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

[(Anonymous)]

Omg, I'm so sorry. I know I'm approximately one jillion years late to this entry, but I just finished an epic re-read of years 5-through-7 and on the off-off-chance anyone is still hanging around and willing to provide answers, I HAVE TO ask:

- The long lost Sandoval sister. Tell me EVERYTHING. Was she really a squib? Where did she end up? Is she aware of her own parentage/origin story? (She should have her very own spin-off fic. I'm obsessed.)

- And on that note: Mr. Sandoval's first marriage. WHY did he produce so many squibs? Before I read Alternity, I never thought of squib-ism as a potentially genetic thing, but...maybe?

- What was up with Tony Parkinson? Was he a loyal Death Eater who just happened to have "questionable" musical tastes, or was there more to it than that?

- Did Dudley ever see his parents again? (Also, did he and Harry ever meet face to face? I wasn't completely clear on that.)

- Was it a conscious choice to have Harry die a virgin, or did it just kind of happen that way?

- Not part of my re-read, but it's been on my mind: When Dennis was killed (in Year 2?) Alice left a message in Draco's journal under the order lock, not intending for him to ever see it. I'm just wondering if he ever did, and if so, what were his thoughts?

Thanks! This has been the reading experience of a lifetime! In the past two weeks I've watched at least six Saoirse Ronan movies, and I place all the blame on Alternity!

[naomikritzer]

Re virginal Harry:

1. Most of our in-character shipping happened sort of organically. Nothing ever really emerged for Harry. At the point when we started thinking about it, nothing really felt right.

2. As we got closer to the end of the game, it felt increasingly like writing a romance plot for Harry would feel very shoehorned-in. His primary relationships throughout the game were his friendships (which in fact is an echo of canon -- canon!Harry's romance with Ginny never has the vibrancy of his relationships with Ron and Hermione). So we focused on those.

So in a sense it was a conscious choice, because we did discuss it. But it was mostly just how the chips fell.

[(Anonymous)]

Good answer! I agree that introducing a major romance for Harry so late in the game would have been a mistake. It WOULD have felt shoehorned in! Not to mention that he didn't really have time for one!

It didn't bother me at all; I was just curious! Especially about whether or not his virginity was in any way symbolic? Like a virgin sacrifice kind of deal?

Honestly, I think THIS Harry and Ginny would have been even more badly suited to one another than they were in canon. Although if Harry had lived, his "saving people thing" probably would've kicked in HARD after Ginny's rape and brainwashing.

[gwendolyngrace]

Regarding Tony Parkinson - it should be generally pointed out that he was far from the only DE with 'questionable musical tastes.' Lucius himself liked some bands that did not strictly speaking produce exclusively wizard music.

The Doylist answer unfortunately goes back, in part, anyway, to Pansy's original player, who introduced elements to Pansy and Tony's backstory very very early in the narrative, when in retrospect it might have been better to withhold some of those thoughts and revelations until later. But then, we would not necessarily have gotten such great Pansy and Sally-Anne and Pansy and Ron relationships, so, everything-works-out-in-the-end.

In a more global answer to your entry, however, about whether Tony was "loyal," bears some examination. Tony was deliberately sitting on the fence about joining the DEs until Lucius basically talked him into it. He was not a particularly bloodthirsty guy, though it should be noted that that does not mean he was necessarily unbiased against Muggleborns and Muggles, but he was into self-preservation and Not Getting Involved was high on his list of priorities. Lucius convinced him that the battle was going to swing decisively toward Voldemort, and that anyone who was NOT on-side before the end would be in a far worse position, relatively speaking, than those who could claim to have joined before the rush. So, Tony ponied up, basically, and then got his ass handed to him from Alecto's friendly fire.

For a long time, we left it open exactly what had happened and how he came to be crushed by that wall. But when we did light on Alecto as the culprit, it worked so well we had to use it.

[(Anonymous)]

But you can believe in a cause and still not want to fight for it! So...I guess what I'm really asking is, did he buy into the Protectorate's garbage? Did he believe Muggles deserved to be rounded up like cattle and enslaved, or was he just going along with it in order to keep his family safe?

And omg, now I'm dying to know which muggle bands Lucius liked. I can't really picture him listening to acid rock...

[gwendolyngrace]

I think he was somewhere in the middle. He (and Lucius) considered things like Muggle music "slumming," like white people in the 20's going to jazz clubs in Harlem. He was a racist, just not a violent one. If he'd been free to express opinion, he would have said the Protectorate was going too far too fast. If he had survived the war, he would have been in the much more moderate camp about what to *do* with the Muggles once they'd won, but over time, he likely would have become more and more callous about it all.

FWIW, even Lucius wasn't originally thinking through the implications of enslaving an entire population (other than the abstract "We should put them all in their place")--Voldemort's insistence and charisma and mania is what led to all the DEs collectively moving the needle. When he pitched taking the Mark to Tony, Lucius at that time stressed that only the "loyal" people would be trusted to appropriately cherry-pick Muggle cultural assets--and that by deigning to like something Mugglish, they would by definition be relieving it of some of its taint (within their own circle. Not generally.) Tony saw which way the wind blew and he agreed with Lucius that if they were going to be able to enjoy the "privilege" of picking and choosing which bits of Muggle culture to embrace with impunity, then he needed to be an active ally to Voldemort.

As for Lucius' taste in music, well, we already know that the Warlocks either were or were a closely-related band to the Beatles (fun fact: their names are all anagrams of the Beatles' names) and if they weren't actually the Fab Four themselves (I think they were, leading a complex double-life), then they at least covered almost every song in the Beatles' catalog. I think *most* of his music consumption was from Muggle bands that never recorded much--thus little evidence of his "transgression" would have survived. He liked other British Invasion bands (The Who, the Kinks), and was heavily into British blues (especially Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton), but not so much Psycheldelic rock (with a few exceptions like Pink Floyd and when the Beatles/Warlocks and the Yardbirds went psych). Once the sound changed to electronica, he was Out, and drifted back to more wizard-produced music, as well as the ever-present classical music.

[reenie]

Draco is the sort of person who, upon joining the Order, would have immediately looked back through everything to see what people were saying to him under the lock, thinking he'd never read it. Much of it would have angered and annoyed him at that point in his life, when he was very angry about everything, and Alice's note is no exception.

But her note would have PARTICULARLY stung because she essentially tells him he ought to feel guilty for what happened to Dennis. Draco never asked to be given a slave, or grow up in a Death Eater family, and he certainly wasn't responsible for Dennis' death. I think even if he looks back at it when he's 20 or 25 it will vaguely irritate him (precisely because he DOES feel a bit guilty), though he'll understand that Alice wrote it while in a state of grief and helplessness.

He genuinely appreciated learning more about Dennis' background, however. Draco had a good deal of sympathy for Dennis, but he struggled with it a lot because he knew he wasn't SUPPOSED to have sympathy for him.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess none of that is very surprising, but I'm still glad to know it. (I thought Draco's reaction to Alice in years 6 and 7 was pretty interesting actually; one of my favorite moments ever was when he shoplifted that jar of expensive face cream for her :)

Thanks for answering!

Sandovals and Squibs: The Untold Story

[lapin_agile]

My turn to apologise: your questions hit at a really busy time, but I've taken way longer to get to this than I hoped.

What follows comes from Lana's initial character questionaire (a character-building tool we used) and from conversations later in game-planning as additional backstory became necessary or simply emerged in play. With respect to Squibbism, the Sandoval family history implies certain things about heredity and in-breeding among very old magical communities (in their case, Spain's wizarding society).

Family:
Parents: Inigo (age 64) and Isobel (Torralva, age 37) Sandoval
Sibling(s)? Orion (age 16), Honoria (age 11) *This information dates from Lana's final year of school, when she was 17.
Other significant family members: Uncles (including Eugènio and Octavio), aunts, cousins (including Lana's favourite, Ibbie [Isobella]), and (maternal) grandparents, who live variously in Barcelona, Madrid, Antwerp, Dijon, Toulouse, Paris, Brussels, Milan and Genoa. One of her cousins, Eduardo (age 32), came to New London when her parents did. He's the son of her father's favourite brother, Eugènio. Eduardo married Catalina Navarro, and they now have several young children.) Lana's paternal grandparents, Alberto and Luisa Sandoval (ages 88 and 83, respectively), also live in London, though they retain their fine old home in Barcelona. Of course, they’ve not been able to spend time there since the wards went up. [For more family details, see: http://alt-lana.dreamwidth.org/25619.html]
Pet names Lana uses: Papa, Mama, Abuelita and Abueloberto.
...snip...
Any secrets?: Lana has, on the handful of occasions when she’s had the opportunity, trailed Bellatrix Lestrange into cloakrooms and ladies’ rooms and dress shops and restaurants in order to observe her unawares. A more important secret is that her family includes squibs. Her father’s first marriage produced a whole series on non-magical children, the first two of whom were kept at home until they reached school age and had manifested no magic. By the time the second child reached age 11 with no sign of ability, Inigo Sandoval had tried everything money and influence could buy: all six of his children had been tested and treated by all known means and none of them had a stitch of magic in them. In a fit of pique, he packed them all off to an institution and separated from his wife, who died shortly after of ‘grief’. Sometime later, he married Lana’s mother, who is a trophy wife chosen not only for her beauty but for her family’s renowned magical prowess—a family of performers, whose feats of daring and magical spectacle have been famous in Spain for hundreds of years. And to Sandoval’s enormous relief, their first born child manifested her magic as an infant, flying her toys around her crib to entertain herself. They promptly had a second child, a boy, who also manifested his magic at an extraordinarily early age, but with the third child, there was no such blessing. The wait was agonising, and again, Sandoval hired every specialist he could find to discern whether the child was another squib or a late-bloomer, and all attempts were made to awaken any latent magic in the child, but every test told the same dire tale: the child was without doubt a squib. In 1981, when the family moved to London, that child was sent to the same asylum as its unhappy half-siblings. In the spirit of starting fresh that marked their decision to emigrate to New London, the Sandovals tried once again to have a child, and Honoria was born. Like her sister, Lana, and brother, Orion, Honoria showed her magic early, but she proved difficult in other ways, and, in any case, her mother had decided that she could not face the strain of and uncertainty of bearing any more children with Sandoval, so the couple agreed that they would leave well-enough alone rather than press their luck another time.

More on the Squibs (What does Honoria know when it comes up in Year 7?):
Honoria knows the name of the squib child her own mother had because her mother kept her name and birthdate inscribed inside an emerald ring she rarely wears, but which Honoria used to puzzle over whenever she had a chance to be alone in her mother's dressing room. That child's name is/was Inés Sandoval. She was born 8 October 1977. That means Inigo Sandoval packed her off to the institution as a lost cause when she was only four years old. 0.o

I think it's more powerful if Honoria has no idea what the names of her half siblings (Inigo's first six children) are/were. She should, however, have got the bare details of the story from her uncle, Eduardo, who lives in NL and immigrated along with her parents. There were six children by Inigo's first wife, Valeria. Honoria knows that Inigo 'set her aside'; that she went away somewhere; and that she died shortly after of 'grief'.

Sidenote: Honoria believes that her grandmother, Luisa (she calls her Abuelita), keeps a picture of Valeria Sandoval in her dressing room (though Honoria would admit it doesn't make a lot of sense that Luisa Sandoval would keep a picture of her disgraced daughter-in-law, and it's completely possible that it's just a story Lana and Orion made up to scare her). Anyway, that picture has always scared Honoria. (What Honoria doesn't know: Lana's boggart looks like the woman in that picture, whom Lana really does believe to be her father's first wife.)

Those are the backstory facts we played from. Yes, Inès Sandoval, Honoria and Lana's sister, was really a squib. She was rejected by their father as defective when she was only four, which would be very early to give up on a child, except that Mr Sandoval believed himself an expert on such tragedies by then and had fierce confidence in the experts who had examined his children. He was, perhaps, quicker to cast the child aside and move on because this latest squib suggested that the earlier failures were not all the fault of his first wife's magical feebleness, as he'd wished to believe.

While I don't mean to imply that Squibs can only happen in old families where the magic is waning alongside or because of the genetic flaws that arise from inbreeding, I certainly applied that logic to the Sandovals' story, and used it to supply Lana with deep, unacknowledged anxieties that intensify her commitment to the Protector's pureblood ideology. She was carrying the flag for her family, as it were, to demonstrate the virility of their blood and the strength of their magic: she was not going disappoint her father. (Because that thought was utterly terrifying.)

Honoria's response to the pressure of living up to Sandoval standards was... rather different.

Re: Sandovals and Squibs: The Untold Story

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you so much for including some of the original character notes! This is incredible!

I feel a little stupid for not considering the idea that severe inbreeding might play a part. In which case, the oldest, strictest Pureblood families are actually at greater risk of producing squibs. It seems so obvious when you think about it!