House Unity: Discussion Post

[eowyn-rain.livejournal.com]

Greetings everyone! I'm Luna Rose, and I am your new House Unity Mod!
 

Before I begin, let me say a big Thank You to the wonderful MC potionmistressm  , for

being a fantastic Mod! I have big shoes to fill, but I'm hoping to make you, and MC, proud. =)

I know there should be the pretty House Unity Banner up right now, but I'm posting this from work,
and do not have access to it. I may edit this entry later when I get home to include it.

 

That being said, let's start off this term with a Discussion Post, shall we?

I would like to know what you would like to see and do with House Unity this term.

 

*What are your thoughts and feeling on the subject?

*Do you have any questions?

*Suggestions?

*Random word association? (House Unity = Pudding to me because...)

*Really anything, as long as it has to do with House Unity.

 

There won't be any points for this, but do not fret! I will be posting a Points Earning activity soon, so keep
a close eye out for it!

 

I really want to make House Unity something really great for all of you guys, because really guys, you deserve it! =D

I have many ideas for fun activities,and I'm hoping for a fun filled, drama free term!

 

Note: If drama should occur, you will be tarred, feathered, and poked with a stick

tied to the whomping willow like a Christmas ornament I will be very disappointed with you. =(

 

Glad we got that out of the way! Now, on to fun and friendships! =D

Comments

[erzsebet.livejournal.com]

I know I already talked to you a little bit about it, but I think it would be great to do introduction posts from new members in the main community. Unless a new member pops into HU chat or right away joins in the activities we have, most members (from houses other than the new member's own) have no idea who they are, or what they're like. It starts a separation right away to have those only in the common rooms.

I'm not saying we should stop doing them in the common rooms; I love that we do that, especially in Gryffindor where I'm sure some of the questions (specifically the gif/youtube preface) would never be as widely accepted with the other houses. DNW to give that up. What I mean is that we could do main community ones IN ADDITION TO the common room ones. Either take questions from each of the houses, or we could all create a new one together.

As for posting it, I think having it all in one post would probably be best at least as far as not spamming the community goes. The comments might get out of control though, especially the weeks we have tons of new members. Something to think about. :)



On a personal level, I love House Unity - as an idea and as a series of activities. I wish there were more activities, really. Especially ones not worth points. While points are all fine and good, I don't feel that it should really have that big of a place in HU activities, since it's about coming together with other houses in support of the community as a whole, not as a way to earn points to beat the other houses.

[alohachary1851.livejournal.com]

It really bothers me that I cannot "Like" your comment like I do on facebook and that i actually have to leave behind a written comment to express how much I agree with this. Especially the bit about introducing new members (heck, even old ones) so that we get to know EVERYONE.

[wildebeth.livejournal.com]

I think doing intros in the main community would be a great idea, especially if they're corralled into one post. The application works really well for getting an idea of someone's personality and background, but the intro post (ours, at least) let you get to know what actually interests someone in the here and now.

[dither-spaz.livejournal.com]

YES, agreed so much with all of this, the new members (and old, damn it!) and points bit for sure.

[pierhias.livejournal.com]

Word on the no points part! House Unity shouldn't be about earning house points imo.

[nanerbear.livejournal.com]

I really like this idea, but I'm curious about how it would be done without looking like a giant cluster of intro posts in the main community, I would be afraid most people would feel inclined to skip over rather than read so many of them. Or do you mean like, one post of welcomes where new members would comment with their introductory survey and we could all comment on that? It sounds like an awesome idea however you do it, though. I was a new member a few months ago, and I still feel pretty new because I tend to feel constrained to the common room and I only get to know others during Hogsmeade or something. Plus I don't really know how to use AIM, my secret D:

Or I guess if you wanted to make it more personal, maybe we could have like a House Unity week each month where different members would post a meme or intro post to other common rooms. Or maybe you'd get paired with someone else that you don't know from another house and do an activity together. *shrug*

[trickery.livejournal.com]

I very much like this idea! I get to know my fellow snakes very well through our introduction posts and the social activities we do, but there are so many members who ended up sorted (and I post mainly RL things in my lj when I post, so I don't really feel comfortable friending someone just from their Platform application). Well, that and I can rarely get AIM to work for me so I'm never in houseunity chats. :/

If we did one intro post for the newbies, maybe each newbie's thread could be linked to in the main post so that people who post later are less likely to be missed. Or another post linking to everyone's threads a day or two later. Or something.

I also agree that earning points defeats the (main) purpose of house unity; there are plenty of other ways to earn points anyway.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but:

[wildebeth.livejournal.com]

I'd really love an activity to kill some of the tension between Gryffindor and Slytherin. I think a lot of us try to pretend it isn't there, but it is and it manifests in multiple icky ways. I feel like I don't get a chance to know enough Lions because of this latent (sometimes blatant) wary tension, and I feel like I'm missing out on getting to know some really cool people. Canon or not, a little bunny cries somewhere with each instance of drama.

Phew, got that off my chest.

Re: Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but:

[erzsebet.livejournal.com]

I feel this way too and I hate it. I've gotten to know so many great Gryffindors, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaws, but I haven't gotten the chance to with Slytherin really at all. There's like a barrier between the two houses, and honestly it's just going to bring all of us down hard if it continues. D:

I think I actually talked about this a bit last night with some other Gryffindors. (Honestly we're all sick of the drama and the tension - we just want to have nice HU parties and sparkle you all with luh. <3)

As far as activities to kill the tension, I love the idea but I'm a little scared of how it would end.

[accountingwitch.livejournal.com]

You say "House Unity", I think "cupcakes".

I personally like quick, fun and social one-off activities - things that you fill in in five minutes and can browse for similar responses to get to know people.

I also like games that bring the community together as a whole over competitions. Because I like games.

[wildebeth.livejournal.com]

I like those, too. I'm not a big fan of friending meme things because my LJ is mostly RL, so I'm usually pretty careful about who I friend. I'd like to get to know people without the pressure of becoming best buds, if that makes sense.

[kissoffools.livejournal.com]

I don't have any new suggestions, but I just wanted to say - I'm fairly knew (been here just under a month) and I find Ive only gotten to know members of my own house. The only people I know outside Hufflepuff are friends that I know from earlier fandoms. I've tried a couple Houe Unity chats, but it's so easy to get lost in the shuffle y'know?

I'm just saying, I'd love to get together and meet people from outside my house. Maybe some kind of comm-wide scavenger hunt, where everyone signs up and is put into teams randomly, not by house? You can have people make chats or comms to brainstorm their ideas, and have stuff like fic and art and Severus Snape's dating site profile as hunt items. Everyone could come up with their own team names and then once the deadline is up, we could show everyone all the teams' submissions and everyone has to vote. Combine that with the amount of submissions they found to determine the winner. I don't know, it's maybe been done and maybe it's not anything anyone would be interested, but I did it in another fandom and it was a LOT of fun. if it's already been done, go ahead and ignore me!

In other news, hi my name is Janna, Im a Puff, and I like hugs. :)

[sibyllevance.livejournal.com]

I second that - more "team" games like PS, CoS and Quidditch World Cup, because I've realized that unless you post in my CR or hang in HU, I don't know you. I don't know ANY Snake for example.
Janna> We chatted a bit in HU a few days ago, come play with us more often, sometimes it's hectic but most of the time it's very low-key and a good way to spend some quality time with people from all over HiH :)

[red-planet31.livejournal.com]

House Unity = Necessary? @ YES PLEASE LOL
I like the idea about the introductory post in the main comm. I also like the previous Greet a Gryff, Salute a Slyth, etc. activities.
Umm.. maybe we could do a group activity and the group has to have a variety of houses. Although I'm not exactly sure what activity would be good. How about a weekly/monthly? Get-To-Know session. Except instead of posting about yourselves, a person from another house will post about you. So, instead of writing our own introductory post of sorts, we'll be writing about other House members and in the process, get to know them.
LOL I can't really think of anything. XD

[jessilestrange.livejournal.com]

One thing I think that has helped me personally make some awesome friends from other Houses was through the Chamber of Secrets challenge. Team Ob-A-Boat (F) may not have won, but we have a funky little clubhouse comm and I ended up friending all my team members before it ended xD

Big community-wide games like those are great, although incredibly time-consuming to plan and co-ordinate. Just throwing that out there~

[wildebeth.livejournal.com]

I really liked the idea of CoS, though I'd love to see some activities that aren't so much time-consuming grunt work. It might be nice to have bigger teams, too, and perhaps a reshuffling halfway through to make things interesting. I liked kissoffools ideas of a creative scavenger hunt.

[erinm-4600.livejournal.com]

*Random word association? (House Unity = Pudding to me because...)

House Unity = Sharpie Highlighters... because you get a RED, a BLUE, a GREEN, a YELLOW and a PURPLE

[erinm-4600.livejournal.com]

I'll get back to you with a real answer... but, like you - WORK

Blah!

[an-ardent-rain.livejournal.com]

I know some people don't like them, but if nothing else a friending meme at least gives you an idea of someone's interests. We could have on in the main comm at least once a term? I also like the idea of an intro post for new members. If nothing else, it at least gets them more comfortable with the comm as a whole. I know it took me long time before I really felt at ease commenting (but I don't think most people are nearly as shy as me).

I also love the idea of mentors/big buddies from another house, as well as more team challenges. Maybe, to make sure the mentors and big buddies got along, there could be an assigned number or mentors, and they picked? It might get a little complicated, though, but it's just an idea.

[jessilestrange.livejournal.com]

I second the mentors/big buddies thing. We have a similar system in Gryffindor where we're paired with a newbie according to common interests so we can all flail and bond together whilst explaining the HiH System xD

I would be really cool actually if something similar could be organised for the whole of HiH. It's a fun system we've just started in Gryffindor and it'd be great to make it comm-wide~

[inabsentialuci.livejournal.com]

Lol, LR, I'll send you the banner- It's on my own PB because I'm lazy. Also because HU has no PB of it's own :'(

I'm also sick, so incoherent ramblings FTW!!!!!

I'm glad you're taking over, you'll do great! You're awesome! ♥

Also, I love unicorns, rainbows, & hearts. Oh, and though I love Ravnclaws, Hufflepuffs, & Slytherins, I'm scared to death of all of their mascots.

I think my bed is calling me...

[inabsentialuci.livejournal.com]

Also, PM me or IM me- I has some stuff for you that might come in handy- stuff I never got to do that you might be interested in based on comments above... muahahahahaha ♥

[http://users.livejournal.com/unnecessary_/]

*What are your thoughts and feeling on the subject? I feel like House Unity should be more about us getting to know each other and making friends from people in other houses, and even in our own house. I would enjoy the House Unity activities more if they had to do with interactions with people more than playing any particular "game."

*Do you have any questions? I do. A lot of them! lol. But for you or for the members? Or in order to spread House Unity? This question is too vague for me! lol.

*Suggestions?

01. A "game" in which you get points for getting to know X number of people from houses other than your own. But you have to learn concrete things about them, and not just their fandoms. Maybe more like what they think of their own house. What they think of the Hogwarts world. Real questions.

02. A guessing "game" sort of. One person puts a hint down in order for everyone to guess who they're thinking of, like 20 questions, but that person has to be from a house outside of their own. For example, you could say "She doesn't believe in hybrids. She lives in American but was born somewhere else. She has a cat she calls her feline companion." And people would try to guess who it was.

03. I have a MILLION more suggestions.

*Random word association? (House Unity = Pudding to me because...)
House Unity = colors, LiveJournal in general, socialization, fun

[wildebeth.livejournal.com]

Those are very cool suggestions! I love the second one. :D It would be best if it were spread out so that only a few were posted at a time. Like...I enjoyed seeing pictures of people's living space a while back, but guessing at 20+ of them got a little overwhelming. Maybe ten at a time or something, as a matching game.

[darkblueflames.livejournal.com]

This may seem like a totally unreasonable idea, but it just popped into my head randomly. Have a superlative survey type thing with totally random questions to get to know other houses (EG: Find a person with the same first initial as you, Find someone who's been to Disneyland, Find a person with the same birth month as you....etc) and you can only use a few from your own house (say 5 out of 30 or 40) it kinda forces you to find stuff you have in common with other houses. We did this my first day of high school and I managed to find my first grade best friend who moved away and moved back through the survey and we're still best friends today /randomstorytangent. I think it could work.

Then we could have the winners gain knuts for order of placement and offer participation knuts.

I am also new (I've been here for about 3 weeks) though so might as well introduce myself. Hi I'm Trish, Gryffindor and I love hockey.

[exoticrooftile.livejournal.com]

I think just about everyone here has echoed the sentiment that CoS type activities are great to get to know people, and I agree with that. But the time race limited nature of the individual tasks sometimes means that we don’t get to socialise within the teams as much as I would have liked. Maybe it’s because my team was a little participationally challenged, but I feel the emphasis was on ‘LOOK, ACTIVITY POSTED, RACE TO COMPLETE’ over anything else, and I barely spoke to some people. I have participated in long term events before whereby the teams were set up and instead of many short term activities, there were fewer, but longer term ones. So you’d have a week as a team to complete xxx to the best of your ability (we made postcards, wrote a ‘bro code’, made browser histories for chartacters, etc, and then they’d anonymously be posted to vote on and teams earned points that way. Some of my best fandom friends came from those challenges, because I socialised a lot more within them (and the points were less important – there weren’t so many up for grabs). Another aspect I loved about those were the weekly ‘feasts’ where each team would host one over the course of the contest, and it was a massive socialising post – the hosts would have threads based on the theme they chose for their feast – so we had a slumber party one with ‘youtube singing-into-the-hairbrush classics’, and ‘pillowicon fight’ and ‘tell us a secret anonymously’ etc.

I’d love it if HU could team up with The Order and run PoA that way.
The ones I’m really thinking about are the summerpornathon(but not so much because this was just fic) and the armer_gayms, both in the Merlin fandom, if any of you have come across those. (or if not, clicky and look see what fun we had *disclaimer – they contain explicit NC-17 work)

[lexispice.livejournal.com]

I think it would be great if we had a certain number of points or knuts set aside each week for the person who best supports house unity. We do this for sorting, right? Going above and beyond, participating in HU activities, reaching out, easing tension, etc. These people deserve kudos, a post in the main comm and some points, baby!

[accountingwitch.livejournal.com]

The idea is good, but the implementation will take time. HiH gets very touchy when something is judged subjectively, especially when points are involved.

[nike-of-athens.livejournal.com]

I heartily echo the statement re: HU activities to be more focused on community interaction rather than points. That isn't to say we can't have some activities for points (like the Greet a Gryff et al activities, which I think should continue in some form/fashion - a lot of effort goes into graphics and ficlets, so I think people should get a little more incentive for that time and energy), but I'd like to see more things that are low-key where members, esp the noobs, can feel more comfortable jumping in and getting to know people from all houses in addition to just their own.

I do love Liz's idea for a noobie intro post, and also agree that we try to format it so that it is 1] easy to access for the noobs, and 2] not spammalicious for the rest of us. Perhaps we can arrange it by sorting weeks? Like have all the noobs from each week post to a different comment thread for that week, that way it's easy to navigate and easy to keep up with all the noobs we have.

House Unity to me = community. TRUE community. I think sometimes our CRs become very insular, which is a great thing, but it makes it harder to facilitate interhouse relationships and creates unnecessary barriers to meeting new people. But with House Unity being kept in mind, it gives me personally some extra motivation to get out and meet other people, to comment on their posts, to order from their Flourish shops, to read their fics, and to be as good of a representative from my own House as I can be.

TL;DR I LUFFS HU SO MUCH I BLEED HOUSE COLORS! XDDDDD ***\o/***

[jessilestrange.livejournal.com]

Yeah, basically all of this ♥

[peyton07.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a little late for the party but whatevskis...

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's been feeling this way. I've been here for two months and have been very active; yet I really only know Claws. Some people I see around seem so awesome, but there's really no forum to up and start a conversation like I can do in my CR (maybe Insomniacs?). If we could open HiH up and create a good forum for House Unity, that would be a spectacular thing and one that would serve to lessen drama.

So yeah, having something like 'Hi, I'm Peyton from Ravenclaw, and right now I'm watching Syfy's Alice and crushing on the Mad Hatter' in a short intro post and letting things go from there would be excellent :D

[erzsebet.livejournal.com]

UNF UNF HATTER. <3

[willfully.livejournal.com]

Definitely tardy to the party (I saw the mention of a discussion on the banner contest and went "BWUH? Where???", sob XD), but here are my thoughts anyway: all the sentiments above about relieving tension between houses (particularly Slytherin and Gryffindor, since we've had so much awful tension the last term or so ;_;), I second those. Yes. I don't know if more needs to be said on this or not, but it looks like I'm not the only one wanting to turn over a new leaf in that regard, and that makes me very hopeful. 8D

Second, I love, love, love the team games to infinity and beyond. They are hilarious awesome fun and even though it would make me sad to leave the fragments of Team Xanatos Gambit behind (we worked so well together!), I really would love to do something like this again. And next time I will throw my name into the hat and try to join up with people I've never worked with before.

Third: for the intro post, maybe that could happen in the newbie posts in Platform, or as HU mod you could put up one welcome post for the newbies each week and let them fill out our super special HU themed survey as well as the ones in our dungeons? My only concern about this is that sometimes (seemingly at random) people don't do the surveys in the CR. Even when I poke them over PM. So... yeah, idk. But it'd definitely get a few more people included.

Also, I love HU chat, but I just cannot handle it when it's crazy. I have trouble enough keeping with one-on-one IMs most of the time. I don't know where I'm going with this except to apologize for being absent from chat, I guess. And that it might be nice for people who can't keep up with chat to be able to have funtimes via LJ-post, just random chats or movie nights or something? Unless I'm the only one who fails at chat. But movie nights would still be awesome fun. XD

[willfully.livejournal.com]

Also, I made this, if anyone else wants it. XD

[huushiita.livejournal.com]

House Unity = love. I love HiH.

But I will say that certain drama that has happened in the past has STOPPED me from making friends with an entire House due to mistrust of certain individuals in that House. This is sad, and I do feel guilty, as it's really not fair to think of an entire group of people XXX based on the actions of a few.

I understand I'm not the only one who thinks this.

I guess a version of sins of the fathers can be expressed here.


I would love to get to know more people by socializing and what not. HouseUnity chat has done that. I've met a few people through there, and I would like to continue to meet more.

[couturefetishes.livejournal.com]

I had this idea a while ago and never really mentioned it I don't think.

What if, in conjunction with hh_stamping instead of it only being available during hogsmeade and since MC has experience and LUH for house unity, we did a giant community hybrid sorting event? This would be an excellent way to get to know each other and when a lot more of us learn our HIH hybrid, it might encourage a lot of common ground. We could even do events/gifting for like, slytherdors and ravenpuffs, etc once it's through, and maybe do it again every term separate from hogsmeade to keep it going? IDEK I just think it might be a good way to use an existing part of HIH to create more common ground :D

- JAY/GRYFFINDOR

[couturefetishes.livejournal.com]

Also, what if we did hybrid chats in addition to HU chat? I don't think they should have to be like SRS BSNS OMG ONLY OFFICIAL~ SLYHERDORS in snakepaw or whatever it would be XD But having a chat aimed at getting members of two houses together could be kind of fun! I find HU to be a little overwhelming sometimes since it seems to be either dead, or a complete clusterfuck of people. More chat options could be really fun, especially with scheduled chats.

Also, Chary alohachary1851 has been running our amazing Gryffindor Fit Club, and she started this features thing for which she had us fill out a survey about our personal goals and ideals for the year, especially pertaining to wellness and fitness. Then she posts the "article" about the person, with pictures if they want, and the rest of us get to read about a fellow gryff! Even our house doesn't completely know each other, and I've found this idea really exciting. We've only had one posted so far, but it was so cool getting to know that particular girl more and the slew of positive comments she got on her feature had to kind of make her day :) Maybe doing a HU Features project would bring this concept and positivity to the entire community!

And just so you know, I'd be happy to help with any workload you might need to add to make more of this stuff happen. :D

xo, Jay