HSS Appreciation Week 2025: Intro, Prompts, and Guidelines
Welcome!
Welcome to HSS Appreciation Week, the event for appreciating all things High School Story, be it the original HSS Prime mobile game, the original HSS Choices trilogy, and/or the High School Story: Class Act spinoff!
This event takes place from January 10, 2025 to January 18, 2025
Hosts: @cadybear420 and @lover-also-fighter-also
Also tagging: @choicescommunityevents
Prompts
These prompts will likely be year-round, but if you have any other ideas or suggestions for possible prompts, feel free to drop them and we might use them in the future!
Jan 10: Meet Our MCs (and OCs)
Jan 11: Fresh Starts and Growth
Jan 12: Favorite Characters
Jan 13: Friendship, Family, and Berry High Unity
Jan 14: Favorite Ships/Pairings
Jan 15: Pride, Welcoming, Acceptance
Jan 16: Antagonists
Jan 17: Favorite Scenes/Moments
Jan 18: Wildcard/Free Day
See Prompt details and Guidelines below!
Prompt Details
Day 1 (January 10): Meet our MCs (and OCs)
HSS has given us three memorable MCs over the years! The monumental HSS Prime MC, the wildcard OG HSS Choices MC, and the adorkable HSS:CA MC. This day is for any works centric around any HSS MCs you have. Feel free to even introduce us to your HSS MCs with a profile or profiles!
If you also have any OCs or fancharacters that aren’t meant to be versions of the MC characters, including any students you enroll in Prime, feel free to post about those too!
Day 2 (January 11): Fresh Starts and Growth
“That’s the great thing about a fresh start. You can be anybody you want to be”, said by Principal Hughs in OG HSS Book 1 Chapter 1.
As such, many of the characters we know get to have a fresh start at Berry High, and grow into better, stronger people from it. What might the fresh start mean for any particular character(s)? Do they go through any personal growth? This is the prompt to explore that!
Day 3 (January 12): Favorite Characters
The HSS iterations have given us a multitude of vibrant and compelling characters. From the shy wallflowers to the ever-confident cheerleaders, from the supportive jocks to the clever nerds, from the party-loving preps to the creative musicians, from the logistical gamers to the expressive theatre club. The uniqueness is captured in the faculty of Berry High, as well as even the rival Hearst kids. Let us hear about your favorites from these characters and why they are compelling to you!
Day 4 (January 13): Friendship, Family, and Berry High Unity
A core theme of HSS has always been how students of different cliques/social groups can come together. Since the foundation of Berry High, a lot of strong friendships have been formed among its students, including our main characters as well as outside their friend group.
From there, the students are able to get stuff done like a team and and uplift each other like a family. And along with that, we get to see a lot of familial relationships outside of school as well. This day is to highlight and celebrate all these relationships which were compelling to you, as well as any you want to see more of!
Day 5 (January 14): Favorite Ships/Pairings
HSS gives our characters all kinds of opportunites for relationships. Tell us about your favorite pairs and ships in HSS! Pairs between a MC and another character, pairs between two canon characters, pairs between OCs, pairs between canon and OC or a MC and an OC, maybe even pairs between two MCs. Whether they can be paired in game or not, whether they're monogamous, polyamourous, strictly romantic, queerplatonic, long-lasting, short fling... no matter what, show us those ships!
Day 6 (January 15): Pride, Welcoming, Acceptance
“This school began as a bunch of empty plots of land and a promise to be open to everyone. A promise that ensured no matter who you were or what you liked, you'd always be included and together we can accomplish anything”, said by the HSS Prime MC in HSS Prime Friendsgiving and as shown on the statue of Ollie the Tiger.
From the very beginning of HSS Prime, Berry High was built with this promise. This is the prompt to celebrate and explore that! This can include cultural/ethnic celebration, queer/gender pride, disability and neurodivergence pride, etc. How is this welcoming and acceptance meaningful to any particular character(s)? How does it influence their identity?
Day 7 (January 16): Antagonists
Nothing comes without difficulties. Berry High has always had its fair share of challenges from the beginning. From keeping the school open, fending off bullies, sabotages from rival schools, and corrupt principals, and more. Show us who is your favourite antagonist and spill their beans!
Day 8 (January 17): Favorite Scenes/Moments
From the beginning of the Prime game in 2013 to the end of Class Act in 2020, HSS has given us nearly 7 years of stories What are those moments in any of the games that really stuck with you? Made you laugh, made you cry, had you on the edge of your seat, or were just overall really powerful or memorable? Tell us about them here!
Day 9 (January 18): Free Day/Wildcard Prompt
This one goes without saying. Are there any HSS themes we didn’t cover? Anything more you love about HSS? This is the day for that! Go wild! Be creative!
General Guidelines for Submission:
TO SUBMIT: A) mention this blog (or at least one of the hosts) and B) specify which prompt or prompts you’re submitting for.
Submissions should lean into being HSS-appreciative/positive.
The tags #HSSAppreciationWeek, #HSSAW, #HSSAW2025, are highly recommended, but not necessary.
If your post is very long in length (eg. if it’s a long fic, has images that take up a lot of length), we highly recommend putting a “Read More” button in your post.
Any submissions that lean into NSFW or suggestive territory, and/or feature sensitive topics should be tagged accordingly.
You don’t have to create for each prompt or each day. Create for as many prompts and days as you like.
You don’t have to create for a prompt on its respective assigned day. Eg. You can create for a Day 1 prompt on Day 4.
You don’t have to create only one piece per prompt. If you have multiple pieces you want to create for a certain prompt, then by all means, go for it.
You don’t have to use only a specific day’s prompts together Eg. You can have a piece that uses a Day 1 prompt and a Day 4 prompt together.
We will still accept submissions even after the event dates have passed. You will have until the HSS Appreciation Week 2026 announcement to submit posts/creations for the current prompts!
What IS welcome:
Any medium of human creation. Art, fanfic, poetry, edits, animation, picrews/meikers* moodboards/stimboards/gifboards, icons, memes/shitposts, gifs, AMVs, playlists, headcanons, character recreation in another game (eg. The Sims), etc!
Meta posts. Eg. screenshots of favorite scenes/moments from the games themselves, essay/analytical writing, even just simply gushing/rambling over any of the games nonstop!
Pieces or posts that you made prior to this event and/or initially not for this event, but you've decided you want to submit them!
WIP/unfinished pieces.
Submissions can be works that you have made yourself, or works that you have commissioned from someone else.
*If you’re submitting a picrew or meiker piece or anything similar, please link to the template in your post!
What is NOT welcome:
Bigotry of any kind. Posts of a nature that is sexist, racist, queerphobic, ableist, xenophobic, etc. are obviously not allowed.
AI-generated material of any kind. This includes images or writing made by genAI, ChatGPT/character.AI screenshots, etc. Feel free to let us know if we accidentally promote AI generated material. We support human creators here!
HSS Pride- My Main Universe MCs' sexuality and gender headcanons
Explanations/Descriptions are below!
Tags: @choicespride , @hsslilly-blog + @ih8harley for HSSPride
Jordan Price (HSS Prime MC, Main Universe): Straight + Cis Genderqueer
Jordan has only ever liked guys, but "straight" is not a set-in-stone label to her. She only feels attraction for guys, but also believes it's entirely possible she discovers herself as a different sexuality. As of now she does consider herself straight.
Jordan's presentation tends to be very fluid, she likes both masculine and feminine styles. Her relationship with femininity is a bit non-normative in that she doesn't fully perceive it as femininity, or at the very least she considers herself to be masculine even with a more feminine appearance.
She would also identify with the Virago label, being a masculine-leaning wlm who prefers heavily role-reversed relationships and is attracted to femininity in men, but it wouldn't be her main label.
Evie Ayana (OG HSS MC, Main Universe): Virago (Bi w/ heavy male preference + Cis GNC)
Evie has had a total of one girl-crush ever, Maria. Thus she knows she is capable of attraction to women. Otherwise, she far prefers guys. Her favorite way to word it is "I can be attracted to women, but any women that are attracted to me... probably shouldn't get their hopes up".
GNC/Virago probably goes without saying at this point, I think. Evie prides herself on taking on masculine appearances and roles, especially in romamtic/sexual relationships with men. Along with that, she tends to have a deep resentment for a lot of things that are considered to "define one's womanhood" or "preserve femininity". Stay tuned for more thorough analyses on this.
She definitely identifies with labels like GNC and genderqueer, but when she learns of the Virago label, I think that would become her favorite to use since her attraction to men and her GNCness are very interconnected for her.
Cher Lee (HSS:CA MC, Main Universe): Bi-Curious wlm + Gender-Creative Drag
Cher generally prefers men, but in Book 1 she gets a major unreciprocated puppy crush on Erin (not Rory, ignore what canon says) and thus she was more sure of bisexuality for herself then. Nowadays she isn't fully sure if she's seriously attracted to women, but at the same time knows her crush on Erin was real, and she's not strictly against the idea of being with a woman. So she's still figuring a lot of things out.
Cher is usually feminine-presenting, but is in-tune with masculinity, femininity, androgyny, all of it really. She likes fashion, costumes, and drag, she loves acting out all kinds of roles with her costumes– hence her love for theatre and acting.
Like Jordan, she would also identify with the Virago label, being a gendercreative woman who prefers heavily role-reversed relationships and is attracted to femininity in men, but it wouldn't be her main label.
Bear Lee (HSS:CA Twin, Main Universe): Heteroromantic Greysexual + Transmasc Man
Bear has always known he was straight/heteroromantic, but he wouldn't discover he was Greysexual until some few months after his failed relationship with Amber. As per canon, he initially rushes into relationships super quickly, and after the bad relationship experience with Amber, I imagine he would start to be more cautious and thus began to discover his identity better.
Bear began realizing himself as a trans guy from a very young age. He heavily prefers masculine appearances.
‘I wish PB would give us 30 diamonds scenes like the once in HSS:CA, where there was obviously not mature content, but where so heartwarming and wholesome that we didn't even need physical contact. Or the ones back then, when we could play the scene, but had to option to skip the sex part, and just spend the time having deep conversations with the LI and tell silly stories from their pasts.’
POST/CONFESSIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE MOD’S PERSONAL OPINIONS!
