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BYOND key: NodNodNod Character names: A LOT. Kira Fairbanks Yeva Petrova Means of Production Outlook of Whimsy Conner Vanleer Valiant Bulwark of the Law SNDI Customer Support (AI) -Others... How long have you been playing on Aurora?: First joined on April 12, 2017, according to records. I feel like it's been longer though, but I'll trust the record on it. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: For the most part, to move a character's narrative forward - but also to branch out and try different things, and because it seems fun. Why did you come to Aurora?: It's been so long, I don't know why. Probably because it was high RP if I had to guess. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Yarp. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? None! Somehow. Yeah, I'm surprised too. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about: Roleplay is assuming a role and playing it out. Yep. That's it. But wait, there's more! It's about the story, about enjoyment, and about a collaborative storytelling effort and producing a narrative that everyone can at least be content with, but hopefully that everyone will enjoy. There's no 'winner' or 'loser', but I'd certainly be lying if I said I didn't feel damn skippy whenever I frag-and-bag an antag, or something that my character is doing works out - but it doesn't always, and that's fine too. I'm kind of rambling at this point and going off on a tangent, but essentially, what it boils down to, is roleplaying should be about fun. If it's not fun, what's the point? What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: Heads of Staff have multiple purposes, both IC and OOC, but the chief purpose that I think a Head of Staff has from the OOC perspective is the IC ability to help drive a narrative for a round. They exist as liaisons for departments to other departments and to Central Command, or with other certain actors of nefarious intent. I don't think they're in any way required for a round to progress, but I do think they help move things along, keep certain departments focused on certain things (or from going a little overboard on other things), and the like. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: To drive a good narrative, ultimately. A lot of what I'm going to say here is elaborated upon in the previous question, so I'm not going to get overly verbose for the sake of not being redundant - but I will address how I would strive to uphold the responsibilities of a whitelist. I'll keep things entertaining and provide interaction for other players' characters, especially as an Eridani rep. There're numerous Eridani-aligned characters on the station at this point, and I'll do my utmost to include them in gimmicks or interactions, as an antagonist or a standard crewman. Naturally, it won't be limited only to Eridani folks that can interact with my character. She'll be available to anyone interested in discussing any topic that she can help with. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career? Currently, Tau Ceti is far less turbulent than it was in the past - and in the past, that played into how my character acted, being that she is a Sol Citizen. During the incident with Frost, she was under constant fear that she would be deported. And then Frost actually came to the station! Fairbanks was always an ATLAS supporter, but less of a... human supremacist, and more of a 'humans first' type person; looking out for her own species in a rather dangerous time (relatively, anyway!) to be alive. With potential for war looming and all that, it ultimately left a bit of a bad taste in her mouth and she left for a time to work in Eridani space. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Initially, I plan on my ISD character, Kira Fairbanks, moving from an EPMC contractor to a corporate liaison, with the reasoning being their lengthy track record of working with both NT and Eridani in their employment history, and as such, they should be able to effectively communicate and deal with both entities. Later, I may branch out into a Chief Engineer, but I don't think I have much interest in other departmental heads, except maybe CMO at a very later date. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: As mentioned above, Kira Fairbanks is the character that I plan on shifting from ISD to Corporate Liaison for Eridani's PMCs. She has a long track record of working with both companies and is on good terms with both, including personnel in command positions within NanoTrasen, which is ideal for someone that will be in such a position. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I don't like to rate myself. I just try to provide a good time to people I'm with and do what makes sense, without really resorting to the powergamey or metagamey techniques. I guess I'll just answer the question with "pretty damn good." Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Of course. Have you familiarize yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yep. Extra notes: I absolutely hate filling out applications and put them off as long as I can, only doing them when I really want something - so take that into account with this. I really want it, I'm really excited to add to a round with what I hope to provide with it (as I like to think I do/have done with my Diona whitelist), so.. yeah. There ya' have it. Also! I'm active around 0100-0700 CST, so that's something to maybe keep in mind. I try to play during more normal hours on my days off.

The worst I've witnessed from the Jawdats (I don't remember which is which, but it's when both are on) is one of them doing something utterly stupid and screaming for help from the other one and playing the victim when they caused the problem in the first place. But.. I'd always considered that an IC thing that would very quickly get them both fired from sec/command roles if you filed an IA complaint and not really an OOC issue. That's pretty much all my input I have on this.

If we collectively want this to stop, we could probably do with mentioning it to the player printing a trillion pizzas, rather than altering the machine so that that one player can't do that one thing. The player is just likely to find another method to assert themselves on the round that others may find just as annoying. It's ahelpable if you believe that someone is making an OOC meme of things, and modmins ask players to do this when they see it so that they can enforce the rules. I think that changing the game's devices mechanically to try and alter behavior isn't the best approach; the machine is not the problem, it's just one way the problem manifests itself. This. 100% this. This is a player issue more than anything else - and it's not even an issue that's really affecting anything severe in the round.

But if they start making commands that result in loss of productivity, they should have a good explanation for why to the Captain (or someone even higher up). This may not be reflected in-game, per se, but it is entirely logical to assume that they would eventually be called on to explain why they told their surgeon to stand at arrivals when his work area in in an operating room.

"A CMO can't order their surgeons to do stupid shit, but a HoS can order them to do stuff relevant to their job. The HoS is the only head of staff with any power." I guess I'm not done here. Can you explain what you mean by this? I'm not sure how to respond to your, what I assume to be, attempt at paraphrasing what I wrote.

I'm okay with this. I hadn't ever considered it enough of an issue to actually make a complaint about it, but Bloke is consistently noticed by myself and generally not in good ways. If there's going to be more effort to be a more reasonable and realistic IPC with quirks, as opposed to a meme that 'learns from what it sees' but only (from my experience) learns the stupidity that gets witnessed, then that's cool.

No. They can't, to the same degree that the Head of Security can. They cannot tell a surgeon to go patrol the halls. Well- they can, but they should be able to defend their action when it gets challenged and brought up to the Captain that the CMO told one of his surgeons to go patrol the surface instead of be ready in medical. It's apples and oranges to compare the HoS and any other department head. I'm not implying other department heads don't have power, but I'm saying that they don't have nearly as much command over the individuals within to do things. Security is across the station. Research is generally in research, medical is generally in medical, et cetera. Calling my pointing out of taking something to an absurd level a fallacy is silly. Stop. You were 100% being absurd and you admitted it yourself. You're doing an even worse job of convincing now. This was never about other departments, nor about the hilarious title of Captain-Commander that you're, seemingly, fond of. That aside, I'm not being rude - this isn't me being rude in the slightest - it's me trying to help you formulate an argument on something other than mostly opinion and hyperbole. If I hurt your feels, I apologize. But my point has been made and I'm done with this thread. People may draw their conclusions from what I've refuted about the original points.

Invoking the logical fallacy of reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to absurdity, does not credit your case. I would advise you to attempt to put forth a better reasoning if you want to convince me that Commander is a bad name for the person in command of security on the station. On that note, I'll go ahead and respond to your absurdity: the Head of Security can command his guards where to go and patrol. The Chief Medical Officer cannot command his surgeons to do anything to the same degree that the HoS can command his men, nor can the Research Director. The only ones that can plausibly get away with that other than the HoS are the Captain, since the Captain is the final authority on the station and his word is, for all intents and purposes, law - even if it means telling a scientist to work on something he's not quite qualified to do or to stop work entirely, and the Chief Engineer, since he may wish to direct engineers in a crisis (not unlike the HoS) or to establish patrols to keep up maintenance (which, while unorthodox, isn't entirely unreasonable.)

He is literally in command of the ISD. As far as your points, let's hit 'em one-by-one. Point 1: You are correct. He is not a military officer. He is simply in command of the ISD on the station. Ohshit, I said command. Point 2: I'm not really sure what point this point is trying to make, actually. Nobody of note has ever called the ISD a military. You might get away with calling it paramilitary, but that's stretching it. Point 3: You're right. There is a difference. However, you've refuted part of your own point by explaining your point. Nobody should have seen any real conflict if they have a military background in the current timeline, to be completely honest. Which means that, despite having been conditioned to be military-minded, they can (and will) transition fairly easily into a civilian workforce. They are disciplined individuals for the most part, and just because training from the ISD is likely to not be as 'hard' as the military's basic training does not mean that people will fail to learn regulations and proper uses of force. Soldiers are actively informed of proper use of force and rules of engagement as well as minimizing collateral damage in today's military theaters. Point 4: This is 100% opinion. I'm not going to even attack this point, as there's no purpose. Point 5: This is your point 4 going into overdrive. Stop. Burn in heck if you can accept four other titles other than commander when he is literally in command of the ISD on the station.

Being the person that was welded in the locker, and later released by the warden because of the security officer being at fault initially, I can say that I had not heard a single time where Bloke was ordered/requested by security to weld me in a locker. I would be very interested in the logs of that round, to see if they did, in fact, make that request. It's possible that I missed it, but again, I was watching chat because I was involved in it so heavily. It's also fairly meme-worthy to weld someone in a locker mid-combat, but I suppose that's something that should be fixed via game mechanics where welding takes several seconds to accomplish instead of being an insta-click thing. A second incident involving myself and Bloke on a different character was where I was dragged into a null-grav holodeck and held in the middle where I couldn't move, and subsequently beaten into pain crit and given a shattered skull because I "touched the gravity and his blonde friend had been seriously injured by gravity" (this is a paraphrase of what I was told by sleepy wolf later on, I cannot recall the exact words, but I believe it was said in discord). Overall, I don't have a problem with an IPC being quirky, but I do have a problem with meme-like activity and actions that equate into overt violence and potential murder of other crewmen. Bloke, as he exists, is far too quirky to exist on a NanoTrasen facility. It is beyond quirk most of the time and borders on what would be considered, if it were a human, to be sociopathic or mentally retarded, which obviously would restrict employment. But maybe I've just seen the bad and none of the good simply by chance.

I believe my incident to report is the same as Sonic's - yesterday, Reyn was playing a scientist (Faith Basinger) and was basically acting like a security officer, chasing down suspicious people and behaving in a manner that was very.. hm. Not sure how to put it. Essentially, they seem to not be able to play anything other than security-oriented characters, which raises red flags with me as well. I believe they were even trying to tell security how to do their job in a few instances when it was hardly appropriate, as well as having their character jump in the middle of situations that security was dealing with.

Or just make it take a few seconds of channeling to turn on? I think that'd be decent. You begin to initiate the startup procedures.

Not a terrible idea, actually. Perhaps every time he respawns, it gets easier to detect where he's storying his phylactery, as well?

Great suggestion, security can make or break a round, and - /thread

OH BOY. A fellow Old Moonguardian. And a fellow Old Gmod Serious RPer. That's Cool. Thanks for the support and the input. As for your question, Rapid Descent's knowledge comes from its origin - the Epsilon Ursae Minor shell. It is known for its stellar (heh pun) engineering knowledge due to the shipyard within the system. Don't go to Moonguard. It's bad now. Also Gmod is bad now. It was kinda bad then, but it's really bad now.

BYOND Key: NodNodNod Character Names: Kira Fairbanks (most common), Yeva Petrova (second most), Albrecht Meyer (third most), others less often. Species you are applying to play: Dionaea What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): N/A Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yarp. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question Why do you wish to play this specific race: I won't lie - it's a mix of a 'spur of the moment' thing, and a lingering general love of the species because it's simply so unique and different from what else exists. The lingering love of Dionaea finally manifested enough when people began talking about it in Discord that I thought to myself, 'Hell, I may as well try.' The only reason I haven't applied for a whitelist before is because I've always thought of them as being, to be blunt, a pain in the ass and a lengthy process - but that seems to be something that is not an issue here, whereas on other servers where I'd looked, the process seemed entirely too daunting and the communities a little.. clique-ish? I'll say clique-ish. Tangent aside, I want to play a Dionaea because it looks like something that would just be all-around enjoyable to roleplay as. It's vastly different from anything I've portrayed before across any number of settings, and that's the appeal of Dionaea (and potentially Skrell at a later date) over Unathi or catbeasts. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: I don't even know where to begin with this one. I could more easily identify how they're similar, but then this would end up being a one sentence explanation and that won't work. I guess for starters, the Dionaea aren't exactly 'individuals' like one would think. They're conglomerates of nymphs - which are the individuals - that form together to network their intelligence, essentially. And the kind of scary thing is, they can keep networking larger and larger. Which apparently scares the hell out of the Skrell, due to the fact that they have standing orders to completely destroy any 'singularity'-class form that they may ever encounter because of the risks of having that much thought-power united. Going back to what makes them different from humans, it's more than just their individuality as grouped beings that sets them apart. It's their whole way of life and living. They don't really 'eat' food, though they do cannibalize their own dead, but instead rely on light radiation like a standard plant. They reproduce like plants, too; seeds are released and will find relatively fertile ground to latch onto and grow. As they grow, they form their basic building block: the nymph. The nymph has no real defined organ structure or anything like a human has. This is so that they may unite more easily with other nymphs to benefit by growing and learning. Which brings me to yet another important difference. Their knowledge is stored not entirely unlike digital storage, in terms of data amount. That's pretty damn wild! I'm really not entirely sure where else to go with this, because as I said, it's easier to list how they are similar than to go through and basically restate everything about Dionaea, since there's so scant few things that can be compared to humans. Character Name: Rapid Descent Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs A small group of nymphs from the Epsilon Ursae Minor shell, Rapid Descent adopted their name the instant they broke from the shell in their collective decision to explore and learn - not unlike what other Dionae had done in the slightest. Their name was chosen because it made sense at the time as they stowed themselves away during a cargo vessel's stop at the system's renowned shipyard, when they were in such a 'hurry' to get on-board that they actually fell down the ladders so that they could more quickly hide themselves away in a cargo compartment, lest they get spotted and kicked off. The plan worked and Rapid Descent found itself in a NanoTrasen chartered cargo vessel. Upon reaching the destination, the dimly-lit cargo compartment had resulted in a malnurtured state and a lethargic, sickly disposition. The crew, thankfully, was less concerned about the stowaway and more concerned that it looked like it was about to die, and so they brought it out into the well-lit landing bay at a central supply port where shipping came and went at all hours. It just so happened that NanoTrasen, always on the hunt for cheap labor, had offices on the hub and had a desire for skilled engineers that would work under such conditions. Rapid Descent's paperwork process was started and sorted within days and thus, it began its dream goal: exploring and learning more and more. What do you like about this character? I enjoy Rapid Descent's desire to 'go fast' in less-than-orthodox ways, and I can potentially see it continuing with such practices on the station. Riding a MULE or driving a cargo-tug for no real reason is not an unlikely choice for Rapid Descent. Really, just the thought of Dionaea even considering the option of 'fast' amuses me, and the mental image of one falling down a hole because it's 'quicker' makes me smirk. Despite its desire to go fast, however, it is still remarkably slow in both speed and speaking. How would you rate your role-playing ability? Ehh. I don't really like to toot my own horn, but I guess I'd put it around an eight or nine out of ten. I never break character and I seldom play in a powergamy manner, and even when I have meta knowledge, I try not to use it in my interactions. Which, obviously, is hard when you know something. I certainly don't carry IC grudges over OOC. I could probably improve on a few things, but I'd say we all could improve. Notes: Well. I've been RPing for.. uh. I dunno. Well over a decade. I played WoW RP back when Moonguard was young and not... y'know, what it is now. I've been on retail and private servers, even serving as a GM on one of the larger and more well-known servers, where I primarily dealt with investigating metagame / exploiting of PvP / etc. I've been on Gmod RP (not dark RP, but serious RP servers, as awful as Gmod is/was), and I can honestly say I've never had anything as interesting to portray as a Dionaea, which is a large part of the reason that I want to do it. It's actually new and unique to me, which is rare to find after so long. On another note, despite my lack of posts, I've been around for a minute or two. I just don't really post much since I have no reason to. I do have one question, though. Dionaea don't feel pain, right? Because if they do, then I may need to rework the backstory - but I'm under the impression that they don't feel pain in a traditional sense.