Yes, I know, it’s shocking. After what would be 4 years next February, it’s just too much.
Mickey and I have been trying so hard to keep this place going. We’ve been using every development, event, task in the book... We’ve been trying to keep things fair and honest and active. It just feels like no matter how much we try, we aren’t getting that effort back.
Beyond Alice was a wonderful place for so long because our members were passionate and helpful and inspired. It doesn’t feel like that anymore. There are still a few of you who have been a wonderful help, but let’s face it guys... This isn’t the place it used to be and it’s so frustrating.
No matter how many plots I throw at you guys, how many new character I post, how much I promo to try to bring in new people... Nothing is happening. Your priorities have changed, and I get that. I just can’t keep trying when no one else is. I have too much going on myself and still I’ve tried my hardest to push onward so that we could continue our amazing plots and get to points we have been planning for years. I can’t afford to do that anymore. I’ve been too disappointed this last year.
So, with my sincerest regrets, I am shutting down Beyond Alice. I’ve been thinking on it for days, weeks even, and it just seems like the best situation for all of us before it falls apart anyway.
Thank you guys so much for being a part of this. You know where to reach us.
If you are looking at the main, then I’m sure you have noticed by now that we have deleted the Skype chat, and I’m here to tell you why:
While the Skype chat was fun, it brought some problems with it. For one, while I love having you guys being so open about talking about your lives with one another and being friendly and I encourage that in the OOC, having the Skype chat meant that you guys did so frequently without ever logging into your character blogs. This meant you have missed messages I and other members have sent you, you’ve been missing tons of admin notes and updates I’ve been posting trying very hard to keep this group functioning properly, and you have been ignoring people who are trying to be in the OOC blog that everyone has access to. With the Skype group moving so quickly all the time, too, many people also have felt isolated from it and have told me this when they decided to leave the group or told me their thoughts of leaving. And that’s not okay.
So now that I’ve finally gotten your attention, please head over the OOC blog, reply to the people that have been missing out on interacting with the rest of you, and watch the video I have posted there about our new three-month reviews.
When you are done, let me know if any of you guys would like to get started on your review today. We can do it either over messenger, skype chat, or skype call - whatever you prefer. The faster we get through these, the sooner we will put up the forms for our Admin reviews and you guys can get your sweet revenge on us.
Theme: We only did a slight rework this time around, because I’m still loving the color scheme but we needed to make things a little more legible and organized. I’m pretty happy with it myself, but feel free to give us some feedback.
Pages: For some of the pages, we stripped their custom themes if we deemed them not important enough to be all fancily formatted. It will make it easier for people to access on mobile and for us to update. In additional we created a brand new masterlist to replace the old one. Since we were able to weed out a lot of characters, it was easier for us to transition to a more traditional character masterlist without it being too chaotic. (No worries, not all of our characters have been put up on the masterlist yet, since we are still waiting to hear back from a few people before we move forward with the extra work.)
Bio Removal: We have taken down quite a few of our beloved. Right now, while we are still waiting on hearing back from a few people, we have brought our numbers down to 90 total characters, with 44 of them currently being taken. This is a pretty good number for us and allows us not only to get more needed characters picked up, but it also gives us the ability to keep pushing out new bios without building up too much. We still have those old bios stored away somewhere if we get to the point that we can bring them back, but for now they will be in holding.
FC Changes: On that same note, we have done some FC changes to some of our open characters (and one taken character). I will list those below the cut so everyone knows.
RSVPs: 17 of our original 21 members from before the hiatus have sent in their responses. So far, 4 people are leaving, but 13 of us are staying, and we are still waiting on another 4 to hear back from everyone. If we do not hear from you by August 27th, we will be reopening your characters. Farewell to Ashley, Mali, Spencer, and Mandi. I will post all the unfollow links below the cut.
Finally, reopening: We have set a date and it is Sunday, September 3rd.
We acknowledge that for those of us getting back into school, this may be cutting it a little close, but we can’t see opening any earlier than that and we don’t want to wait too long. For me, that’s just a few days before my first class. However, we will be posting muse things, prompts, and character templates in the coming weeks to help people get prepared and into character, and in my eyes this will be the perfect time for us to prepare to mesh schedules with both school and rp and figure out how it will all work.
If you have any questions, let us know! We will be beginning to promote and are immediately receiving applications, though we will not be accepting until opening day.
Unfollow:
Aisling Sturnidae - reopened
Enya Ember - removed
Geneva Lanehart - closed
Icarus James - reopened
Reed Shore - closed
Tristan Magnolia - closed
Face Claim Changes:
Aisling Sturnidae: Jane Levy→ Kat McNamara
Alexandria: Poppy Drayton → Naomi Scott
Dmitri Brannan: Godfrey Gao → Harry Shum Jr.
Elijah Rose: Michael Fassbender → Luke Evans
(Actually that was before the break but look at him again.)
We’re excited to say within only 3 days, we’ve heard back from over half of our members. Unfortunately, so far we know to be losing 2 of our long-time members, and we wish them well.
If you haven’t responded to our Google Form yet, please do so as soon as possible, whether you plan on returning or not. The link is right on the main page. And just let us know if you need anything.
Today we are going to be going on OFFICIAL HIATUS.
Let’s face it, the summertime rut is here and we’re not going to be able to make it through another event. But no worries! Mickey and I have already figured out a way to really get some plot progress made over the summer and we will be able to start fresh when we returned.
So for those of you who are newer, here is what the summer hiatus means:
We will be gone indefinitely. That does not mean we are done with BDA. We’ve been going for over 3 years and have so much more to do, but the summer hiatus has helped us refresh every year. We will announce a return date closer to the end of the summer and will make sure we give everyone plenty of time to get back into things then.
You are still free to roleplay. We only ask that you do not enter into any plots or threads that would usually involve admin permission. Aside from that, do whatever you want.
We will not be accepting applications until we are back from hiatus, at which point we will make a formal announcement.
If you have any questions, let us know. We will still be checking in every so often. However, while we all go off and refresh our muse, Mickey and I WOULD like to announce that we are working on a little summer project of our own. We have started working on a new skeleton rpg to see how that goes and will be posting about it on our personals. If you don’t follow my personal blog, I’ll put the link in the OOC for you guys! Keep in touch, please. And know that this new little group is not going to take away from Beyond Alice in the future, it’s just a way for us to keep occupied while we all take a break. We have exciting stuff ready when we come back here!
It is your Admin Amber speaking. First thing first, I will be posting the mafia AU announcement today. The date will be set but can be changed if anyone feels they need a little more time with everything going on. You guys can start sending in your descriptions as soon as you’d like so we can start plotting!
Secondly, and more importantly, it has come to my attention that although the skype OOC is still pretty active, sometimes all of that quick messaging leaves a few people behind. I want to remind everyone that while it is great to hear about all of your individual stuff, please remember to respond to others and keep people included in the conversation. An OOC group as active as that can be intimidating, and we want everyone to feel comfortable as a part of it, so speak up and let everyone know they are heard.
So I’m actually going to be on today if anyone needs anything. I’ll be working between replies, new bios, and a surprise for the anniversary so I may disappear from time to time but I’ll be here. Also, because of the weather it will take me another day to get the rest of these gifts packed and sent out, so I apologize if they come a few days later than I intended.
In the meantime, if everyone could please try to get those bio updates as soon as you can. If your character is on this list then I am at least waiting on you to check in with me and I can help with whatever updating or plotting you need. Most of them don’t require a whole lot of tweaking, so I’d even be satisfied with you just sending me a paragraph of the added stuff and I’ll move around and edit what already exists. We will not be waiting months again like we have for updates in the past, so know that if we don’t get these updates by the first week of March, we may make a note saying that updates will be required before you can continue playing your characters. We’ve been giving you guys time to do these since before this was even a requirement. It’s really not much at all and it only takes a minute to message me if you’re struggling to figure out what to write.
And on a quick side note, please check your character blogs to confirm that your ask and submit boxes are open. I've tried to message multiple people in the past month and noticed that I had to do it through the messenger so please double check that and open them if they aren’t already. Thank you, guys.
And like this note once you’ve seen it so I know who has read it.
