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Post by edward on Sept 2, 2014 19:45:51 GMT -8
Maybe it's because I'm too devoted to the series, but to be honest, having modern technology and electronics work inside of a magical school would kind of half-kill it for me. Something about it just feels less m...agical.
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Post by ROGUE on Sept 2, 2014 21:04:40 GMT -8
I think it could be AU or not without even really mentioning either Harry or Voldemort? I mean, think about it. Even when a hugely significant event takes place in another country, to what extent to most Americans really hear about it? tumblr.
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Post by edward on Sept 2, 2014 22:34:41 GMT -8
I think it could be AU or not without even really mentioning either Harry or Voldemort? I mean, think about it. Even when a hugely significant event takes place in another country, to what extent to most Americans really hear about it? tumblr.if you're saying that tumblr is your news source you need jesus
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Post by redox-kun on Sept 2, 2014 23:00:17 GMT -8
if you're saying that tumblr is your news source you need jesus it depends on which blogs you get them from really like i get that tumblr is a cesspool of crap half the time but there are legitimate, sourced articles out there and looking down on the platform without considering that people are cognitively able to separate the crap from the good stuff is kind of dumb tbh shit is this about a harry potter site oops sry for hijacking
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Phantom of the Black Parade
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Post by Kuroya on Sept 3, 2014 3:13:48 GMT -8
Maybe it's because I'm too devoted to the series, but to be honest, having modern technology and electronics work inside of a magical school would kind of half-kill it for me. Something about it just feels less m...agical. Hermione time. "Whenever Muggles bring electronics close to Hogwarts, they start going haywire because of all the magic. I read about it in Hogwarts: A History". No but seriously I remember her going into the fact that electronics don't work around magic in Goblet since that was how Ron kept saying Rita was spying on Harry.
Also on the flip side of that, with isolationism, you can know about things. For example, the U.S. was very much aware of both world wars before getting involved, the reason we didn't was because congress thought we shouldn't since isolationism means we don't get involved. Thus in theory we could do it around the same time, say the ministry cut off immigration from Britain, and thus cut out actual death eaters and the like. And include the fact that U.S. wizards are viewed as trailer trash and thus aside from families that moved there before a certain year, most wizard families don't migrate to the Americas anyway.
Food for thought.
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Phantom of the Black Parade
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Post by Kuroya on Sept 3, 2014 6:02:05 GMT -8
Okay this is a secondary post since I'm working on the skin since it can take me anywhere from three days to three weeks to figure out what I'm doing and going through Zerochan is giving me ideas.
School itself: Possibly a four year thing (college or high school or a mix for 16-20?) with the more "American" idea of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior versus the year system?
Setting: I'm sorta interested in the school being hidden around Las Vegas or Hollywood since I personally would find it amusing for some of the "magic" the Muggles do there are actually real, not to mention it allows for more opportunities to mess with the Muggles I mean, no one would look at you funny there for being more eccentric.
Transport: Going with the sort of "We're American, we don't do it the same way everyone else does", I almost want to say going to school doesn't involve a train like in the books but rather... to cover the largeness of the US, it's via magical cell phones where if you hit one app, it apparates you to the front gates. Or you ride pegasi (since yes they do have those) to get to the flying school since come on the Americans probably would be that group to have a flying school.
Classes: I actually really like the system they had in canon with required classes the first two years and then you could pick electives after that.
Wands/Sorting: TBH I'm sorta leaning towards the staff can award wands upon approval but members sort themselves in their bios since in my opinion the members will know their characters better.
Species: I would personally love the option to make halfbreeds (I love half-Veela), but would this happen? Same with werewolves and animangi. Are they going to be a purchase thing or...?
Blood Status: While I can get behind the idea of the US wizards being mostly Muggleborns or half-bloods since it's America the land of opportunity, I also would like to see the traditional "I'm pureblood and better than you" dynamic, which then begs the question - are there going to be a certain list of pureblood families or will we let the members do what they want and only restrict I'm a nerd who hates straight-out bans since they tend to backfire and result in people making a bunch when it's removed if it becomes a problem.
Name: (I'm pushing this since I'm gonna need this while I code) American Spice possibly? I know this is probs something to be hammered out later, but since I code the banner area first, the sooner there's a name the better.
Skin itself: Okay so while I would love to do a carousel or a tabbed thing, I have no idea how to code either and since I code everything from scratch, that means that's almost definitely out. So from there I'm going to either play with a hover banner, do a sidebar (which I'm personally partial to, though sorry guys, it won't be one of those static ones, those personally annoy me), or a little table area under the main banner. Thoughts/preferences?
This is my personal reference so I can find things again as I'm skinning. Images here aren't set in stone, they're linked so I can grab them when I get to that part of the code. Possible Banner bases: One Two Three
Default large mini-profile
Possible ad images: One Two
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Post by MASQUE on Sept 3, 2014 6:54:24 GMT -8
/here yes
I don't really have much to add that hasn't been talked about but I was just thinking about how they would have something like /Wizarding Tumblr/ or something. Sure Muggle electronics don't work with Magical areas, but who says some intrepid wizard didn't decide to recreate but with magic? maybe I just really want a random wizarding chatroom okay. Screened so that only wizards or magical people can see the website and thus that's how they find some of the muggleborns... sometimes.
So yeah /unhelpful imsorry
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Phantom of the Black Parade
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Post by Kuroya on Sept 3, 2014 8:05:25 GMT -8
I think it's going to be either a sidebar or a table area thing since the hover was acting up on me. I've not started much, and the name/subtitle is totally up for debate... but not gonna lie, I'm partial to American Spice after this.
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Post by ROGUE on Sept 3, 2014 11:39:20 GMT -8
American Spice, 10/10.
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Post by invictus on Sept 3, 2014 13:51:06 GMT -8
Kuroya american spice sounds good.
school: the four year thing sounds cool, and we can open up a few "canon" spots i.e. professor, grounds keeper, beast master, etc. if they want to play older characters. personally i'm thinking that the school itself is a large mansion/boardingschool-esque thing on the outside but it's bigger on the inside! *shot*
setting: HOLLYWOOD AND THEIR MAGIC WERE REALLY CAUSED BY WIZARDS. *shot again* but all jokes aside, i'm partial to hollywood and maybe somewhere in the los angeles area, really. las vegas makes it sound like the founders wanted the students to gamble... >.<
transport: i support the magical phone and pegasi ideas 120%. come on, someone had to have been able to recreate modern technology -- it's america!
classes: a list of "required classes" could be compiled, and a group of electives for older years to choose from would be nice if we could make them later. inter-year courses would be pretty fun, too, i think, if they were between two consecutive years or such.
wands/sorting: granting wands could be the "approved by staff, you've gotten your letter, welcome to the magical world" kind of thing, and the houses we could let the members choose. we might need to put bans later, though, if one house has too many, and write up the different house mythos ourselves too.
species: urgh. i have to say i'm kind of biased when i say this, but i would prefer to have mixed-species characters available via purchase, if only because they're supposed to be rare. we can't have 20 different half-werewolves running around without negative repercussions.
blood status: might be another thing the staff will have to watch out for the populations on, but we could have site-canon pureblood families, and allow members to create their own via purchase from a shop? i dunno how you guys would feel about that, though, so this is just me throwing that out there.
name: american spice sounds awesome and it's perfect because who would expect it to be a magical school site *shot*
skin: i'd say a sidebar, if you're having that much trouble with the skin.
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Phantom of the Black Parade
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Post by Kuroya on Sept 3, 2014 14:10:29 GMT -8
*starts running with American Spice then, no regrets*
I'm not a fan for canon spots tbh. Make it more of an occupation claim thing and try to trim out site canons as much as possible - or have the option to go around as many as possible. *personally dislikes it when people snag out spots and then don't use them*
No but seriously I could see that. Movie magic isn't called magic for no reason~ *brick'd* And Vegas wasn't originally a gambling town, it just turned out that way. It wouldn't be for gambling, it'd be for the cheapo magicians, but I think I like Hollywood better.
And yes I think magical phone would be cool. Pegasi would be more appropriate for like... if we go with floating school above LA.
Well we could draw on canon for those: Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, DAtDA, Herbology, Astrology - required. Divination, CoMC, Muggle Studies, Ancient Runes, Arthimathcy, etc - not required. We could even add in a few that never appeared in canon like alchemy.
And yeah that was what I was thinking. Only minus the bans since in my opinion, banning something only means that the moment it's unbanned, people are going to run around like idiots flooding that thing and get it rebanned again. Or they're gonna bend the rules to put themselves in areas that may not fit. Discouraging or rewarding works a bit better in my opinion. And we can just translate the houses from normal Harry Potter and be lazy
I personally am not so fond of this if only because I'm against the idea of waiving it for x amount of members or something. Instead of making it a purchase, you can maybe alot it to each member gets one and if they have more than, say, seven characters they have an option to make a second. And werewolves actually aren't entirely rare, that's something that can be made, versus a half-Veela or half-giant since that's an entirely new character. IDK I'm just a bit of a lame dork in that I sorta follow the "if it's not a problem don't over-regulate it" approach.
And I'm reaaaaaally not fond of that. I just... don't really like the idea of sites creating canon family and making "new families" a purchase. After all, if someone decides to be a jerk and make Family X a single-child family, that means that family is closed off for others. I'd say let them make purebloods as they want but, again, rely on discouragements/encouragements to keep them in check.
And if you want a sidebar I actually might just be able to hand this over now with a few extra tweaks to the mini-profile. Or rather I'd swap the banner area around in another skin and let Garden mess with colors since I can't do color to save my life. *had been planning on doing a table right under the banner*
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And to clarify what I mean for discouraged/encouraged: You could always start each member with X amount of money to purchase spells and the like, and if they make a character type that's discouraged, they get less money while if they make an encouraged one they get more. Sorry, it just really bothers me when there's a straight-out ban on a character type, especially since the bans usually come out a day or two before I want to make one of that type (or before I join the site, which brings up the question of fairness that new members have to deal with a restriction or ban that older members didn't have to deal with when they made their characters) and it's a major turnoff for me.
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Post by MASQUE on Sept 3, 2014 16:03:19 GMT -8
On the subject of banning/unbanning
I would suggest a mix of both. Allow any member x freebie. Such like, 1 pureblood family creation, 1 half-creature, and maybe 1 full creature? I'd doubt that in america creatures would be as heavily regulated as Europe for the most part, simply because America is the 'land of the free'. Probably a lot of creatures, and wizards immigrated there to get /away/ from the atrocious bull from the other countries.
Idk, I can see both the merit of encouraging/discouraging, and limiting, promoting activity to get a reward via purchase. I just think we should keep an eye on the pureblood family influxes and the half-creatures in general, because I've seen sites where things weigh heavily on one side of the equation. I'm sure we can figure an efficient system, but I'd suggest a mix of both methods. That's just me though. It's like sample products. You get a couple freebies, and if you want more you have to shell up for it. american marketing yes
I also have a question, mainly: will foreigners be allowed in? Such as European families that don't like the three, or say, other Americain continental countries? Or do each of these countries have their own school as well? (I'm thinking since Hogwarts is in Scotland, and the school accepts anyone from the UK, which includes Ireland, England etc. that the US school may include probably Canadian and Mexican students, maybe even central and south america students? Also the NA students would be more plausible imo.)
As for the houses, look at the animals and derive traits and lores off the scents. Name muse away!
/also in the camp of just 'here occupations, have fun filling them' more so then site canons. You /could/ reserve site altering occupations for staff or trustworthy people, or at worse try-outs if you're really concerned about a position. (such as Minister of Magic or Headmaster)
/still unhelpful though. I might come up with lore on the four scents if nobody's gotten there yet after the answer of my NA question .w.
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SHE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED
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Post by HADES | ALONE on Sept 3, 2014 17:33:31 GMT -8
Can we plz have sorting done by staff? The one thing I loved about my first HP site was the surprise you get when finding out what house you're in. It kinda sucks when people just pull a Harry and choose their house right off the bat :I but meh, that's just a personal pet peeve of mine xD /ignore meeeee
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Post by Ginger on Sept 3, 2014 18:02:19 GMT -8
Sorry for butting in, and posting... If the setting is in hollywood/las vegas where's there's tons of technology is it possible that maybe the American wizards discovered a charm, spell, or something that allows magic and technology to reach a balance? Maybe they kept is secret from Europe in case of a war, or just being Americans trying to be different than the world. It would make sense that the Wizards in Britain who didn't even know what a rubber ducky was, would have problems trying to find a way to balance magic and technology.
//Maybe the sort could be optional, so those who want to be surprised can be?//
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Post by edward on Sept 3, 2014 20:39:15 GMT -8
Can we plz have sorting done by staff? The one thing I loved about my first HP site was the surprise you get when finding out what house you're in. It kinda sucks when people just pull a Harry and choose their house right off the bat :I but meh, that's just a personal pet peeve of mine xD /ignore meeeee On sites that use the four classic Hogwarts houses, I'm usually more inclined to think that characters should choose their own houses. But on a site like this that's using original houses, potentially with different traits than those used in those of Hogwarts, I think sorting by staff could be ideal. After all, even though players obviously know their characters best, that doesn't mean that they know the houses better than the staff members would, you know? Then again, a good compromise for members that are REALLY gung-ho about which house their character should be in is simply allowing people the choice of whether they want to sort themselves of if they'd rather be sorted by staff.
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