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brooksmoses...among other things.
So, I've known about the Alternity Harry Potter transformative work (see also the FanLore.org entry) for a while, since my dear friendjenett was involved in it. It was a massive project -- collaborative storytelling (aka role-playing game, though this was far on the "collaborative storytelling" end of any RPG spectrums one might draw) through an alternate-universe version of Harry Potter's seven years at Hogwarts, written in real time from 2008 to 2015, using LiveJournal and Dreamwidth journals as a model for magical communications between the characters. The conceit is that there is a system of magic journals that people can use to communicate with each other, either privately or in groups -- basically something between text message and email.
The Alternity site describes the setting as diverging from the original series because Voldemort adopted Harry Potter rather than killing him, and he "experienced great good fortune ever since. Wizarding Britain fell before him; the legitimate government came under his hand, and he set himself up as the Lord Protector of the realm. Activating the ancient magic of the standing stones, he sealed the British Isles off from the rest of the world, and set to work exterminating, enchanting, or enslaving all the Muggles in his purview."
What's not described in so many words in that introduction is that ... well, if you take a hard look at the worldbuilding in the original stories, there are rather a lot of horrific things hiding in the logical conclusions of what's provided. The original stories tend to ignore these things by not following through on that logic. Alternity had no such compunctions, following all of the logic gleefully into the horrific.
It is also, as you might imagine from that description, a bit daunting to consider reading, and so I hadn't read it. Instead I readkiya's quasi-fanfic about it, which is set beside the main storyline with minor connections, and which is also much smaller in scope.
This afternoon, though, a conversation with Jenett and Kiya turned to the subject of naming characters, and Alternity's habits of taking Rowling's "very obvious" naming conventions (such as naming a werewolf "Remus Lupin") and turning them to 11. One of Jenett's particularly entertaining examples was a bit-part character named Meniscus Fulton, and so I went to see who he was.
I found this journal-letter to him, which is a really excellently-written dressing-down of someone who has made a complete hash of an investigation. I recommend it even if you aren't going to read anything else of this. I was hooked, and I kept clicking the "next" buttons to read the further communications of Barty Crouch Jr. -- and replies that other people wrote to him -- until I got to the end. That covered roughly the last three years of Alternity history.
And then, having read that, I went back and read the last year of that history in the writings of his young protege, Hydra Lestrange Finch-Fletchley, starting from this entry. Again, there's a fair bit of replies from others, done as comments on the entries, as well as Hydra's own words.
I won't spoil it for you (although I imagine further discussion in comments is likely to), but it was particularly interesting reading that without entirely knowing whether either Barty or Hydra were on the side of good or evil -- especially since both of them of course imagine themselves on the side of good. It slowly becomes clear by the end of Barty's writings, but it takes a while.
A fascinating thing about this is that it's very much a case of unreliable narration. Both of these characters are trying to manipulate others through their messages, and are being guarded about what they say even when they appear not to be -- perhaps especially when they appear not to be. In Barty's writings, we get replies from Hydra, but only the things that she is saying to Barty; it's very much a view from only his perspective. And then going back and reading the other entries with the knowledge of where she's going, it was quite a different perspective on what was essentially the same overall conversation.
The other thing that happens here is that, because this is only the journal writings, there's not a lot about the actual events directly. Especially some of the largest ones, because everyone already knows what happened, so people talk about how they're doing in the aftermath. For some of the biggest, not even that. Whereas for the small things, there's often lots of detail.
This meant that ... well, again avoiding spoilers as much as I can, but there is a point where someone close to Barty dies. From Barty's writings, we don't see it at all -- there is simply a point after which this person is not mentioned again and there are no journal communications, even though both were fairly frequent beforehand, and there are reasons that mentions would be expected. But there is no sign of dramatic trauma, and no mention of what happened, so it's just an odd oddity.
Then, in Hydra's writings from that time, it's still not described directly when it happened, but then a bit later there are some discussions of why it happened and what that meant, and we can piece together that it was truly horrific, and the fact that it's not mentioned again becomes a significant piece of understanding of Barty's character that I'd mostly missed without that context.
There's also a point with Hydra's writings where something similar happens -- I don't know if that event was intentionally set up as a twisted mirror of the other, or was just a case of applying Bujold's "imagine the worst thing that could happen to your character and then do that" advice (note: not actual quote, and going from vague memory), but it is certainly an interesting mirror of the sort that one could trivially write a high-school "compare and contrast" essay about. We do see that one in Hydra's writings, but not when it happened, and again it's a matter of piecing things together, and uncovering onion-peeling layers of how horrific it was.
(Also that one has some nice foreshadowing and I wonder how much it was conscious foreshadowing; I don't actually know how much of the character arcs were planned how much in advance.)
It's definitely a "psychological horror" world -- one in which Voldemort is the "Lord Protector" of the British Isles has plenty of room for that. I found the slow reveals, and the way that jumping in the middle with little idea who the characters are meant that all that I had were random clues to piece together that meant little on their own until I'd connected them to others, to be a really interesting way to experience it. My whole understanding of the characters and events kept changing, so that new pieces not only made the world at that point become more horrific, but also made what I thought I understood of it more horrific as well.
So, I've known about the Alternity Harry Potter transformative work (see also the FanLore.org entry) for a while, since my dear friend
jenett was involved in it. It was a massive project -- collaborative storytelling (aka role-playing game, though this was far on the "collaborative storytelling" end of any RPG spectrums one might draw) through an alternate-universe version of Harry Potter's seven years at Hogwarts, written in real time from 2008 to 2015, using LiveJournal and Dreamwidth journals as a model for magical communications between the characters. The conceit is that there is a system of magic journals that people can use to communicate with each other, either privately or in groups -- basically something between text message and email.The Alternity site describes the setting as diverging from the original series because Voldemort adopted Harry Potter rather than killing him, and he "experienced great good fortune ever since. Wizarding Britain fell before him; the legitimate government came under his hand, and he set himself up as the Lord Protector of the realm. Activating the ancient magic of the standing stones, he sealed the British Isles off from the rest of the world, and set to work exterminating, enchanting, or enslaving all the Muggles in his purview."
What's not described in so many words in that introduction is that ... well, if you take a hard look at the worldbuilding in the original stories, there are rather a lot of horrific things hiding in the logical conclusions of what's provided. The original stories tend to ignore these things by not following through on that logic. Alternity had no such compunctions, following all of the logic gleefully into the horrific.
It is also, as you might imagine from that description, a bit daunting to consider reading, and so I hadn't read it. Instead I read
kiya's quasi-fanfic about it, which is set beside the main storyline with minor connections, and which is also much smaller in scope.This afternoon, though, a conversation with Jenett and Kiya turned to the subject of naming characters, and Alternity's habits of taking Rowling's "very obvious" naming conventions (such as naming a werewolf "Remus Lupin") and turning them to 11. One of Jenett's particularly entertaining examples was a bit-part character named Meniscus Fulton, and so I went to see who he was.
I found this journal-letter to him, which is a really excellently-written dressing-down of someone who has made a complete hash of an investigation. I recommend it even if you aren't going to read anything else of this. I was hooked, and I kept clicking the "next" buttons to read the further communications of Barty Crouch Jr. -- and replies that other people wrote to him -- until I got to the end. That covered roughly the last three years of Alternity history.
And then, having read that, I went back and read the last year of that history in the writings of his young protege, Hydra Lestrange Finch-Fletchley, starting from this entry. Again, there's a fair bit of replies from others, done as comments on the entries, as well as Hydra's own words.
I won't spoil it for you (although I imagine further discussion in comments is likely to), but it was particularly interesting reading that without entirely knowing whether either Barty or Hydra were on the side of good or evil -- especially since both of them of course imagine themselves on the side of good. It slowly becomes clear by the end of Barty's writings, but it takes a while.
A fascinating thing about this is that it's very much a case of unreliable narration. Both of these characters are trying to manipulate others through their messages, and are being guarded about what they say even when they appear not to be -- perhaps especially when they appear not to be. In Barty's writings, we get replies from Hydra, but only the things that she is saying to Barty; it's very much a view from only his perspective. And then going back and reading the other entries with the knowledge of where she's going, it was quite a different perspective on what was essentially the same overall conversation.
The other thing that happens here is that, because this is only the journal writings, there's not a lot about the actual events directly. Especially some of the largest ones, because everyone already knows what happened, so people talk about how they're doing in the aftermath. For some of the biggest, not even that. Whereas for the small things, there's often lots of detail.
This meant that ... well, again avoiding spoilers as much as I can, but there is a point where someone close to Barty dies. From Barty's writings, we don't see it at all -- there is simply a point after which this person is not mentioned again and there are no journal communications, even though both were fairly frequent beforehand, and there are reasons that mentions would be expected. But there is no sign of dramatic trauma, and no mention of what happened, so it's just an odd oddity.
Then, in Hydra's writings from that time, it's still not described directly when it happened, but then a bit later there are some discussions of why it happened and what that meant, and we can piece together that it was truly horrific, and the fact that it's not mentioned again becomes a significant piece of understanding of Barty's character that I'd mostly missed without that context.
There's also a point with Hydra's writings where something similar happens -- I don't know if that event was intentionally set up as a twisted mirror of the other, or was just a case of applying Bujold's "imagine the worst thing that could happen to your character and then do that" advice (note: not actual quote, and going from vague memory), but it is certainly an interesting mirror of the sort that one could trivially write a high-school "compare and contrast" essay about. We do see that one in Hydra's writings, but not when it happened, and again it's a matter of piecing things together, and uncovering onion-peeling layers of how horrific it was.
(Also that one has some nice foreshadowing and I wonder how much it was conscious foreshadowing; I don't actually know how much of the character arcs were planned how much in advance.)
It's definitely a "psychological horror" world -- one in which Voldemort is the "Lord Protector" of the British Isles has plenty of room for that. I found the slow reveals, and the way that jumping in the middle with little idea who the characters are meant that all that I had were random clues to piece together that meant little on their own until I'd connected them to others, to be a really interesting way to experience it. My whole understanding of the characters and events kept changing, so that new pieces not only made the world at that point become more horrific, but also made what I thought I understood of it more horrific as well.