Fans of Alternity

Urgent: We need to tell you some things

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 23:28:50 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

This community has been quiescent for a long time because Alternity is over.

Except that three of the writers who helped conceptualize and write this game are living in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we need to tell you this:

We are actually living it.

If you ever loved Alternity, we are earnestly asking you, begging you, to read this right now.

( Here are Peg's thoughts )

( Here are Naomi's thoughts )

( Here are Elise's thoughts )

***

If you have made it this far (yes, we know this was long), thanks for listening. We would welcome your comments.

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When real life starts to look more and more like Alternity

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 23:03:56 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

I wrote a post today about what lessons I took from writing Alternity that are echoing more and more loudly in my own life, as we face the reality of the way Trump's second term is shaping up.

I've concluded that seven years spent writing Alternity on a daily basis was about the best preparation I could have possibly made for this strange and frightening time.

Of course, when we wrote it, we were operating under the assumption, "Naturally, this couldn't possibly happen here."

But things are gradually starting to come into focus into something that looks more and more familiar. In a rather terrifying way.

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The paperwhites are blooming

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 15:46:21 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

Rest in peace, alt_neville.

*sigh* I miss Alternity.

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Paperwhites for Neville

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 19:36:25 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

This is Neville's player, just stopping by to say...

I planted some paperwhites today. They should be blooming by Christmas.

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TWO HUGO AWARDS TO TWO ALTERNITY WRITERS!

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 01:34:17 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

naomikritzer(Sally-Anne Perks, etc.) just won the Lodestar Award for best Young Adult Novel for her book Catfishing on Catnet. Sequel coming soon!

And Elise Matthesen elisem (Linus Moon, etc.) just won the Hugo Award for best Fan Artist! See her work here.

YAAAAYYYY!!!! So proud of both of them!

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Project Update!

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 03:36:55 GMT

Posted by: stormyhearted

I've made some progress on my Alternity project as mentioned in my last post, and I added a comment there with a link and some other info! (I was just going to make a new post, and then absentmindedly made it a comment instead. Whoops.)

https://alt-fen.dreamwidth.org/292474.html?thread=1800826#cmt1800826

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A Project for Alternity!

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 18:32:57 GMT

Posted by: stormyhearted

Hello all! Hope you're doing well.

I have two weeks off, thanks to my trip getting cancelled by the present pandemic. (Alas, I work in retail so I can't revoke my vacation request.) I've decided that I'd like to spend some of my time on bringing Alternity back to the web in a semi-interactive format that would evoke the spirit of the story when it was live, watching posts and comments go "live" with each click. It'll take much, much longer than my two weeks off, but I figure it'll be a nice chunk of uninterrupted time to get it started and work out some of the kinks.

But first I want to ask the players: are you okay with this? Is there anyone who'd be okay with me checking in with them periodically, or to ask general questions of?

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Publishing News for Alternity writers

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 02:57:26 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

If you have occasionally found yourself missing Alternity and the high quality of writing that the game provided, you might be interested in knowing that a number of the alternity writers have been getting books published! Here's your chance to pick up some of our work, and hey, maybe fill out those empty spots on your holiday shopping list.

Naomi Kritzer (naomikritzer) wrote the characters Savitha Desai, Seamus Finnigan, Rachel (Lamont) Brodie, Remus Lupin, Harry Marvolo, Corax Mulciber, Sally-Anne Perks, Arista Selwyn, Dominic Selwyn, and Ginny Weasley.

Her book Catfishing on Catnet was released by Tor Teen in November, and it's made quite a splash! The book has been named a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019, and it's been reviewed on NPR. The book is based on Naomi's Hugo Award-winning story "Cat Pictures, Please," and a sequel is in the works. Naomi's website is here.

Jenett (jenett) wrote the characters Albus Dumbledore, Lee Jordan, Aurora Sinistra, Pomona Sprout, and Dolores Umbridge. She writes under the name Celia Lake (website here) The books she has written are 1920s romance with magic, and as Jenett explains, a lot of the worldbuilding is influenced by thinking through Alternity things. Pick up the Kindle editions here.

As for me, Peg Kerr (pegkerr), I wrote Hannah Abbott, Terry Boot, Amycus Carrow, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Arthur Weasley, Bill Weasley, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Molly Weasley, and Percy Weasley. Two books I wrote twenty years ago are being re-released by Endeavour Media as ebooks (and talks are in the works about also releasing them on a print-on-demand basis). The first The Wild Swans is now available for pre-order on Amazon (publication date January 10, 2020). The second, a reprint of Emerald House Rising will be available in February (no link yet, but keep an eye out). I have re-acquired my old domain, pegkerr.com, and I'll be putting up an author's website, uh, Real Soon Now. As soon as I finish the edits and get them back to London, honest.

Happy reading!

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On the deserving of noses

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 23:17:59 GMT

Posted by: aedifica

I'm hiding inside from the hot weather we have here today, and catching up on MCU movies. Today I'm watching Avengers: Infinity War and my first thought on seeing one of the new characters was "Dude doesn't deserve a nose." (Then I thought "well, I don't know him, maybe he does deserve a nose--but he doesn't have one in any case.")

(Does anyone remember when Sally-Anne said that?)

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Oh look, it's the Protectorate...

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 21:51:24 GMT

Posted by: keshwyn

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/07/that-sinking-feeling.html#more

Charlie Stross basically describes what Alternity figured out years ago: the UK is not self-sufficient anymore.

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20th Anniversary of the May Battle

Sat, 19 May 2018 18:45:07 GMT

Posted by: naomikritzer

Albion celebrates Remembrance Day on the anniversary of the May Battle. From Neville's coda:

During the annual observance of Remembrance Day on May 16th each year, bells are rung, names are read, and candles are lit. And white flowers -- miles and miles of flowers -- spring up from the ground in St James Park and are left at graves and on memorials, worn as corsages, and displayed in windows.

Year 7 was set in 1998, so this past Wednesday would have been the 20th Anniversary.

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I wrote a fic today!

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 20:17:16 GMT

Posted by: longstrider

Google's paralymic doodle today and Peg's post had me thinking about Alternity and Cedric's future. Along with a healthy dose of procrastination, I wrote a fic today from the future timeline hinted at in the final post about Cedric. Here's the link

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My Weasley Clock has lost a hand

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 03:29:00 GMT

Posted by: pegkerr

I played both Molly and Arthur during Alternity. I wrote Arthur's death, and I wrote Molly during her widowhood.

Remember this post that Charlie made after Arthur died?

Life has now caught up with art. I lost my beloved husband of thirty-one years, Rob Ihinger, to cancer at the end of January.

We had a Weasley clock hanging in our bedroom. Tonight, I took down my husband Rob's hand, and I mounted and hung it under the clock.

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Alternity Fic: "To the Revolution"

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:06:32 GMT

Posted by: naomikritzer

I was in my Google Docs for some reason and realized that I never put this up on AO3, or shared with anyone other than Gwen and Elise.

Below: my Alternity Fic in which the (surviving) Alternity characters discover the new musical, "Hamilton." (Inspired by "They Call Themselves the Trash of the Thing," in which the Avengers discover it.)

( Read more... )

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I needed to do something productive.

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 15:08:17 GMT

Posted by: keshwyn

For a variety of reasons, I have had an unproductive week.

So I did a productive thing: https://www.dragonmage.net/hpalternity/

It has everything that the wayback machine could give me, but the css is broken for some reason. (I do not speak fluent CSS. It is a joke in my workplace that CSS is harder to write than C.) But all the links that are not otherwise noted as broken work.

I will leave this where it is until the real site comes back. Hosting flatfiles is easy. And at least this means I got *something* useful done this week.

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ALL HAIL jenett, EXTREME LIBRARIAN

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 17:45:16 GMT

Posted by: sporky_rat

Good fen, we have jenett to thank for this!

September of Year Three (FOR REAL THIS TIME)! Apologies for it being a GoogleDrive linke, but I went through the WaybackMachine and downloaded every single one of the pdfs and saved them to my GoogleDrive so I would have access ANYWHERE. Mauahaha.

So on 25 August-ish, I can post October!

(Please work, GoogleDrive. Please work.)

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Hoorah wayback machine

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 20:36:20 GMT

Posted by: lucky_guess

I finally got around to backing up my alternity files.

I also couldn't help myself, and read the codas, and the final month of game play, and also the Battle for Hogwarts month.

It took me a solid two-day marathon just to get through all of it, and I cried like a dozen times. Mercy. (Also, I may end up getting on a computer that has advanced adobe and rearranging some of the pages during 2015-05 to match order of events -- silly time zones interfering in the height of battle. I'll re-post here when I do in case anyone else wants a copy.)

There were so many sweet little touches I'd forgotten, or let fade a little.

( for those still re-reading who don't want to be (re)spoilered )

It was SO GOOD, y'all.

Just.

Thank you.

I may also have to dig around for some of those final letters, and re-read them, and let them break my heart all over again.

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this is adorable

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 18:07:57 GMT

Posted by: sporky_rat

Turns out Hydra's actress Saoirse Ronan is in Ed Sheeran's video, 'Galway Girl'.

Kinda neat seeing her all cheerful and happy and drinking dark beer.

I like to think this what it looks like in Ireland after the wards fell and everything got settled out.

(I'd never seen Ed Sheeran's face before. He looks like a Weasley!)

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All hail the Wayback Machine!

Wed, 17 May 2017 21:06:41 GMT

Posted by: sporky_rat

I don't know why I didn't think about the Wayback Machine earlier.

July, Summer of the Year with the Freaking Chamber of Secrets Crap. (Which year is that and if it's not three, can someone go back and fix those posts? Please?)

August, Last Month of Summer Before The Prisoner of Azkaban (I am pretty sure that's Year Two.)

WOO WAYBACK MACHINE.

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Off-Topic: Silly Recommendation

Fri, 28 Apr 2017 20:34:19 GMT

Posted by: gwendolyngrace

I was bored and poking around AO3 today and found this little gem:

Casablanca

I thought this group, of any, would appreciate it. It's the salient points of the movie, recast with Marauders.

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hpalternity update

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 02:53:58 GMT

Posted by: synecdochic

Sorry about the extended downtime -- the machine's hosed in a way that will take me having about six or seven straight hours uninterrupted to fix it, and between Dreamwidth exploding over the past few weeks and my pain levels being fucking awful and keeping me from being able to sit up for an extended period of time, I haven't had the cope to handle it. I'll post again when I get it back up!

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hpalternity.com having an occasional lie-down

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 18:05:02 GMT

Posted by: synecdochic

I keep getting messages from the hosting company that the machine hpalternity.com is on keeps becoming unresponsive and needs to be rebooted. (I will guess somebody else on the same virtual server has a runaway script that's locking all the CPU, or else the physical hardware is having problems or something.)

I'm pretty sure I have the whole thing backed up (although I'll take a fresh backup the next time the server comes up while I'm around/awake/free, just to be certain), and the hosting company is pretty on top of noticing & fixing it when there's a problem. Still, if you can't connect to the site, that's why!

EDIT: Yeah, the site's allegedly back up, but I can't connect to it via SSH and the web server isn't responding. I've opened a ticket with the host, but I gotta go pass out now, so it won't get fixed until tomorrow if they need me to do anything.

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Your Mum: International Woman of Mystery

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 04:03:14 GMT

Posted by: naomikritzer

A recent episode of This American Life:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/613/ok-ill-do-it

(Act II)

features a young woman who, in her mid-20s, discovered that her mother had had a really exciting secret life back when her mother was in her early 20s. She had been recruited as a college student to run guns to support the militant wing of the African National Congress in South Africa. She was a white woman, and posed as a honeymooner for a few months in Africa, along with a white man she was not romantically involved with (or interested in in any way, in fact) and they successfully ran guns for about three months, which was what they'd been recruited to do, while also going out to look at animals like they were normal honeymooners on safari.

Her reaction to find out that HER MUM (who never seemed like one of the COOL mums!) had done something this fascinating and daring reminded me of the younger Weasleys' initial reaction to the theory that their mother might be one of the Wand Smugglers.

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Happy Birthday, Ron

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 14:06:23 GMT

Posted by: gwendolyngrace

I thought it was also Kiss a Ginger Day but now I think I might be wrong?

I miss Alternity.

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our current dystopia

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:54:23 GMT

Posted by: naomikritzer

I was thinking about how Dominic Selwyn was basically Reince Preibus: much less crazy than his boss, still evil, but you'd almost certainly rather have him in charge, and this got me pondering other Death Eater <> Current Members of Trump's Administration pairings.

(Did we have any readers who were Trump fans? I'm going to say, if so, that you somehow weirdly missed the point of this entire project...)

Lucius. Clearly the Mike Pence of the Voldemort administration: extremely influential but not in charge, and there's legitimate debate over whether putting him in charge for real would be better or worse than the original option. (On the plus side: less likely to nuke China / make his followers fight to the death in an arena for kicks. On the minus side: probably would be more effective at pursuing his agenda.)

Amycus Carrow. The Steve Bannon. No one but the Top Dog actually wants him around but there he fucking is; also, DEEPLY CREEPY and physically repugnant (not that this is the worst thing about him).

Dolores Umbridge. I know it's been popular to compare Betty DeVos to Umbridge, but I actually think KellyAnne Conway is the better comparison here.

I suppose we could also say that Selwyn's analog is Spicer: he got sent out to defend the party line bullshit on the regular, but Selwyn was a fair amount better at it, I think. Also, you kind of don't need a Spicer when you are unapologetically running a dictatorship with no pretence of a free press.

Lana Sandoval. Ivanka Trump. (Ivanka Trump has reminded me of Lana since sometime during the campaign. Something about her facial expressions.) And Jerod, obviously, is Ned. Less influential than he thinks / aspires to be.

I'm not sure whether to be glad or sorry that I can't think of anyone in Trump's administration who remotely reminds me of Dolohov.

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