Hey! It's BDE Time!

[fewer_explosions]

Aloha, Fandom! It's time for your summer BDE, which will be starting Monday, July 23rd! Sign-ups will be going up in a day or two, but first, here's what's coming up this time around...

A Blast from the Past

Five years ago, the witch Dolores Umbridge arrived on Fandom with intent to... clean things up a bit. Her reign quickly took a turn for the tyrannical as she began to enforce dress codes and acts of conduct on the island. Her behavior escalated, and she started to torture students and teachers with her magical quill in order to discipline them. Umbridge had gone fundamentally mad.

Finally, the island's populace had had enough. A makeshift army burst into Umbridge's house and put a stop to her once and for all, trapping her in Special Collections for good...

... or so they thought.

It's the Return of the AU!

...A new AU, mind. Come Sunday, July 22nd the good Miss Umbridge will be using her significant plotting facilities down in Special Collections to travel back in time and change the course of history (starting with killing that pesky Anakin Skywalker...). Starting Monday, the island's modern day will be twisted into Umbridge Island - a place where the obedient and the Imperio'd thrive, while a small underground movement plots to cut her down once and for all. The unbroken powerful are kept in captivity in detention, where they can't serve as a threat to Umbridge's reign... but the underground is plotting to release them-- that very weekend.

How that's going to happen? Well, that's up to you! Time to scheme, plot, and plan... or get ready to run counter-insurgence, rough up do-gooders and protect Umbridge at all costs.

So How's This Going To Work?

On Saturday, July 21st there will be an alumni dance celebrating the original Moon Landing! on Sunday, the island is going to get a little ornery, providing a reason for anyone who might want to escape before the BDE begins.

Starting Monday, the main comms will be going Umbridge - that means all classes, work posts, and dorms posts will be shifting into Umbridgeverse status. Anyone who's on-island at the time - alumni, expats, students, teachers, townies - will be warping along with them... and for that, we'll be opening up the comms to AU journals for all those icon addicts. (More on that in the sign-up post.)

We'll be tossing up a brainstorming post soon. Communication is key: businesses might not be what they are in the regular timeline, and classes might be different, too, so make sure you talk to your boss/teacher/TA to work out where your characters are at!

That being said, if it makes sense for you to keep your class or your business close to the way it is in Fandom canon, that's absolutely fine with us too. As for signing into classes, assume the classes you signed up for are the ones taught by your current teachers-- or the ones in the same slot. (Or don't show up for class at all, because you're underground, man.)

Death

It's quite possible your character might be dead in present continuity, or never arrived on the island. You're free to keep playing your character off-island (let's say Umbridge's magic hasn't managed to pour off the island yet) or to make them vanish entirely, reappearing at the end of the plot.

If your teacher character is dun dead or gone in the new continuity, you're welcome to pass the class on to 1) your TA; 2) another teacher; 3) another townie; 4) an alumni or expat. If you can't find one, let us know, and we'll just strike the class off the list for the week.

[[ bde announcement | sign-up post | brainstorming post | roomies! ]]

Comments

I Have Questions!

[fewer_explosions]

And not a vague, general statement about the sky. Nick.

Re: I Have Questions!

[wwiii]

So, just clarifying, but this will be sort of like an AU weekend in that people who are on the island won't be aware that a change has happened? They'll be going along with it, since this will just seem like the status quo for them?

Re: I Have Questions!

[lockestheway]

Yep! It's a rewrite of their histories as well as that of the island, so everyone involved goes AU.

Re: I Have Questions!

[life_inshadow]

Sorry for the megaspecific nature of this one, but would Umbridge have let the Magic Box stand more or less as-is, or would it have been shut down long ago for encouraging unsupervised magic ZOMG?

More generally, what's the policy on use of magic during this BDE?

Re: I Have Questions!

[heromaniac]

Stupid OCD question: Will the geography change back to 2007-esque?

Re: I Have Questions!

[wrongkindofsith]

Oooh, I have one.

Is there scope for twisty, turny double-agent style shenanigans?

Like, if instance if a character has skills that would make them valuable on Umbridge's goon squads, but personality/ethics/pre-existing loyalties means they'd side with the underground instead.

Re: I Have Questions!

[furnaceface]

Here's another silly question! Umbridge is essentially rewinding the island to a previous point and we're playing in the here and now as though it's been this way since, yes? So is it then up to us how we account for characters who have since left? Or will there be some reasoning for that, taking into consideration how many dropped characters might have stayed over the years had things gone differently, as part of the resistance or on the other side of the coin, working for Umbridge? It is essentially the same Fandom, but with some meddling in the timestream, right?

Sorry for being pedantic about this one. I've had a lot of characters over the years, and while I'm not looking to bring anyone back or anything (I'd die trying to juggle that many anyhow), I'm just trying to get a feel for how people who are long gone might have left (dead or fled, I imagine?) or shaped the island's history before the more current FH crew arrived.

Re: I Have Questions!

[yakkoyaks.livejournal.com]

What about a vague, general question about the sky?

Re: I Have Questions!

[boobs-and-evil.livejournal.com]

Similar to wrongkindofsith's question -- can those of us who have evil-inclined characters have them be on Umbridge's side?

Edited to clarify: not just obedient and broken, but, um, y'know. Umbridge-aligned. Like the evil fucks they are.

Re: I Have Questions!

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

QUESTION!

Can we kill off our characters mid-week, or is it purely an ~IN THE PAST~ kind of thing?

No reason.

Re: I Have Questions!

[holy-daughter.livejournal.com]

Another question, although this one is oddly specific!

What about characters who are off-island temporarily? I.e. Lucrezia is home for the second half of summer, doing some canon catch-up, and Dany is visiting her.

I have no idea if I'd even be able to work in bringing her back, with what's going on plot-wise, but it'd be good to know what my options are before I start figuring it out, because this is amazetastic zomg. So here, have a bizarre ill-stated question! At least there are boobs to make up for that?

Re: I Have Questions!

[l1ttle-billy.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm late, I was away this weekend. Is Umbrage taking over the entire island? Or just the school?

Re: I Have Questions!

[nonelikemesince.livejournal.com]

I am late. You hush. I've been preoccupied.

In terms of backstory for the AU, could characters graduate and come back to teach per the normal universe (assuming they'd behaved the whole time), or would they basically be on lockdown and not allowed to leave?

Re: I Have Questions!

[dollpocalypse]

Question! Are rooms being reworked at all to account for opposite-sex pairings and pairs where one occupant is Resistance/otherwise not present?

And for Resistance students, what sort of living arrangements are they looking at, provided they aren't doing the double-agent thing?

Re: I Have Questions!

[taseredagod.livejournal.com]

I can't find the post to drop journal names. Can we get a post that links to all the posts that have gone up?

Thank you!

I have a Vague General Statement

[fewer_explosions]

Precise statements not welcome.

Re: I have a Vague General Statement

[heromaniac]

Maybe.

Re: I have a Vague General Statement

[wrongkindofsith]

*rereads Umbridge gets hers*

Man, I'd forgotten how much fun to play of a tool Ares was in that scene.

Re: I have a Vague General Statement

[trigons_child]

Raven would like to go on record to say she strongly disapproves of AUs based on killing Anakin off. D:

So so screwed. Yay! ;)

Re: I have a Vague General Statement

[yakkoyaks.livejournal.com]

There are things I may have done that I have some kind of opinion on and which may have played some part in inspiring some form of response.

This may be one of those times. If so, I my feelings about it could be described as indeterminate.

Re: I have a Vague General Statement

[nofishinmypond.livejournal.com]

I'm not even on the island any more, but... eh, you know what I mean.

We Like Gifs!

[fewer_explosions]

Well, that's a lie. mouthy_merc likes gifs. Personally I'm more partial to YouTube videos.



*squee*

Re: We Like Gifs!

[abitlowkey]

SO?

Re: We Like Gifs!

[firstnameagent.livejournal.com]

Re: We Like Gifs!

[unburnt-queen.livejournal.com]