feinted

Hey all! This one's kind of an important announcement.

Because you guys are all so amazing, we are now rather close to filling all the spots we originally had available when we opened the game in August. Not only that, but the vast majority of you are amazingly active; we seriously cannot impress enough upon you how much we appreciate your dedication to this game.

It is precisely because you have made this game so awesome that we decided to open up some (actually, a total of 36) new character possibilities: each Hogwarts dormitory now has the capacity to house 6 students rather than 5, and we have added four new spots to each of the foreign delegations:

two medic interns (per team). These students have interest in Healing (and the position deals specifically with sports healing) and they will be working closely with Madam Zest—and you know those times when your kids have been temporarily removed from the game to be attended to on the sidelines? Yeah, that's these kids. There are also two of these slots for the Hogwarts kids; if current characters are interested, feel free to talk to us.

one writer/announcer (per team). This student is responsible for announcing the games for their home schools (in the school's official language), as well as providing the school newspaper (and more infrequently the equivalent of the Daily Prophet) with pieces on both the tournament and the "international cooperation" sides of things (so the events, etc.). At Hogwarts, this duty will be split by Sev Rookwood (announcer), and [Corbin Finch-Fletchley, you have right of first refusal] (writer).

one photographer (per team). This student is responsible for photographing all Quidditch matches as well as important events: basically, whatever the writer needs to complement his/her pieces, but there is also potential for a photographic essay series if they so choose. This is open to Hogwarts students as well.

Please note that we still have the one-foreigner-per-player rule in place. However, we are open to changing that on a case by case basis if someone has only one Quidditch player but you'd need a convincing reason why they'd have to be foreign.

It's apparently an announcement kind of week!

yes, again. Jess brings you JJ Higgs (jjunkie).

Secondly, some of you may have noticed on the calendar we posted yesterday that CAREER DAY IS FRIDAY, 9 DECEMBER. Here's how this will go down. First off, all classes for 5th, 6th, and 7th years will be canceled. BUT before you celebrate, kids, realize that this means you will be stuck in the Great Hall all morning! Immediately after breakfast, there will be short presentations from the "head" of each department on what sorts of work they do. Then, after about an hour and a half, the Great Hall will transition into a Career Fair type set-up, and each "company" will have their own area, with a bunch of representatives milling about—and sorry, the doors are magically closed until lunch, so no sneaking out early! Nicely, the staff of Hogwarts reached out to a certain group first, so the majority of people here to speak to the students are...their parents/guardians!

Yes folks, Hogwarts is about to get bombarded with the parent folk (and foreigners, your parents were sent invitations as well!). Not only this, but a few of the inns in Hogsmeade have offered special rates for parents who'd like to stay on Friday and Saturday night to a) see the play, and b) enjoy a day in Hogsmeade with their kid(s) before the holidays. We've started a list of careers that will be represented and the people who will show up to represent them which you are welcome but not required to add your kids' parents/guardians to. Feel free to also add professions that I've forgotten that aren't represented! Sorry Weasley-Potters, all of your family is going to troll you because they are canon and I said so.

In the vein of the above news, and from some interest in chat and in posting pictures of families to journals, we thought a taken parent pb list would be useful! Feel free to comment to add your kids' (please consult with their siblings first, if any!) in a comment, and we'll stick them on the list. Please note: due to age ranges and to be fair to new and future players/characters and the PBs they may want, we are not doing an NPC list for siblings. Sorry.

*Note: please include their names!*

You might recall a few days back that Theo put up a ward to Alice about doing something for Halloween. Thanks to my spacey mind and busy schedules, I'm a WEE bit late on putting the OOC over this. However, basically they would have started working on it over the weekend. With first to second years (third and fourth invited, if they wish) from Hufflepuffs they would have spent Saturday evening and most of Sunday setting up decorations for Halloween (Monday). They kept the decorations up and they're still up, they'll be taken down this evening. They did something on All Soul's Day (Nov. 2) as a sort of honor to the whole different cultures angle Hogwarts is doing (Not just Mexico but Spain, Poland, and others). Theo was pretty big on having the ickles help since it'd be the first years first Halloween from home. I have yet to decide if he's done this before. Maybe last Christmas? So, Hufflepuffs, vistors to Hufflepuff, people with sibs in Hufflepuff feel free to have noticed. Grabbed a snack (sorry to say those were only there on Monday and yesterday). Whichever.

Here are so pictures of Theo and Alice's (and the ickle's .. and of course the House-Elves, poor over-worked creatures combined efforts). The theme was graveyards/cemeteries which works for the skeletal decorations of yesterday.

( Here (mostly links but has some pictures) )

Thanks to Stevie for some of the links, also if you want the URL for the pics, just ask! <3

Hey guys! A couple of things. First, it's that time again. Lauren adds Annabelle Hopkins and Sarah brings Maggie Wood. Unfortunately, we lost Sara with Jonquil Rosier, Lily Potter, Anais Beausoleil, and Jack Cardew

This also means there's an empty spot on the Hogwarts quidditch team. We're still discussing what to do but we'll keep you posted.

Secondly, it's time for the second multicultural relations project. This time, it's a cooking project. Everyone will be divided into groups of five and given a country. They then have to decide on a food from that country to cook. While the teachers will be a resource, they are encouraged to talk to someone from their given country for ideas. The groups will be assigned tomorrow and they have until next Tuesday to submit their recipe proposal. They will have to cook their foods by next Thursday. All meals will be judged by the Headmasters and the winning groups will get a prize. Groups are judged on taste as well as difficulty to discourage picking foods that are too easy.

Any questions? Feel free to ask!

( the groups )

Thirdly, here are the event for the next two weeks.
1st: Roald Krum's birthday
3rd: Félix Dupont's birthday
4th: Ginny Potter's second article and stats profiles published in the Daily Prophet
5th: HOGWARTS v. SALEM PREP (Round 1). Rose Weasley's birthday. Roxanne Weasley's birthday. Fred Weasley's birthday.
8th: Recipes due
7th: Annabelle Hopkins's birthday
10th: Foods due
15th: Anya Bielski's birthday

Hey guys!

We have FINALLY created a clubs page! So far, the clubs are art, book, charms, chess, choir, dueling, film, gobstones, herbology, HILT, and potions. If there's a club you want to see, let us know and we'll add it. In order to sign up for clubs please go to the page and reply with the clubs your character would like to be involved in. You can also sign up for leadership roles, but please don't go nuts; we want everyone to get a chance, and it's unlikely that even the most dedicated overachiever would be given more than three leadership roles (and this includes being a prefect, Head, or Quidditch Captain).

Also keep in mind that 7th years will get preference for leadership roles, and that there are a couple we have already assigned simply due to that character's professed passion for the subject.

Hey all!

So here's a simple rundown of what you can expect plotwise during the month of October (we know, we're a few days late). We decided this announcement set-up might be useful for everyone--and for future reference, if you didn't already know where to go, the upcoming events calendar can be found here.

( events )

( birthdays )

Hey guys! I know we said we wouldn't be doing activity check, but this game got bigger faster than we intended, and it's proven to be difficult to keep track of everyone so we've decided to do an activity check of sorts. While it is required, there's no punishment for not being active provided that you respond; we're not going to kick you out or give you a week to update or something if you haven't. This is more of a way to check in with all of you rather than a warning.

So for each character, please respond with a link to the most recent journal entry or thread AND comment thread in response to someone else's entry just so we know you've been posting. These should be things that were started before this check (9/13). If you haven't been as active with a character, don't sweat it. We understand that real life gets in the way, so if you've been busy, just tell us! Or if you haven't posted with a character because of a lack of plot, we'll try to help you get more involved. We're flexible so if, say, you've been commenting a lot but just forgot to post a journal entry or if you don't have something from within the past two weeks, but post something later this week, just let us know and show us links.

All comments are screened. Please try to respond within the next few days. Thanks!

Just a note! All 6th years who are taking Herbology are now in Herbology section A. We had to add another section because the class is just so damn popular (no doubt due to the stunning Professor Longbottom here).

[Section B is Thursdays, 10:00–11:45; your characters are welcome to switch if they so desire.]

Okay folks, heap lavish amounts of praise and love on Stevie and Lisa, who collaborated and put together this phenomenal tableau of places to visit at Diagon Alley. It is incredible.

There is now a direct link to it on the mod home page, too. Happy perusing!

As some of you have no doubt realized, today was the first multicultural relations class. Basically, today was just an introduction to the class, the expectations, and the schools. There won't be exams and grades are pass/fail, but there will be various projects and multicultural events throughout the term. The first assignment is simple: interview each other. Everyone has been placed into a group of 4 or 5, and they're expected to ask about things like hometowns, family traditions, etc. They'll also have to do also be a brief write up (paragraph or so) of each person in the group. You as players are not required to do anything, but feel free to thread or journal the interviews or reactions to the assignment/interviews!

Here are the groups

1. Dorian, Audrey, Charles, Jana
2. Jonni, Scorpius, Penny, Ronnie
3. Avery, Lorcan, Corrie, Riley
4. Danny, Jonathan, Maddie, Alessandro
5. Chase, Elliot, Nate, Leonard
6. Corbin, Wren, Ava, Dani
7. Tanner, Rosalind, Albus, Ryu
8. Maggie, Lysander, Nikki, Roald
9. Lily, Eddie, Garrett, Katja
10. Georgie, Alice, Lennon, Caer
11. Olivia, Ian, James, Eirik, Felix
12. Hal, Jack, Catie, Mei
13. Aggie, Estella, Lucy, Didi
14. Rose, Clover, Lisa, Cel, Anais
15. Tori, Dexter, Duck, Willow

If you have any questions about the assignment or the class in general, feel free to ask here!

Hey guys! Quick request: it would be super great if you could start tagging your posts both in the IC and OOC community. Names are just firstname-lastname and things like !intro and !hiatus for the OOC comm. As some of you may have noticed, this wasn't totally possible before, but we just modified the settings so now everyone can create tags. Tagging your own posts just makes it a little easier on us. Thanks!

Quick announcement: the female cap is now dropped, so if you want to hold a girl, feel free to.

Time to run the friend all. Sara has added Jack Cardew!

On a related note, we've talked about it and we've decided to get rid of the wait period between characters. We mainly added it to make sure we had players who were serious rather than ones who would join with a ton of characters and then quickly quit. But we trust you guys, and if you think you can handle more than three, feel free to apply for another. However, your activity still matters so we will turn down holds if we feel like you haven't been active enough with current characters. For now, the character limit is still five and we're still allowing only one foreign student per player. And one new note: if you have three girls, we would prefer if your fourth was a boy since we've had trouble keeping the gender ratio even.

We're also hoping to lift the cap on girls soon. We just wanted to wait to get apps from the current holds to make the ratio even. Once we get a few more boys, you'll be able to apply with a girl so sit tight.

Hey folks! Just a quick note for your information, since Eddie Longbottom here brought up a good point re: team decisions.

The foreign teams' rosters were announced just last week (a few days prior to the journal connection going live), so none of them has had a chance to practice together as of yet, and won't until they arrive at Hogwarts. The reasoning behind their early selection was both the practicality of arranging for overseas travel and that the foreign teams have to get used to their new surroundings as well as working together as a team. Hogwartians have home court advantage, so this is intended to balance it out.

Other questions about logistics? Shoot 'em here!

Hey all! If you haven't done so recently, please run the friend all button!

Now that we're open, we'll be notifying you every time it's been updated.

WE'RE OPEN!

Journal entries and threads are now fair game. The journals of foreign students are now officially connected to the Hogwarts magical network.

Probably the first thing you want to decide is whether the owl sent by Headmaster Flux is news to your kids or not, depending on where their parents work and how willing they'd be to share that information if they had it. Happy playing!