welcome!

welcome to socals – a slice-of-life community with a little faux mixed in, set in the city of los angeles and the surrounding area of greater southern california. the main focus of the community is and always will be writing with interaction focused at the center of it. setting up: we hope to make the joining process as easy and seamless as possible for anyone looking to join. we also want people to give people the ability to explore their creativity. character journals are allowed to be ic or ooc. while we aren't requiring you to write a dissertation on your character, we do want you to put some basic information about your character such as hometown, age, birthday, etc. and a 150+ word bio to start the fleshing out process. we completely understand that some aspects may be developed as they're written! if you chose to write a faux celebrity, you must choose only one credit and keep their entire career. it is just too hard to keep track of otherwise. with the rise of nepo babies, we would like to allow the option to hold credits for parents and grandparents. please, note this in your application as well. f/o and ooc posts should be backdated with comments screened, please. we also ask that you do not exceed more than two characters per writer without asking. if you'd like to write more than two, please talk to us first. as the mods, we reserve the right to reject anyone that we feel would not make a good fit for the community. explanations of rejections will not be given.

activity

updates/intros: we ask for one monthly update, but there's no restriction on posting more frequently. we actually encourage it by using the random chatter community for one-off, short ideas or lyrics to talk about. posts within this community will not count towards your monthly update. it is an optional community after all. we hope this will keep the friend's page alive and thriving like the golden age of ij rp. we do ask you to try to not all post at the end of the month when updates are due, because it makes the page stop completely and it is hard for the new members to get to know old ones. to encourage updates, we will introduce challenges at a later date. we aim to inspire rather than mandate updates, giving you the freedom to share anything you'd like without specific requirements. at the heart of our hobby is writing, and we would love to see more of that in whatever way you wish to do it. your introduction counts as your monthly update only after the 20th of the month, and engaging with comments within 48 hours is necessary. additionally, once accepted, running the friends button within 48 hours is mandatory. friendly activity: we're all grown-ups, and life can get pretty busy for everyone. with lighter update requirements, we hope that we have given enough time to be active and friendly to everyone you can. we understand that it is hard to stay ontop of the friends page but we do want to see effort from old and new members. it is just unreasonable to think everyone is going to befriend and get along with everyone within the community, but we do ask you to chat and interact with people beyond your storyline partners and friends. those make the community feel dead and unwelcoming! we want to see the drama and the fun on the friends page as much as possible. . what will get you removed: removals happen during the month and at the end of the month. you will be removed during the month if your friends list is 13+ days out of date. random activity checks/posts will be listed on the friends page. make sure you're checking it or you will be removed. at the end of the month you will be removed if you haven't met your activity requirements. this includes one update & a clear attempt at being active on the fp and/or in pbads. all updates must be visible on the friends page in order to count. if you have not been active on the fp, you will receive a polite nudge to get out there. we don't want deadweight. you will have 72 hours to intro, but you must run the button within 48 hours of being added.

etc.

bannable offenses: let's keep things chill and fun here! it's pretty basic, but we gotta stress: no crossing lines between ic and ooc stuff, and definitely no bullying or harassment. also, just so we're clear, the drama in your character's story shouldn't involve racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or anything like that. those heavy topics can come up in narratives if you give a heads up with a proper trigger warning, but they should never be used as a way for characters to fight. if you hear about anything like that happening, give us a heads up. we will definitely take care of it. we want this place to be safe for everyone to write and enjoy their characters, and we're serious about having absolutely zero tolerance for things like this. wire/discord/etc is banned here. we ask that you do not use off-site chatting apps and keep all interactiong strictly in your character journals. we find it incredibly disrespectful when people break this request at communities. if you pull conversation to these apps, it also kills the friends page and makes interacting with new people hard. breaking this rule will result in your immediate removal and a character ban from socals no matter how long you've been here.

nsfw content

please be respectful with nsfw content. this includes images of any explicit nature. please ask ic or ooc before springing a link like that on someone. we know we're all adults and it's just rp but consent to share that sort of content is required. complaints will be taken seriously and could result in your removal if this rule is broken.