Every week a new topic is posted for the muses to write about. These can range anywhere from "Thoughts On Life" to "What's Your Favorite Band?" Gen, Het, and Slash muses are all welcome.
How to Join
To join us, please go to our main site and see what muses have been spoken for. If your muse is free, drop the mods a line at the email address provided for your fandom. Supply the muse name, fandom, and a written response to the most current weekly challenge for your proposed muse. The list of topic challenges can be found on this page. In addition, give the moderator a list of all other muses that you currently have in the community.
Please do not make a journal and announce that you have joined the community until you have received approval from a moderator. There may be other applications ahead of you in the queue for a muse.
We do maintain waitlists for muses, so if you are interested in applying for a muse that is currently part of the community, contact the appropriate moderator and request to be added to the waitlist.
LJ Terms of Service notice
All members and prospective members please be reminded that this is a moderated community. The community owner will enforce the LJ Terms of Service rules regarding harrassment, abuse, violations of privacy, etc. The LJ ToS supercedes all community-specific rules. The Theatrical Muse community owner will take whatever action is necessary to enforce the ToS.
In line with this, the Theatrical Muse community owner reserves the right to remove any member who engages in antagonistic, aggressive, boorish behavior in TM and the related, moderated TM communities. Members may not claim to be writing 'in character' as an excuse to attack, insult, or agitate any other member of this community. The Theatrical Muse community owner will enforce this overall community 'guideline' as needed, and all decisions will be final.
At the discretion of the moderators, any journal that has been locked so that moderators cannot read it may be removed from the community.
Community Rules
1. Members may have up to 3 muses to start. Members who stay current with all 3 muses for at least 3 individual challenges (not answering 3 challenges at once) may apply for a 4th muse. Members who are caught with more than 4 muses in the community will be asked to remove some of their muses, and may be banned from the community entirely. To apply for a 4th muse, you must send the moderator links to 3 current posts for each of your 3 existing muses along with the usual application details.
Members may also request to be put on the waitlist for an existing muse.
2. Members must put their muse full name and fandom affiliation on their LJ user info page and also on their weekly posts to the TM community.
3. New challenges will be posted every Friday and end on Thursday the following week.
4. Members must respond to at least 1 in every 4 of the most current weekly ficlet writing challenges. You can miss no more than 3 challenges in a row. This means responding to a minimum of one current challenge every four weeks, working backwards from the current challenge week. This does not mean posting just once per calendar month.
Members who do not participate in the TM community by responding to the fiction challenges will receive only two written warnings. The third time a moderator discovers that the muse is inactive, it will be permanently removed from the community.
5. The TM ficlet response must be a minimum of 150-250 words. Responses that are longer than 450 words should be put behind an lj-cut. Responses that are under 150 words will not qualify towards participation in this community. Members who consistently post under the 150 word count minimum will be contacted by the TM community owner and may be removed at the discretion of the moderator.
6. Members must post their ficlet response to the main community
7. Members must cross-post their ficlet responses to their character journal and add the post to their journal memories. This seems redundant, but it ensures that the TM moderators always have a way to track your posts.
8. All RPF pups must link to the disclaimer that appears at the bottom of this page. Other TM members are also encouraged to link to the disclaimer. TM is grateful to ewanmuse for writing the disclaimer for us.
9. No attacking of other members. It will not be tolerated. Members who fight with or attack other members will be contacted by the TM community owner and will be removed. Note: "attacking other members" includes posting private IM/emails with another TM member in any TM-related community without the other person(s) permission as part of a personal fight.
10. Theatrical Muse is a ficlet writing community. It is not an RP community; however, many members do RP with their TM muses. All members are free to RP if they want to, but note: the TM moderators do not moderate RP. RP postings do not count towards your participation in the TM community. If you do RP, post your RP threads in your character journals or in any of the several RP communities for TM pups. Do not post RP comments in the main Theatrical Muse community. These will be deleted.
11. If for some reason you cannot respond to the weekly challenges but you wish to keep your muse in the community, you must contact the mods to request a hiatus. If you request a hiatus, tell the moderator how long you expect to be away and the reason for the hiatus. Pending the discretion of the moderator, the hiatus request may be granted. Hiatus requests will not be granted for reasons such as, "my muse isn't speaking to me right now." If you do not contact a moderator or respond to moderator inquiries regarding your participation, your journal will be removed from the community.
12. SPOILER RULE: This applies to all members who are writing characters from current television programs (and to a lesser extent, movie characters). If your TM posts contain current season spoilers, put your post behind a cut. If you're writing a movie character from a popular movie, and that movie has not yet gone into full worldwide release, also put your post to the community behind a cut. You do not have to cut the copies that you post in your own character journal if you don't want to. For movies, once a film has gone into full release for a couple of weeks, it shouldn't be necesssary to cut posts; however, since TV shows can be as much as a full season behind in other countries, put any post that contain current season spoilers behind a cut.
13. The highest rating acceptable for the main TM community is "R". We have a wide audience and rather than shutting out certain members from reading or posting, we are trying to be as all inclusive as possible. Therefore, any NC-17 het or slash should be placed in the private journals. If any of the private journals plan on having any NC-17 writings, please make sure your user info has the appropriate disclaimer. Something as simple as: 'This journal features adult content' should do it.
14. Some muns do not wish to be linked with their pup for various reasons. The mods ask that everyone respect this rule. Even if you know who someone is behind the muse mask, please refer to them as the muse in this forum. We have promised a level of anonymity to a few of the muses. Members who break this rule will be banned.
15. OT postings can be placed in our meta community: Theatrical Fen. Please read the Theatrical Fen rules before posting in this community.
16. No spamming of any kind will be tolerated. Members who spam the community or other member journals will be removed from the community.
17. No duplicate characters. If Batman is in play, it doesn't matter if he is Batman from the comics or the movie... There will be only one Batman. In the case of characters who are in multiple fandoms, this will be decided on a case by case basis by the TM community owner. In the case of canon-based, AU versions of characters, these cases will be also be decided on a case by case basis by the TM community owner.
18. Members who have more than one muse in the community may not write combined responses for any of their muses. You must write individual, unique responses for each muse journal you have in the community.
19. Members should not recycle previously written responses in order to answer a new TM challenge. This is a creative writing community.
20. Members who drop a muse, or request a muse and then cancel their request, may not request the same muse again for one month. Members who repeatedly drop and re-request the same character, or who have repeatedly had muses removed for non-participation, may be denied requesting the same muse in the future, at the discretion of the moderators.
21. Theatrical Muse accepts fandom-based original characters provided you already have a current muse. To apply for a Fandom OC muse, you must send the moderator links to three (3) current posts for your existing muse in addition to the usual application.
Please note: At the request of the authors, various book-based fandoms are not allowed in TM. Please see the Misc. Books fandom webpage for a listing of restricted authors. Thank you for understanding.
The "Real Person Fiction" and Copyrighted Character Disclaimer:
The "celebrity" whose journal you read IS NOT THE ACTUAL CELEBRITY nor are they actually associated with any companies named therein. The author/maintainer of this journal is a participant in a creative writing project called Theatrical Muse where people portray actors, fictional characters, and other assorted people.
The journal is produced and written by a fan and is meant for entertainment purposes only. The thoughts contained in the journal are not those of the celebrity, nor are they meant to represent the actual thoughts, actions, lifestyle or image of the celebrity.
They are a fictional interpretation and not meant in any way to be an accurate depiction. They are absolutely false and based on a public image, and are not meant to reflect the person's private life or the actual practices and activities of any companies named.
No harm, misrepresentation, libel, malice or copyright infringement is intended. At no time is this meant to be construed as reality.
This is FICTION.
We believe that these journals are in no way libellous as there is no malicious intent, and no intent to misinform fellow roleplayers or anyone who may read the journal.
We also believe that this constitutes "fair use" under section 107 of the US Copyright Law. These journals are nonprofit and meant as a commentary on a public image and not meant to use that public image for any personal gain.
Once again, Theatrical Muse is a completely fictional universe. Any and all actions, ideas and opinions are associated only with this fictional universe.