The Alternity Re-Read: April / May, Year 1

[alt_moderator]

Here are the links to the pdfs:

April

May


Comment away, as you get there!

Comments

[naomikritzer]

I decided that Padraig Pearse and Countess Markievicz were wizards. I can't remember why I made that call about Pearse. I picked Countess Markievicz because I found her pretty fascinating. And re-reading her biography, I have to say, she'd have made a heck of a role model for some of our characters. Born super privileged, she married a Polish Count (hence the last name and title) but then joined the Irish revolutionaries. From her wikipedia entry:

>>>In 1909 Markievicz founded Fianna Éireann, a para-military nationalist scouts organisation that instructed teenage boys and girls in the use of firearms. Patrick Pearse said that the creation of Fianna Éireann was as important as the creation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. [...] She was jailed for the first time in 1911 for speaking at an Irish Republican Brotherhood demonstration attended by 30,000 people, organised to protest against George V's visit to Ireland. During this protest Markievicz handed out leaflets, erected great masts: Dear land thou art not conquered yet., participated in stone-throwing at pictures of the King and Queen and attempted to burn the giant British flag taken from Leinster House, eventually succeeding, but then seeing James McArdle imprisoned for one month for the incident, despite Markievicz testifing in court that she was responsible. Her friend Helena Moloney was arrested for her part in the stone-throwing and became the first woman in Ireland to be tried and imprisoned for a political act since the time of the Ladies Land League.

Markievicz also joined James Connolly's socialist Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a small volunteer force formed in response to the lock-out of 1913, to defend the demonstrating workers from the police. Markievicz recruited volunteers to peel potatoes in a basement while she and others worked on distributing the food. As all the food was paid out of her own pocket, Markievicz was forced to take out many loans, at this time,and sold all her jewellery. That same year, with Inghinidhe na hÉireann, she ran a soup kitchen to feed poor school children.

During the Howth gun-running, on 26 July 1914, when Erskine Childers' yacht Asgard, sailed by Mary Spring Rice, unloaded arms in Howth harbour, it was met by Irish Citizen Army members, led by Markievicz, ready with hand carts and wheelbarrows. Among the organisers were Thomas MacDonagh, Bulmer Hobson, Douglas Hyde and Darrell Figgis.

Fashion advice attributed to her was: "Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver." <<<

She died in 1927, and thus Pansy Parkinson never got to meet her, which is a tremendous shame.

[naomikritzer]

(Seamus mentions the two clandestine wizards of the Easter Rising in his discussion of Irish politics on April 12.)

[elisem]

April was the month, for me as reader, that Alternity shifted into a higher gear. It was Alice's account of her discussion with John Turner that did it.

[lucky_guess]

(aww. Thank you for that.)

[gwendolyngrace]

I am now into May, and I have to say that while I naturally went back and checked all of Sirius's posts regarding tracking down Justin, I had forgotten that his existence was tipped off by a disturbance big enough to require the French Ministry cleanup crew....

Justin being a virtual shut-in, btw, was inspired by Colin from The Secret Garden. That's also why he starts off as a bit peevish and spoiled and immediately gets way better once he's no longer kept prisoner in his own house!

[gwendolyngrace]

Also, Sally-Anne says:

I got an owl today from the Half-Blood Affairs Office saying that the
Strettons don't want me back. Well that's not exactly what it said. It
said that on consideration they felt that they did not have the time and
resources to manage a foster child right now. So they're going to do
another placement for me for summer but they don't know where yet.
I wish I could go stay with Pansy but her mum's still not entirely well
and I doubt it will work out.

I remember that Sally-Anne was originally with the Strettons as an Anne of Green Gables nod and that she was meant to have a progression of awful foster-families, but then (I think?) what happened was Naomi was too happy with the fully-realized Stretton family, and felt she had put much good effort into creating NPCs who had real voices and personalities, and so in the end she chose to contrive reasons Sally-Anne wound up staying with the Strettons all the time.

Which is lucky, because Jeremy wound up being a great NPC and then a great PC, and we had a grand time with Stretton-related stuff throughout the game. But it does make me wish we had had the space to tell about SOMEONE getting bounced around from foster home to foster home, even if it had just been an NPC that we heard about in passing. It strikes me that to put a PC in that position might have wound up being abuse porn instead of subtle storytelling, but it also might have offered us interesting windows on different aspects of the Protectorate.

[naomikritzer]

That is pretty much exactly what happened. I realized after writing about the Strettons (and then about the Woods, during the summer) that creating fleshed-out NPCs was a lot of work. Jeremy, Gemma, and Mrs Stretton all had pretty distinctive personalities. (The babies, Philip, and Mr Stretton were a bit more in the background.) As large-scale growers and manufacturers, the Strettons also filled a worldbuilding niche in various ways.

An NPC half-blood who got bounced around endlessly would have been fun. We could've done that with Su Li and let Padma tell that story.

[gwendolyngrace]

That's right - we're coming up on the Wood interlude! (Ah, Oliver Wood. Hydra's second husband, lol. I guess with Percy dead....)

[naomikritzer]

...does fandom like to pair Oliver with Percy?

[gwendolyngrace]

Yep. It's like Seamus/Dean but not quite as ubiquitous.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bquery%5D=percy%2Foliver


Though sadly it looks like Etakyma's (that would be my Amy) "In This World of Strangers" has been lost from the Interwebz. Hers was one of the very first P/O fics (and IMO one of the best).

[gwendolyngrace]

Here's a better Google search:
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=percy%2Foliver+fanfiction

(115,000 results)

Of course, it helps that they are the ONLY Gryffindor boys in their year ever mentioned....

[gwendolyngrace]

Oh, and she reminds me that her stuff is under the name AjesBlue, and yes, it's still there - but it looks like some of her pieces have had some funky formatting woe.

[naomikritzer]

May: the disemvowelment hex still cracks me up.

[elisem]

Me too!

[naomikritzer]

And the introduction of the YPL. I had forgotten it was this early.

[naomikritzer]

Robe pets.

My younger daughter is now a 6th grader and she would looooooooove a Robe Pet. Like if we could get her a piece of jewelry that clipped to her clothes and was also a little animal that would run around and be cute, there is seriously nothing in the world she would like more.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

"Did anyone see that Harry's servant was wearing livery? She's not
wearing it now but she did on the train back to Hogwarts. I'd like to
get some livery like that for Dennis. He'd wear it much better than
Harry's mudblood, who looked more like she was wearing a costume
than someone who really understood the part."

Oh, Draco. Hilarious in hindsight much?

[naomikritzer]

May 29th, Sirius on Justin: "Then he asked if I'd change into a dog for him again and sleep at the foot of his bed 'like a real dog.' I couldn't help laughing. What boy hasn't wanted a pet at some point? I think he's eager to learn magic, but hasn't admitted it to himself yet. I also think his first lesson is going to be that I may be able to change into a dog, but I'm neither tame, nor a pet, nor a servant he can order about. It's going to be a long summer!"

Aww.

[naomikritzer]

Another bit of unplanned foreshadowing, Seamus on Percy: "I bet Percy wishes he could posess the twins and make them behave properly. Thats how it works right? Theyd have to do whatever he wanted. They let the Head Boy and girl use crucio but no ones suggested letting prefects use imperius yet."

Percy later (Y3, I think, but I can't remember exactly when) cast a coercion spell on Ron to force him to apologize to Draco for something he'd said.