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

[ivorygates]

What happens to Lana?

[stormyhearted]

(To anyone who wants to comment.) Is there anyone you wish had been a played character, but it just didn't work out?

[reenie]

I always thought it would be interesting to see what Nanella (Narcissa and Bella's mother) would add to the game. I was always really intrigued by Sarah Yaxley, too, mostly based on Deb's creation of her as reflected in Lana's posts. I'm really curious about Maureen, too.

A lot of the NPCs felt really real to me, despite not having journals. Remy Jugson, for example; Astoria Greengrass; Teddy Nott (who started as a PC, yes, and gave us something to work from); Mrs Professor Carrow; Lizzie Stevens and Samantha Montgomery. Many more besides.

[lucky_guess]

Ah, Lana.

http://alt-lana.dreamwidth.org/61102.html

[naomikritzer]

I would add Honoria to that list, and Gwendolyn Acton.

[lucky_guess]

I'm glad we got a glimpse of Sarah Fawcett when Draco was on bedrest, but I would've liked to have seen more of her, too! Padma might've been interesting, as would've Cho Chang.

Due to the mechanics of not having the journal be accessible to Muggle people, that also limited our voices, too.

(Oh, Remy.)

[reenie]

Some NPCs were just useful for being NPCs, is the thing. You know? Like, if we needed someone to be horrible, Teddy was always waiting in the wings. If we needed someone to do something kind of bone-headed, there was Remy! If we needed someone to annoy Daphne, cue Astoria! I really think those people all worked best as NPCs.

[lucky_guess]

I do like how Jeremy started off that way -- someone doing something boneheaded/opportunistic/causing Sally-Anne frustration who existed largely in the background, and then he evolved wonderfully into someone entirely his own. So that was one case where it went really well!

[keshwyn]

Why did Frank get his magic back but George didn't?

[stormyhearted]

Who has Neville's herbology journal, and what will happen with it?

[gwendolyngrace]

It might have been interesting to have a played Aristotle Baddock, or Ptolemy's wife and Linus's sister Karoline Moon.


Early on we tried a bunch of characters who just didn't work out (either because the players didn't have a firm hold on them, and then the players dropped out) or because the character just didn't fit within the platform of the story format (Moaning Myrtle was an interesting concept, but...no. Why would a GHOST even have a journal???). One of the things we found quickly was that there needed to be a critical mass of voiced characters with whom each new one could reasonably interact.

I also miss us having more sycophantic Hogwarts kids, like Su Li (who, like Seamus, Padma never, ever betrayed, despite her being a fostered halfblood), or some of the other Ravenclaw Tower nerds. I think that colored the perception that Padma was a lone force of meanness in the school. Lana's arrival helped that somewhat, and boy did she help shape Padma's arc.

I had had a plan for Parvati's story with Inderpal to be the dark (or light?) mirror to the marriages of both Sinistra/Razzer and Daphne/Barty. That never really worked, though, because Parvati was too off-screen as an unvoiced character.

[naomikritzer]

The NPCs I would've really loved to see as PCs were the Archer kids.

Aloysius Archer was an Order affiliate who committed suicide in order to avoid interrogation (using a poisoned ring that later inspired the ones Sally-Anne and Hermione made for the ISS kids.)

Aloysius left behind a son, Gareth, who was a Gryffindor. We suggested a few times that he had committed himself firmly to the Protectorate, trying to avoid the taint of his father's suspect death.

He had been estranged from Gareth, but quite close to his niece, Aurelia, a Slytherin from a mostly-Gryffindor family. Aurelia was Susan's girlfriend for a while, and a Galleon holder. She was solidly in the Order-leaning, subversive camp.

And Aloysius was betrayed by his own brother, who was trying desperately to get his children out of a muggleborn camp. Igraine Archer was one of those children, and had a fascinating tragic backstory -- her awful secret, which she revealed to Seamus under Imperius, was that she would sometimes steal food from her brother, justifying it because if he'd never been born she wouldn't have lost her halfblood status and been condemned to the camps. She felt tremendously guilty about this, and willingly followed Seamus's orders to protect her secret.

There was a lot of interesting angst there, but we never hit the point of thinking they needed to be played characters. The whole family was really damn interesting, though, from Aloysius outward.

[stormyhearted]

Oh, and another- Dolohov told Sally Anne that Neville and Harry's bodies had been cremated. Did he lie, or was he lied to? If so, who told him that- Barty, or Bella? Why did Rod know where they were- and why weren't they cremated?

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

I always thought it would have been interesting to have a Cho too, but the story just didn't evolve that way. Ditto Parvati!

[gwendolyngrace]

Ah!

Because the Neo-Fidelius spell is highly unpredictable and no one knows what effect it would have.

There were three instances of its use in canon: Frank used it, lost his magic for a while, and it came back. George used it, lost his magic forever. Dumbledore used it, and it killed him.

For this reason the Neo-F was considered a brilliant effort, but ultimately a failed piece of spellcraft.

[naomikritzer]

The neo-Fidelius spell is unpredictable. Sometimes it kills you outright (Dumbledore), sometimes it just robs you of your magic. Sometimes you get it back (Frank), sometimes you don't (George).

I think with Frank we may have done a random determination (dead or just magic-deprived? permanently or temporarily?). The others may have been done because it would make for a really good story. (We did not want to kill ONE TWIN like somehow that's less bad than killing any of the other Weasleys, but one of them paying a profound price along the way seemed like something we needed.)

(Does this answer sound right to the rest of you? Please chime in with corrections/alterations.)

[ivorygates]

Constant as the moon, that one. Thank you!

[jenett]

And to add to the range of outcomes (and why Albus was quite certain he wasn't coming back from the Ministry), he knew that the risks got greater the more area you encompass with it.

The Ministry, besides having huge amounts of years and years of accumulated magic, is also canonically really big.

(For any runes geeks out there, the wiki has our geeky runes theory explanation of why the Neo-Fidelius works, how it's different from the charm Fidelius, and the theory of an original version of a runed Fidelius, but the charm version works better.)

[keshwyn]

And did anyone rescue his Lionwort cultivars from the greenhouses?

[reenie]

Barty suggested that he and Bella burn the bodies (interesting, given that he must have known that Dolohov wouldn't be too happy about it). Bella said she didn't care. They did whatever they did off journal, but Dolohov was told the bodies were burned.

I believe Bella and Rod decided to hold on to them (ew, by which I mean put them in a secure location) for a couple of reasons:

1) leverage for later, if needed (as employed by Rod in his plea bargain)
2) Both of them wondering if Voldemort's remains might have some mysterious power or value attached to them, given what an awesomely dark wizard he was. Rod was an experimenter, remember.

[jenett]

I sort of regret we didn't have Irma Pince, who we see really interesting hints of here and there.

And in very general terms - but it was hard, because original characters not tighly connected to other characters are hard to play and tended not to work - I wish we'd been able to get out more 'this is the general population and their reactions'.

I think that got a lot more clear once we got Bill and Rachel and Jeremy and several other consistent NPCs who could get referenced at the Ministry in the final years, but I keep wishing we'd been able to do more with that from the publishing world, or something.

[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.

[longstrider]

I wish I'd joined at least a year earlier as Cedric so we'd have had him, through the tourney.

I offered to channel my librarian and pick up Pince but it didn't work out at the time. We added Rookwood instead.

[lucky_guess]

Yes, I think Frank was highly experienced with regular Fielius and George was new to it, which mattered, and the sheer area that Albus was attempting to encompass played a part too.

Basically, we didn't want it to be world-breaking -- a really fascinating tool, but one that came at such a price (and an unpredictable one, at that!) that our characters wouldn't use it CONSTANTLY.

[stormyhearted]

What is your favorite thing created for Alternity? (Place, spell, item, whatever.)