So You're Thinking About Joining Fandom High! Stuff You Should Know:
Nov 08, 2008 10:52
Student and teacher applications are only accepted during specific periods (the fandomhigh profile page will indicate whether apps are open), because the school aspect runs on real semesters, with scheduled interactive class posts. Townie applications are always open and usually processed within a week.
Teachers post class posts during the week where students interact with the teacher and each other; townies post business posts where all characters can interact with the employee, or each other! Characters can also interact in open spaces on Fandom Island, NPC businesses that are posted as needed, their homes/rooms, the student dorms, and many other settings and events. Have no fear: we've got guides for what gets posted where, character activity requirements and maximum character limits.
All Fandom High characters must come from an existing and published fictional source (which we refer to as the character's canon). This can be a tv show, book, comic (including webcomics), film, video game, etc. All types of canons are acceptable.
They do have to be from a specific canon, though, not a myth/legend/archetype. 'Arthur Pendragon of legend' wouldn't be allowed; Arthur Pendragon as portrayed in the BBC Merlin series would. (As would Arthur Pendragon as portrayed in T.H. White's The Once and Future King, etc.) Aphrodite from Greek mythology wouldn't be allowed; Aphrodite as portrayed in Xena: Warrior Princess would.
No original characters (even if their background is set in an existing fictional world), and no Real People are accepted.
The exception to "Real People" above is fictional characters based on real people -- but again, they must be from a published fictional source. For example: Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain from Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novels would be a playable character at FH. Christina Aguilera would not, even if the prospective player made up a fictionalized history for her.
Small amounts of AU (alternate universe) are allowed in a character's backstory to provide a reason for them to get to Fandom High, including aging up or down, playing the character before their canon storyline started, or changing an event or two, but we're still looking for the character as seen in canon here. Jo from The Facts of Life can get a scholarship to Fandom High instead of Eastland Boarding School, but she can't be a secret superhero, or a boy, or part of a steamy offscreen relationship with Mrs. Garrett. You can, of course, change her future in all kinds of ways through experiences in the game!
Only one version of each character is allowed in the game at any given time. Please check the character directory to see if the character already exists! If a character leaves the game completely (with a few formally-retired exceptions), they'll be removed from the directory and once again open for new versions of themselves to be applied.
Canon clones (or crazy transporter accident duplicates who go on to have their own lives, etc.) will be considered on a case by case basis, and probably allowed if they seem to be treated as a different person within the original fictional universe.
Student characters have to be at least 13 or the equivalent age to be a high school freshman; there's not necessarily any maximum age, as long as they appear to be of high school age or otherwise have some appropriate backstory that would explain why they need to be a student.
Teacher and Townie characters have to be at least 18 or the equivalent age to be considered an adult of their species.
Players have to be at least 18. This isn't a sex game, but there are sex scenes and other adult topics played out, among many other options. You don't have to be part of them, but since you have the opportunity to, we need you to be of age for all our protection.
FH is played in third-person past-tense prose, for the most part. The odd dream-sequence may be described in present tense, or a letter/journal-entry written in first-person, but mostly, we're telling a story here, just alternating paragraphs.
Example: Main Post, posted in character's LJ: Rob was sitting on his bed, flipping through his Practical Wizardry textbook and wondering when exactly the men in white coats were coming to take him away from here, or possibly give him his meds. They seriously had a class on magic! Real magic, not that David Blaine stuff. He shook his head, glancing every so often out the open door into the hallway to see if anyone might wander past to help take his mind off the crazy.
Comment to post: Donald, noticing the open door and being a nosy friendly sort, tapped on the doorframe and poked his head in. "Hi, neighbor! I'm Don, from 302."
Reply to comment: Rob looked up and gave him a wave. "Hey, I'm Rob. I think I saw you at the welcome picnic; you're the one with the big old sheepdog, right? Do they let you keep him in the dorms?"
Only, you know, not boring and with characters we didn't just randomly make up for this example.
Fandom is a dimensional nexus, and it's not at all unusual for a character to be greeted by someone who knew a previous version of him, possibly including secrets your character wishes they didn't. You pays your money and you takes your chances, when you bring in a character who has game history. However, he'll be a different individual, and he won't be responsible for knowing what some parallel universe version of him did (though other characters will probably be all too gleefully willing to tell him about it).
To see if your prospective character has been around before, check out the town and dorm tags!
Fandom High works on a 'no canon-puncturing' principle, with limited exceptions. Unless you fall into one of those exceptions, no character is going to recognize your character as someone who's fictional in their world.
Instead, we use made-up 'meta' shows and literature to replace the fictional stuff that characters would normally know. For example, on meeting Buffy Summers, no one who wasn't from her own canon would recognize her as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because no such show exists. Instead people are familiar with Wendy the Werewolf Stalker (who may have some odd similarities to Buffy, but it's not polite to point those out unless Buffy herself is doing so). The idea is to have fun with this, use the meta fiction to make jokes about the real source, create awful puns, and so on, without putting any characters on the spot.
The exceptions are:
Legends or myths: anyone who knows Earth history is allowed to know that Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love, and believe whatever they choose to believe about how historically real she was. What they know or think they know about that legend may be completely different from what's true about the lady of the same name who runs the sex toy shop in town and claims to be the mythical Aphrodite.
Classic literature: mostly we're talking Shakespeare here, though there are others that would work similarly. With Shakespeare specifically, any of his plays and characters are fair game for mentioning by name, unless there's currently a character from that play in the game. Once that happens, it's up to the preference of that player: they can allow themselves to be recognized as a 'historical' character that Shakespeare wrote a play about and may or may not have got the details right, or they can request that a meta-name be invented for their particular play, at which point everyone whistles, hand-waves, and pretends the meta-name has been in use all along.
Culturally-pervasive literature: this is purely voluntary on the part of players from those canons, and has to be agreed upon by all players in the game from that canon, but if that happens, a widely-known canon can be left fictional. The novel/tv-show/etc. is treated as a documentary about real people, or a story that was secretly based on reality but published as fiction. For example, this is currently the case with the Wizard of Oz fandom (and offshoots like Wicked). L. Frank Baum was writing about a place he'd really visited, and just publishing it as fiction.
Canons that have already set this up themselves: The Princess Bride, for instance, is presented as a piece of historical fiction being read to a modern boy, within its own framework. Therefore anyone can walk into the Fandom High library and pull that book (or its fictional sequel, Buttercup's Baby) off the shelves. If Buttercup ever comes to Fandom as a character, people who've read the book will know only the version of her life that was presented in that piece of fiction, and she's welcome to say "Pfft, they totally got that bit wrong."
Show-within-a-show, book-within-a-book, etc.: when a canon has a made-up show in it that the characters watch, that show is fair game to be treated as a real show by everyone in Fandom. For example, the Queer As Folk (US) characters watch a show called Gay As Blazes. Fandom TV can totally broadcast that!
For the main entry on how we use Meta names, head over here. To see the list of existing meta names, (or add to it once you're a player) visit the FH Meta Wiki!
This is just a basic overview of things to consider when you're thinking about joining the game. You can find more information on specific topics on the Fandom High Profile page, and you're welcome to send any questions to us via fandomhighadmins at iambicnut dot com. (If you know a Fandom High player, you're also always welcome to grill them mercilessly chat with them about it!) Finally, one of the best ways to see what's happening is just to lurk about reading the game for a bit! For a good example of a day's worth of gameplay and how things are phrased and posted, check out any entry in fandom_radio and follow the links.