Changing Courses in the Alternity-verse....

[gwendolyngrace]

Aliethen asked:
Can you give us a sense of (a few of the) plots which were surprises but worked really well in the end? For example I always had the impression that Terry/Hermione was supposed to be endgame at first but Draco/Hermione ended up evolving organically...was I right? (Was it even known at first that Draco would be in the Order in the end?) Did you always know Harry and Neville would die?


I felt like that sort of thing deserves its own thread, so here. Discuss!

Comments

[lapin_agile]

I was Tonks' player at the point that Bill became interested in her, and I felt that Tonks wasn't looking for love at the time. She was invested in trying to make her family life work with Sirius and Remus and Bea, and that was a work-in-progress, still.

And she and Bill were in different places about what they needed: she wasn't looking for another relationship and wasn't ready to try to fill the hole in her heart--a space that wasn't yet entirely empty because she really was still in love with Remus. In some ways, Bill just wanted too much from her.

Then, yeah, Charlie arrived, and he was funny and already partnered and didn't want anything but to flirt and play with Bea, and Tonks was just totally charmed.

[lucky_guess]

When I took over Tonks, I likened her situation to the Baker's Wife in Into The Woods. She had a Remus and Sirius for childrearing help and love of a familiar, companionable sort, a baby for warmth, and a Charlie for... whatever. And he ended up being love of a friendly sort too, just not the Epic Romance Love, and y'know, that was pretty much fine.

[lucky_guess]

Plus sex! So win-win!

[synecdochic]

It's funny how many of us were thinking Into the Woods for our characters! (I had to stop Tosha from quoting "Wishes come true, not free" soooo many times.)

[naomikritzer]

"I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right." (There were quite a few characters who might have felt quite justified singing that lyric. Some of them enemies of each other.)

[synecdochic]

Oh Lord YES.

[naomikritzer]

And, you know: the first act of "Into the Woods" is a fairy tale; the second act is an adult revisiting of that same fairy tale but with all the consequences explored instead of skipped over.

That is pretty much exactly what we were doing in Alternity -- revisiting a fairy tale, but without shying away from the unpleasant consequences. So it's not surprising that "Into the Woods" really speaks to a lot of us.

[synecdochic]

Oh, absolutely. (And it's one of the reasons why I love Into the Woods so much, and always have.) 'Consequence' is one of my absolute favorite things to explore in stories, hands down -- part of the reason Tosha is SO MUCH one of my characters is that I love playing the sort of character who makes choices fully aware of consequences and does them anyway because he HAS TO.

Parents and children, and the influence of parents ON children, was another thing ItW and Alternity have in common. In Alternity's case it's most often "older generation and younger generation" more than a literal "parents and children", but "careful the things you say, children will listen; careful the things you do, children will see and learn" and "careful the spell you cast, not just on children, sometimes the spell may last past what you can see and turn against you. Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell."

[elisem]

Yeah.

Makes me think of the line "Every knot was once straight rope."

[gwendolyngrace]

I love that analogy.

[synecdochic]

I think Charlie and Tonks wound up so perfect for each other because neither one of them needed the other. (Enjoyed, definitely, but they both had very full lives and plenty of other emotional entanglements that kept them from ever being all wrapped up in the other.) Bill was wearing his heart on his sleeve, and he was so lonely, and he was looking for someone to help heal that loneliness, and that's a lot of pressure to put on someone! He really did need someone like Rachel to just come along and roll her eyes and hit him over the head and drag him back to her flat, and Tonks wasn't going to ever be able to be that person.

[lapin_agile]

[Bill] really did need someone like Rachel to just come along and roll her eyes and hit him over the head and drag him back to her flat, and Tonks wasn't going to ever be able to be that person.

Which is another thing, really, that I love about Alternity. There were so many different relationship plot lines, so many different ways that love could arise, be expressed, be organized, be shared. And Bill's quest for a lover could just have looked like this: A. Bill is lonely and needs to find love; B. Tonks got shoved out of her marriage by Sirius, so she's a single female; C. Actually, Tonks is the only single female of Bill's generation in the Order; so D. Bill must ask Tonks to marry him, and that will make all the maths work out in neat pairs!

But Alternity didn't do maths that way, and really it is much more interesting to have told a story where Bill was sure he wanted Tonks, but Tonks just didn't return the feeling, and that was hard for Bill, and awkward for her, and then more awkward when his brother turned up and she DID find Charlie sexy and exciting and just more her type. And Bill was hurt, but over time it got to be okay. That's so much more interesting than Some Enchanted Evening--or Some Enchanted Evening (The Only Two Single People in the Room Hooked Up Because What Else Can You Do?)

[synecdochic]

I really do think there were very few moments where we took the easy path, which is one of the things I'm most proud of. (Out of all the other things I'm most proud of! THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM, OKAY.)

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely. I am really pleased that we didn't go the simple route (and then that Bill and Rachel didn't have the automatic happy ending with each other, either, but they both ended up satisfied with their lives).

[pegkerr]

And that was me, by the way.