Semester of Desolation

Welcome to Meridian, jewel of the desert. Last chance stop for the next fifty miles. Application Status: CLOSED! Game Start: July 23rd Current Session: Meridian

[shsl-meridian]

And...Cut!

Congrats, guys! The mastermind has been correctly identified and we are now in endgame mode! It’s been a long journey, but we’re so happy to have made it, and we thank every one of you. So, what now?

A hiatus will be taken while we make preparations for endgame - as it will be interactive, your characters can make optional (but preferred) contributions to the big finale. We’ll keep you posted as we set up the necessary details and finalize everything, so if you’re interested, keep an eye on the main chat/blog. 

Now, on to our next announcement… We are going to be undertaking a third round! We are still finalizing details, so we will be posting announcements about details such as the mod team and application changes. Once endgame is finished, you will have at least a week to finish up your applications - so there is still plenty of time! As with the last round, any changes to the form will be minor, so you can get started on applications immediately if you want to. 

As for the setting, it’s literally up in the air…

We won’t give out too much about it quite yet, so keep an eye out on the main blog if you’re interested! We’re working hard to make SoD2 endgame the best it can be, and to make SoD3 as enjoyable as possible. And we hope you stay tuned for SoD2′s wrap-up… with perhaps a surprise or two along the way. 

- Mod Team

[ultimatephantomthief-blog]

a thereminist LOST HER ARM, KIMI INABA,

[ultimatephantomthief-blog]

(audio warning maybe?) i have too much free time

[kmk-nrt-blog]

SEMESTER OF DESOLATION 2 : START

…okay, so i’m a little past start date for this, but hey. shush. they’re still alive and they’re still happy, so it’s all good.

for the record i plan on keeping track of who dies through th—

[semesterofdesolation]

The sky above, the ground beneath… and you stand where the two meet. Careful now, it’s a long way...

The adventure begins in one hour! We welcome everyone to follow along with us, and we’ve updated the blog’s sidebar to contain links with all the posts from each game organized chronologically!

[semesterofdesolation]

If we weren't accepted, are we allowed to apply with the same characters next time?

Of course! That’s perfectly acceptable.

--Yuro

[semesterofdesolation]

i really did try to research, so i did try my best to treat it respectfully

Firstly, I’m really sorry you didn’t make rosters-- rejection can really sting, especially if you tried your hardest. Believe me, I know, for a while I was barely getting into any of the games I applied to! But I asked people for advice, looked at what people who were accepted did to get in, and kept trying.

If you did show your work as much as you could, it’s possible your app was turned down for other reasons. To be honest, once we got to the last set of cuts, even with the biggest roster size we’d accounted for, we were really splitting hairs. Things like improbable weaknesses and strengths, personalities being out of balance with the rest of the roster we were considering, and a character just not working with the setting all ended up being decisive factors. We had to make a lot of hard choices, and your character not getting in the game doesn’t mean they’re a bad character.

Unfortunately , it’s hard to say why we ended up turning down the character without knowing which one you applied. We did make commentary on every app and I can guarantee we read every single one of them. So to any other people who’ve been wondering why you might’ve been rejected, we have a small announcement to make.

We’ll be accepting requests for critiques once we finish the brunt of prep work for the game. While we need to collaborate to come up with a specific date, it will be soon and it’ll be before the game starts. We’re sorry for the delay, but please be understanding-- this is a pretty busy time right now and we’ve still got a good bit left to do! However, once we’ve got the worst out of the way we’ll be happy to help.

--Yuro

[fallenpeak-blog]

The dim pinpricks of light above you are not stars. The rustle of wings, chittering of bats, and other things are the backdrop of the city around you. These are not the clean, well-lit halls of a famous high school. This is not the bright future you were promised. You are not in Hell, but it isn’t much of a walk from here.

You accepted an invitation to Hope’s Peak Academy, but Fallen London awaits…

[An All-New DR/Fallen London Roleplay Game! Artist Applications are currently open, Student Applications will be opened in the near future. Prior knowledge of Fallen London not necessary. Check links below for more information.]

ABOUT | RULES/HOW TO PLAY | FAQ | APPLICATIONS

[sugarrushslaughter]

If it’s a good egg, it’s shined up and shipped out all over the world. But if it’s a bad egg…

Sugar Rush Slaughter is a Dangan Ronpa OC group based loosely on Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory! 16-18 very important children living in a war-torn future made barely habitable by climate change will find themselves trapped in a game of life or death in the chocolatier Killy Wonka’s factory. Killy and his Monoompa Loompas inform the children of a horrifying truth…to escape this place they must get away with murder.

Sugar Rush Slaughter will be based in Tumblr, Skype and MSPARP, with Skype-based trials. Applications close July 30.

「ABOUT | FAQ | WORLD | MODS | APPLICATION | RULES」

…down the chute.

[semesterofdesolation]

Were characters with sensitive material in their back stories auto rejected just because those characters had dark back stories? If so, that information should have been clear from the start so players could have better prepared their apps.

They weren’t an auto-reject; I mentioned that in the same paragraph the issue is addressed in.

We have seen apps that deal with sensitive topics that we’ve considered for the final cut. It’s certainly not impossible.

However, you can’t honestly expect that we won’t judge harsher when we see those things mentioned in a character’s backstory. Those are serious topics, and the choice to include them in your character was yours and yours alone to decide. 

But we need to look over those sorts of things carefully because it’s so common (at least, back in my olden days of forum rp and what have you) to just... put that stuff in for the sake of drama and edge. And we don’t want that. It’s rude, it’s disrespectful, it’s further taking something that so many people as a joke or as just another drama Thing and pushing it even further into that direction.

We’ve seen apps where we’ve just felt even more squicked out and unsure about the character, and we’ve seen apps where we were uncomfortable, sure, but recognized that that sort of material had been handled in a realistic and respectful manner.

(And on an extra note: you can have a dark backstory without needing any of those things.)

So no, those apps weren’t auto-rejected. We’d never auto-reject an app unless if it literally broke the rules/didn’t have what we asked for.

And... it goes without saying that if you choose to include heavy topics that may upset people, we’re going to look at it very carefully. After all, we don’t... want any drama ingame, either. We want to make sure you really get the gravity of what you chose to include, and understand why it’s sensitive stuff, and be able to respect it and also whoever might have an issue with it.

-- Moo

[thecardsofdespair-blog]

Dear Hope’s Peak Student,

You have been invited to attend a prestigious Christmas Party this Christmas Eve - even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, it will still be a lovely party. Please arrive in appropriate attire, as there will be opportunities to meet and greet some extraordinary people from around the world, including previous Hope’s Peak students. Please arrive on time.

Plus ones are encouraged, but not necessary. It will hopefully be a fun evening for all.

Signed, The King

The Cards of Despair is a submission-based 16 person group. No spots will be given to mods. Occasionally we may hold events on Skype, but almost everything will be done through Tumblr. Private threads are permitted on whichever medium the muns prefer to use.

A regular group with a twist, we are giving players the chance to play one of 4 roles - the King, the Queen, the Jack and the Joker. A hierarchy remains in place with the King at the top and Low Aces at the bottom. The Jokers are not a part of the hierarchy.

Will you climb to the top and become a High Ace? Or will you die as a Low Ace?

Applications will close the 13th of July.

MODS || STUDENT APP || ARTIST APP || APPLIED || HOW TO PLAY || RULES || HOPEFUL CHAT

[semesterofdesolation]

DANG, guys! 90 apps! Give yourselves a round of applause for running us ragged—I mean. Ahem.

Every app was an interesting read, and while it was very long and very grueling, we actually had a lot of fun looking at what everyone did with their characters and all the sorts of ideas that you all decided to breathe life into! Still, as you will soon find out… we couldn’t accept all of you.

(Though it took two weeks, as you all may know. Deciding and judging was hard. There were so many amazing apps that it breaks our heart to have to reject.)

But anyway, we’d like to list a few issues we saw come up in our dive through the sea of apps. These things are sort of a very general list of reasons for why you might not have gotten accepted, though it may not apply to you in particular! After all, we had 90 apps.

So, without further ado:

COMMON REASONS FOR NOT BEING ACCEPTED:

Elaboration on meaningless details / Little elaboration on important details: Two sides of the same coin, we saw a lot of applications feature this, particularly the longer ones. There were apps that gave us information that… we didn’t really need, or that didn’t have much relevance in the section it was in – a good way to remedy this is simply asking yourself: “why do I need this paragraph? What does it show about my character?” Additionally, having someone proofread over your app helps as well.

Issues with Backstories: For the mods of SOD2, we value things making sense – we’ve read backstories that confused us, that left us with a  lot of questions of “how?” and “why?” that simply were never answered, or were answered but with something that left us wanting for more. This is especially true for any illegal talents or illegal activities, as those require justification that we’ll judge pretty harshly – breaking the law is pretty serious, after all. There were also backstory events that were said to have a significant impact on a character’s life… but then never mentioned again, leaving us confused and unimpressed.

Sensitive Material: Child abuse, mental illness, discrimination, and sexual abuse are all really, really sensitive topics – none that people want to talk about. While we won’t say no to these, such things are very carefully looked over – you need to make sure there is a proper, justified reasoning that it is there, and you need to treat it respectfully. A lot of what we saw felt… added on as an afterthought, or never really elaborated on. What this does is leave the mods feeling very off-put and wary of the player’s ability to respectfully write that sort of thing.

Character Development: A character develops in roleplay, but they’re still a person who is shaped by their previous experiences. We noted in a lot of apps that any trauma or large events (especially the above materials) were never explicitly said to have an effect on the character when it should have – or even a mention of it at all!

Player Activity History: Applies mostly to previous SOD players, but also taken to account with players from roleplays we’ve participated in or seen. Last game, there was an issue with inactivity that we would prefer to avoid. If you were inactive and never approached us about it and acknowledged it or gave us any warning or anything… then we were more likely to be hesitant on giving you a chance. Bluntly put, we would rather give the spot to someone who would be more active (who might not have as good of an application) over someone who had a very good app but poor activity history.

As a footnote! While it wasn’t necessarily a reason to turn anyone down, we noticed there was a bit of a trend that caused us some trouble. So for the record...

Don’t link your prompts separately. I know that leaving them in can make your app look dauntingly long. But we make copies of apps to do running commentary on them-- and needing three separate copies (or however many prompts you did!) is really inconvenient so we just copy everything into the app anyways. It wasn’t a dealbreaker...but it added on a lot of time and it really doesn’t do anything to help us.

[semesterofdesolation]

All Aboard!

It’s been a long time since anybody else has set foot here… though relics and ruins are still very much present, though forgotten by everybody on the outside world.

               …Will you be forgotten here, too?

Butterscotch, SHSL Herpetologist

Camille Licht, SHSL Glover

Chiyo Chono, SHSL Opera Singer

Haku, SHSL Nature Photographer

Haruka Oshiro, SHSL Seed Bomber

Hinata Haruno, SHSL Nohyakusha

Isamu Nakano, SHSL Cat Whisperer

Itona Takenaka, SHSL Marine Animal Trainer

Jinzaemon Hasekura, SHSL Superbike Racer

Kayoko Tanaka, SHSL Tokusatsu Actress

Kenichi Uoya, SHSL Iaidoka

Kimi Inaba, SHSL Virtual Pet Site Dev

Kimiko Narita, SHSL Supermodel

Kohaku Hayashi, SHSL Shamisen Player

Matsukaze “Matsu” Ito, SHSL Reed Maker

Mei, SHSL Roller Skate Waitress

Michiyo Kurono, SHSL Horror Mangaka

Mitsusuke Abiko, SHSL Elder Care Assistant

Morgan Lowell, SHSL American Football Player

Naoya Kizaki, SHSL Dealer

Nyk Archress, SHSL Fast Draw

Ran Usui, SHSL Otokoyaku

Red Rover, SHSL LEGO Architecture Builder

Shigure Fujiwara, SHSL Animatronic Technologist

Shion Tsuzuki, SHSL Thereminist

Siyu Zhen, SHSL Kotoist

STARRE, SHSL Phantom Thief

Tohru Fujiwara, HSL Glassblower

Toshio Todoroki, SHSL Wedding Planner

Yutaka Kurosawa, SHSL Food Blogger

Next stop, Meridian. All aboard!

[semesterofdesolation]

I dont know if youve heard but Pokemon Go is LIT

But is it LITten?

[semesterofdesolation]

Roster Timeframe!

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! We currently have the roster assembled. However, we are waiting to set up all required blogs first before posting it. As such, we’ll be waiting until 12AM EST to post it. That is about four hours from now. Please stay tuned for further information!

[semesterofdesolation]

How are all the mods going? Make sure that you all get some sleep and be healthy as usual!

We’re doing fine.. or as fine as we can be. 

/everyone yelling at yur] to sleep/eat in the background.

Thank you, though! We’re hard at work to bring you rosters soonish! >:0

-- Moo

[semesterofdesolation]

I hate to ask, because i'm sure you're working on it, but do you have a timeframe for roster release?

I think we’ll be doing a PSA sooner or later that covers everything, but since there’s like a million asks about this in the inbox, I’ll say this now:To whoever said the roster date was July 4: … wha? Nah. 

Technically it’d be two weeks now (half of our asks were from like… July 3 or earlier, as I’d checked then) because revision deadline ended on the 22nd-23rd of June. 

But regardless, we’ll likely not make that deadline, so the point is moot. 

We’re… actually really close now. Like super close. We’ve compiled lists, it’s just a matter of getting all the mods together and picking the final roster.

… I’m not making any promises, however. It won’t be today or tomorrow, but soon. Less than a week, or a week at most. THIS TIME FOR SURE. Like, a week would be stretching it because I’m pretty sure we only need one day where we’re all available to actually piece that roster together. <_> So at some point during that time, you’ll see a post that’ll say ‘hey, we’ll be revealing rosters at _____!’

In any case, look forward to a post about the delay and………. perhaps a post for when the roster is revealed within the upcoming days. ;3c

But sorry about the delay, guys! \ o / We’re basically Right At That Point, so hold on for a little longer.

– Moo