So in-between dealing with confessing my feelings to my now girlfriend and other stuff I’ve been thinking a lot about Hogwarts World Tour. I love the cast we have of players here and I want to work with them on the long term but unfortunately my inexperience with Harry Potter has really burdened me here. I like the character I made and the characters she potentially can interact with but every time I look at Microsoft Word for a post I can barely mustered two to four sentences and I don’t tend to like the sentences at all. I want in on this, but I refuse to burden you guys by waiting for my ass forever so I’m going to be transparent that I have no creative spark with Hogwarts World Tour and unfortunately I’m going to have to bow out despite really wanting to do the inverse.

Okay, thanks for letting us know. In this case, I'll fire off the portkeys at some point tonight and if Raven still wants in, we can retcon Ross.

Sorry for the radio silence on my part. I've had a week of 9 hours each day doing a math program for college, and between that and moving in and all the business I had to take care of this week, I've had next to no time to sit down and really write anything. Now that I'm settled, I'll gear up to reply later in my free time either today or tomorrow when I have nothing going on. Whichever comes right after the portkeys fire, and I'll retcon Ross in then.

Sorry for the radio silence on my part. I've had a week of 9 hours each day doing a math program for college, and between that and moving in and all the business I had to take care of this week, I've had next to no time to sit down and really write anything. Now that I'm settled, I'll gear up to reply later in my free time either today or tomorrow when I have nothing going on. Whichever comes right after the portkeys fire, and I'll retcon Ross in then.

If you want, you can try to join Elise and Mary since Ross was also in Diagon alley yes?

radio silence

Slowness and stuff is something I can deal with, but if we can try our best as a group to avoid the whole 'Jig doesn't know whether they're still involved and whether to move the plot on without them' thing, I'd mucho appreciato. If you've not said hi on the OoC for about a week, if you could take the time to check in just for five mins to be all 'what up still here', that'll keep me a happy human.

---

1) Since we've lost like 3-4 people between OoC and IC, I'm gonna re-run the poll, because that's at least nine votes that are suddenly no longer relevant. When I've put together another poll, I'll link it in a new post and tag everybody so #noexcuses2016. Literally what La Place du Fourmilier was about.

2) I'm gonna gently bunny some characters for the purposes of the firing the portkey and making my following post read all nice. I had an unexpected (and thankfully minor) life-splosion coupled with the internet downtime I thought was fixed but apparently isn't so progress has been slower than it should've been. Depending on what I write and how much I bunny youse, I might ask for some contributing ideas and words to retrospectively include but we'll see depending on what I write. In my head, Ross will end up hanging with Beck, Will, and Darren because that makes the most sense from the sheets but I'll probably leave it open.

3) I might not run every setting like this, but I'm gonna do an IC infodump post (I promise I'll try to make it not suck) and some supplementary OoC info about certain gubbins will probably be thrown in the CS tab. Will draw your attention to it as applicable.

4) I'm still keen for people to spearhead their own chapters. That said, super-hint/warning: if you suggested a chapter idea, I'll absolutely be looking to you to at the very least guide some of it. Obviously, for the ideas I've suggested myself, I kinda know where we could go with them, but, if I didn't come up with the idea, there's a good chance I can't do too much more than help make it work.

5) I'm on funny sleeping patterns right now and will be in unbelievably rural Wales tomorrow night, not to mention my slightly exploderific internet, so unless I find myself extraordinarily productive, it might be Sunday before it's all sorted.

#sorryfortextwall #importantbidness

@Jig: I love you, Jig. It's because you're Always Right™.

A wild post from me and @Mchaggis...

Went to Wales because my friends own a pub there. Spent the evening/morning staying up and getting hammered with the landlady talking absolute and frequently literal bollocks until five in the morning. Went to bed. Fell over no fewer than four times (and we're talking literal absolute arse-over-tit drunken pratfalls, each and every one). Woke up in the very early morning. Couldn't find my way out of the room because I was still drunk. Woke up Jig's Also-Still-Drunk Partner to ask for help leaving the room which wasn't forthcoming because of all of the still-drunkness. Fell over again. Successfully found the bathroom. Went to sleep. Woke up. Had a cheeseburger. Nearly died in the car on the way home. Played some Smash Brothers. Kicked ass. Went to a sushi bar. Ate the shit out of some sushi. Went to pub. Got drunk. Lock in. Got drunker. Came back. Still drinking.

tl;dr- expect some legit content in the coming days.

@Jig: I love you, Jig. It's because you're Always Right™.

Real talk tho I just came

I know this is silly to ask, are you still accepting? I am interest!

I'm afraid not right now. I won't say it's impossible that I'll be accepting in the future, but we're exactly at the point where we're about to get going and slowing things down to accept a new character and player will almost certainly utterly cripple the momentum.

It's not unlikely that I'll either re-tag this as 'apply' (I have no idea how it's tagged right now and I'm too drunk to check) or more likely will put another thread in the Interest Check thread of this section to recruit new players, but now's not the time. Thanks but sorry, no.

Check the Character Tab for some notes on La Place Du Fourmilier. There's nothing super-vital in there, but checking it out won't hurt either. Cheers x

3) I've not said what the room allocation is but I'm gonna suggest that the boys are all in one room and Siobhan/Beck and Mary/Elise are in rooms each but that's up for grabs if anybody has any strong preferences

Yep, so, I can't count heads properly. We have a neat cast of eight, four boys, four girls, when I thought the ratio was 3:4. So I'd say shared rooms, two apiece. I'm not gonna dictate the buddying-up procedure because like fuck it I'm not your parents, so shout out how you think it would work well.

And remember... not every character has to be happy about their individual arrangements.

• Good room partners for Will: probably Ross or Darren. You know. People that could stand him. Kyle could also work. All the girls hate him apart from Siobhan, but I think Kyle would shit himself sooner than have another guy sleep in the same room as her, so that probably wouldn't happen anyway.
• Good room partners for Beck: while she'd be happier crashing with her mates (lol, also Ross or Darren), her sleeping in a room with a guy will mean another girl would have to do the same because #maths2016 and I can't really see any of the others doing that (Siobhan and Kyle maybe?) so she'll probably end up bunking with another girl - reluctantly.

Throw in your thoughts.

---

Fun fact of the day: I'm reading through HP and the Goblet of Fire in Dutch, which is a really easy way to passively learn some language while not really being challenged in any way, and they change like almost all of the names, some of which are great.

Professor Dumbledore becomes Professor Perkamentus, which translates as Parchment-us.
Snape becomes Sneep, which is pronounced the same, but is spelled sneep.
Speaking of Death Eaters, Lucius Malfoy becomes Lucifer Malfidus, just in case the satan reference wasn't already sufficient.
The OWL exams are called SLIJMBALs - or, obviously, slimeballs.
Hogwarts itself becomes Zweinsteins School voor Hexerei en Hocus-Pocus.
The Dutch Mad-Eye Moody's name translates as Crazy-Eye Madman, while McGonagle becomes basically Professor Transformation.
Victor Krum's name is immeasurably improved by a bonus 'L' for no reason: Kruml.
Potions are simply magicdrinks.
My absolute favourite, however, is Hermione's Society for the Prevention of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W) becomes S.H.I.T.

Ross'll be okay with Will. Or maybe he'll scream into the pillow at night while Will is talking.

Having Mary room with Siobhan or Beck seems entertaining to me. I don't think she'd be cool with rooming with any of the boys. Also I laughed so hard at Kyle shitting himself if Siobhan shared a room with a boy. And it's mostly true. He'd sulk so much. And be like we'll that's her choice and I'd want to punch him because he's never said anything to her about other choices so yeah. Punch Kyle 2016.

Ross'll be okay with Will. Or maybe he'll scream into the pillow at night while Will is talking.

Marvellous.

Ross found Will attractive [...] but he could not move past the fact that Will just seemed outright douche-y.
[...]
Ross couldn't tell what he was tempted to do more - kiss him or do something Unforgivable.

There has got to be some fun to be had there.
Side-note: I also cocked up somewhere along the lines and got it into my head that Ross was muggleborn, so anything I've said that would have Will be patronising to him on those grounds... obviously needs rescinding.

Having Mary room with Siobhan or Beck seems entertaining to me.

They have shared for years at Hogwarts, so it's probably actually a reasonable shout.

---

It's just occurred to me that our cast is possibly the most dysfunctional group of humans ever to walk the face of the wizarding world.

Beck and Kyle are both wracked by associations to dark wizards and bad shit that their direct family did, which Beck tries to deal with by completely overcompensating, while Kyle is jealously focused on one of his former tribe's victims: Siobhan, who is basically the innocent victim of magical biological warfare for which there is no cure. Meanwhile, we have two products of unhappy childhoods, Darren, who seems to be just about doing okay by now, and Mary, who seems to be pretty emotionally dependent on possibly the only not-broken person in the group, her cousin. Ross and Will have had pretty content backgrounds, but the former being gay and crushing on his incompatible current roommate (when he should probably know better), while Will is so overdriven by his own self-esteem and desperation to be the best that he's basically an asshat that's going to burn himself out.

#lightheartedgame #nicetriparoundtheworld

Elise would probably prefer to room with Mary, just to keep an eye on her, but probably wouldn't mind bunking with Beck or Siobhan, but if she had to bunk with one of the boys, she'd probably freak.

#Elisehasprobablyneverkissedanyone #foreveralone?

and Mary, who seems to be pretty emotionally dependent on possibly the only not-broken person in the group, her cousin.

My character is the only non-broken one?

I need to fix that.

@Jig: To be fair, Ross is half-muggleborn, so Will could still talk shit and get hit.

@Jig: To be fair, Ross is half-muggleborn, so Will could still talk shit and get hit.

Fair. He'd just find it less worthy of note that Ross is a competent wizard and so would be less likely to (innocently) mention it.

Elise would probably prefer to room with Mary, just to keep an eye on her, but probably wouldn't mind bunking with Beck or Siobhan, but if she had to bunk with one of the boys, she'd probably freak.

Well, if she doesn't know Beck or Siobhan terribly well, it'd probably make more sense for her to bunk with Mary than either of the others, unless Kirah/Mary has a distinct preference to chat to other people.

Any input, @McHaggis?

Also mostly at @McHaggis, but also for anybody else that feels like being involved in this, but I'm feeling it might be fun for a drunken friendly duel on their first evening - establish some rivalries, maybe?

This is basically my perfect game. Drunkenness, magic, and travelling. The only thing missing is the opportunity to kill people in secret tbh.

---

As I said, I'm rerunning the poll to account for the 9 no-longer-relevant votes that got cast by our no-longer-present cast. And here it is. Same dealeo - 3 votes each. Not being all YO POLL WILL CLOSE this time because there are fewer people to shepherd but obviously the sooner y'all can get round to it, the more planning time we'll have.