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Author Topic: Other: Alternity  (Read 9179 times)

Jenett

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Alternity
« on: June 05, 2013, 09:40:06 am »
I figured I should just give up and make a thread, in part because I would love somewhere to geek the religious and magical theory in the project.

Explanation below, for those unfamiliar with the game.

Alternity, which many of you have heard me mention, is a massive long-term online project in an alternate universe Harry Potter setting in which Voldemort took power in 1982, and has been raising Harry as his son, and ruling the Protectorate (the British Isles) which has been cut off from the rest of the world through magical wards. Most Muggles are in magical sleep-stasis or in massive work camps, Muggleborns are all in enforced service. And even for the purebloods at the top of the heap, it's not actually a very comfortable place to live.

It is one part role-playing game (the game conceit is that in our Year 1, Voldemort handed magical journals to the entire country: you get to read about 70 characters worth of them, but you see how characters describe things in their journal, not the action as it goes), one part deconstruction of the Harry Potter world (filling in the inconsistencies and gaps and 'how does that even *work*?') and one part really complicated look at how people make difficult choices in difficult settings.

Anyway, why this thread: I managed to hook a good handful of Cauldron readers on it by saying "We have extensive moral ambiguity!" (We do: Good people make horrible choices, Death Eaters do wonderful things). But we also have really sound magical theory underlying as much of it as we can manage given canon.

We also have, in Antonin Dolohov (a character introduced in Year 5, now teaching Dark Arts at Hogwarts) someone who is a Kemetic religionist more or less, with a side of Russian Orthodoxy that lacks a community of co-religionists to do anything with. (His mother was Egyptian, his father was Russian.) And there's hints of nature-focused Pagan background among several other characters, though religion in general is not highly common in the Protectorate.

I find it fascinating for a deeply nuanced (and many shades of gray) look at ethics, morality, choice, loyalty, and many related topics. I find it hilariously funny in places. And I find the process of helping create it to be incredibly informative about how to make longterm collaborative complex projects work. [1]

(As a one-thread example of the hilarious that doesn't require much explanation this thread is a discussion in which Luna Lovegood asks about her Noble Arts assignment: it turns out that the required book they just started (Intra Profundis) shares a title with the Alternity-verse's equivalent of 50 Shades of Gray. Once you've read that, back up and read various people teasing the Death Eater.)

If you'd like to read more, http://hpalternity.com is our website. We currently have monthly PDFs available of the entire game, beginning in Y1, and the website also links to additional summary information. (The game starts out a little rough: it starts gelling better around January of Year 1, and I think we really start getting into the amazing stuff around Year 3. We have just had the year finale of Year 5 as I write this.) Feel free to ask questions here!

We also have fan discussion communities at http://alt-fen.livejournal.com and http://alt-fen.dreamwidth.org (the latter is tending to be more active these days), where people would love to join in dissecting fragments of text and underlying implications.

If you'd like to go "OMG, what just happened" and/or dig into the magical theory parts of the game, you know what to do with the thread here.

[1] As you might guess from that sentence, I am one of the player authors. (We have 12 right now): a few people on the forum know who I'm playing, but please do not reveal it in this thread: it is something we mostly keep private to preserve the fourth wall.)
« Last Edit: May 07, 2019, 03:09:17 pm by RandallS »
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Darkhawk

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2013, 11:03:48 am »
Quote from: Jenett;110803
(As a one-thread example of the hilarious that doesn't require much explanation this thread is a discussion in which Luna Lovegood asks about her Noble Arts assignment: it turns out that the required book they just started (Intra Profundis) shares a title with the Alternity-verse's equivalent of 50 Shades of Gray. Once you've read that, back up and read various people teasing the Death Eater.)

 
I think another good example is one inspired by a discussion on the Cauldron, actually, the thing about "necromancers" and "Death Essence".
as the water grinds the stone
we rise and fall
as our ashes turn to dust
we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2013, 11:32:12 am »
Quote from: Darkhawk;110804
I think another good example is one inspired by a discussion on the Cauldron, actually, the thing about "necromancers" and "Death Essence".

 
Oh, yes! That'd be this one: http://alt-sinistra.dreamwidth.org/40553.html?thread=338025#cmt338025 . Which also has an excellent example of the nuances of the Dark - or as Dolohov likes to call them, the Noble Arts - and a working definition.

(See, this is what I mean about magical theory.)
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Re: Alternity
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2013, 06:21:43 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;110803


If you'd like to read more, http://hpalternity.com is our website. We currently have monthly PDFs available of the entire game, beginning in Y1, and the website also links to additional summary information. (The game starts out a little rough: it starts gelling better around January of Year 1, and I think we really start getting into the amazing stuff around Year 3. We have just had the year finale of Year 5 as I write this.) Feel free to ask questions here!


 
I'm going to be really annoying right now. I'm nearly at the end of October Year 1 (got so much more to read!) but I'm already hooked. There is just one little issue which is niggling at the moment. The inconsistency in using American English vs British English spelling. It just jars it a bit for me, probably the dyslexia because I see a word which is spelt incorrectly for me and it makes me stumble a bit in reading. (Not that I can't read things in American English, I have plenty of books written in it but because the whole book has those spellings I get used to it within the first 50 pages or so. But with this it's the occasional switching between the spellings due to which character is writing that is niggling. )

So basically, if I carry on reading, ok not if, I am going to carry on reading, but  does it get sorted out or shall I start trying to get my brain to stop screaming at me whenever Hermione goes all American? :p: (She's the one that I can remember off the top of my head, I know there's a few others though. )

Apart from that, I bloody love it! I've also got a friend hooked on it as well.

Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2013, 07:02:53 pm »
Quote from: Aranel;111973
So basically, if I carry on reading, ok not if, I am going to carry on reading, but  does it get sorted out or shall I start trying to get my brain to stop screaming at me whenever Hermione goes all American? :p: (She's the one that I can remember off the top of my head, I know there's a few others though. )

We have gotten much better about it. We still occaisionally slip (especially when a thread is going very quickly in conversation, and when fixing it would disrupt the entire flow), but we've gotten much better over the years, and we're averaging one or two slips a month now, I think, that don't get edited as we go. (Which given that we mostly work in real-time and given our current amount of content per month - which is running four or so times what it was in Y1 - is a very good average.) Anyway, I think we got more solid about it somewhere in Y2.

I tend to have to think about it at times: I'm American-born-and-raised, but my parents are both effectively British, and I've read so much British-based lit that often I stare at something and go "Those both look right" until I go and look it up. (Same thing happens to other people, too: all the current players are American, but several of the others have spent extended time in the UK.)

Quote
Apart from that, I bloody love it! I've also got a friend hooked on it as well.

Woooo!
« Last Edit: June 12, 2013, 07:03:18 pm by Jenett »
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Re: Alternity
« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2013, 05:40:08 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;110803


 
So I may have completely gotten obsessed with Alternity over the past twenty-four hours. I've just started on the October of the first year PDF, and the part about Muggle doctors being some of the first they killed was absolutely chilling. Please give my regards to the player behind Lupin -- they're doing an excellent job with the character.

Do we get to hear more about how the rest of the world sees Britain? Has the wizarding world cover been completely blown for everywhere? What do the leaders of Muggle countries think about the UK being taken over? Is Voldemort eventually planning for world domination? Do Remus and Sirius ever kiss dammit
Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.

-Canticle of Trials 1:10

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Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #6 on: June 13, 2013, 06:15:06 pm »
Quote from: Sage;112278
So I may have completely gotten obsessed with Alternity over the past twenty-four hours. I've just started on the October of the first year PDF, and the part about Muggle doctors being some of the first they killed was absolutely chilling.


Worldbuilding in tiny details, one of our specialities.

(No seriously, the alt-fen community on Dreamwidth has just had a run of posts in which they dug up tiny little half-sentences and did a lot of "OH DAMN" commentary as they pieced things together.)

Quote

Do we get to hear more about how the rest of the world sees Britain? Has the wizarding world cover been completely blown for everywhere? What do the leaders of Muggle countries think about the UK being taken over? Is Voldemort eventually planning for world domination?


You will hear more about many of these topics! (You hear more outside world stuff especially in Y4, but there's bits and pieces before that, too.)
 
Quote
Do Remus and Sirius ever kiss dammit


*snerk*

Some things you'll have to discover for yourself. (I will say that I am very pleased at the varied sexualities and relationship models of our characters, given that the Protectorate is very "There should be more pureblood babies in heterosexual pureblood households, and did we mention purebloods?" about everything.)
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Darkhawk

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #7 on: June 13, 2013, 06:29:00 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;112291
(No seriously, the alt-fen community on Dreamwidth has just had a run of posts in which they dug up tiny little half-sentences and did a lot of "OH DAMN" commentary as they pieced things together.)

 
And I was only doing that with Dolohov, who Sage hasn't met yet.  The person who chased down all of the Department of Mysteries references is a star.
as the water grinds the stone
we rise and fall
as our ashes turn to dust
we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #8 on: June 13, 2013, 06:45:49 pm »
Quote from: Darkhawk;112301
And I was only doing that with Dolohov, who Sage hasn't met yet.  The person who chased down all of the Department of Mysteries references is a star.

 
I was going to say that sorting through the Dolohov stuff was probably as much *verbage* as the DoM stuff. And then I remembered that a lot of the DoM content is in Lucius posts, and Lucius is almost as bad.
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Darkhawk

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #9 on: June 13, 2013, 06:56:13 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;112310
I was going to say that sorting through the Dolohov stuff was probably as much *verbage* as the DoM stuff. And then I remembered that a lot of the DoM content is in Lucius posts, and Lucius is almost as bad.

 
I think it mildly more relevant that looking through things for Dolohov has a fifth of the material to scan through, number of PDFs-wise. ;)
as the water grinds the stone
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Re: Alternity
« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2013, 07:21:54 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;112310
I was going to say that sorting through the Dolohov stuff was probably as much *verbage* as the DoM stuff. And then I remembered that a lot of the DoM content is in Lucius posts, and Lucius is almost as bad.

 
Why are there still DADA classes if Voldemort has control over Britain and Hogwarts now? Magical defense in general I can understand, learning the Dark Arts maybe, but "Defense Against the Dark Arts" (supposedly the Noble Arts?) now seems like a strange oversight to leave from the last regime.
Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.

-Canticle of Trials 1:10

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Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #11 on: June 13, 2013, 07:53:34 pm »
Quote from: Sage;112314
Why are there still DADA classes if Voldemort has control over Britain and Hogwarts now? Magical defense in general I can understand, learning the Dark Arts maybe, but "Defense Against the Dark Arts" (supposedly the Noble Arts?) now seems like a strange oversight to leave from the last regime.

 
Because people have called it Defence Against The Dark Arts at Hogwarts for *so long* that it still sticks in people's heads. (We have moved, over the years, much more toward just calling it Defence, which is a much more practical name.)

We figure that Dark Arts used to get taught way back, when they stopped, a bunch of the general content (what people can do with them) got moved into Defence (which had also always had a bunch of non-Dark stuff. Boggarts, f'ex, or pixies, are tedious and annoying, but whether they're really DARK is another question.)

And then when they started teaching Dark Arts again, they pulled some of that out, made some of it into more general drilling and duelling practice, and so on.

(You will see a lot more of this in Y3, when our current Defence professor arrives, and is actually competent, and then tons more in Y5, when our current Noble Arts professor arrives, and expounds at length about the distinction between Dark and Noble.)
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Re: Alternity
« Reply #12 on: June 13, 2013, 08:29:22 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;112316
Because people have called it Defence Against The Dark Arts at Hogwarts for *so long* that it still sticks in people's heads. (We have moved, over the years, much more toward just calling it Defence, which is a much more practical name.)

We figure that Dark Arts used to get taught way back, when they stopped, a bunch of the general content (what people can do with them) got moved into Defence (which had also always had a bunch of non-Dark stuff. Boggarts, f'ex, or pixies, are tedious and annoying, but whether they're really DARK is another question.)

And then when they started teaching Dark Arts again, they pulled some of that out, made some of it into more general drilling and duelling practice, and so on.

(You will see a lot more of this in Y3, when our current Defence professor arrives, and is actually competent, and then tons more in Y5, when our current Noble Arts professor arrives, and expounds at length about the distinction between Dark and Noble.)

 
Fascinating! One last question for now. :) I haven't been in Harry Potter fandom for over a decade -- read the first four books at least a dozen times each, but the fifth and sixth only once, never was buggered to read the seventh -- and I was wondering, how exactly is religion dealt with in the Wizarding world, either Rowlings' or in Alternity's? From what I can figure, religion seems to be a Muggle thing, which is a hadnwave that makes me grumpy as a religious studies person.
Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.

-Canticle of Trials 1:10

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Darkhawk

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #13 on: June 13, 2013, 08:51:40 pm »
Quote from: Sage;112320
Fascinating! One last question for now. :) I haven't been in Harry Potter fandom for over a decade -- read the first four books at least a dozen times each, but the fifth and sixth only once, never was buggered to read the seventh -- and I was wondering, how exactly is religion dealt with in the Wizarding world, either Rowlings' or in Alternity's? From what I can figure, religion seems to be a Muggle thing, which is a hadnwave that makes me grumpy as a religious studies person.

 
I think it's worth noting that the UK in general is a much less overtly religious culture than the US, so the fact that there's the cultural expectation of, f'ex, Christmas presents without any apparent religious context in Rowling's canon doesn't strike me as terribly surprising?  (The wizarding culture appears to also operate under 'we generate our own supernatural effects, so, well, whatever', which kind of annoys me, especially since they're in a position where they are actually able to do experiments on actual souls....)

The way it appears to run in Alternity is that religion is not common among the wizards, but it's not unheard of either.  Dolohov - the DA professor who shows up in Y5 - comments explicitly once or twice that he knows his compatriots consider his devout religious beliefs (a combination of Kemetic and Russian Orthodox) kind of an eccentricity.  A couple of other people appear to have leanings towards a sort of vague animism - or a more specific animism, as Hogwarts Castle itself appears to have rather strong opinions about a variety of things - but that doesn't have a lot of overtly religious trappings to it.  Customary family magic appears to have a lot of the weight of religious practice, even if it doesn't come with god-related beliefs.  I think the only explicitly (solely) Christian-identified character we've seen is Justin Finch-Fletchley (not in game as far as you've read to this point), who is of course muggleborn.
as the water grinds the stone
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we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

Jenett

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Re: Alternity
« Reply #14 on: June 13, 2013, 09:00:26 pm »
Quote from: Darkhawk;112325

There's also the Patil family (Hindu), one of whom is a played character, and who periodically discusses various religious things. (In her case, the general response is "Oh, is that time of year again" rather than "Huh, *religion*?" - she's an outlier, but it's not the fact that someone is religious that is the issue.)

I agree with Darkhawk's comments about there being an awful lot of animism around. And there's a lot of seasonal-cycle stuff referenced in bits and pieces, though usually only in passing. (Since one of the things about a lot of what we see being at Hogwarts is that people mostly don't do the family-custom stuff that their parents might do at home.)

My own personal theory is that a bunch of the family magics are effectively witchy famtrads that picked the pieces they liked from Roman Britain, and added and subtracted over the years. Mostly, they lost the deity bits, but a number of them fairly clearly kept some things like honoring family ancestors (see the family tapestries: the Black family canonically has one, but so do a number of other pureblood families), or spirits of place for the ancestral family magical seat, or whatever.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2013, 09:01:26 pm by Jenett »
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