☆ rules / ☆ guidelines

[judiciary]

Welcome to foreignrelation, the informal roleplay comm for the webcomic series Axis Powers Hetalia! While this is strictly informal thing, we do encourage a few rules to maintain order; read the rules before doing anything else.


Basic Rules:

• Courtesy is required OOC. We want to maintain a lively and fun atmosphere here, so please be nice to one another.
• English, please. Foreign loanwords are nice, but don’t overdo it. Also keep in mind to write with coherence and sparse emoticons (if any).
• Adhere to the claims. Go for the characters that are not on the claims list. Before you make a claim, check the claims list; limit of two to each person, and is subject to change.
• Have fun! Post to the comm and enjoy! Cheesy as it sounds, this is the most important rule.

Rule Amendments:

• Character Limit: Two Irregardless of canon or OC, three or four on a case-by-case basis if there is good activity.
  You will be allowed to have a third or fourth character if you already have two, IF you fulfil certain conditions, and those are that you have to have maintained activity with your previous three characters AS well as provided consistent characterization. Simple, right? This will be based on mod discretion. This also means that new players will have to be playing for a certain amount of time and will not be able to grab three characters in one go.
-Baby nations are paradox characters, and will be allowed on a limited basis to current players if claimed, in addition to the currently played cast (that means you can have 1 baby character if you want, even if you have four characters already).
• Mods reserve the right to refuse character requests. Please note that we do not want to encourage character squatting for main characters, and if there are more than one people who wish to play three main characters (Main implies any of the ALLIES (America, England, Russia, France, China) or AXIS POWERS (Japan, Germany, N.Italy) ), we will be giving preference to the players who don't have more than two main characters, unless we've seen good activity from the first player, AND we will be discouraging one person from picking up too closely connected characters. (Like one player playing both England and France, etc.)
• Answer roll call. The mods will be monitoring activity, but there will also be roll call checks periodically. This means that we require a certain amount of activity at some point-- one post a month by your characters is fine so long as there is interaction going, within that post (unless it's a mingle post, where they only set up scenes and don't reply to everyone)-- as well as commenting to others' posts. We understand real life obligations, college, work, family etc, but we're here to interact and where possible, when possible, please do so! :D
• Hiatus. If a player knows that they will not be able to play at all for a period of time, please leave us a note about it on the hiatus post. If by the time AC rolls around, the characters have not been active, we will take up the matter with the players. If a player is on hiatus or will not be able to respond, please PM the mod journal judiciary and let us know. If your hiatus will run longer than two-three weeks, please let us know and we will allow an extension on a case-by-case basis.
• Secondary Claims. For new players, a grace period from the time they join until the next activity check will be observed before they can pick up a second character. We just want to make sure that a player is committed to this game and isn't merely sitting on characters because that's just being rude.

Icons;

• All icons are used at players' discretion, fanart/original/olive branch friendly etc. Please don't pick on people for using fanart icons! Out of courtesy, please have sources if possible. If you don't, it's fine, but just in case!
• Icons are used to define expressions, please make use of them! Multi-part iconspam comments are welcome as well.
• hetalia_icons, hetalia under the icon tag are good starting places to look for icons and sets for characters shown in the series. Making your own icons and sets is definitely encouraged too!
• For OC nation-tans, we strongly recommend looking through free_manga for some series for art to create uniform icon sets by modifying colours, or using bases. As this is a manga/anime series, using real PBs would be breaking fourth wall.
• If you wish to draw your own icons for OC nations, feel free to, but please make sure icons show the characters and are clear. If you need assistance, let the comm know! We have icon-makers and artists who will be willing to help!

Posting and Game Environment;

• Keep formatting in mind, it helps keep reading easier! (You can use small action brackets "[]" or "[italicized]" or *between asterisks* for actions between dialogue). Prose style posting isn't discouraged, but it's preferable to keep things real time with the formatting. Check the comm to see how dialogue and action formats are done!
• While we're lenient with the usage of the Japanese translated nicknames "Su-san, France-niichan, Hana-Tamago etc", we would prefer it if the Japanese suffixes were not used too much except by Japan himself.
  
  "Spain-niichan, France-niichan, Roma-jiichan, Russia-san, Belarus-chan" etc would either just be "Big brother France/Spain" "Grandpa/Uncle Rome" or "Russia/Russia sir, etc." and "Belarus" and so on.
  As for Su-san and Hana-Tamago, what would cute equivalents be? Try and find some but we won't kill you if you can't ;D. It's also fun to try and figure out what the address would be in the nations' respective homes, right? (Herr, Monsieur, Senor, Sir and Madam etc.) If it doesn't work, (like how we'll never be able to explain Poland's valley girl accent) then worry not, THIS IS JUST A SUGGESTION. :|
• The comm is to be treated as "Headquarters"-- where -anything- is possible in any of the rooms. But the posts can also be made as being in the nations' homes, just be sure to mark them appropriately in the subject and tag with your nation name in the tags! As well as giving us descriptions in the opening post itself!
• When commenting in a post of your own, treat each thread in a post as being only between yourself and the other character unless someone threadjacks or you ask someone to join in. Log format isn't discouraged but action-logging is preferred, due to the nature of the community, but feel free to do real time action logs, and you may also backdate it you like.
• Please make sure that when you post, you have enough time to reply to comments that may start coming in. Leaving people hanging and dropping threads is considered impolite, especially if you're not going to backdate, unless you've specified in an ooc note that you are creating a 'mingle post' and won't be replying to all of the comments. But if anyone addresses your nation directly, then please do thread with them if you can!
• Craziness is more than welcome, anything goes after all. Just monitor yourselves for what is acceptable or not. 4th wall days are present for you to interact with more characters and people from different series, and we do love the creativity that comes with this! Go wild, have fun, let everyone mingle with everyone!

On Characterisation;

• Remember, nation-tans are nations, not actual people-- please refrain from addressing them by their 'human' names (Alfred F.Jones, Ludwig etc.) too much, if at all, unless there's going to be confusion (Italy Veniciano/Italy Romano etc). "Brotherly/Loving" nicknames (Liet, Veneciano, Iggy, Su etc.) are no problem, for example.
• Physical descriptions of the nations aren't necessary in posts, everyone knows each other-- mostly anyway! Unless you're France dressing up in a maid outfit, yeow.
• OC Nation-tans are encouraged to build relations with the canon ones, but with common RP courtesy, make sure the canon ones are aware of these relations as well.
• Unlike other characters, our nation-tans will bounce back from all the madness that's flung at them. So please don't 'humanize' them to the point where they can't realistically recover from their ongoing development, or can't handle relations and interactions built in the game, but please try your best to stay true to the actual nations' relations as well. (For example, France and England, as nice as they can be, will still end up fighting somehow due to history and such. This keeps consistency in characterization.)
• We love our shipping, we love our 'intimate relations' and 'special relationships', but please try to be *somewhat* observant of the natures of these relationships and execute them accordingly. We don't want to offend people by disregarding the rules of their countries after all! (For example, giving characters sexualities is all good and fine, but try and draw from what works where, especially in nations where religious law also counts.) Otherwise, take it easy, use your best judgement, who knows what relations can be formed!
• The game is set in modern times, so feel free to draw from current events, but this isn't necessary. Have some silly fun too. (Check France getting England drunk for example or tossing HRE like a throwball.)

Fanworks/Memes/OOC posts;

• Wanna make/share icons/fanart/fic/stuff based on interactions in THIS community only? Use the [ooc] subject and tag and the appropriate nature of the ooc post, and use a single post for them! These posts are to be friends-locked to the comm if they will contain PG-13 content (NC-17 is not allowed except if you're going to link to your own journals and labelled accordingly). Fanworks are welcome, but try to not spam up the comm with them.
• OOC spam posts for hiatuses/drops are all right in the main comm but we'd prefer the hiatus/drop to be posted to the " Claims" post, and please indicate the amount of time you'll be gone as well/who you are dropping there.