Hurricane Update

From our post last week, you guys know that a good many of our authors were in the general pathway of Hurricane Irene. Several were evacuated and others just battened down the hatches at home, but we're happy to let all of you know that we have heard from most of the authors who were evacuated or in the hurricane's path and everyone we've heard from is a-okay.

As far as the Admin Team goes, Julia evacuated inland to stay with a friend and got through the storm with nothing more major than a power outage that's projected to last another 3-4 days. Because she's incredibly pro, this didn't stop her from MacGyvering a griddle out of nothing more than tea candles and cooking sheets in order to make a post-storm pancake breakfast.

Marina was evacuated from her university campus and stayed safely in the area with a family friend. She didn't lose power but did lose her Internet connection. Other residents in her area are without power and she might still be affected by power/Internet outages in the next week or so.

Ryan was not evacuated, but like the cool Army dude he is he was working overtime this weekend to make sure things in his area were a-okay. He is doing fine and had both power and Internet the last we heard from him.

I, Austin, was not evacuated and basically just got a lot of rain from the "hurricane". We didn't lose power at home, but I've since re-located to campus and some buildings are out of power. Mine has both power and Internet at the moment, but since my school enjoys breaking things while they're fixing other things, this could change.

If you were in the hurricane's path, please leave a comment below to let everyone know what's up on in your town!

Quidditch Talk (Ryan)

Hey guys, it's your resident go-to guy Ryan here! As you all should know, I write the once-upon-a-time Captain and Seeker of the US National Quidditch team and your current Quidditch Coach, Mr. Gaston Munro! He is a pretty exciting guy to write and I love running the Quidditch Program here at RMI. You guys seriously make it so much fun to be the Coach, but I'm sure some of you want to know just exactly how the Quidditch Program is run. That’s what I am here to tell you!

We will start at the beginning with the first lessons. As you all know, first years have to take both Flying lessons and Quidditch lessons before being allowed to try out for the team. Flying lessons give you a taste of how to describe how your kids feel on a broom and what it's like for them in the air. Quidditch lessons were added to the program to let us see how you react in a game setting. It also lets us stop any godmodding that might happen before the game. Therefore, these are mandatory to first years interested in Quidditch, and second and third years are encouraged to join in.

Next comes the try-outs, which are run by the Captains of the House teams. They can choose any way of running try-outs. When it comes to actually choosing the team some Captains choose to do so by themselves while others talk to their assistant captains and then choose the list. Choosing teams is something Captains think about both IC and OOC. For example, if you have a character on the House team already another character of yours who tries out probably won’t get on so that we can give lots of authors a chance to write Quidditch.

Now we finally get to what everyone has waited for: the game. Games are written by me; I choose the weather and all those little details that make a Quidditch game, write it, then post it. Games always run for two weeks with me normally closing the game at midnight on Friday, although sometimes I'm away and don't close it until later on Friday.

At that time I sit down with a nice cup of coffee and start reading the posts starting with Gaston's. From there I read the game in order giving each post a point total of 1 through 5. Points are given on the length of the post, the action going on, and how well you've followed the guide I've given you about the day. Saying it was rainy when I clearly stated in the first post it was sunny will cost you points, ladies and gentlemen. Even though one team might have posted 15 times while the other only posted 13 times, sometimes those 13 posts can win a game.

After reading all the posts I total up the points and submit them to our points tally before sending out the Seeker e-mail. From there I close the game and allow the Seeker to write a post before actually announcing who won the game.

I hope this clears things up guys, since the final is coming up very soon! I would love to see more stands action during the games and let's see if we can go one game without someone falling off their brooms! Plus don’t forget that stand posts can get House points for your House even if it isn’t playing!

Hasta Lugeo

Ryan

Dispatch from the Profiles Department (Julia)

Wow.

I can't believe that I've officially been an admin for a little over a week now. It's still too new. My admin badge is still shiny. There isn't a speck of lint on my Chatzy Admin hat. (Flour, yes, because I'm a baker and I have very little that has not gotten stray bench flour on it at some point.)

This isn't something that I expected to happen when I first began writing at RMI three years ago. I blame Marina for getting me into this. Marina is my sister's best friend and a good friend in her own right. So it was pretty hard to turn down her invitation to join the site, which took place in the hallway of our high school after lunch one day and went something like this:

Marina: Hey, y'know that website [Sister] and I write for? We need students in the artistic house. Wanna write someone who plays the cello, since you actually do?”

Me (unsuspecting): Okay, sure.

Little did I know what I was getting into... (Cue creepy organ music.)

In all honesty, though, if I had known in advance what writing at RMI is like, I would have still said yes. Why? Despite the hours of lost sleep from staying up reading up reading, writing, and brainstorming, and the headaches and frustrations from writer's block and characters that won't shut up even when they know you can't post them (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Celia Hier.), I have made friends with some fantastic people, both OOC and IC; gotten to go to a school like Hogwarts wtihout needing a passport, student visa, Gringotts account, or having to leave the comfort of the spinny chair in front of the computer; and learned a lot about writing, characterization, myself, and life in general. Not to mention that I now have enough alter egos that becoming a spy or someone in the Witness Protection Program won't be a problem. Worth it? Without a doubt.

I didn't know any of that then, but I agreed to anyway, and after some thought, I came up with Celia Hier. My original formula for her was something like this:

Celia = [plays cello] + [looks like friend instead of me for added separation of author and character] + [has the same sense of humor that I do] + [has a name that looks like the word “cello”]

A few days later, I was persuaded to to write the Librarian, on the grounds that someone needed to do it and that position didn't require a lot of posting, so a new author could handle it. And thus began my career at RMI. I've added a few more characters since then, and now this term, I'm writing a new staff member that has actual responsibilities: Kristina de los Santos, RMI's new medic.

And then, because Austin thinks I'm qualified, he asked me to join the Admin team. I didn't exactly leap at the opportunity, despite how much I love the site and the community. It was because I love the site and the community that I didn't leap at it right away. I wanted to make sure that it would be something that I wouldn't end up neglecting. Because if I took on a Responsibility that I couldn't manage along with school and work, I would be letting everyone at the site down. (Austin asked me right after I pulled a 55-hour work week.) And I don't want to do that to RMI.

So now I am RMI's odd-job woman, graphics designer for the site upgrade, and Profile Queen. My to-do list, depending on how specific I make it, has either tripled or increased at least fifty-fold.

I don't have a problem with that. I get to make pretty things, which I haven't gotten to do in quite some time, for the new boards, and I actually find doing profiles soothing, despite what Austin thinks. Although they usually don't involve a lot of brainpower, courtesy of all the authors who are awesome enough to do things like editing and checking spelling before submitting, they are time-consuming. (I should be charging Austin for doing them :P.) They are the same thing over and over with minor changes, but I work at a bakery. I'm used to that sort of work. Plus, coding makes me feel like such a computer pro when I know nothing beyond the most basic HTML tags and how to use most already-created software.

Profiles also have the advantage of being unintentionally amusing or ironic. The template I have is based off one character's profile, complete with all of the information intact so that I know where to put things. This character is a second-year Pureblood girl. So while I'm copying and pasting things in and formatting, I end up with things like all the rough-and-tumble Aquila boys disliking being dirty; rebellious Yevetya Alkaeva's greatest ambition to please her family; and any number of awkward or downright inappropriate betrothals, like Cash Taylor being betrothed to Kat Eagle for the amount of time it took me to type that she was his “Greatest Annoyance.” My favorite was definitely the five-second betrothal between Andersson Leppit and Milo Sarkes. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish them much happiness in their life together.

Ciao,

Julia

Why the Changes?

As many of you have noticed, there have been a lot of changes around RMI lately. And yes, we do mean a lot. There's a new Headmaster (or as Milo Sarkes put it, a 'tradition-ruining bouncing fool') skipping merrily about campus, a new set of classes, a new site design, a new Admin on our team - what's going on? What prompted all of this? And Merlin DAMN it, where did the Classes page go?!

...I'm working on the Classes page.

As for the rest of it, there's a pretty simple answer: I got burned out.

On 29 December, RMI will turn five years old. On 28 December, I (Austin) will turn twenty. And a vague month-or-so before that, I will have my fifth roleplaying anniversary.

It's been kind of a long haul. When I first started RMI, it was with my best friend, Sherri. We were co-Heads, that first year, and freshmen in high school. We had a rough first term, a rough second term, and a rough third term. Somewhere in the middle of that, Sherri left RMI because Real Life got too busy. Talitha Cumni stepped in for a few terms as DH, but her Real Life got in the way too, and it was then that Garen Tennant became a permanent fixture as RMI's Deputy Head. Somewhere along the way, we acquired a Quidditch programme and a Drama Club. Somewhere along the way, I acquired a disturbing number of characters.

Stavros Ploukratia, Allegra Ruisi, Scott Kendrick, Mia Nealson, Hank Macrae. I adopted Kaseem Bakhum, who had been Sherri's, in that first graduating class too. Monica Jiminez was in the second graduating class. One free term, then Alissa Kendrick. Then Phoebe and Dylan Maddox. Megan Macrae, Rob Jacobs. Trevor Jacobs and Edmund Tarry. Elise Jacobs. The Lander-Guidos, the Headmaster. Briefly, the caretaker. Briefly, the Quidditch Coach.

...needless to say, when I impose per-term character limits, I do it with the knowledge that having five characters in one year seriously sucks.

But in the midst of all that, I was getting busier with Real Life too. I graduated high school with both a high school diploma and the International Baccalaureate diploma in 2010, then spent the last year as a freshman in Chemical Engineering. RMI had become a stressful obligation instead of a fun hobby, and by the end of my freshman year, I was done.

Yes, I wanted to quit. I handed the site over to Garen Tennant and Gaston Munro for about a half-term, planning to hand it off to them. But between time concerns and the question of who would pay for the site, and the awkward reality that I'm the only one on the Admin who knew how the site was coded at the time...we realised that it just wasn't realistic to hand RMI off to Garen and Gaston.

And then came that awkward point in time where I considered closing RMI. What else was I going to do with something that frustrated me and burned me out when I had so much else going on?

But the great thing about RMI is that we aren't just a roleplaying site. When I tried to make RMI into a place that was open, safe, and welcoming for everyone, regardless of their writing ability or anything else, I accidentally created the best support system ever for not only myself, but for you guys. Because when I suggested closing RMI to the few who knew about it at the time, all hell did break loose. It was only a day or two later, when Garen texted me, that I really got it.

"I think I can do it [take control of the site]. And I think it would be letting people down not to [. . . .] All I can think is that Rebecca Brandon is getting so good and I love seeing Milo Sarkes be a freak, and how [Gwen] told me she thinks the RMI authors were a literal godsend b/c we've made her life so much better and I couldn't give it up."

This is the RMI that I wanted it to be. Somewhere where people could improve their writing, be creative, and have a safe place where they wouldn't be judged. It's not perfect, but realising that I have a responsibility to you guys helped me snap back into gear. It helped me see how much I would miss those things too, if RMI closed, and how I owed it to Garen, to Rebecca, to Milo, to Gwen, to me to keep it going.

So we got a new site design, a new Headmaster, and I sadly-but-necessarily abandoned a handful of characters. I gave everyone else that chance too, because if I felt overwhelmed, who was to say that nobody else did? Consequently, we have both the fewest number of characters and the most active number of characters we have had on RMI in a long time. I think it worked - and I'm less stressed because Kristina de los Santos has taken over profile duty. And although there may be disagreements in Chatzy sometimes and tempers can flare, and although the new site isn't perfect (eep, yes, getting on that ><; ), I hope you can see the RMI Garen helped me to see again through those cracks.

Cheers,
Your friendly local Austin

A new site, a new beginning?

Almost seven terms after beginning the "Blogging Heads" idea (and quickly abandoning it), I can guarantee you that some things have seriously changed. We have an almost completely new staff - although Juliet, Christian, and Garen have been fantastic enough to stick with us through this time - and a completely new look, but over the terms I can honestly say that our community has only become stronger and more diverse.

In order to keep you guys well-advised about what's going on at RMI, both IC and OOC, inside and out, I've decided to re-start this blog. My fellow admins will write posts on topics that they feel strongly about or just want to give you a heads up on. Feel free to request topics or submit questions that you'd like to see us address here.

That's it for now! Stay tuned for more from the RMI Admin Team, and don't feel shy about letting us know what you want to hear about!

Cheers,
Austin
Author of Headmaster Tobias "Tobi-wan" Morgan
Site founder