Applications

[aungier_mods]

APPLICATIONS
Reserves are OPEN

Apps will be closed for the foreseeable future! From June 26th, reserves will last for two weeks; reserves placed before this date will expire two weeks after the date they were first made. If you'd like to apply to the game, please fill in the app, post your app in a journal and link it below; if you've reserved please say so in your comment header.

Currently, we ask that players already in the game to wait three weeks before apping another character. The game has been closed as of the 27th of July. Thank you for your interest.

APP GUIDELINES

OOC Information

Name: Whatever handle you'd like to go by.

Age: There is no age limit to the game, but we'd like to know all the same.

Characters already in game?: If you don't have any, just put N/A.

Contact: However you'd like us to contact you- DW journal, plurk, email, whatever.

IC Information

Name: Your character's name and what they go by, if it's something different.

Canon: The canon they're from.

Canon Medium: TV series, comic, anime, game, etc?

Age: Physical and actual.

Gender/ Sex: If they aren't the same, please say so here.

Canon History: Their history in-canon. You're very welcome to provide a link to a wiki if one exists, provided it's well put together and covers everything we would need to know. If you choose to write your own history or add to it, please put all headcanon in italics.

Canon Point: Where are you taking them from in their canon?

Powers: What powers does your character have, if any? Be as thorough as possible. All powers will be removed on entry to the game, but we may run events that involve partial regains.

Personality: Give us a good, all-encompassing explanation of your character's personality. We need to be able to really get a grip on who they are and why they're the way they are- not just how they behave, but what motivates them, what frightens them, what makes them them. If you use canon examples, try to use them to illustrate your point rather than as points in and of themselves; we know what your character does from their history, and now we want to know why.

AU Role: What role would you like them to take at Aungier House?
Please refer to the available roles here. You should also bear in mind that some roles may be more in demand than others; you should have a back-up role and AU history in mind just in case we decide to give your first choice to another applicant.

AU History: Describe the kind of life your character's AU self has led. This section is primarily dictated by the role you have chosen for them, and as such we will use this to decide which character should get the role in event that two players apply for the same one. Most characters will only require a couple of paragraphs, but more in-demand roles may benefit from more detail. Try to be historically accurate, and feel free to engage with the setting in whatever way you choose!

Samples

This is a prose game, and as such all samples should be in prose. You can either give us:

a) A prose sample of around 400 words

b) A prose thread where you have posted at least three comments

What we want to see is your writing ability (spelling, grammar, clarity, coherence) and the way in which you express your character's personality and thoughts.

Application:

<b><u>OOC Information</u></b><div style="margin-left: 40px;"> <b>Name:</b> Whatever handle you'd like to go by. <b>Age:</b> There is no age limit to the game, but we'd like to know all the same. <b>Characters already in game?:</b> If you don't have any, just put N/A. <b>Contact:</b> However you'd like us to contact you- DW journal, plurk, email, whatever. </div><b><u>IC Information</u></b> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><b>Name:</b> Your character's name and what they go by, if it's something different. <b>Canon:</b> The canon they're from. <b>Canon Medium:</b> TV series, comic, anime, game, etc? <b>Age:</b> Physical and actual. <b>Gender/ Sex:</b> If they aren't the same, please say so here. <b>Canon History:</b> Their history in-canon. You're very welcome to provide a link to a wiki if one exists, provided it's well put together and covers everything we would need to know. If you choose to write your own history or add to it, please put all headcanon in <i>italics</i>. <b>Canon Point:</b> Where are you taking them from in their canon? <b> Powers:</b> What powers does your character have, if any? Be as thorough as possible. All powers will be removed on entry to the game, but we may run events that involve partial regains. <b>Personality:</b> Give us a good, all-encompassing explanation of your character's personality. We need to be able to really get a grip on who they are and why they're the way they are- not just how they behave, but what motivates them, what frightens them, what makes them <i>them</i>. If you use canon examples, try to use them to illustrate your point rather than as points in and of themselves; we know what your character does from their history, and now we want to know why. <b>AU Role:</b> What role would you like them to take at Aungier House? Please refer to the available roles <a href=" http://aungier-mods.dreamwidth.org/2292.html">here</a>. You should also bear in mind that some roles may be more in demand than others; you should have a back-up role and AU history in mind just in case we decide to give your first choice to another applicant. <b>AU History:</b> Describe the kind of life your character's AU self has led. This section is primarily dictated by the role you have chosen for them, and as such we will use this to decide which character should get the role in event that two players apply for the same one. Most characters will only require a couple of paragraphs, but more in-demand roles may benefit from more detail. Try to be historically accurate, and feel free to engage with the setting in whatever way you choose! </div><b><u>Samples</u></b> <div style="margin-left: 40px;">This is a prose game, and as such all samples should be in prose. You can either give us: a) A prose sample of around 400 words b) A prose thread where you have posted at least three comments What we want to see is your writing ability (spelling, grammar, clarity, coherence) and the way in which you express your character's personality and thoughts.</div>

Comments

REVISION REQUEST

[aungier_mods]

Overall we were satisfied with your app, but we were concerned with the attempted child sex abuse in Kanda's AU history; we felt that it was unnecessary, given that it did not seem to greatly impact his AU self and was not acting as a reasonable parallel to an event in his canon history. We would ask, therefore, that this part of his AU be removed or altered.

[aungier_mods]

Unfortunately, we also feel that we cannot back down from our revisions request for a number of reasons.

While we understand that you would like to have Kanda's violent, troubled past reflected in his AU history, we also feel that the attempted sexual abuse is not a reasonable or necessary way of doing so. In regards to the canon example you cited, we also disagree that this is a reasonable basis for what happens in his AU history. The example you gave was not mentioned in the history section of his wiki page and therefore we did not see it during our first assessment of your app. Now that we have familiarised ourselves with it- without downplaying that it is sexual assault/ harassment- we feel that it is neither a significant enough event in his life to support the AU event, nor an example of a strong enough recurring pattern of harassment and abuse in his life. Reading Kanda's AU history, we strongly believe that the event in question could be removed or altered without significantly affecting the character he is.

Though you also cite historical accuracy, it should also be noted that the Meiji era was an intensely turbulent and violent period in Japanese history. There is no reason why you should not be able to find other, equally historically accurate ways of representing his trauma that do not involve sexual assault. We appreciate that you are looking to represent systematic victimisation and abuse, but we do not feel that the way you have done so here is appropriate when you have many other ways of recreating it. On a related note, we were troubled by your explanation that his AU self resisting sexual assault was somehow symbolic of his 'refusal to be a victim', a suggestion we found uncomfortably close to victim blaming.

We do understand if you would rather not revise your app, but ultimately we cannot accept it as it currently stands.

[aungier_mods]

It feels as though we are discussing different matters here. We are not attempting to erase history and we do acknowledge that these things happened throughout history- we simply do not accept that Kanda is a suitable character with which to explore these themes and issues. The example you referred to was of an original character whose "canon" history involved those subjects; if you had apped a character whose backstory involved attempted or actual sexual abuse, we would have been amenable to an AU backstory that involved the same.

We chose to take a cautious approach by asking you to remove the two lines in Kanda's AU backstory that we felt were unnecessary in the grand scheme of his app- we did not feel that removing them would hurt either the historical accuracy, the character you were describing or the overall impact of your AU in any significant way. Given that it made up such a small part of your app, we did not think we were being unreasonable. Our comment about victim blaming was in response to actual discomfort expressed by one of our current players about your app, and thus we felt it important to include so that you could clarify your meaning.

We are genuinely sorry that this panned out so badly- we haven't handled this nearly as well as we could have done and apologise sincerely if we made you feel talked down to or wronged in any way which, though not our intention, seems to have happened anyway. We wish you the best for the future and hope you'll forgive us for making such a mess of this (it's our first modding gig and, fingers crossed, we can learn from the mistakes made here and in the past and work things out going into the future).

edit: just to add that we'll be revisiting and revising our policies on this and working out a better way of judging things. Again, we're very sorry.