Term 26 Announcements & Posting Requirement Chat

Hello, Handlers! Announcement Time!

Thanks for sticking with us for another term! It was a good one, in my opinion! We unveiled our new houses, graduated two Seventh Years (Congrats to Anthony and Garnet!), we graduated an Auror (in Adult World), we welcomed three adults on board this past term, we experienced heartbreaking break ups, a prank in the Grand Hall was expertly handled by the Head Boy and the Lumière prefect, Linette Puchard's (a pioneer on the site, she's been here since Term 1) daughter, Minnie came on board, and Éclairage won the Quidditch Cup. In real life, Charm and Grace celebrated its third anniversary of being open. And March of 2016 saw 214 posts. That's so amazing. I want to thank you all for making that possible. Here's to another excellent term!

And you guys know me, I have a topic of conversation to bring up as well. So now it's Blog Time!

Recently, I have been ignoring posting requirements for students. If you posted once in the term, I didn't even check where it was, I promoted you. I want to stop having to do this. Here's why:

Back in the day, first years (and you started as a first year, no exceptions) needed to post 30 times. Fifteen before they could post in the Sorting Ceremony, then fifteen more to be promoted. We also had a word count of 100 words. This was originally to compete with Pottersworld, another roleplay site that is extremely popular. There, you must post 50 times in your first year. Granted, their word count is only 50 words, but still. Can you see how wild that is? Like, 50 posts. If you're a student in real life, or you have a full time job, you can't really dedicate that much time to roleplay. Charm and Grace was founded by great writers, originally meeting on Pottersworld, who saw that as too much. They saw it as very clique-y. They wanted a website similar to it, but more open and friendly. So they worked for three months and made this site.

None of the original founders are around anymore. They trusted the website to me, a newbie at the time. I don't know why, but they let me take over so they could take the next journey in their lives. If you've been around for awhile, you remember that activity was dead for a little bit when they left. Charm and Grace closed for two months because I was running it alone and I couldn't handle it anymore.

But we reopened, obviously, with new rules, ideas, and fresh faces! I got some help from some really great writers. We changed the posting requirement, word count, and some of the rules to make us stand out and be a bit more user friendly. Our goal was to attract new users, which we did (that's you, fair reader)!

So new characters post five times before sorting, then five more times to pass the first term. And instead of fifteen each returning term, we lowered it to five. So no one had to rush to get promoted. That's two posts a week to pass your first term, if you needed a schedule. Or one post a week, if you're a returning student. And then, if you're an adult character, I won't delete you unless you request it. And none of those posts have to be a certain length. Heck, you could write one sentence and I probably wouldn't say anything unless it's like, "'Hi!' she said." Like, with no other context or anything. You guys never do that, though, so thank you.

What I'm trying to say is asking you to make two posts a week or one post a week isn't going to suck up all of your time. It takes me fifteen minutes on average to write 150 words, which is a pretty good starter length. Even if you are a slow writer, it still shouldn't take a really long time to just do a quick comeback post.

I understand writers' block. I get it. But every day, I go on Tumblr and reblog writing resources to [url=charmandgracerp.tumblr.com]our Tumblr[/url]. I reblog starting sentence ideas, little headcanons, fun adjectives, positive quotes, fun Harry Potter themed things and things to get you thinking about your writing. I do this for you guys. It helps me and I hope that it'll help you, too. You have resources. And if you need someone to bounce ideas off of, feel free to message me and I'll help the best I can. I have some pretty cool ideas floating around in my head with no characters attached to them. I would love to help give you some direction with a character you're having trouble with.

And if you're busy, cool! Just let us know. Remember that I was gone for two months? Minister Zaofu had my back. You know we'll do that for you, too. We're friendly, I promise.

Also, we have this one thread. It's called [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. If you post in there with a character you no longer want, a staff member will delete them for you. No questions asked. It's okay if you can't handle every character you have. I've deleted several, Minister Sherlock and Minister Wishbone have deleted several as well. Yes, it's sad at first, but not nearly as sad as stringing along a character that you can't handle anymore.

And here are a couple of suggestions if you want a new character, but can't completely commit or are having trouble with getting posts for your current characters:

-Share a character with another handler.
-Create an adult who has to post less. More on this process [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
-Make a family member or advertise for one! Then, your character has a built in buddy! Or enemy, if that's what you prefer.
-Make a character with a friend. Maybe they grew up together or come from the same town. Maybe they're twins or rivals from different families.
-If you have just a whim, add on to an existing character. So if you want a character that really likes goldfish, add it to another one. Flesh out your characters a bit more.
-Start a diary in the holiday or dorm forums, where double posting is allowed. See [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for an example of this.
-Join quidditch! You get free posts in a secret dressing room forum only visible to players. And these posts are just to keep track of how many times you've posted in a game. Easy posts.
-Detention! Every two to three terms, a professor will start a detention sign up. You just give your reason and when the prompt is written it will be linked to you and there you have it. A thread!
-Exams! We haven't done these in a while, but we're going to this term. You just write a tiny post as if your student were taking a final exam. We used to give out house points for this, but until I get those templates adjusted, you just get a nice, free post.
-Games! Honestly, when I promote, I don't necessarily look at where someone has posted. I keep track throughout the term where most people have threads. So if I see five in the games, and only there, I may tell you no. But if I see you did a few posts and did one or two in games to help out, that's fine. I'll give them to you.

So I hope that helped you a bit! I want to keep encouraging you guys. I want to help y'all. I'm here running this site for all of you. Never hesitate to ask me questions!

I believe that's it for now! Stay tuned for our site plot for the students, which should be out within the next two weeks. Happy posting!

-Minister Viridian