VVipEdout

Can't believe I let this sit for ten days. I've honestly nothing to comment but 'genuinely amazing'; your application hits on every point required and then some more while managing to be fresh and creative. I've no doubt you'll be an amazing addition to our whitelistees, and I hope to see what stories you can tell us in the future. Approved ten times over, will be looking for someone to archive and add your perms right away.

Though the effort put onto changing aspects of the character and going over the Locations/Culture pages is appreciated, sadly the application still doesn't show a good grasp on Skrell lore to the level of being represented on-station; a lack of mention of Federation culture/parental Quya/the genophage/age/psionics, a sudden shift in career uncharacteristic of Skrell specialisation, and the general story resembling the original Tup concept too closely past a change in origins. It's also important to mention that Xrim lore on abandoned laboratories is both under revision due to the history rework, and mentions only hostile xeno-organisms onto the present day. While a good choice for a career xenobiologist, remember that field specialisation is highly important in the Federation, and branching only occurs when a field is considered to be mastered -- typically by older, accomplished academics. You're free to reapply in the future, and we hope to see what you come up with after reading and internalising the lore further. Feel free to use some of the very good applications we've had; specially Omicega's for a military character 'done right'.

Hello! For policy reasons, Skrell lorestaff doesn't accept new Tup characters as of the Warbling arc; the only extant example is a result of grandfathering by a former maintainer. Additionally, there are several concerns that came up while reading your application: Federation culture and views around AI are mentioned as points you're interested in, but the application largely glosses over what they are or what they involve, both in general and toward the character. Age, professional/familiar/personal connections and (specially academic) accomplishments are key to the Federation worldview and major themes for any Skrell. These are also scarce; though a vatgrown by necessity approaches these themes differently, remember an application is meant as proof that you grasp the lore and its themes. Characters born and raised in the JF would not go by 'he/her'. The concept is considered foreign and typically associated with younger Skrell exposed to alien cultures. We urge you to read over the wiki pages again and write another character to address these issues. Additionally, feel free to check out a particularly good example from earlier this year.

Reposting per request. After consideration, we've decided to put out a preliminary set of blurbs as an overview of the current state of the rework; assuming no further changes, these will be displayed in the wiki page after release as part of a collapsible format. Remember that any and all current content of the rework is subject to lorestaff review, and will only be available in full after gathering staff feedback. A huge shoutout to Jade for helping write these and making them not an unreadable plaintext, and remember to ping or DM me for any comments. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ES8alm4mvF3OZCHmLVTKiH0Oq67mbNAYwnJAingoktU/edit?usp=sharing

Verdict time. Your application was fun to read and it shows a grasp for the lore and the general feel of a squid in a creative way, rather than by using a 'safe' concept. I've no idea what's up with the weird comment either, it's up to us to take a concept seriously. Consider the app accepted.

Okay, so. As far as we've read here and in the lore channels, the main issues pointed out have been: Verbosity. The length is off-putting, it's difficult to read, the wording isn't reader friendly. Dryness. Matter-of-fact or not, the text is stiff and emotionless. Skrell exclusivity. The content comes across as unrelatable/irrelevant to other species, making it less usable for roleplay. Watering down. 'Sting' is missing, it's not as punchy as before. The sheer emotional impact isn't there. Synthetic discrimination. The new edition undercuts arguments used by IC actors to be wary/spiteful of AI, whether Skrell or not. Lack of clarity. Ideas are left too ambiguous, themes aren't marked on enough, so on. Humanization. The 'unknowable' aspect is moved away from, knowing internal processes or motivations personifies too much, it's not 'AI-like' enough. These points are all taken into account. Particular ones have jumped out the most to us, particularly ones relating to wording and properly conveying the content, and all of them are influencing a currently in-progress revision. Going forward, we've drawn a preliminary roadmap to improve the history write-up considering feedback: Repetitive, unnecessarily wordy or otherwise useless phrasing is being cut down to condense the actual content in a more readable form. Approx. 950 words have been trimmed by now, hopefully reducing the sheer density of the text. Concepts scrapped in early drafts to shrink the Third Incident's length are being reconsidered along with suggested events, so as to illustrate the conflict with a wider sample. 'Means to ends' and the dangers of AI potential as core themes of Glorsh are being underlined rather than implied. Malice for malice's sake, 'AI Satan', pop culture genocidal AI and so on are not being implemented. We consider the former write-up to be incredibly poor characterization and lacking in nuance. To address the point of the Nlom/'Skrell Only Threat', it is a single means which in any other species may take the form of advanced psychology, media control, brute force, etc. AI in other situations would have found other means to the same end, which will be clarified if necessary. Lore team requested additions, due to their 10 paragraphs of length, are being reviewed to condense the intended message rather than bloat the document with content. If reduced, this will leave space for the former two points to be better implemented. As usual, feedback and suggestions are welcome by myself and @Snakebittenn via lore channels or this thread. Make sure to take the former points into consideration to avoid repetition, and be aware that all criticism is taken into account. Vitriolic comments will be promptly ignored; 'I don't enjoy this' or 'I'd do X and Y' are accepted, attacks are not and make the feedback process more difficult. We're all here to have fun, after all.

It is just the one dice. To repeat, the dice can't be taken by humans for good reason; it's a cultural item you wouldn't reasonably be expected to get for no particular reason as a non-cat. Putting it up as a loadout request is the equivalent of asking to open up the unathi clothes or spacer gear to the general item selection, being the reason for the app.

+1 cool dude good rper even tho i dont really know the species But no, really. It's always been my opinion that a maintainer must be able to be a passable editor, an interesting writer and able to keep a theme all at once, and I fully trust Ven to do this. Though I share the love for dystopian content, Zavodskoi in its current iteration isn't my pick for favourite corplore despite being miles better than >necropolis, and I'm a sucker for storytelling through histories. There's a few questions I'd like to drop off, both out of curiosity and out of custom: 1). Why Zavodskoi? Necropolis has been all over the place content-wise since its inception, and frankly I'd be hesitant to call any pre-rename writing on it good. What do you like about it, and where would you like to take it? 2). What plans do you have for subsidiaries? While none of them occupy a spotlight right now, some in particular are more forgotten than others; Zeng-Hu's spring to mind, with the exception of Bishop, and Taipei Engineering has only really had love recently in the form of the Banshee suits. What springs to mind for subsidiaries, specially the least used ones? 3). Thoughts on Dominia. The recent rewrite has helped massively in gutting out honestly cringeworthy aspects of it, but from Pegasus and before the faction's writing has had a bad history, starting by a proposal literally phrased as 'Space Rome'. What is your opinion on it, and what core ideas should it express?

This falls under metagaming rules, iirc. All roundtypes are meant to be roleplayed the same. Rev is a pain, though. Nobody wants to go through the millionth wage cut gimmick or Racial Tensions Episode 6669 again. The few times something mildly interesting does happen it more often than not falls flat because of a lack of engagement and/or not enough coordination, even if the players themselves are good. Malf dead is one of the best things we've done, that said. No reason rev would be different.

Byond key: vvipedout Discord key: Pan#9369 Character Name: Zoe Helike Item name: adhomian dice Item function(s): It roll. Item description: It's just a single, regular, wooden Suns and Moon dice, painted Moon colours; using the very same sprite, name and description as the usual item. Why is your character bringing this item to work?: Because gambling is fun. How did your character obtain this item: Gifted it by everyone's favourite Zhan assistant, Murrrrrrrhzmanq, after losing on the first toss with a 6-6-6. What value does this item have to your character, and what story does it tell?: It's the conclusion of an odd sequence of events. Helike decides to try out Suns and Moon from a Crevan's public game, goes through a Crevus classic scamming attempt, ends up scamming the dealer accidentally, goes on to win 6 games straight and 2000 credits from a liaison. At this point Helike comes to think of it as a good luck charm, or at least a reminder of good fortune. Whatever other incredibly fortunate events come to happen will also likely be pinned on the dice, too; this is a fresh character, after all. Sprites: It's just the existent adhomian dice. Humans can't take it on the loadout, and for good reason. Additional Comments: I'd thought to either get a full bag or make the dice weighted, but it didn't feel proper. Just the single normal dice feels most fitting.

'Trade Zone' is thematic for corphell, 'Federation' by itself tells us practically nothing, 'Corporate Federation' is a lazy compromise. The change adds onto the lore's image and there's no reason not to implement it beyond 'but it's good right now!' which isn't much of an argument.

Snippy PR comments aside, the underlying idea is plain mistaken. Real world chemicals let us have a base to roleplay pharmacology from instead of having to play a PharmD and just shrug whenever you're discussing your profession. Made up chems can come later with lore to support them; a whole charter of chemicals being made up leaves us in the water. Sanitizing names out of "ethical concerns" is a losing exercise in a game such as SS13 where horrible harm in very much real world ways is a hourly occurrence, and our target audience isn't Timmy browsing through mom's cabinet to take the funny healy pills from the videogame. And even if it were, what's oxycordine going to distance from oxycodone, to his understanding? But, as has been said in the PR, it's a change that makes gameplay more painful, less intuitive and a relearning for literally anyone who uses the chemistry system. It has also been asked for by nobody besides out of context quotes up in the pull request, and solves no mechanical or roleplay issues. Worse, it creates more of them. If LRP servers are going to do a better job at believability and seriousness than us as far as chemical names go, we're making a mistake.

While the five year increase is sensible, it feels like the fast-and-boring way out of the issue of 'how tf do you know xenoanatomy' and doesn't consider how similar species in the Spur are; conversely, 'it's the exact same' is blatantly false mechanics or not. It's not world ending and yet it feels like a waste of writing. Trauma Physician, though, is not something whose removal I can see justified. 'It's bloat' is purely gamist of a concept, and with the incredible amount of immediately life-threatening traumatic injuries on the Aurora it makes little sense to remove it from an RP perspective. Changes can be motivated for the sake of verisimilitude ideally or for the sake of gameplay loops less so, but both at once and directly contrary to each other in the same PR doesn't just work.

Hello! Me and Snake have been going over your responses, and we feel you get the general vibe and lore well enough. Your answers to the IPC question are a bit lacking and we'd like to see you go over the Skrell pages some more and hang about in the lore channels, but your application is accepted.

I feel like it's for the best and good for transparency that I reiterate what I've said on Jade at staffcord, here. The gist is that I can attest to Hestia being an incredibly hostile (I'd use toxic, but I hate the word) environment to develop both lore and code in to any capacity. Plagiarism is day-to-day, staff recruitment is scraping the bottom of the barrel as of recently, changes have a tendency to be devolve into 'I am adding/removing this because I want to, fuck the rest' and the turnover is so large twice-retired staff have to return to stop the boat from sinking. Needless to say, this isn't a fun place to work on for any sane person. Despite all this, I can vouch for Jade handling all issues encountered either borne from malice or incompetence with far more patience and goodwill than the other side was willing to give. If there's any questions as to burnout and abrasiveness after this, I'd love to remark that her off-Aurora experience doesn't strike me as that of someone who would end up sitting on the slot for nothing but fights. Unless we're incredibly, laughably bad judges of character, the Skrell team can put their trust in her fully to be both a creative lore writer and a team worker; as no longer present lore staff have demonstrated, having just one of these traits doesn't work out. One doesn't even have to leave the thread to see proof on this, given their essay and the time they've taken to respond to criticisms. As an aside, there are not a lot of people I can name who would want to return after having their work stolen and mangled by a supposed team player, or who've been in the same spot at all. Cooperation is a two way street, and we can't really get to a functional team without being willing to cooperate in the first place. Onto the point of 'inactive and had no projects', the very essay is a massive overhaul project if we were to incorporate it to existent and planned Skrell lore. Not only that, but I distinctly remember her IPC lorestaff application as touching upon the nature of positronics beyond the expected robot tropes, and an alternative Vaurca history document which had been floating around. To repeat, this doesn't strike me as someone who would end up occupying a spot for nothing, even if they hadn't gone through the effort of a detailed application essay and sitting down to respond to whatever issues are brought up. Nobody else springs to mind when I think about available, innovative writers you can approach who would want to work with the Skrell team.