would you rather see susan, pansy or millicent?
We would rather see whichever of those three you have the most inspiration for.
I know that sounds like a cop-out answer, but itâs true! All three of those witches have so much potential for this game, and are positioned to offer a lot of fun interactions for our playersâŠwhich I suppose means itâs time for anotherâŠ
Susan Bones is someone weâve talked about before, and you can find more of our ramblings about potential directions to take that character in this tag, but to sum-up: sheâd be a great character if you want somebody angry. Somebodyâs whoâs ready to burn the world and damn the consequences. Somebody whoâs solidly on the anti-Voldemort bandwagon, but who isnât necessarily going to toe whatever line the D.A. and Harry Potter preaching either â not if they donât go far enough for her. There are other directions you can take her, of course; thatâs just the one that seemed most obvious to us. But the core of Susan Bones is: Sheâs lost a lot. So whatâs she going to do about it?
Millicent Bulstrode would be a very interesting choice, and there are a lot of directions you can take her in because we donât see all that much of her in the books really. She comes from a family that was listed among the Sacred Twenty-Eight back in the 1930s, but sheâs a half-blood â because the family as a whole have lost their so-called âpureâ status, or is it a more recent and individual thing? We donât know, and we donât actually know what Millicentâs feelings are about blood-purity, but we do know that she shared a dormitory with people who cared a lot. People like Pansy, who would have thought themselves better than Millicent because of her blood; would Millicent agree? Or would she rebel against the presumptive norms of Slytherin House? She did join the Inquisitorial Squad under Dolores Umbridge in her fifth year â but that didnât necessarily have anything to do with blood-supremacy (although most of the other kids we know of who were on the squad were indeed blood-supremacists), she could have just been in it for the power or prestige, or maybe she had family at the Ministry who wanted her to get in good with Umbridge orâŠ
Really we donât know much about her motivations, although itâs easy to lump her in with people like Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, since she was usually mentioned in conjunction with them. But even her repeated tussles with Hermione Granger donât necessarily indicate that she hated Hermione â but maybe she did. We donât know who Millicent hated, who she liked, what she wanted out of life. All we know is she was a half-blood witch in Slytherin who owned a black cat and who once played enforcer for Dolores Umbridge. Oh, and Harry and his friends certainly disliked her â so itâs not like sheâd be welcomed into the D.A. with open arms even if she wanted to join them now. Certainly she had no problem helping Umbridge before, but does that mean sheâs eager to help the Carrows? Her head of house is the new headmaster, and maybe thatâs inspired some loyalty â or maybe not. Maybe sheâs playing a game of personal ambition, or trying to hedge her bets and seek the safety that her blood isnât quite good enough to guarantee her, or maybe like Severus (and Harry) she just hates her Muggle relations. Maybe sheâs sick of being pushed around and happy to be the one doing the pushing now; maybe she hates whatâs going on and wants to stop it. The only thing we really know about Millicent is that sheâs no push-overâŠbut where has she chosen to throw her weight?
Pansy Parkinson is also an interesting option, because sheâs not really like anyone else in the game right now. She is utterly and wholly opposed to Harry Potter and all of his nonsense and filth-blooded friendsâŠbut she doesnât seem to be happy about whatâs going on in the world, either. Itâs sort of like what happened to Draco, but on a smaller scale: Pansy got what she thought she wanted, and found she didnât like it one bit. (At least by May she doesnât; maybe sheâs still trying to convince herself everything is fine, at the moment.) Unlike with Draco, it doesnât seem to change her opinions on blood-supremacy later in life however; she just disliked all the violence and danger that came along with Lord Voldemortâs coup. Does that mean that she spent most of her seventh year blustering and bluffing, âtalking the talkâ so to speak while only pretending to âwalk the walkâ but really just trying to keep herself out of anything messy? Did she throw herself into things 100% in hopes of riding the wave through safely? Did she lie to herself that she was happy to be helping the Dark Lord and his minions? Or did she just try to keep her head down and not draw attention?
Personally we donât think the latter a likely option for a girl like Pansy, who made a point of being so visible and so cruel to people for so long; she was quick to join the Inquisitorial Squad, after allâŠbut the stakes are higher than they were in fifth year. Maybe theyâre too high for her. Maybe bullying, belligerent, bigoted Pansy Parkinson has crumbled under the strainâŠor maybe she refuses to break. Maybe sheâs scared, maybe sheâs overwhelmed, maybe she feels like sheâs drowning â but sheâs still Pansy Parkinson, dammit! And that means that nobody gets to see her flinch. There are several different ways you can tilt Pansy but regardless of how you choose to play her, having someone around who isnât enthusiastically on Voldemortâs side but who is still passionately opposed to Harry Potter and the D.A. (even if itâs mostly just because sheâs afraid their antics are endangering her own skin) offers an interesting monkey wrench to future plotlines. The basic question to ask yourself is: Pansyâs world isnât going the way she planned; whatâs she going to do about it?
In Summation: the biggest thing to think about in deciding which character to choose, in our opinion, is what are you going to do with them? Also consider, where do you want your character standing when the chips are down? Do you want to play the angry girl whoâs honed her grief into a weapon? The girl whoâs never been good enough whoâs going to carve herself a place if it kills someone? The girl whoâs terrified to discover that her dreams have turned into nightmares?Â
Weâd be excited to see any of themâŠso who do you want to see?
