Semester of Desolation

Of course! That’s perfectly acceptable.

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.

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.

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...

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

But is it LITten?

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

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.