of the last time said characters were seen:

• Brook: Cedric Diggory*, Rabastan Lestrange, Augustus Rookwood*


• Deb: Regulus Black, Barty Crouch, Jr., Poppy Pomfrey*, Lana Sandoval-Pennifold*, Ron Weasley, Blaise Zabini*


• Denise: Antonin Dolohov*, Severus Snape, Charlie Weasley*


• Elise: Megan Jones, Linus Moon, Jeremy Stretton*


• Erin: Susan Bones*, Lavender Brown*, Pomona Sprout**


• Gwen: Ptolemy Baddock*, Sirius Black*, Michael Corner, Justin Finch-Fletchley*, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Lucius Malfoy*, Narcissa Malfoy, Padma Patil*, Horace Slughorn, Zacharias Smith*


• Jenett: Albus Dumbledore, Lee Jordan, Aurora Sinistra, Pomona Sprout**, Dolores Umbridge*


• Linny: Penelope Clearwater, Colin Creevey*, Alice Longbottom, Evelyn Longbottom*, Frank Longbottom, Ernie Macmillan, Pansy Parkinson, Nymphadora Tonks (Ponds)


• Naomi: Savitha Desai*, Seamus Finnigan*, Rachel (Lamont) Brodie*, Remus Lupin, Harry Marvolo, Corax Mulciber*, Sally-Anne Perks*, Arista Selwyn*, Dominic Selwyn*, Ginny Weasley


• Peg: Hannah Abbott, Terry Boot*, Amycus Carrow, Neville Longbottom*, Luna Lovegood*, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Arthur Weasley, Bill Weasley*, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Molly Weasley*, Percy Weasley*


• Rene: Millicent Bulstrode, Daphne Greengrass, Bellatrix Lestrange*, Hydra Lestrange*, Rodolphus Lestrange*, Walden Macnair*, Draco Malfoy, Eloise Midgen*, Jason Montague*

(**This character was shared by both players)

In Alternity, at the memorial services, people were encouraged to offer memories of their loved ones. Let's get the ball rolling here by inviting the players to offer up their favorite memories of their own characters and of others. We also want your feedback! What goes in your book of "Best Alternity Moments?"

In the next few days, we'll start holding AMA sessions with various players and their characters - understanding that some players may want some of their character information to remain nebulous or open to interpretation, of course!

Comments

[longstrider]

Brook here.

I've been reading since the beginning thanks to Peg. I finally worked up the courage to app and joined taking up Cedric.

[naomikritzer]

::waves::

Peg talked me into joining the game shortly after it first started.

In addition to writing in Alternity, I write novels, short stories, science articles, and I blog about Minneapolis politics.

(Here's a story of mine that was published in January, if you're curious.)

One of my favorite bits from a while back was when Luna wound up with the wizarding world's equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey instead of the dry classic text on Dark Arts Dolohov had intended for her to bring in. ("I hated to think what you were going to ask us to do for extra credit.")

[gwendolyngrace]

Gwen reporting!

I was part of the original crew Flourish recruited for Alternity (back at Portus in Dallas, 2008), and I've been privileged, honored and delighted to see the project through to its conclusion.

I also served as your recapper (with the exception of the first couple of months, and the first 2 1/2 (?) years of "Previously on Alternity" posts, which were done by Flourish), and I succeeded Flourish as moderator when life commitments forced her to step back from the game. I could not have done it without the intense collaboration of all our players, but especially Naomi, who served as my second, as well as Denise, Deb, and Rene, whose twisted and beautiful minds were always ready to figure out how the HECK we were going to make this all work...and who frequently helped me calm my shit down so that it would all work.

[lucky_guess]

HAH! Yes! That entire exchange was utterly brilliant.

[synecdochic]

HELLO. I played Dolohov, Charlie, and Snape, and I have to thank all y'all for loving Dolohov so much, because your constant, gleeful love for him has helped me tailor how I wrote him for maximum effect.

See, back in mid-2012, LiveJournal released (the semi-infamous) Release 88, which removed subject lines from comments and which infuriated a large portion of LJ's huge collection of RP games. (Alternity had moved over to DW in 2009 when we first opened, but a lot of games stayed.) As the co-owner of Dreamwidth, I knew that in order to make sensible product decisions for the site in order to make RPers feel welcome, I should understand more about the subculture -- and what better way than to join a game myself? I'd already been reading Alternity, because I've known jenett for ages, and she kept trying to lure me in and I kept saying "I don't have time! DW keeps me too busy!" Turning it into something work-related, though, gave me just enough of the excuse I needed. :)

When I joined the cast mailing list, I asked, okay, what kind of character do you need? And the consensus was: we need somebody who's able to be seductive, charismatic evil, who can help bring out some of the moral conflicts that the next few years of the game will inevitably contain. Seductive, charismatic evil? "I can do that!" I cheerfully announced. And Tosha was born, and I've used your feedback to tweak him as time went on.

(Amusingly, I knew up front that I had to keep secret the fact that I was playing in Alternity, because if you know I'm playing, and you know my writing, who I was playing becomes BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS. I have a type -- or, shall we say, an archetype? -- and Tosha fits it to a T. I actually had two separate people guess I was playing Tosha just from me having recommended the game to them, without telling them that I was playing.)

I picked up Snape when Flourish had to pass him on due to lack of time, and I added Charlie because with Snape and Tosha, I needed one character who wouldn't know what a semicolon was if it bit him. I love all three of them to bits and pieces.

[gwendolyngrace]

I am going to cheat because I have too many favorite moments to even begin to mention.

Particularly special to me is the relationship that Rene and I built for Justin and Hydra, and I'm so glad readers found it touching and tragic.

My respect and admiration goes out to Rene, as well, for everything she did with her Draco.

[gwendolyngrace]

Oh, and a really early standout moment for me was the Disemvowelling Hex! That was awesome clever, and go Peg!

[elisem]

Elise here.

Jenett told me to read Alternity, and I gulped the whole thing down in, oh, January 2012 I think it was. Then Jenett and Peg and Naomi talked to me. I remember Peg cornering me at a party with that bright idea smile she gets, and, well, then I wound up here.

Writing Linus was waaaay too much fun, especially in exchanges with Erin (Lav). Writing Megan was full of unexpectedly overwhelming moments; there was a point where her conversations with Harry just dissolved me. (Shadow twins, wrestling with issues of family and authority and freedom and danger.) Writing Jeremy taught me a great deal about editing everything down to 1/4 of what I started with. :-)

One of my favorite Alternity moments was the whole grand pandemonium of what wound up being called The Platening. That night was a hoot. (Speaking of Umbridge, another of my favorite Alternity things was discussing Umbridge with Jenett and helping think up some of the awful punishments she used. She was just so wonderfully icky.) And reading everyone's codas has been the most amazing thing.

OK, someone's been cutting onions in here, pardon me.

[reenie]

Hi all, this is Rene.

When the game launched I was invited to play Bellatrix Lestrange. I had sworn off doing yet ANOTHER Harry Potter RPG after just finishing as the mod of This is Now, where I also played Bellatrix and Draco, among others. And yet somehow the premise of this particular RPG, Alternity, pulled me in, and I was soon back in Bella's shoes.

Only a few weeks later, I picked up Draco when the original player left. For all but his two first posts he's been mine. I also developed Rod's character, and invented Hydra from out of the ether. I picked up other characters along the way, playing Daphne for all but a few of her early posts, and forcing Jason on everyone in the game's final months.

I'm a writer in the real world. I have a website here

I have more fond memories of this game and the last seven years than I can began to comment upon. But I'll do my best here in the coming days. :)

[pegkerr]

Hi, this is Peg, and like Gwen, I have been with the game since the conception stage. I had about a dozen short stories and two fantasy novels published before I discovered Harry Potter, but I fell into the fandom when my mother-in-law sent the first two books to me to read to our daughters.

I've often said that while I'm proud of my original published work, my work on Alternity was the most FUN I've ever had as a fiction writer. I also discovered that I really enjoy working collaboratively. I feel that I'm strong on writing dialogue and scenes, but I have trouble coming up with plots. As a team, we players had skills that overlapped, and I am so impressed with the collaborative result.

I was going to mention Luna's confusion over her assignment from Dolohov, too! The idea was just a little comment that Naomi threw away on our planning list, suggesting that Luna was the best character for the joke. The writing between me and Denise (as Dolohov) just unspooled like magic, and I was absolutely SCREAMING with laughter as we threaded back and forth. And then when Naomi came back later that night, she was astonished when everyone of the players yelled at her, "OMG, NAOMI, BEST IDEA EVAH!" and she was like, 'What? What did I miss?'

I'm very proud that I lured Naomi, Elise and Brook to the group.

Ideas that I personally came up with that I'm rather chuffed about: The I Solemnly Swear Lock (and how Fred and George tested it), Alt-Galleon, and the idea that we would plant Dumbledore at Hogwarts during year one and have him switch to the Transfiguration teacher role later on. And then when everyone would be looking at Barty Crouch, Jr arriving to teach Year 4, we would pull the rug out from everybody by having Dumbledore show up. It worked really well.

[lucky_guess]

I'm a Linny! Big Nocturne Alley fan, and small-time RPer, found out about Alternity through NrAged folks, and applied to take over Alice and Frank back in October of 2008 (so Year 1). I took over Pansy in Year 2, and played Harry for a while too.

I have some published work, but it's dry and Sciencey, so this has been a nice change of pace.

I'd say one favorite moment (of many!) was the Time-turning sequence in Y3 -- we had to work out the multiple timelines, and then had to time the posts properly, and it was just a lot of fun to pull off!

[pegkerr]

Oh, and also, Rene reminds me: I played in two other RPGs: I played Neville (taking over from another player) in both Nocturne Alley and Seen Unforeseen. Nocturne Alley was REALLY popular, but I always felt a bit lost because I came in late and felt that I wasn't oriented very well. And Seen Unforeseen sort of fell apart because there really wasn't very good central planning.

I've felt that the writing in Alternity just kept getting better and better (my big frustration was that I was always hoping for a bigger audience, because I felt that we deserved it), and I'm as proud of work that I've done here as anything I've sold professionally.

[naomikritzer]

I really loved the backstory on the kitten plates. Did that ever get out of player-conversation and into the game?

And, I loved the avalanche of kittens when they all got de-plated, and all the people who wound up with pet kitties.

[lapin_agile]

Hi, I'm Deb, and I play Alternity.

Er.

I came to Alternity as a reader and loved it madly for sixth months before I succumbed to the siren song of the Casting Call. I applied to create and play Madam Pomfrey and I ended up taking on Ron, as well, because he'd been languishing after his first player left the game. (True confession: Ron was a hard sell. I didn't particularly like Ron in canon, and I really had no burning desire to figure him out and play him. But I'm so very glad I did.)

I have lots of favourite conversations/moments of the game. Like the time Sirius and Poppy talked about music and about going surreptitiously to Muggle rock festivals before the war. Or the time in first year when the firsties had a Potions lesson disaster with Forgetfulness potion. (Or the other Potions fiasco that year when Padma ended up with a boil on her face in the shape of Poland.)

A favourite night of play, though, was the night when Regulus, whom I then played, stayed up very late, talking first with Pansy and then making peace with his much loved and entirely misunderstood brother, Sirius. Those two character relationships were lovely to play, and that night was a game highpoint for me. So long ago!

[pegkerr]

I admired Denise's playing SO MUCH OMG, and a big regret I have is that she didn't join the game earlier. It was quite an astonishment to me, especially (aside from the delights of Dolohov and Snape) how much she added to the game by playing Charlie. I played most of the Weasley family, but didn't see the need to include Charlie at all. In fact, when she joined and it was announced that she was taking Charlie, my chief reaction was, Why? Charlie? Off-stage during most of canon, mucks around with dragons, what could he possibly add to the plot? I was so wrong! It was a wild delight to me how quickly the sibling bond blossomed between Charlie and Bill--it seemed to spring from our collective imagination as an instantly fully developed relationship--and it really upped the fun I had playing Bill.

[naomikritzer]

Oh, the forgetfulness potion. Poor Lav. Draco forgetting that he disliked Ron: also hilarious.

[pegkerr]

I LOVED Linus' poetry! (Elise, I should tell everyone, is a member of a group of poets here in Minneapolis that periodically appear at science fiction conventions as the Lady Poetesses From Hell, where they dress up in stodgy old lady hats and read screamingly funny poems until the audience is entirely convulsed with laughter.)

[gwendolyngrace]

OMG, yes...


I blame sleep deprivation for NOT mentioning the Regulus-Sirius bond!

Our discussions about the two of them and their upbringing gave rise to an entire series of "Blackstory" that (mostly) I wrote, because my head canon for Sirius Black was entirely divorced from the canonical facts about him that we learned in Order of the Phoenix (I blame my own fanfic, and other people's, written before the book came out).

I'm so, so very glad that we hammered out the shape of their childhoods, because not only did it continuously color Sirius right up to his Kamikaze mission, it also deepened and strengthened my understanding of how the canonical Sirius might have been - to the point where I believe I have actually reconciled Rowling's original creation.

[gwendolyngrace]

And ironical!

[lapin_agile]

That was so totally awesome! Such a Neville thing!

[elisem]

I really liked Cedric's Hufflepuffian nature, the way you played him.

[pegkerr]

That idea is from an idea discussed on Tor editors Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light. See the entry which started it all and see the Wikipedia article here. It is an approach used by moderators on internet forums to control trolls while still giving them license to speak, because the significant cognitive effort it requires to mentally put the vowels back in blunts the impact of hateful speech.

My favorite bit in that entire thread was Draco's comment when he realized that Neville had been hit by the hex: "H H H H H H !"

[gwendolyngrace]

It's funny because many players (and I think almost no one is exempt) from time to time would meet a new concept or character with resistance (sometimes a lot of resistance), but through the course of our talking it out, the final decision almost always seemed to work out for the betterment of the story.

Even when we threw things in at the very last possible second (cough*the party last night*cough), it ALL just enhanced and enhanced and enhanced the stories we were telling.

I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR.

[reenie]

H H H H H H!

Yes!

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

Hi!

I'm Erin\queenbookwench; I've played Susan Bones and Lavender Brown since they showed up in the middle of year 1, and shared Pomona Sprout with Jennett.

I was a huge fan of an RPG on LJ called That Was Then\This is Now (you can still find my plot speculation posts in the fan comm!) that was active between 2004-2006ish; I was totally hooked by the plot, the banter, the quality of character development, and the immersiveness of following the story in real time. I looked, but never found another game that casptivated me in that way. So when someone (Rene I think) posted on the fan comm that some TWT\TIN alums were starting a new game with a cool AU premise, I gamely headed over to read. And actually, the moment that really hooked me as a reader was when Teddy and the Slytherin boys decide to test Hermione's blood.

The player application re-opened shortly thereafter, and I nervously submitted....