MoondancerPony

While the exact specifics of the implementation are still up in the air, I'd like to accomplish a few things: First, I would like to introduce a geopolitical conflict to Skrell lore. A lot of old lore, even in Loow's era, hints at conflict between the colonial government of the Jargon Federation and the local government of the Traverse. Many formerly independent colonies have been annexed in the decade since the last election, and as it draws nearer tension in the Traverse is reaching a boiling point. They—and the Federation as a whole—are polarised on which candidate to support; the two frontrunners are Weashbi Jrugl, the incumbent Grand Councillor who has a hardline assimilationist stance on Traverse issues, and Qalvau Na'noli, a challenger from the Inner Traverse who is a supporter of the "doctrine of peaceful coexistence". The main focus would be on the electoral campaign of both candidates, complicated by the involvement of a secessionist movement in the Traverse leading to a strong crackdown on pro-Traverse/anti-Federation sentiments by Jrugl, which will no doubt lead to their victory if gone unchecked. While the initial attack by the secessionist movement is quickly dealt with, its effects on the political landscape of the Federation—and on Skrell elsewhere in the Spur—would not fade so fast, especially as they become a repeated nuisance to the Federation. In the wake of accusations of sympathies to these “anti-Federation terrorists”, Na'noli seeks refuge in Tau Ceti while continuing to campaign—both for their own candidacy and against the anti-Traverse crackdown in the Federation, imploring sapient rights advocates around the Spur to publicly repudiate or place sanctions on the Federation. This effectively creates a three-way conflict in the Federation regarding the Traverse: First, Jrugl represents the status quo: an authoritarian regime that provides numerous boons to those who support it, but which chews up its own citizens in its tangled web of bureaucracy if they step out of line. Second, Na'noli represents reform: while they still support the Federation and want the Traverse to remain a part of it, they seek to reach a middle ground that gives the Traverse more freedom overall, while not losing out on the benefits the Federation gains from controlling them. However, they are caught between a rock and a hard place with regards to anti-authoritarianism in the Federation: they are banking on anti-authoritarianism as their ticket into office (and back into the Federation), while needing to maintain the power of the Councillor in order to accomplish their goals. Third, the secessionist movement represents revolution: they seek complete independence of the Traverse regardless of the difficulties in maintaining it or the cost it takes to get there. While they are largely anti-authoritarian, infighting in the movement means certain factions in it are attempting to form coalitions to centralise their power. Skrell players are caught in the middle of this: some may be from the Traverse and harbour pro-secession sentiments, while others may have closer ties to the Federation and its government and don't want to jeopardise the benefits they reap from it. Yet others still may be influenced primarily by the moderate egalitarianism of the Republic of Biesel, swayed by the similarly moderate platform of Na'noli but lured by the bread and circuses of Jrugl's authoritarian Federation. I've seen a number of players (even those without Skrell whitelists) echo these sentiments out of character, and so giving them an outlet for it in-character with the potential to impact the narrative would likely drive interest in the species' lore. Some other things I would like to do in this arc: Reference/tie in older lore as much as possible, both for Skrell and non-Skrell. I want the arc to feel like a natural occurrence in the universe that seamlessly ties into past events. For example: Na'noli flees to Tau Ceti for asylum; however, Tau Ceti has been under international scrutiny before for harbouring those accused of terrible things, e.g. blood cultists, murderers, war criminals, literally all Guwan ever, etc. This could easily be used in propaganda against Na'noli. The events of the Warbling, despite the substantial issues of the arc, could be brought up as a reason for Tau Ceti to refuse extradition of Na'noli back to the Federation, as well as a reason for non-Skrell in the Republic of Biesel to oppose Jrugl's re-election. The SLF's rescue of President Dorn could be used as propaganda to present Biesel as a supporter/proponent of international terrorism, which would be especially revolting for moderate Skrell sitting on the fence; an association with the SLF, however tangential, would be extremely offputting. Provide an incentive for Skrell players to be active, and for non-Skrell players to apply for and start playing Skrell characters. I'm considering doing something involving statistics/playtime, like allowing people to vote once per Skrell character with a minimum amount of playtime during the arc. This will incentivise people to play Skrell more, as well as create more character concepts using the new lore this arc would provide. I'd also like to provide an incentive to write characters outside of the standard background, though I'm less certain on how to accomplish this. Perhaps a loadout item to signify membership in a certain movement, as this was incredibly effective during the original Sol invasion arc. Create an immersive and intriguing political conflict with ramifications for characters on-station. I don't want to have Jrugl and Na'noli duke it out in a cooking contest at a barbecue on-station; instead, I'd rather them battle in the court of public opinion through propaganda, news appearances, public statements and covert actions. I want the arc to be a constant presence, but not overbearing: people could bring posters for or against candidates to work, attempt to recruit their coworkers to their causes, and likewise deal with the consequences of doing so in the workplace. I'm not a fan of manually-created events for this, or special antagonist stuff; instead I'd prefer to give players the tools to create their own moments of conflict, by giving them reasons to be invested in the various sides of the conflict. I want to give factions a larger impact on the station in general. I want to give Federation consuls more to do on the station during the arc. Attempting to leverage members of Security into persecuting supporters of their political opponents, or bribing them to turn a blind eye to their allies—it allows these roles to become embroiled in the political drama of the Federation, but in an organic way that depends on what the players involved are willing to do to. I also want to give consuls in general the ability to provide boons and maluses to departments if they do/don't comply with their demands; things like putting a discount or upcharge on certain goods from Cargo, unlocking faction-specific goods to buy (either via something like a Consul-specific merchant console, or by unlocking it in Cargo), etc. They are representatives of governments or corporations with an interest in the station, and this should be reflected in their responsibilities, actions, and treatment. I would also like for consuls' objectives to provide tangible rewards if achieved; stuff like Federation consuls providing a temporary boon to R&D but a temporary malus to Robotics if they get enough unique signatures on a petition, Tajara providing a bonus to Robotics (such as a crate of roundstart prosthetics provided to Medical), and in the future Unathi could provide bonuses to overmap ships or tweak the chances of certain encounters due to their naval (and naval engineering) influence. Overall, I want representatives of factions (who have command and often species whitelists and are held to a high standard) to be able to wield that power responsibly in a way that influences the station and demonstrates the influence these groups have on both the station (or ship in the NBT) as well as on society as a whole.

This was a tricky question to answer, especially without going against the core ideas I had in mind for the Exiles, but I think I've got something down now: As exiles share no specific origin save for no longer being Jargon Federation citizens, they have no shared culture. However, I'll instead provide several examples of exiles that can shed light on what a Federation exile character might be like. These examples are non-exhaustive but give a decent overview of typical backgrounds. One distinctive background an exile may have is being a Traverse independence supporter. Whether they willingly renounce their Federation citizenship or have it revoked due to 'inflammatory activity' or 'incendiary rhetoric', these individuals still nominally live under the Federation, and the Federation still profits from their labour. Even Traverse colonies with a large independence movement or non-citizen population still ship resources back to the core Federation worlds, due to careful management and design forcing individual colonies to rely on the Federation's logistics network for many of their needs. This traces its origins back to Glorsh's reign, though the complex web of interdependencies ensuring true independence is out of reach has been expanded substantially ever since. A Traverse exile may not be too different than a Traverse citizen on the surface, possessing many of the same positions and privileges afforded to others in their colony; however, they lack official government recognition and the benefits that come with it. Oftentimes colonies with many exiles are touted as being the most productive per-citizen, and have very close Jargon oversight due to this. Outside of the Traverse, two additional demographics come to mind. Many former anti-Federation rebels end up exiled (or worse) due to their activities; oftentimes this is because a former comrade of theirs sold them out. Due to this, exiled ex-rebels tend to have little to no faith in Skrell society remaining. Many are loners who leverage their skills to get by, while others work with small (typically non-Skrellian) political groups in hopes of finding a way to rekindle that sense of purpose they had as a rebel. The rebels who wind up exiled are often the middle of the pack, as they managed to get the attention of Jargon, but are exiled rather than imprisoned or 'reeducated'. Their crimes are not so grievous to justify spending resources on their imprisonment, while their skills and abilities are not useful enough for them to be made into a pawn of the state. The other prominent demographic, at least in my mind, are academics and researchers who seek to work without Federation oversight or have been poached by any number of state or corporate interests. Save for Zeng-Hu, most megacorps employ disgraced Federation academics rather liberally, as they tend to have fewer strings attached than Federation citizens; even Zeng-Hu likely does the same, albeit less overtly. While this demographic overlaps with expatriates, many of them who openly work in fields that the Federation is opposed to (including but not limited to xenopsionics, AI research, and research on Dionae titans) inevitably find themselves exiled. Thusly, exiles have much more freedom in their activities than expatriates, in large part due to the Repatriation Program's extensive oversight of Federation citizens living abroad. However, these are not exhaustive examples, nor are they representative of every Skrell exiled from the Federation. Instead, they should be taken as examples of variations on the core concept of exiles: a Skrell who is estranged, either willingly or not, from the Federation, lacking its restrictions as well as its numerous privileges. There are no doubt a multitude of ways this concept could be taken by players, who (as other factions have shown) often tend to enjoy playing characters that subvert aspects of the lore, but it is the responsibility of those writing the lore to provide a good basis so that players can be responsible in how they deviate from the norm. As to why players would enjoy playing an Exile (or any of the other subversive factions): Players enjoy taking the lore and running with it; it's up to us to give them pointers so that the end result is in line with what we want to accomplish. Far from detracting from the rest of the species' themes, both the primary faction(s) and their opposition should instead bolster each other. If a theme is driven by a central conflict (tradition vs modernity, authoritarian control vs lawless freedom, corporations versus nations) it would be a disservice to provide only one side of that conflict. As an example, adding other megacorporations, as well as diplomatic representatives, to the station via corporate liaisons and diplomatic consuls placed the reins in the players' hands and allowed the conflicts between these factions to come to life. This is something I think Tajara lore does well: all three of those themes are examined in the central conflict of the PRA, NKA, and DPRA. The NKA values tradition and nationalism, while the PRA falls into the same issues pre-Revolution society had due to their desperate desire to modernise at all costs (an example is the mistreatment of Zhan-Khazan in the PRA) while simultaneously courting and reviling the influence of megacorporations. The PRA is authoritarian but provides security to those who fall in line, while the ALA are a bunch of warlords federated into a military junta; on the macro level they're not as exacting and strict as the PRA, but on the smaller this lends itself to a trend of 'might makes right' that may turn some away—or drive them out. I would love to create rich lore like this, to provide scaffolding for players to build on; I've seen many Tajara players run with headcanons for small things like villages, culture, cuisine, and so on, and almost none of it has seemed out of place. By creating a world with sufficient depth and ease of access, I feel that players can be immersed enough in Skrell lore to do similar things. While a Federation supporter is still the easiest character to write out of the gate, playing an Exile—or Expatriate, or even a Rebel—is still a viable option for those players daring and creative enough to look outside the protective bubble of the Federation.

To clarify, I haven't been using the wiki to propose stuff, except for my sandbox page which is an upcoming Unathi lore application. The changes that I have submitted on the wiki are proofreading suggestions and a few minor content revisions, things I feel would improve the lore and that were approved by Cael, not original lore submissions. I do believe I can avoid the activity issue I had last time, since I've been consistently working on Skrell lore for almost a year now. In terms of working with others, I've been working on monitoring my tone and avoiding kneejerk responses or, as someone put it, "firing from the hip". I still have room to improve, but I'm always trying to be more mindful of times when I'm about to speak or act without thinking things through. I've also been trying to reach out to others to collaborate more often and demonstrate that I've improved and am willing to rebuild the personal and professional relationships that my prior behaviour damaged. I'm currently working on improving what was written for Glorsh, as well as the history changes, alongside Pan, Caelphon, and hopefully Nienna soon as well. These changes have been in the works for a while now, and are based on the conclusions drawn from the feedback thread on Snakebitten's history rework. From my discussions with players in the lore discord it seems a lot of the issues with the history rework were because we, as writers, had difficulty properly translating our intended themes, tones, and ideas into writing; oftentimes we lost track of the real goal and chased rabbits that made the lore dry, meandering, and uninteresting—or even just outright irrelevant and bad in some parts. The history rework (and the Glorsh segment of it) was overall tonally and thematically inconsistent, which was a large departure from our initial plans for the rework. To fix this I started the current revision off by creating an outline in order to ensure it remained consistent throughout the entire writing process. Additionally, Pan and I have been more involved and thorough with our review process this time, although currently I'm a bit hands-off as it's in internal review. I've come to realise that it's not necessarily about outright changing my vision, but about allowing my vision room to evolve past my original expectations for it. Oftentimes when I work with others on projects, my vision will naturally be pulled towards a version that everyone involved is happier with overall.

This complaint isn't against silly round premises, it's against events that encourage people to break character, as stated in the topic post. There is a difference between "funny stuff" and, as Danse said in the topic post, "breaking character to reference OOC memes."

Could you provide an example of LRP canon events? "Meaningful roleplay", to me, doesn't mean it has to be the centrepiece of the round, just that if it doesn't generate roleplay, then it doesn't actively impede it either.

For those who believe this is just Danse going "no fun allowed", keep in mind that this doesn't mean we can't have fun events. We've had a number of very, very fun non-canon events in the past, with plenty of quality roleplay generated. I believe that everyone on this server finds roleplay fun (that's why we're here, after all), so there should be no issue with having non-canon events that are both fun and don't involve LRP. I also agree that there needs to be a bit more transparency with event votes. There have been a number of times where people have voted yes to "add spice" and then complained that the "spice" ruined their round, or wasn't what they expected, etc. If you want a non-canon event to have secrecy involved, it should ideally be pre-scheduled with a description like "non-canon horror event involving Tajara lore" or something; heck, you could even put that as a vote! If you still want a low-RP/goofing-off event, it should be pre-scheduled a la Ass Day on Goon so people can choose to opt out. No one's plans for a fun round of roleplay should be derailed that heavily by a rogue "add spice????" vote.

Okay, I'm making a PR to fulfill this. There will be four ways to empty it, one of which already exists: Throw at something to spill its contents. Use in your hand to dump it on the floor. Use it on a disposal unit to dump its contents in. (If on harm intent, you'll disposal the ashtray instead.) Destroy/shatter the ashtray. Also, the PR does some other QoL things for ashtrays.

Ah, thank you, I hadn't considered it that way. My main intent was to say that it was largely a one-off incident and I would be fine with being pinged like that now, but I figure I should have said that explicitly. Thinking back on things I've since (not long after that incident, I think) had my own issues with others reacting badly to pings, and I can safely say that it's not fun for anyone involved and tends to create a lasting wariness to ping someone, even on important topics--I'd like to avoid that going forward. I don't think I can necessarily undo any of the bad interactions I've had with people, but I hope that moving forward I can build a better rapport with people despite that. Thank you for giving me this feedback, it's much-appreciated.

I understand concerns about my activity, but I've been working on a lot of Skrell lore or another pretty much constantly since March. Even after the first disastrous history rework was released, I basically dove headfirst into proofreading it, with us slashing entire swathes of dry, overly-redundant academic text for just the important bits, followed by a total ground-up rewrite of the Glorsh section alongside Pan. Even after my last application I never stopped working, and I think being encouraged to be more active in the community in the feedback on that application just furthered my drive to work on it. I'm sorry if I've been passive-aggressive to you recently; sometimes things I say come across that way when I don't intend for them to, and other times (though not as much recently) I do get a bit snippy for brief moments. That said, I don't think I've had a long, protracted passive-aggressive (or just plain aggressive) argument like back when Tunnel Runners were removed since, well... when Tunnel Runners were removed. That was probably my worst moment, I think, next to the conflict with Resi over my original plans for a Glorsh rework. I hope that in light of this I can regain your trust, if not now, then at some point in the future. I really do value your opinion as a community member, dev, and admin, and I want to mend our fences together; I just hope my recent behaviour gives enough of a reason for you to try and help bridge that divide. If you can provide any examples of times you saw I was being passive-aggressive, I'd like to see them so that I can improve. While I am working on self-awareness, I can't improve on that if I don't know what it is I'm still failing to catch. Hi, thank you for your feedback. First off I'd like to apologise for my tone in that conversation; looking back on it, it appears I was woken up either from sleep or from the verge of it, so I wasn't exactly a happy camper. However, I would like to point out that this was in late July, and (to my knowledge) we haven't had any negative interactions since. Additionally, there is a difference between being woken up at 2am with a ping about an offhanded comment earlier in the day, and being woken up with a ping/message at 2am to work on lore; I'm far more open to the latter, and I don't think I would be too opposed to the former now anyway. I'm sorry that my part in that interaction rubbed you the wrong way, but I do hope it's clear that I've made (and am making) an effort not to repeat it.

At one point I feared it would be difficult for me to not do this, too (this was back when I was considering reapplying for deputy, while Snakebitten was still maintainer), but now that we've come forward with info about the rework and I've been helping Cael with their cuisine lore I think it's not as difficult as I thought. I really do enjoy answering good-faith questions, and it turns out that bad-faith questions are incredibly rare; the biggest arguments I've had that I can think of were probably with Stev, and we found out that was just over a miscommunication about the status of the rework and (to my knowledge) we've hashed it out, especially given the recent steps we've taken like releasing an outline of our changes. Additionally, I'd like to genuinely thank you for going out on a limb and trying to help me out here. It's honestly pretty difficult to make a change for the better, especially when my actions in the past have made others (perhaps justifiably) reluctant to give me a second chance. This part of your post really touched me, because one of my biggest fears is that my past mistakes have created a divide too large to bridge; this reminds me that even if it's too wide for me to cross alone, someone reaching out to lend a hand could be enough to fix that. Dionae are the closest thing to a modern existential threat the Federation has, what with rumoured colossus/titanic gestalts that rival the sizes of planets, if not entire stars. Due to being completely outside of the Receiver-Listener spectrum (not binary, though it's often presented as such), they don't really fall into any of the groups; frankly it would make sense for them to simply be second-class citizens, maybe akin to AI in some parts of human society (though, in all likelihood, probably treated slightly better; they're not synthetics, and normal-sized gestalts aren't exactly existential threats on their own). That said, the dionae religion that claims their destiny is to consume/absorb all knowledge in the universe would probably be cracked down on pretty hard, given that it's literally admitting to being an existential threat. Glad you asked! Pan and I have actually completed an entire rewrite of the rework, as of November 6, which is currently in the internal review stages. A preliminary outline has been made public in the Skrell chat on the lore discord as of a few days ago. From those who I've had preview the entire rewrite (mainly those who had strong criticism of the initial Glorsh rework), it's been very well-received, and the outline also was met with generally positive feedback. I even hung around in the skrell general channel to answer questions and preview some other stuff. The Traverse Skrell are actually what I had in mind with the Disavowed Exiles; I believe I even mentioned Traverse secessionists in there. It's touched on more in parts of the Glorsh/history rewrite, but essentially the Traverse has a storied history of exploitation and repression under both the old Federation and Glorsh, and as evidenced by some articles from when Loow was maintainer, they've had their fair share of both under the new Federation as well. In my mind, there is a rich and flourishing group of Traverse subcultures that the Federation is trying to stamp out and replace with their own cultural hegemony, and a large portion of the Disavowed Exiles are those taking part in passive or active resistance against this. Also, I'd like to note that the factions and their names are mostly for OOC convenience and probably wouldn't be referred to in-character, unless you're playing a sociologist character or something. I have a number of things in mind for both background narrative arcs as well as those that affect the station more! The Federation, as has been shown in the past, is no stranger to meddling in interstellar affairs, whether it be covertly or overtly. Even toning this back a bit (I dislike the campy elements of things like threatening the entire station with a nuke, even if the core concept of Jargon interferes in the activities of a Federation expatriated/exiled AI researcher in a sovereign territory is pretty good), it's pretty easy to give Federation representatives tasks of obtaining, say, photos of secured areas in order to reflect the espionage aspect of their repatriation program in-game. The Federation doesn't overtly meddle in what non-Skrell non-Federation citizens do, but they do interfere in the actions of Skrell across the Spur; I mainly wrote these factions in order to set up lore/narrative/arc hooks in the future, such as a mole sending AI research teams down rabbitholes with red herrings and spurious data, or Jargon representatives keeping tabs on various Skrell in order to find reasons to include them in the repatriation program (or what benefits they could offer to sway them into joining the program). I'd like to start by saying I value your opinion very much, and I really took your suggestion to be more active in the community, in terms of both PRs, lore, and general community interaction, to heart. I was initially worried that the suggestion was an attempt to simply extract as much usable work from me as possible before tossing me aside, but despite some people accidentally (and others deliberately) feeding into that worry I quickly set that aside and decided I had nothing to lose from being more active. As I'm sure you know, my reasons (or at least, what I've come to believe are my reasons; I can't say I have perfect clarity on my actions in hindsight, especially those clouded by emotion and bad judgment) for my inactivity and vitriol when I was synth deputy were because I felt I had been cut out of discussions on my Glorsh rework despite both Resi and Snakebitten expressing a desire to work on it with me. I essentially felt like I mentioned before, that I had been used for my work and set aside, and despite the conflict being entirely between me and Resi I dragged others into it and blamed them for not backing me up, which soured my opinion of the loreteam as a whole. Particularly, I was very bitter towards you during that argument because I thought, as a maintainer, you would back me up in it, but in retrospect there was honestly no reason to drag you into what was effectively a petty squabble. Frankly, the argument over the "theft" of the rework seems scarily close to the intellectual property argument surrounding Vaurca lore a while back, which I think spurned my desire to prevent further conflicts like that in the future. Regardless, both Resi and I have long since made amends, and while the subject of that period does still touch a nerve a bit, I know that no one on the loreteam was responsible for either of our actions but ourselves. For what it's worth, I'm sorry for my part in that conflict and for my attempts in dragging you into it, as well as the burden it put on synthlore as a whole. In regards to not feeling comfortable working with me, I'm sorry I've made you uncomfortable in the past. Since my last application, I've made an effort to reach out to a number of people in the community (primarily lore developers) on various things to work with them on, such as: For Tajara, adding Tajaran foods and their recipes to the game during my cooking rework. I think one of my first sprite contributions after returning (and maybe in general, to Aurora) was the Earthenroot kebab, in addition to the stove and pot/pan sprites. The initial Glorsh rework with Pan and Snakebitten (and subsequent re-reworking alongside Pan), Jargon plants, and Skrellian cuisine, with the latter two written mostly by Nursiekitty/Witchbells with some creative liberties taken by me when I implemented them into the game. Rewriting parts of the Unathi honour page with Haydizzle's help, as well as working on an in-progress colony that will hopefully serve as a good hook for future developments; this will also hopefully include a lot more Wastelander food, as most current Unathi foods are just variations on breakfast foods I can't say I've done much with the Diona team but they've been pretty pleasant to work with; I've helped review/proofread Cael's Skrell Cuisine lore. I've talked a bit with Biohazard about the Lii'dra, and tried to talk with Jam about both Lii'dra lore earlier this year and tachyon weapons recently, though neither went anywhere for various reasons. I still need to fix implants for Vaurca if Alb or others haven't already gotten around to it. I attempted to reach out to you at least once during the Glorsh rewrite, asking for your feedback on both the preliminary second rewrite outline as well as the first finished section of the second rewrite; once it got to the internal lore review portion it was essentially out of my hands, so I don't know of anything that happened after that point. I appreciate the feedback regardless, thank you for being so honest with me. I don't want people to walk on eggshells around me, so if people have felt uncomfortable around me I want to know so I can improve.

Ckey/BYOND Username: MoondancerPony Position Being Applied For: Skrell Lore Deputy Past Experiences/Knowledge: I’ve been a member of the lore team twice, as well as a developer twice. I’ve written a good bit of lore both while on the team and in cooperation with those who are when I’m not; examples of such are the Glorsh rework on the wiki as well as the work Pan and I have put in to rewrite it. On top of that I’ve done some smaller projects with other lore teams, like implementing some Tajara foods with my cooking rework and going over a wiki page with the Unathi team. Examples of Past Work: I’ve recently done work with the Unathi lore team on both a WIP project that I will hopefully make into a lore canonisation app soon, as well as heavily revising the Unathi Honour page on the wiki. I also was heavily involved in the previous Glorsh rework as well as the current efforts to rewrite it and fix its issues. I've also made a number of code contributions recently, which can be seen on the Github. Additional Comments: While ultimately it was a hard call, given that I really, really like Unathi lore as well, recent discussions in the Skrell general chat in the lore discord pushed me to make an application for this position rather than the soon-to-open Unathi deputy slot. As I said in my last application, I’ve been working hard on developing mindfulness and self-awareness; in addition, in the time since that application I’ve taken both a public speaking class and a leadership class at my university. I hope that people in the Skrell lore chat can testify that when disagreements do crop up I try my best to resolve or defuse them, and regardless I’m always looking for ways to improve my handling of these things. I still have issues with kneejerk reactions to criticism, for example, like with my previous application: though I’d like to think I hid it well, I was absolutely terrified that everyone secretly hated me, and read far too much into innocuous comments that amounted to “try again later once you’ve been around a bit”. I’ve been working on fighting those kneejerk responses and, whenever that’s not possible, taking a break to cool off and approach it later with a clearer head. Thankfully, as I’ve gotten better at it, this has gone from “sleep on it” to “grab a glass of water and drink the whole thing”. I’m hoping that this pattern of improvement continues until my kneejerk responses to things go away entirely. With that out of the way, I decided to write about the Federation’s authoritarianism, as well as the misconception that all Skrell support the Federation. The essay may appear long at first, but the individual sections are mostly standalone bits of lore that work together to paint a clear picture.

PR is up. https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/10567

Ideally it would only inject a specific toxin, to not be unbalanced compared to the syringe gun.

A good solution might be having it inject a toxin/poison instead of directly dealing toxin damage.

One could say this interpretation is fine; a triage technician that goes out to people who are in bad situations and rescues them, and can also step in and work in the medbay in situations where they're needed. Triage, in addition to implying a mass-casualty situation, can also imply prehospital/field work. If the intent were to say that they triage every patient that comes in, they would be a triage nurse, but the point is to move it away from IRL jobs. Therefore, I think "Triage Technician" properly connotes that the job is typically for providing first aid outside of the medbay, or in mass-casualty situations within the medbay. They can provide other care within their knowledge/means, but the main intent of the job gets across well. That said, the important thing is just making it so EMTs don't have to sit in the Gremlin Cave whenever there's not someone bleeding out in maint somewhere.

Personally, the name Lasorexant makes me think it's somewhere between an expectorant and Lasix (a brand name for a certain diuretic); this drug name makes me feel like it's going to make me cough and pee. I'm not sure of an alternate name, though; in Dracula it's referred to as "the modern Morpheus", referring to the god of sleep, but then the go-to would be "Morphine" and that's... already a thing. I could see Somnine or a variant thereof, perhaps, referring to the father of Morpheus in Roman mythology, Somnus? Polysomnine - It's a more potent drug than soporific, so "poly" could help imply that. Somniplem, somnidon, somniplone, somniclem, - All formed from combinations of IRL sedative (Z-drugs, if you're wondering) suffixes, but not using any real ones; "-plem" and "-don" are from "-(pi)dem" and "-plon", "-plone" is from "-clone" and "-plon", "-clem" is from "-(pi)dem" and "-clone". This makes them feel vaguely familiar without letting someone make undue comparisons to real drugs based off of the name. There are several other combinations you could make from those suffixes, but I removed some of them due to being too close to IRL suffixes for other things, like "-done" being too similar to "-ridone" for antipsychotics and "-(z)odone" for antidepressants. Personally, I'm a big fan of polysomnine and somniclem; if you're willing to include IRL suffixes, somniclone is a cool name too.

Potassium chloride only works if overdosed. It's not a medication, just a precursor. Potassium chlorophoride is intended to be a more potent version that works without having to overdose someone on it; giving it more features kind of misses the point.

"The way medicines work isn't going to change significantly, except maybe for psychiatric drugs, in the time between now and the setting. That's the reason we combine multiple drugs in real life instead of just coming up with new ones on the fly. To have completely new ones would require basic biology to change, which won't happen in the span of 442 years. New medications will probably do stuff we don't have medicines for yet, or be better versions based on the old ones, not completely obsolete current medications to the extent that they would be considered 'ancient', as described by the PR." That's what it's intended to convey. I ran it past multiple people and they said it looked good and wasn't too hard to understand, that's why I phrased it that way. It comes across as dismissive to only respond to that point and boil it down to complaints over 'realism'. The post is written as a direct response to individual points brought up by other people; the quoted point was directed at others' arguments on how modern medications would realistically be completely obsolete by 2462. Calling it unintelligible technobabble is an aggressive response that discourages any sort of discussion, which makes the point of a feedback thread moot. It invites ridicule of others' feedback rather than simply viewing the feedback on its own merit.

To be fair, I would be opposed to "Paracetamol Plus" as well. The alternate names suggested by SadKermit could be good for advanced medications. Also, I don't really mind changes to the psychology chems. We've gone through like, at least three generations of antidepressants, antipsychotics, etc. since 1960, so it would make sense to have completely different ones by 2462. That's the one place our knowledge of pharmacodynamics is spotty enough to justify a complete and total replacement. Obligatory not a psychiatrist either, I only know about this from researching my own IRL prescription.

I second this entirely. Even if you don't think the aforementioned is an issue, it's still bad writing. The premise is, supposedly, that by 2462 these chemicals would have been improved, but all we have to go off of is the name and description. In fact, since it's literally just a rename, they haven't been improved at all. They are exactly as functional as their current counterparts, and we just have to pretend that they're better. Instead, if you want to add new chemical names and get away from current ones, leave them in. Use them as precursors for more advanced iterations. Create a version of oxycodone with less addictive potential, or a version of paracetamol that puts less stress on the liver. The important thing is that these are improved versions of the current drugs, which is shown by virtue of the current drugs being used to create them. The description is only ever visible if you click the seldom-used 'analyse' button in the chemmaster. Building on what I said earlier, the reasons presented for this change (that I've seen) are not valid. Using real-life chemical names is not ethical. This is entirely not true. No one has ever complained to Goon, who have many, many more real-life medicines than we do, that their medicines are unethical. Other IPs use chemical names in even worse ways, like epipens being a speed boost in L4D2. The rebuttal to this was that L4D2 is being satirical with this usage, but that's not correct; L4D2 is parodying action movies, not satirising epipens. No one has been using epipens for speed boosts IRL after L4D2 came out. If you want to argue ethics, there are many other things you could go after before coming to chemical names. We present IRL surgery in a very, very loose manner; you can safely treat someone with arterial bleeding as long as you have a table, a glass shard, some wire, and a cigarette. No one is demanding that we change surgery to use fake tools like "slapcels" instead of scalpels, in case someone suddenly decides they know enough about surgery from a video game to attempt it in real life. You could also say that the functions of a lot of organs are inaccurate; the liver doesn't heal other organs, and the only effect of kidneys until recently was causing toxins when you drink coffee if they're damaged. However, no one has gone into a moral panic and declared that kidneys need to be renamed to childknees or else people could endanger themselves in real life. I also think that this argument is patronising; it infantilises our playerbase, acting as if they lack common sense entirely. SS13 was not intended as a 1:1 simulation of reality. I mean, this isn't true? It was intended as a (mildly) realistic atmospherics simulator, following the ideal gas law and everything, and grew out of that. I have never seen anyone push for changing the ideal gas law or making it so the math doesn't work anymore. Claiming anything follows the "intent" of SS13 is just wrong, since it's changed so much since Exadv1 made it. Medicine will have advanced enough by 2463 that these chemicals would be entirely outmoded. Basic pharmacodynamics (the way drugs get their effect) will not change. Paracetamol will not cease to be a painkiller that is neither an NSAID or an opiate just due to the passing of time. Oxycodone will not cease to be effective for extreme pain just due to the passing of time. You will not discover an entirely new nociception system that requires specialised drugs to block in the time between now and 2462. There is a reason we create things like Ultracet (tramadol and paracetamol, known by some in SS13 as ParaTram) rather than a completely new chemical. Our understanding of pharmacology is sufficiently advanced that any new drugs will likely come from improvements on existing ones or fill niches that are currently unfilled, like safe anti-cancer drugs or anti-Alzheimer's drugs, or treatments for rare diseases. Even if new, more effective forms of these drugs are discovered, just renaming the current ones to reference "ancient paracetamol" is not sufficient to convey that. To be frank, it's bad writing; telling instead of showing. The proper thing to do would be to keep the current drugs and add more advanced versions with different names. Take hydroxychloroquine, for example; it's a safer form of chloroquine, but it's still made using chloroquine as a precursor. Chloroquine didn't just stop existing when hydroxychloroquine was discovered. This way, you could keep the drugs that are already well-known while still being able to add new versions with extra features in the future. Related to the previous point: If we base drugs off of real chems, we can't give them additional effects in the future. You shouldn't be basing name changes off of hypothetical future changes. If we need to change the name to reflect a mechanical difference, that mechanical difference should be more than just hypothetical. You can follow the kelotane/dermaline or alkysine/mannitol model with this: Keep the basic version, and add an advanced version with new mechanics. That way, it makes sense that it would have additional effects. It puts everyone on a level playing field with chem names/this only hurts people who already use out-of-game medicine knowledge to help them in-game What. People have been using most of these chemical names for years in SS13 and many people have experience with them out of the game, too (I'm sure most people have taken paracetamol as a fever reducer or painkiller). This point essentially admits that it would be a detriment to many and a boon to none, so why is this anything but an argument against it? I'm sure I missed some, but this covers most of the points I've seen presented in favour of this PR. Also, pre-emptively: I am not a medical student. I am not a doctor. I am not a chemist. I am not an EMT. Lots of people tend to imply that the reason I am for/against certain changes to Medical is because of extensive knowledge of IRL medicine, which, while flattering, is entirely incorrect. I have a first aid certificate. That's all. I'm a loser compsci major who almost dropped out of high school several times, with no formal medical education. The entire reason I know this stuff is because someone claimed my character's skillset was unrealistic so I set out to learn it out-of-character to prove that it wasn't.

Editing the thread after you've gotten a lot of feedback, without responding to it, to introduce yet another highly contentious change is a weird and offputting thing to do; doing so without addressing any of the criticisms or questions levied against the two already-present changes, or even an engagement with the thread beyond "edited to add another change to the OP" is even worse. I agree that Medical needs to change somehow, but I don't think this is the way to go about it.

I think it waters down the difference between surgeon and CMO, personally. Maybe push CMO up to 40? Honestly, anatomy is mostly similar across the species--organs are somewhat different, and arranged differently, but having to memorise a couple more mnemonics is not too much more on a surgeon's plate, and hardly worthy of five years extra schooling. Instead I would argue that you'd specifically learn to generalise across (almost) every species, focus more on that, and then spend less time on the individual species, instead just filling in the gaps of what the general teaching missed. Every species except the Vaurca have a closed circulatory system, with lungs or lung-like organs. They still have some form of oxygen-binding protein in their blood, they still have bones, ligaments, tendons, arteries, etc. The biggest differences are also rather small; organ placement rather than function, combined/reduced functionality, etc. It doesn't take five years to learn about Skrell gill-lungs or the differences between the lobes of the human and Unathi livers; in fact, such deep knowledge would likely be considered the role of a specialty surgeon, while the surgeons on-station would be performing life-saving surgeries or working to the best of their ability despite having incomplete knowledge, and then sending them for proper aftercare off-station. Not every IRL surgeon is a cardiothoracic surgeon, or a hepatic surgeon, or a renal surgeon, or a neurosurgeon, but in 2462 it would be trivial to get at least the cursory knowledge needed for a surgeon to perform lifesaving interventions. Even then, as it stands there aren't major differences for any species other than Vaurca, which are a relatively new species. In fact, a five-year difference would mean nothing, since it's been barely five years or less since Vaurca were discovered. Instead, we should focus on the biotechnology/sci-fi aspect of our setting. In 2462, we already have neural suppressors, laser scalpels, and the incision management system; why not a surgical HUD to help surgeons adapt better to variant biology? I mean I'd be up for coding a surgical HUD or something in order to explain/facilitate that; some kind of MediHUD alternative with special organ overlays. You'd still need to be a surgeon to be able to do surgery; cutting with a scalpel is hard to do correctly, and is a lot more than just "slashy slashy". You'd still have to be able to perform the same basic steps of making an incision through the skin and fascia, clamping and ligating vessels, exposing the organ, actually doing surgery on the organ (especially in a timely manner, since this whole time you're often cutting off blood flow to the surrounding tissue), then suturing the wound closed correctly (which is a LOT harder than 'stitch it shut'). This way, surgery would become much more about skill and technique rather than about rote memorisation of anatomy. Yes, knowing anatomy on a deep level would help, but it wouldn't be the mainstay of surgical training and would actually be able to make medical schooling much more efficient. No megacorp wants to have to shell out for their surgeons to learn twelve different mnemonics for each species' organs when instead they could just buy a license to use Zeng-Hu SurgiHUDs instead. OH, and Trauma Physician can just go. The entire Medbay is structured like an emergency department; if you're not a competent trauma/emergency physician why are you even here? Go work on a planetside hospital if you want to sit back and only handle appointments or whatever. Even in real-life this is becoming a reality, with the increase in mass casualty incidents leading to all-hands-on-deck triage scenarios. Trauma Physician's entirely redundant, but honestly I could even see an argument for removing the Medical Doctor title and replacing it with Trauma Physician. Sure, you can roleplay a checkup or something, but it's not your primary job; you're working in an emergency department. This adds to my point; Trauma Physicians make the most sense to be on the station, while the general Medical Doctor title makes it sound like you'll be making appointments and sitting in an office waiting for lab results to come back. The only things you'd need to treat that aren't considered trauma are radiation injuries and poisonings (including overdoses), and to be frank radiation injuries would probably be considered trauma in 2462 as an eventuality of working in space. This is kind of a non-sequitur. Residents are NOT medical students. Interns and residents are fully-fledged MD-holders who could work in private practice if they so desired, but they're instead choosing to specialise in a certain department or role. I hate how mechanics conflates medical students, medical interns, and medical residents when there is effectively a world of difference between them; yes, some people call residents interns, but that's not exactly correct, and medical students are NOT medical interns. Interns are in their first year of residency, while residents are more advanced, and BOTH have medical doctorates. Medical students are, well, students, in medical school. I can't argue against this, however. Frankly, it seems more like the nebulous and nonspecific "Medical Doctor" title is the issue; why would a megacorporation employ what are presumably general practitioners on a station that has had no shortage of trauma injuries in its past, even if you consider only canonical events? Invasions, tanks, hivebots, biohazards, space carp, mining and elevator falls, and so on provide a countless number of reasons for them to primarily employ Trauma Physicians as opposed to GPs/"Medical Doctors".

Thanks everyone for your feedback, after mulling it over for a while I've decided that this application was premature and I will most likely reapply later, working on various projects and contributions to the game and community in the meantime. I'll ask to leave this open for any final comments from Lore People and such. The return of Hgluk Tzqi's Basilisk will have to wait... For now.

I really, really messed up explaining this, thank you for pointing that out. Looking back on it it definitely comes across as "Aurora's awful, but Hestia's worse so I guess I have no choice," which is absolutely not what I meant. I talked it over with someone and I think that a more accurate way to put it would be this: I thought Aurora was shit but it took Hestia to put things in perspective. Aurora is imperfect but its flaws, wherever they may be, are not insurmountable and they're nowhere near as bad as I thought they were. I'm not going to say Aurora has no flaws. I am going to say that Aurora's flaws are not malicious, and they're not insurmountable. I used to think that they were. Hestia showed me what a server would be like if that were actually true, which made it clear that not only was Aurora better, but that I had actually, genuinely misjudged it by assuming malice where there was none. I think I can safely say that I made a mistake describing Hestia as the "dark mirror" version of Aurora. More accurately, it actually has what I incorrectly believed Aurora's issues to be. With it as a reference point, I can now accurately judge Aurora and say that my assessment of it was incorrect. I left, originally, because I thought I was being (maliciously) ignored and made redundant (something that did actually happen later on Hestia). A lot of that was due to Resi's use of my Glorsh lore without my permission, which we've since talked about and mended some fences over, both acknowledging mutual fault in what happened (though at the time of that resolution I blamed a lot of it on Aurora as a whole, rather than the culture of Aurora at the time, which was influenced by the people who were there at the time, influencing the people who influenced the culture of Aurora--hey this is actually a lot like that whole spiral thing I talked about in my essay). There were also some other issues complicated by me, again, taking criticism of my demeanour and actions as malicious attacks on the rationale, opinions, and beliefs that informed them. Specifically I interpreted being told to be less abrasive (a valid criticism and something I've tried to do recently) as being told not to disagree with people at all and to just fall in line, which in retrospect is absurd; the current Skrell lore team proves that you can disagree with people and criticise their lore without being an asshole to them. I'm not here because I've exhausted all my options, or anything. If I just wanted to feel important or have power or something I'd have stuck with any one of various projects I've made or been working on. I'm working on Aurora (even during my beach vacation, actually) because I find it fun. You guys make it fun. You're, all things considered, pretty chill and allow for a lot of really interesting and cool things when it comes to lore and mechanics; a big one I can point to that I did is makeshift chemistry. It's a weird mechanic (and still kind of riddled with bugs that I need to fix, oops) but it's a neat and unique one, and you guys chose to add it. Instead of being super-serious and no-fun-allowed (the common accusation against Aurora), you guys choose to add a lot of weird but fun stuff and make it all work together cohesively. It may not be completely super-serious, but it's fun, and it works, and it's (mostly) internally consistent. I, honestly, really like that. That's fair, I suppose, given that I can't prove I've changed, I just have to demonstrate it. However, I've been talking with people about Aurora lore stuff since before I left Hestia, and in fact I wrote a bit of (alternate Vaurca history) lore based on Aurora lore while I was there. I also was tempered a lot by working as head dev on Hestia; I had to deal with a lot of stuff (both in terms of job responsibility and in terms of people) and only after unsuccessfully looking for a replacement since mid-March, going through about three or four headmins, being unable to hire any competent devs, and having a host who constantly circumvented me did I give up. Some other things that happened stemming from my time on Hestia, though not directly related, also led to me trying to develop better self-control and conflict resolution skills. This time I wasn't on my own, having several people to help me learn and, yes, to yell at me (deservedly) when I fucked things up. I'm obviously not done learning and improving, and so I still talk with these people regularly; in addition to being my friends they also just, y'know, give good advice. As an aside, I'd like to add that if what I'm saying still doesn't make sense, or comes off as ambiguous or really just not something someone would mean, then maybe talking about it in DMs would be better because I'm better at writing short-form conversations than long-form ones. The longer a conversation segment is, like a message or post, the more you have to anticipate the other person's reaction which is a department in which I'm currently lacking. Writing lore, however, is essentially just writing a note rather than a conversation; you don't need to simulate someone else's thought process and anticipate their future response in order to write lore. I'm still trying to improve at long-form conversations (hence this post) but it would definitely be a lot easier to clarify things when there's not long gaps of time between massive posts to contend with. I actually wrote different sections of this post in different orders, for example I'm adding this specific sentence to the end of this paragraph right after writing the third paragraph, which was written after the last paragraph, so some things may come off as disjointed. While I can try to explain any confusion in this topic, I'd much rather explain in DMs and if you feel it's relevant you could post the conversation in here. I'd also like to thank all of you for giving me a chance to be heard out. To give you I guess some kind of look inside my head: The last time I received criticism like this I definitely took it too personally and it colored my interactions with everyone for the rest of the time I was here. I thought people personally disliked me and didn't want me to be on lore because it was riddled with cliques, not because they had in-good-faith, genuine concerns about my behavior. Ironically, I wound up proving them right. This time, however, it's different. I still had that instinctual gut reaction of "people hate me" but I was able to ignore it and look at things objectively. Does it make sense that Matt hates me and is getting some kind of sadistic pleasure out of trying to publicly beat me down? Of course not. Matt's not trying to criticise me as a person. He's made it clear that he can work and talk with me just fine outside of the context of a staff app, so clearly it's specifically to do with whether or not I'll be good as a member of staff, which is a valid concern. Any doubts about the good faith of the criticism that I had left after that I was able to talk through with someone and completely dismiss. Improvement isn't just a thing that happens. You can't take a break for a few months and be better out of nowhere. It's an active process and one you have to keep at and practice and sometimes you still fuck up and have to pause, apologise, and step back from things until you have a clear head. I thought I could do that before but, for one example, I blew up at VT over an argument when they asked me to calm down because I was acting really unreasonable and I, still acting unreasonable, didn't think I was acting unreasonable.. Later in the conversation I realised I was in the wrong and apologised, but the damage was already done. Being able to actually listen to people and take feedback, even when it seems like something that feels completely incorrect and wrong to me, is important, and I've learned to take that kind of feeling-of-wrongness as a sign that I'm being unreasonable and need to take a step back and think things through objectively rather than as a sign of hostility or malice.

Ckey/BYOND Username: MoondancerPony Position Being Applied For: Skrell Deputy Lore Developer Past Experiences/Knowledge: Former lore team member x2, former developer x2, wrote the (kind-of misexplained, unfortunately) utility function lore, re-did the Clockworks, helped Snakebitten with a lot of Skrellcode and Shellcode and Hellcode, my ideas were used for the current iteration of Glorsh-Omega's lore. Examples of Past Work: My Glorsh-Omega overhaul was ultimately taken, had large swathes of it cut out, and turned into the current Glorsh-Omega lore. The Clockworks were redone by me out of respect for Nebulaflare's lore and characters, which still hold a special place in my heart; Aveo'Kluup-Olesh Ioblakku is a strong reason for my interest in Glorsh and Skrell lore. I also wrote lore for utility functions that got kind-of lost in translation through the lore canonisation app. Additional Comments: Pre-empting the usual question of "why will this time be different than last time/what's changed since then": Hestia. Unironically. I thought Aurora was awful but once I got a taste of how bad a server could actually be I missed Aurora so much. Even if people on Aurora's staff had some disagreements, even some really bad ones, and there were occasionally bad actors, it was never a concerted effort by entire swathes of the staff team to push a malicious agenda. As a note, I've also worked hard on developing mindfulness and self-awareness. I've developed an ability to step outside of my current thinking and recognise that I'm not always thinking rationally which is a good tool to have to de-escalate conflicts. It unfortunately doesn't help me to retroactively solve problems; I am not going to suddenly be best friends with the people I've failed to get along with in the past. The things we said to each other still hurt and I was to blame for at the very least my part in escalating those conflicts. However, I'm not going to let past conflicts weigh down the ship or color my interactions with the team in the future. If it ever does impact my ability to write lore, I'll let Snakebitten help me handle it. Oh, and my essay. It's a bit of a long read.