TV3 Sandbox Location/School Info

#1

TV3 is set in Miami, Florida. Located on the south-eastern edge of the United States, Miami proper is the second-largest city in the state, though the metropolitan area accounts for a significantly larger population, one of the largest in the nation at over six million people.

Miami's climate is tropical, with seasons loosely falling into wet and dry spells, and the city is often in the path of hurricanes (and is host to a research centre dedicated to tracking them). It sports a wide range of economic activities, hosting the headquarters of many global companies, while also sporting a thriving tourism industry; it is an iconic city in the popular imagination, part of the reason for its selection for the season. Despite this, the city has a wide range of income inequality, including some of the heaviest concentrations of poverty in the nation.

The city is predominantly Hispanic in population, including a large number of white Hispanics, with Cuban-Americans particularly well-represented. There is also a substantial African-American population, with non-Hispanic whites trailing behind.

In the world of SOTF-TV, the selection of Miami is notable as it makes Florida one of the states most represented in show history. SOTF being the cultural phenomenon that it is, many/most characters are likely to be at least passingly aware of the recent events and changes to the show's format, notably that there was a lasting slump in recent times, a debacle in the form of 2019's Season Sixty's mass escape, and a revitalization began in Season Sixty-Five and continued through Season Sixty-Six that saw basic aspects of the game revamped, producing seasons with vastly larger size and new rules allowing for team play and an alternate victory condition to be achieved by scoring ten kills (for which team-kills do not count). Characters may also be particularly aware of the four previous semi-local seasons: Season Thirty-two (from St. Augustine), Season Forty-Five (from Tampa Bay), Season Forty-Eight (from Orlando), and Season Fifty-Four (from West Palm Beach).

Season Sixty-Seven (TV3) will see students selected in mid-late April, 2021. No new season has manifested for almost four months, quite the gap by SOTF standards, though in no way unprecedented. Unlike the past two seasons, all students are taken from the same school. The team and ten-kill mechanics will make their return in TV3, though in modified form. The details of these modifications will be made available upon game launch. Arena details, weapon assignments, and team assignments will (as in TV2) be revealed only at the actual moment the game launches. Launch date is not known at this time.

Please note that the presence of the alternate rules in this game and the last few does not mean they will always recur. Please note that this disclaimer does not mean they won't always recur.

With no further ado, the school for TV3:

Mangrove Garden High School

Location: Miami, Florida
Colours: Orange/Navy Blue
Mascot: An anthropomorphic Florida Panther
Sports name: The Mangrove Garden Panthers

Mangrove Garden High School is a semi-prestigious private academy located on the outskirts of Miami, Florida. Although it has had many changes over the 110 years since its founding (having once been an all-girls academy and then a regular public school), in its current form it exists as a self-proclaimed "center for the academically gifted," offering entrance tests each year for every graduating middle school applicant and providing scholarships to the fifty students of each gender with the top scores. However, enlistment in the school is not limited to those who do well on the test; any parent is free to enrol their children so long as they go through the regular private school admission progress and pay the tuition.

As physical appearances go, Mangrove Garden is more akin to a campus than an academy, with the school sporting five buildings, each focused towards a particular subject area. For the most part, these buildings are fairly up-to-par for a high school—while most haven't been updated or renovated for five to ten years, they remain quite functional and are free of complaints about age or poor maintenance. The school also boasts far more extensive outdoor grounds than the average school in Miami, with students being able to explore several acres of fields and gardens and sit wherever they want for lunchtimes and free periods. The library—located in the building used for science and languages—is large and fairly consistently maintained, with the library team working hard to constantly update it with the newest YA, adult, and non-fiction releases. Seniors get privilege to utilize the second floor of the library, a platform raised above the ground with a staircase leading to it, as a place to study, either with friends or by themselves in a soundproofed room next to the platform. In regards to sport facilities, the school boasts a large gymnasium which is also utilized as an auditorium for school election speeches and for general assemblies or shelter during severe weather. Students are forbidden from using this room during lunchtime, but have access to multiple outdoor basketball courts, a baseball diamond, and a large open patch of grass, which can be used as multiple makeshift soccer and sports fields.

Notably, school social dynamics and popularity often dictates where students hang out at lunchtime. The more popular students often coalesce roughly near the basketball courts, either to play or talk while on the sidelines, while the less popular students are left with the other side of the school, with smaller cliques often staking out particular unused places in gardens or behind classrooms and returning to them every lunchtime, pushing out anyone who tries to infringe upon their space. Also of note is that the arts building sports both drama and music halls, and school plays and student-run concerts are frequent occurrences, with some sort of event cropping up in most months. In addition, once every year the music and drama faculties band together to run a school musical, and this year, opening in May 2021, the musical on show is Little Shop of Horrors. Casting is biased to putting juniors and seniors into major cast roles, although anyone is free to audition/join as part of the chorus or part of the orchestra.

Academically, the school has undergone radical changes over the past five years. Under the oversight of previous headmaster Xiu-Ping Sun—who was biased towards the arts (particularly towards music) and placed funds accordingly—the school was relatively balanced and free-form, and placed primary focus on enriching whatever an individual student's primarily talent was. However, since her retirement, and the appointment of her replacement Theodore "Frank" Knox, the school has undergone a shift in focus and priority funding. Wanting to lean into Mangrove Garden's reputation as a bastion of excellence, Knox has increased funding and focus on academically taxing subjects such as mathematics and the sciences, in addition to placing more focus and spending on school sports teams and PE programs, which has been to the detriment of subjects relating to the creative arts, such as music, drama, or visual art. In addition, while students still receive regular grades for their work, Knox has pushed on staff a way of assessing students via ranking them amongst their classmates, believing this to be "a way of truly showing a student's achievement measured against their peers." Rankings are now considered by students to be more important than regular grades, and while those who typically get high rankings like them, seeing them as a way to push themselves forwards and become better students, those who receive middling or low rankings are often discouraged by them, as poor rankings can lead to feelings of inadequacy, dampen motivation for future semesters, or even encourage social ostracization. While there has been some criticism of the rankings system since its inception, it was at the end of last semester (with focus on grades having been completely neglected in favour of rankings and with the comprehensive ranking metrics showing a very clear bias towards academic subjects over humanities, the arts, and practical subjects such as woodworking and home economics, which were weighted against due to their "less competitive nature") in which this criticism boiled over, with former alumni, local news outlets, and current students now decrying the system due to its negative impact on the mental health of individual students (at both the high and the low ends of the rankings) and its transformation of the educational system into a competitive environment rather than a place for cooperation. There has been no response by the school administration to these complaints as of yet, though rumours circulate of an audit being conducted under the guidance of the State Department of Education.

When it comes to sports, Mangrove Garden is fairly standout in its region, due to heavy funding for athletic training facilities and with students receiving individual focus in terms of sporting achievement. In particular, the school has achieved acclaim in track & field, acrobatics, soccer, and basketball, with the former two groups often having one or two students compete at a national level each year and the latter two teams often averaging very well (and sometimes winning overall) against other local and state teams.

Students for Season Sixty-Seven are drawn from the junior and senior classes of Mangrove Garden, with no preference or quota for one grade or another.