SilverSZ

Gillian is one of those players where I can't remember a bad interaction with any of their characters. Seeing characters like Rize or Lilith on the manifest (Sec Main lol) is always something that makes me know I'll get at least some enjoyable interaction in the round and I couldn't speak enough on how I have enjoyed the interactions I have had with them across numerous characters over time. As for the application itself. The answers are all the kind of ones I gave on my own application for the whitelist, and personally I can sympathise that it can be hard to not be too hot on the gun or to make a bad call in a situation I know I have as HoS and been spoken too about it. But perhaps given that it might be good to start with playing a less intense head role such as XO or RD like suggested for the trial. And then move into getting back into HoS after getting more acquainted with general command play again. I always found my mistakes as HoS when I was playing it actively came from being overwhelmed and missing key information or feeling pressure to do something when I didn't have too. And playing other command roles with a chance to step back like RD and Captain helped me get a lot better at avoiding that. But, I certainly think just based on RP prowess alone. I'd like to see Gillian get trialed at the very least, after all. The Trial Period does exist to test the applicant and based on my interactions with Gillian I think they would rise to the occasion just fine in whatever command role they choose to play. +1

Personally I'm quite a fan of this idea. Ship to Ship combat for how cool it is and the effort put into it goes woefully underused as it is now for the reasons already stated by Danse and as Danse also says it is likely going to remain that way for a while. I think regardless of even giving people a chance to learn the system so long as someone is willing to take it up and run it on the staff team it would be a pretty good way to make use of a fun and engaging part of our gameplay until it starts seeing more regular day to day use.

I don't believe I've had many OOC interactions with Loorey, at least not that come to my mind instantly. But I have played a good few rounds with their XO with my Captain and I could not say more positive things about their roleplay and general temperament from those experiences. Levine is one of those characters I see where it makes me think "Yeah, I should play Captain this round." I've genuinely never had an unpleasant experience from them IC, they're a delightful character and good role-player. And I do think that IC conduct speaks to the OOC conduct of a player as well to some extent whilst also showing that they know what the expectations for good play should be in-game. Along with the answers given as part of their application. I would be quite happy to see them be given a trial at the very least. +1

I've also, similar to Sycmos. Not had a huge wealth of interactions with Lain. Just some as part of being in the lore team for the short time I was, and with his characters ingame. I think it speaks more though in this case that just those small interactions gave me the solid impression of a very level-headed, well-adjusted, kind and simply pleasant person. Which I think are the exact qualities someone should have for a moderation position. Reinforced by him already being very obviously invested in the server and community through his position as Human Loremaster, which also I think requires many of the same qualities that being a moderator does. I think he would do a great job. +1

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Even putting our personal friendship aside. I like all of the responses and I think you'd make a great synthetic lore writer. +1

Not who I expected to see apply. But life is full of welcome surprises. During my recently ended Tenure I talked with Sycmos about lore including synthlore plenty of times and I have no doubts as to his passion for Aurora's Lorebase and Synthlore in general. Nor would I doubt his ability to conduct himself professionally and, much better than me, actually get stuff done. However I do have some questions. 1: Bioshells, What do you think about them? Do you want to see them added? Is Signalis the best game ever made? 2: In contrast to what Lancer asked, what aspect of Synthlore interests you the least to work on? And if asked to work on it specifically would you be fine with that? 3: Is there any part of synthetic lore that you believe would be better off removed or retconned? Or are there any parts that you think need immediate work in order to improve them? 4: Do you have any ideas or desires regarding cross-species lore? Human Lore is the obvious one here. But any others are also welcome.

Hey, I played as Captain with Sefiya in the round as my Chief Medical Officer. They were communicative, competent and did a good job with everything I tasked them with. Ontop of being a strong roleplayer. I'd be happy seeing them occupy the slot more whenever I end up playing Captain. +1

I'll give this a +1 after playing with their Lyodii officer I found them to be a good roleplayer and don't really see why they shouldn't be given a chance at the command whitelist. OOC bans and warnings shouldn't get in the way of a trial imo, as it's purpose is to filter people out anyway. There's no reason to not give them a shot in my eyes and I think they could do well.

I played a round with my captain, Rose Hortensia, with Loorey as my Executive Officer. They were a very nice, helpful and good executive officer. Involving themselves with both command and the crew and being communicative and able to assist with multiple things throughout the round. I was very pleasantly surprised having not played with the character before and I certainly feel that they make for a great executive officer. +1

I played as my Captain, Rose Hortensia, with Lisek playing as my Commander. Overall, in what was a chaotic and messy round, complete with a security traitor along with multiple others. I think they did very well. They were an interesting character, communicative, involved with the round and with the rest of command and did a good job managing their department and being generally competent despite the circumstances. My one piece of feedback would be to lean on your fellow command more and make use of the tools you have, rather than asking for an engineer over common, mention it over the command channel and let the Interim Chief Engineer or Captain handle that as you focus on your duties. Otherwise, a solid +1 from me.

Lisek is cool, and a good role-player. They hold some of the qualities I believe are most important in a command staff member such as doing their best to make a round enjoyable for people around them and having a good head on their shoulders for managing stressful situations. I have seen both with characters on theirs in interim head positions. I also, as the player of a Zavod CMO. Proudly support a Zeng-hu HoS in return. +1 blah blah, I will prevent them from rescinding their application with my own pressure.

Unlike last time this topic was discussed. I now have a command whitelist, so I would like to comment on it a bit. I've not played the game in a good chunk of time. I think two months thanks to my growing university commitments, and personally. I would consider it a disservice to an event if I were to hop on a play a command character for an event. However, I also haven't really seen the idea of inactive/unplaying command coming back for events to be a huge deal, in the events (4 of them) I observed for the Tajara arc I recognized basically all of the command members involved, though I can't say how it went for the final two that I was not able to attend. I can also say that the Captain involved in the Dreary Futures mutiny for example, would have maintained their whitelist under this new proposal as they had played within 365 days of that event happening and I believe also would not lose their whitelist to a 180 day period but my memory is rusty. I have witnessed some cases of strange command choices or decisions but I don't believe these are due to people stepping away from the server and coming back just to event character, but more merely a factor that not everyone will be an ideal player, for events or otherwise. I don't really think the idea of stripping inactive players command whitelists is bad, but it also would not fix the problems that the OP brings up particularly. Active characters are just as able to make a bad decision, someone who hasn't played in 30, 60, 90 etc days can be just as problematic as someone who hasn't in 365+ I think instead perhaps we need to look at how events are structured and run and how we can nudge and encourage command towards decisions that create a better outcome for everyone involved. As mentioned I'm not against the idea of stripping WL's really, but I think the problem would persist just fine. We do also need to consider every case of this is really a problem. The mutiny occurring was an IC thing and the product of multiple characters IC decisions and lead to very meaningful consequences for many of them, the Captain who was in charge one of them. I don't think something like that is at all a problem but instead a very good display of how interesting our canon events can be and how people willing to accept consequences can affect them and the story of the server as a whole. In terms of more simply bad on an OOC level behaviour, it's hard to say, as this would usually only affect one round but does affect multiple due to how our arcs work. Perhaps the solution lies in changing how we approach treating this behaviour in arcs specifically. In summary. I'm not really for or against the concept of an inactivity strip for head whitelists. I think the issues that have been bought up are much deeper and harder to solve than that and we should focus on discussing them outside of the context of an inactivity strip, as that would be more productive overall towards crafting better events in the future.

I couldn't ask for a better person to work with on the lore team, and I'm sure those same qualities already referenced will carry over into an excellent moderator. +1

Geeves is my friend, as much as the fact he doesn't care about my precious beloved Dominia (Goddess Bless the Empire) wounds me it's something I can get over to say I would be pretty happy to see him get the position of Unathi deputy and his previous tenure is something I see a positive. Especially considering the wasteland is my favourite aspect of Unathi lore as it stands right now. However, I do have some questions. 1: If Dominian Unathi, Ouerea or more Gakal'zaal lore ended up being what you were told to write, would you be okay with that? You mention that you don't particular have much interests for the former two and the latter is something that seems to have slipped under your radar. Are you fine with working on these, or would it be something that would sap your creativity and desire to work on lore if that was the case? 2: Do you have any thoughts on interspecies Unathi lore outside of the scope of the three big ones, being the K'lax, Tajara of Gakal'zaal and humans of Dominia. Unathi are presents on various other planets with Mictlan being a primary example and I know recently you've added stuff regarding the Au'takh communes of Eridani. Are there any other interspecies avenues you would like to explore or expand upon during your tenure? 3: What are your thoughts on the current major players of Unathi lore as a whole, primarily looking at your thoughts on the Hegemony here but feel free to touch on any others as well. Do you think they're in a good spot? Interesting? Boring? Underdeveloped? Would you want to change anything significant during your tenure. 4: Please elaborate on how we get our first canon romance arc.

Hi, First of all I'd like to echo what Brotendo has said already. Trio is a wonderful person to work with on the team, with good ideas and good writing to back those ideas up. In terms of the quality of their character and work I believe they're fully cut out to take a higher position in the team than deputy. However, I also have questions, when else do I get the chance to truly bother my colleagues in a public space other than applications after all. 1.) As president of the Dominia Fanclub and a Unathi whitelist holder myself I must ask if you have any ideas at all for this heavy rework or even removal of Dominian Unathi. I'll make it clear now I'm not even against the idea of removing them as I also feel like the lore for their inclusion within the Empire is lacking in many regards even if I personally enjoy it. You mention already planning to rework them but the question was "Remove or Rework" and as Unathi Lore Writer the power to pursue a removal would be there for you. Would you prefer that over putting the time and energy into reworking something you don't even particularly enjoy? Would you look for a deputy who had a passion to write and work on that sort of rework specifically instead of you having to do so as much? Touching Dominian Unathi in either regard is a big thing that would affect lots of characters and lore, not just Dominian Unathi but also the Humans of Dominia, and we all know there's plenty of those kicking around the Horizon constantly. 2.) Another case of me pressing on what Brotendo already asked you, you mention that you want to get Unathi lore to a point where it no longer needs any major OOC changes. What aspects currently exist that you believe need to be changed in a major OOC way? Obviously you've mentioned the relationship between the K'lax and Hegemony as well as Dominian Unathi but what else is there that you feel needs to be changed in such a way before you can be satisfied with focusing more on the IC development of the species and it's factions instead. 3.) Regarding the last question, what direction do you want to take Unathi lore in an IC manner? Do you want to develop on the state of Moghes? The Hegemony? Wasteland? Off-World Colonies like Ouerea or Gakal'zaal? Inter-species/Inter-factional relations between Unathi/Unathi Factions and those of the greater spur? And is there anything you would in the future like to introduce to the species through IC developments? For example, introducing a new planet as a new colony or a new off-world community in another part of the Spur currently without a major Unathi presence. etc etc. 4.) Finally, the selfish question I always pose on every lore application, is there anywhere or anything in particular you would want to collaborate with the Synthetic team on? Unathi aren't a species with much cross-over with Synthetics and indeed are anti-synthetic in numerous ways. But I wonder if you have any ideas for where there could be point of contact and crossover in the lore, or anything you would like to work on that would require the synthetic teams input and assistance. Thank you for your responses, and I do wish you the best for your application.

Hello, Thank you for applying again however this is going to be another denial of the application. I'll talk section by section. "Why do I wish to play an IPC" - This is fine "What makes role-playing this species different from role-playing a human" - You only really touch on one thing here, which is the prejudice faced by IPC in society, simply mentioning they are better or that they have "robot issues" isn't really a difference in roleplaying. What we really want to see in this section is an elaboration on the things that make an IPC have fundamentally different thought processes than a human, how IPC handle emotions, how they learn and their concept of self-preservation being good examples of that. Without seeing a good understanding of that side of role-playing an IPC I don't think I can approve an application. "CHARACTER SECTION" - The backstory is lacking, in a number of ways such as I don't believe a individual person would hold such a monopoly in Biesel, one of the most mega-corporately dominated planets in the setting, but primarily it's just lacking in telling us about the IPC as a character, it tells us how they came to be and what they are but nothing about it really gives me an impression of them as a character nor any sign of how they would act in accordance to how IPC are meant to act in our lore. The only real character trait I see is the part about Dementia but acting like a human with dementia isn't really a way an IPC should be acting particularly and the quotes section doesn't really make up for this. In future, try and write a backstory that explores what I mentioned should be covered in the "What makes role-playing this species different from role-playing a human" section, how did the different thought processes that your IPC has, by virtue of being an IPC, affect it during it's life and service wherever it saw it. We want to see a backstory that shows how a character thinks and how they became the IPC that they are now, and I don't really see this with your backstory. Finally, as a closing mention. I strongly recommend putting more effort into the spelling, punctuation and grammar of your applications in the future, there's a various mistakes in these aspects throughout the application and it makes it much harder to read and understand the application than it probably should be. Please consider spending more time on this aspect in your future applications. If you have any questions, please reach out to me on discord (Silvie#0624) and ask. I'm more than happy to help with the writing of an application and you can find me in any of the Aurora discord servers.

Whilst in principal I think that elevating the XO to a more official second in command could be interesting and a positive dynamic for the ship I have to disagree with it for the same reasons Deadlantern raised. This change would mean that XO is something above the other heads, similar to how captain is now, and would essentially be Captain on any round without a captain. I couldn't see this working at all with how we allow races such as IPC, Diona, Tajara etc to be XO as they would never reasonably be given such power by the SCC. The reason these species get to be heads is because there will be a Human/Skrell captain above them or they will only be one part of the command council. I suppose if it ended up being that XO could be the second in command without any species losing access I would be in favour but I don't really see that being how it would go.

Faye burnt my crops and salted the earth. That being said they're cool, so it's fine.

Hi, As someone obviously intimately involved in Zulu's original whitelist strip I would just like to say that after that was resolved the process for warning and stripping people of WLs did change inside of the lore team. We now must officially warn people prior to a strip and these warnings are logged, a strip must also be logged in the same way Given that as Zulu said to them it is an example of an unfair punishment without talking to the user I feel it is pertinent to point out that it has changed now since said incident.

I disagree with keeping positive reactions, plainly because people will twist them to be used for negative connotations if they remain and more negative ones don't. Forum reactions are funny, yes. But at the end of the day the community has proven they can't be trusted with them and we should remove them, it really is no loss and I've never seen them used in a way that simply posting "I agree" couldn't change. And in cases where you can't post it's on stuff you also shouldn't be reacting too if you aren't involved. Forum Fiends, It's over.

I quite like the idea actually, whilst synthetic vocal chords exist and I actually use them for a character who would otherwise be mute they serve a very different purpose imo to this idea proposed in that they act as a full remedy and are invisible to an average observer. I'd describe them as analogous to saying your character lost a limb and has a transplanted vat-grown organic one to replace it. The idea of gloves like this seems to me more like having a robotic limb, it's something that helps your condition immensely, allowing you to talk in the same way a robotic limb might allow you to walk or hold things but it's a lot more visible and thusly makes it more interesting and visible for other characters in the same way that a robotic limb makes characters who are missing limbs more interesting than those who aren't along with lots of RP reasons one could want a non-augmented aide for being muted. For example with our cultures that have taboos against augmentation like Dominia. I don't think it'd in some way lead to more snowflakey characters and there's reasons why these gloves would be used, both ooc and ic for mute characters rather than our existing alternatives. I'd personally like to see it added.

I had a brief interaction with their RD during a round and I found them to be a perfectly entertaining and good role-player. Can't comment much on department knowledge because I don't touch research myself but the RP was up to the standards I'd expect of a head whitelistee.