#app advice

Absolutely! If you look at our tumblr (on desktop mode if you’re on mobile), you can find the tentative schedule in our sidebar. Contributor applications are set to open around November 8th. Once they open, you’ll want to fill out an artist application and wait for the result e-mails, which we will be sending out around  December 21st. 

Now, there is a lot that goes along with filling out an application. That can make it hard for newbies to break into the zine scene. In order to make it as fair for everyone as possible, the guidelines page will explicitly state exactly what we are looking for, things that may help or hinder your application, and link to resources for things like portfolio creation. For now, I can tell you that we plan on judging artist applications by anatomy, composition, lineart, coloring, lighting, and ”plus ultra” (the overall feel and uniqueness of the piece). Be aware that this may change depending on the head art mod, as neither Lanni nor myself are artists. 

For the time being, some decent guides to art applications can be found here and here. There’s also a good guide to general applications here.

I would also like to take this time to say that as the head writing mod, I can give at least a faint outline of how we will be judging writers. (Assuming that the interest check comes out in favor of them! Further information depends on the results of the interest check and mod discussion.)  Writers will be awarded a score, the maximum being 50 points, based on their application and portfolio. The categories we will be judging are grammar (8 points), characterization (12 points*), dialogue (10 points), wordflow/style (10 points), and “plus ultra” (10 points). In the case of writing, “plus ultra” is likely to be dependant on pacing and emotional impact. I would like to note that greater emphasis will be placed on emotional impact when judging writing than when judging art. Writing and art are different experiences at their core; the point of including both in a zine is so one can provide what the other can’t. Imagery is nice, but if all we get is lots of imagery and flowery prose with very little impactful content, it is likely to lose points. (Please note that the ‘impact’ made does not necessarily need to be sad or angsty. Humor works as well, or horror, or even strong feelings of hope! All emotions are fair game.) Meanwhile, although invoking strong emotional reactions will still give them a leg up, an artist who submitted a portfolio with very simplistic pieces might still be accepted because it looked gorgeous. 

Some good advice on writing portfolios can be found here.

I hope this helped!

So today we’re covering consistency within an app regarding personality and backstory. This is a longer one (which is one reason it took longer to get out), and in general talks about the sections individually and the cohesion between the two as a whole.

Backstory alone

Keep backstory character motivations clear and consistent. For example, if your character has a friend who hates cats, and later on can be found petting cats, explain why this happened. This is only really important if the change has an effect on your character’s life.

Take into account how backstory events happened and what role your character played in them. Were they a victim? Did they do something bad themself? Do they have a victim complex? It’s dissonant if a character puts the blame on someone who had nothing to do with the situation without saying why.

Chula personally has a bias towards characters who have people in their backstory who aren’t just immediate family. Cousins, bullies, best friends... your family isn’t the only factor that affects a person.

Longer does not always mean better! While I appreciate detail in events, at some point, it can be too much.

Personality only

Avoid contradictory personality traits! Someone cannot be good under pressure and crack under pressure at the same time. That doesn’t make any sense. Try paying attention to the little things like that to clear up any questions we might have.

Now this should be an obvious one: Give your characters a balance between good and bad traits. An all bad or an all good character is no fun. Even cinnamon rolls should have some sort of downside, yeah? Maybe they’re stupid, or maybe they have detrimentally low self esteem.

Personality & Backstory

It's worth noting not every trait of someone's personality needs to be attributed to some event in their backstory. Sometimes personality is simply someone's nature. You can be joyful in terrible circumstances, or likewise melancholic even when surrounded by friends on a beautiful cruise ship.

That being said, when you show that a major event in your character's life affects how they feel and act, or otherwise explain why it didn't have such an effect, it demonstrates a deeper understanding of your character's motivations, and ultimately results in a stronger app.

It’s a good idea to make your character’s nature shine through during events in their backstory and how they respond to certain events. A backstory can have it’s own sort of character arc, where the personality grows for the better or worse throughout your descriptions of events. Showing bits and pieces of personality off in a backstory can turn a good app into a great one.

Best of luck!! <3

Hiya nonny! Hmmm I’ve never actually had that happen to me before 🤔 is your app connected to Facebook? If so, I’d say that your best bet may be to try deleting the app (AFTER making sure it’s synched to FB) and then reinstalling it? When I got my iPhone I made sure that my Choices was synched to FB so that when I played it on my new phone it carried over my Choices from the old phone.

oh yeah lol i got your message i started writing up a response but then i reloaded and it got deleted.

anyway

sometimes youll just get a terrible interviewer. like my yale interviewer. she didnt understand or make an attempt to understand my academic goals, every question she asked seemed to drag me away from what i wanted to talk about, and we just did not vibe. but assuming you dont have a terrible interviewer, yay!

obviously it’s not the whole thing, but the *foundation* for the good interview is going to be putting your best foot forward by acting friendly/mature/charming/polite. if youve ever socialized with some cool friends of your parents or grandparents, it’s kinda like that.

that said, your main goal once you get there is just to have a good conversation. kind of like on the common app, with the interview you want to present yourself in a good light overall, by just talking about what you care about, what youre up to in high school, what youre excited for about college, etc. you want your interviewer to come out of the conversation saying “wow, that kid is really smart and interesting. if they don’t get into harvard then harvard’s admissions decisions are stupid. i like hearing about what these awesome high schoolers are into”

for harvard specifically the interviewer is going to ask you some questions about, like, factual information about yourself, a lot of which is the same stuff you put on your written college applications (eg. what extracurriculars do you do, what AP exams have you taken, what do you think you might want to concentrate in, etc), and theyll probably take occasional notes during the whole conversation. i guess the interviewers dont see your written application? it’s probably good that you have this opportunity to tell your story another way (orally), though.

also: it’s not just them asking and you answering. you should bring in a couple questions about harvard, or things about harvard to chat with the person about. even though the focus is you, this is an opportunity for you to talk to an alum: ask them a little about what their experience was like, or what they think of harvard compared to other schools they or you know about, or what they do now - even if it was a while ago (my interviewer was at harvard in the late 80s), and even if you also have access to other harvard people to talk to. if nothing else, you have an extra connection with this person because they live near you, especially if theyre from the area, though obviously they might not be.

also, dont worry too much about it! the interview alone wont make or break your acceptance. see it as an opportunity to show how you currently see your experiences/interests/values/college aspirations in a different way in addition to all the other application materials harvard has on you.

Nope!! Second person. The context for this is, in chapter 2 the motive was a cool twist on “biggest secrets.” Essentially, characters had someone else’s anonymous memory planted into their brain that was mostly related to their secret. In the event where the character’s secret didn’t translate to a memory well, it was a traumatic memory. Anyway, the person who received the memory relived someone else’s secret. SUPER COOL.

The threat was that once a day, Monokuma would share a pair that traded memories. So that pair would know exactly who’s memory this was! And if nobody killed by the time he revealed all pairs, he would reveal all the secrets.

Frankly I loved the motive. A player came up with it. So! I decided I MIGHT use it again for MS, plus it makes a decent prompt, really. An interesting way to see how a writer handles a different style.

It’s kinda written like someone narrates a DnD game.

Here, I’ll grab an example from last game!

You wander into the kitchen while the they are preparing your dinner, and you find yourself curious about the knives. She had always instructed you to stay away from them, as they were dangerous; naturally, that makes you curious. They are all too busy to notice, so you sneak out of the kitchen with a set of them – different sizes of paring, cutting, chef’s knives, and a meat cleaver. As you unsheath the meat cleaver from the knife set holder, you feel a rush of excitement run down your spine. You hold the lives of every one of them in the kitchen, right in the grip of your hand. At that point, you shake and quiver with an overwhelming sensation of power, which quickly turns into an overwhelming sensation of fear. You think to yourself, ‘Oh, God… why… Has that thought even crossed my mind…?’ She had always instructed you to stay away from knives - and now, you plan to avoid them. You are horrified with yourself for even thinking of killing, much less finding it so empowering and, in a way, exciting and arousing. You sneak back into the kitchen, and return the knife-holder to where it belongs - but not without a second thought.

All night, you toss and turn, unable to sleep. You can’t help yourself but wonder how it would have felt to kill one of them. You think to yourself, 'There are so many… nobody would notice if one went missing…’ But at the same time, you feel horrible with yourself for even thinking that way. You never do kill, but this fear of the excitement you feel while thinking about killing keeps you from ever touching a knife again.

-Ochako Senchamoto, Melancholic Gardens

A few folks turned in apps not quite formatted correctly, but upon acceptance, we can easily request changes >w< It is confusing, so getting it wrong doesn’t hurt your score, really.

It me again... Chula! Here with a much shorter post than last time. This one is going to cover app deadlines.

I highly recommend this for not just Melancholic, but other games as well! Turn in your apps early. Mods tend to get really tired while reading ~15+ apps all turned in on the last day of a deadline, and it tends to make them more jaded and... cranky for lack of a better word.