Ask Us Anything!

[alt_moderator]

The cast thread is filling up rapidly, and while we don't have to fuss about comment collapse, it is getting difficult to navigate...

So here's a new post, where we're asking YOU to ask US: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Comments

[lapin_agile]

That! Oh, how I would have loved to have had Irma. She and Poppy would have had such an interesting relationship.

There were times it would have been very useful to have had Hooch, and if she'd been played, we'd have found even more use for her. But it was hard, and in the end I think we failed, to capitalise on the potential that lay in her being a mole at Hogwarts--an apparent Order ally, who was compromised and a threat to them.

That was a good idea we couldn't bring to fruition.

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

I had fun creating Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank's backstory and connection to the Bones family, and sometimes thought it would have been fun to have her as a played character once she started at Hogwarts.

But I also knew my limitations, and since I struggled to keep up with the 2 1/2 I already had (endless kudos to everybody who played multiple major characters!!) , I never proposed it.

[keshwyn]

That would have been cool, because it would have given us later insight into the DE mentality, at least until His Noselessness did her in. And I knew it was possible she was the mole, but I missed the final confirmation.

[jenett]

We never quite formally confirmed it, but http://alt-umbridge.dreamwidth.org/1819.html?thread=13339#cmt13339 makes it pretty clear she's more than just naturally helpful.

[(Anonymous)]

Was Hooch the mysterious person that Poppy(?) saw skulking around Hogwarts at one point in the early seasons?

(Qwerty88)

[naomikritzer]

Yes, that was one of the plotlines we never quite properly developed.

We could do a whole thread on discarded squids, honestly.

[kiya]

I'm reminded of something I read Neil Gaiman say once, about Sandman and how he did plotting, which was that since once a book was released it was Out There In The World, what he had to do was throw in TONNES OF EVERYTHING so that if he needed it in book five it might have appeared in a junk drawer in book one.

[naomikritzer]

That is a very funny image, and yeah, there was some of that.

There were also plots where we had an idea, set it up, and then the timing for a payoff was never quite right. Or plots where we had an idea, started the setup, and things veered left because we realized there was something we'd overlooked. Or we did something, realized a likely ramification, but never got around to playing out the ramification. Or we had a plan, and just spaced it.

[jenett]

The thing is, as much as I sort of wish we'd pulled some of those plots out (the Hooch one was the one I think I wish that most about), I think it's also sort of entirely realistic - some stuff in the world sort of drifts into your awarnes, and you know there's more there, but you never see the details on it?

I think if we'd had everything sort itself out tidily, the whole project wouldn't have felt as real as it did.

[pegkerr]

PETER PETTIGREW, OMG. For YEARS I kept saying, 'What are we going to do about Peter Pettigrew?' We must have planned out about a dozen different scenarios for dealing with it, and none of them ever became quite airborne.

Part of the problem, I think, was that we dealt in Year One with the big issue that Rowling dealt with in Year Three: Why are Sirius and Remus estranged? What really happened on that Halloween night all those years ago? I liked our version, but it wasn't infused throughout with the circumstances of Peter's betrayal, so it was difficult to get back to it, somehow.

[naomikritzer]

Yeah, that really was the central problem.

I was very happy with the storyline we crafted around him (again, I felt like it explained stuff that never got explained in canon), especially Tosha's role, but although we did discover Peter we never came up with anything especially interesting to do with him afterward. (Which isn't surprising, since we packed him off to Saltash and he wasn't going to be able to escape, and we'd have been idiots to ever trust him, even if he'd taken an unbreakable vow.)