Sniblet

I still don’t understand how you can unironically say this after prosthetics and glasses have been brought up so many times. Can there be no acceptable method in your mind for a mute character to try to communicate? If not, what makes a method acceptable vs not? If so… huh? If this thread were suggesting adding prescription glasses, would you still dislike the idea for circumventing accessibility requirements? If not, what’s different? If so… I don’t know where to begin? By now all I want is to know what you’re thinking, because all I know for sure is you don’t like the gloves, that you believe the gloves would be boring, and that I’m missing your point. I assume that your concerns are entirely OOC. I assume that you believe the gloves would be, in total, bad for the game. I’m not entirely closed to discovering that I may be wrong and stupid, but I can’t begin to reach any kind of conclusion with you if I can only engage with your argument by filling in the parts that haven’t been made clear to me on my own.

Okay. I’m sorry. Take two, with less frustrated sarcasm. >You actively subscribe to playing a disabled character That’s true in the sense that often, when you create a character with a particularly memorable and inflexible trait, you can’t retcon it. However, I don’t see how this precludes the option to create and play a less-disabled character (prosthetic as opposed to amputee), or play out an IC transition from being fully mute (amputee) into wearing some cool gloves (prosthetic). It’d be like playing someone who can’t afford glasses (let’s pretend they’re really expensive) for a while, then buying some shitty glasses that don’t really get you up to normal as a hard-earned “first step” to not being nearsighted. That’s exactly the plan for my mute character. I’m not sure if people just aren't considering that this kind of arc is possible, but part of my frustration in this thread comes from the implication that it’s worthless. >There is a plethora Few reasons. 1. Why not one more? 2. IC, they’re all implants: either synthetic vocal chords (only useful if the larynx is what’s defective) or fluff augmentations. And I think that’s literally it for speech disabilities. There are a few IC reasons to avoid these: cost, safety, body purism, a lack of an accurate diagnosis making addressing the issue directly impossible… 3. A partial, visible fix, with clear remaining mechanical disadvantages, is more interesting to play (with) than “I got some made-up implant yesterday and can talk literally perfectly once I’ve had a bit more practice! It’s over! My character’s gimmick is dead!! :).” Refer to my first response paragraph.

There are a lot of jobs where communicating and doing things at the same time is a strict requirement to working well. Security officer is certainly one of those jobs, as I indicated myself. Why are we ignoring the rest? Is a machinist with sign-to-speech incapable of work? A reporter? If you suffer from a disability or life-altering injury you CANNOT try to overcome it. There is NO WAY that any realistic character would EVER want to be as close to normal and functional as possible. You must either be FULLY mute or NOT mute. NO middle ground exists, and attempting to depict such a thing would be BORING and BAD. *me ignores synthetic vocal chords, hearing aids, cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs and organs, prescription glasses, people RPing their way out of being mute because OOC they can literally just decide to stop with basically any IC justification It seems like there was some mute character boom a year or five back which led to a lot of cringey characters being made? That's sad and all but it has nothing to do with adding a new optional loadout item now. If you just don't want people to play mutes, amend the accessibility requirements to ban them from everywhere with no qualifier for assisted speech. It won't be IC realistic, but oh well?

Typing is less convenient than signing for someone fluent

Mute-with-sign-readers doesn't fit snugly as a speech impediment or a heavy speech impediment, but I think it could fit somewhere between. It's not on the linear scale of "how good can you talk" because the TTS is perfectly clear and understandable, but isn't always effective. Here's where it fails: Severe electronic/electromagnetic interference disables your speech. Talking into a radio is possible, but very inconvenient. Talking while your hands are occupied is not possible. Talking while wearing other gloves is not possible. While fluent signers can rattle something off pretty fast - faster than typing - it's not as fast as real speech. Here's a review of every job not currently open to mutes and how/if they're disadvantaged significantly by being assisted-mute. Command positions are not being considered. Bridge crew: 2, 3, 5 Security officer: DQ'd by 1, 2, 3, 5 Warden: 1, 2, 3, 5 Investigator: Works - assuming they're playing as investigator, and not a better-trained officer - someone doing arrests and handling crises hits 1, 2, 3, and 5 Scientist: Works Xenoarchaeologist: 1 Xenobiologist: Works Xenobotanist: Works Physician: 3, 5 Surgeon: 3, 4, 5 Pharmacist: Works FR: 1, 2, 3, 5 Psychologist: Works - while they may suffer due to lack of tonality, this doesn't make them nonfunctional, and there's always using your face Engineer: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Atmos tech: 3, 5 Reporter: Works Shaft Miner: Works - given that shortwave radios pick up voice from your pocket even in vacuum, 2 can be dismissed here Machinist: Works I could argue that 1 isn't a valid concern considering that, for many people who are allowed into any position onboard, severe electromagnetic interference disables their life.

Well uh This is Ceti Basic, not English. Basic and TCSL are both designed languages and could have been made to correspond better than English to ASL, and if not, that's a player issue that exists regardless of whether these gloves exist. I don't know what cringey characters we're talking about. Cringe is a player issue that exists regardless of whether these gloves exist. There are simple ways to design around accidental activations, like a "start reading" gesture and an on/off switch.

I was torn between proposing this as a custom item for myself and just putting it here, then realized the only reason I was thinking about it as a custom item was because that forum was less crowded. A Gloves and Handwear item that interprets anything the wearer does in sign language and repeats it in spoken Basic. Ideally, this would be done in a way that causes runechat above the wearer. It'd also be nice to have an on-off switch like other worn electronics. It can just use the electronic gloves sprite. I'd be interested to see this item and functional substitutes for it addressed in the job accessibility page. Item name: sign reader gloves Item description: A pair of gloves covered in small motion sensors and gyroscopes, capable of reading a wearer's gestures in TCSL and repeating them out loud. Surprisingly breathable. Shoutouts to Lillian Nyström and Jill N1luz

Since it achieved sentience about 6 months ago, and has spent all that time until very recently either in the tunnels of the Hidden Queen’s hive or in her VRscapes, Suth hasn’t had the chance to develop much of a nuanced political perspective. It has what it grew up with: a healthy distrust of the C’thur, a healthy instant fight-or-flight terror of the Lii’dra, and a sort of smiling disappointment in the K’lax for abandoning the Bezzzt Hive. The Horizon is THE PLACE TO BE. Obviously there’s nowhere better in the entire galaxy for it to spend its time, or it wouldn’t be assigned there! Horizon is where it’ll do all its science and learn all its… thingzzz! Again, six months of sentience, so there’s not much nuance to Suth’s hobbies. It’s interested mostly in its assignment and a few things separated by just one degree from it. Biology, anatomy - uncomfortable psychoanalysis, maybe structural design. It’s a curious bug and will directly ask many living things to explain how they work.

BYOND Key: Sniblet Character Names: Iphigenia Konstantinou - Karen Stahl - Natascha Marikova - Anahi Avalona - Lilija Larsdottir - Ayla Shanae - Kalini Shanae - Lyric Valana Species you are applying to play: Vaurca What color do you plan on making your first alien character: (RGB 71, 0, 31) Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Most of them! I haven’t looked at settlements and I’ve heavily glossed the history page, but I’ve gone over the broods and biology and main page. So that should be everything an average newborn Vaurca would know. :shrug: Why do you wish to play this specific race: Antag gimmicks firstly, because the Lii’dra are more interesting than Einstein For The 5th Time Today, and Einstein For The 5th Time Today But Now With A C’thur Attached is more interesting than just the humans and two shells. But I also like my weird and robotic characters (psychologically robotic, not necessarily made of steel), and a Viax is basically that without the moaning about having your access nerfed to the ground. An Akaix is further from that, but also lets me play roles I haven’t before, and is still weird enough to be entertaining. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Similar to a synthetic, you are designed. Even if you’re born with “free” will, you were created by an intelligent hand with an intelligible goal, and deviating from this purpose is both close to impossible and invalidates the reason for your continued existence. As a Bound, your commitment to your work in the material world is absolute. Failure means you are recycled, which isn't effective because it's scary so much as because there are no living failures. As an Unbound, your absolute commitment is mainly just to the Hive, but you're still made for something. Character Name: Ka’Akaix’Suth Zo’ra Please provide a short backstory for this character: Today is Suth’s first birthday! Or maybe that was earlier this week. There isn’t really any unique backstory to it, because it was born for its work on the Horizon and hasn’t done anything else outside the normal birthing and raising process. Suth belongs to Scay’s brood, and its primary purpose is that of just another information collector. The SCCV Horizon, going where no man has gone before, could meet lots of new exciting lifeforms, genetic catastrophes, or cool new forms of bioweaponry to pull apart and examine, but the regular sophonts going around are, well, also worth studying. As an investigator only dissects people for legal reasons and a scientist isn’t supposed to dissect people, Suth was set up to be an NT surgeon here. For better or worse, that means it's mostly just doing well-intentioned medicine... but there are opportunities still. *enables traitor* What do you like about this character? I’m interested by the idea of a surgeon that prefers to work with the lights off and windows tinted. Pleazzze turn off your flazzzlight, the mazzzter izzz at work. Pleazzze do not demote me. No, thizzz izzz juzzzt zzzo I can zzzee. I have only a rough idea what its personality would look like at the moment besides the usual “funny bug guy.” I imagine it’ll be doing a lot of *eyebrow stuff like asking for blood samples just to keep for later and being a truly merciless destroyer of cubespawn and protopeople. It might also like to uncomfortably dissect other people’s psychology, like “oh, I zzzee I muzzzt have zzztimulated an amygdala hijack with that comment.” How would you rate your role-playing ability? Always learning. I learned how not to self-insert years ago, and nowadays my main focus is instigating interactions and getting people immersed with my characters. Lyric has helped a little with teaching me to emote more. Suth can be my first real weirdo here. *me gazes concerningly at the patient’s open chest cavity! Notes: I’ve been highlighting its mad scientist side, but obviously Suth has enough self-control to be employable, or it wouldn’t be employed. Intruzzzive thoughtzzz are in fashion these days, I think. The Vaurca quote I can't get off my mind: "If you like my work pleazzze give k'oizzz, I am not paid."

I can connect now. That's all, thanks again.

Okay, thank you. I think I'll have an easy time not repeating this. I'm still unable to connect - did you say you were bringing down the ban?

A 24 hour ban is whatever, but a note that someone in the future could use to assume that I'm a serial ERPer is forever - as we've learned with this ban happening to begin with. I also want to be absolutely sure about what I did so it doesn't happen twice. So my mistake was making the warden feel like she might have been violating the technomancer? (she seemed to brush it off, actually, but I can see it still being a bad thing if I did it to someone else)

So, to reiterate: my mistake this time was making the warden look like she was trying to ERP? The thing is, to the person you're saying not to get your dick out too, it immediately creates a situation where your character was implying theirs's was doing exactly that - attempting to undress your character for questionable purposes. This kind of thing sticks. It doesn't matter if it's observers or other players, but this kind of stuff causes issues. People aren't going to want to interact with someone who's trying to 'get people's dicks out' or the like, yeah? It's really just the kind of thing that gets cemented onto someone's reputation in a really bad way. I do not believe you were being malicious, or attempting to do that. I don't know of anyone who actually saw it that way. I was distracted once the PMs started, of course, but I don't think anyone took, or any reasonable person could have taken, my comment as an actual accusation. It's evident that you, at least, didn't think she was ERPing. Did deadchat have a different view, or something?

God OK they just replied to the ban appeal Sorry peppermint!! Can we have this talk here though, I still think you're acting on bad info

Moved from this ban appeal thread because it looks like I was using the wrong section. BYOND Key: Sniblet Staff BYOND Key: peppermint96 Game ID: Last round as of posting, probably Reason for complaint: Extensive details, complete context, etc are in the linked ban appeal. I believe I've been erroneously seen as a serial ERPer and accordingly tempbanned (and warned of a future permaban) for using immature phrasing regarding dicks as an established immature kid technomancer. My history with the ERP rule was a note (may I read it?) that I think (I do not know what the note actually is) came from me contacting staff to ask what my next steps should be in a flirty PDA conversation to avoid toeing the ERP line. I took advice from that discussion and was not scolded about the action I eventually decided to take. peppermint seems to be arguing that "I've been warned about this before," which implies that they think I've overstepped a line before, when to my knowledge I have not. I also don't think I overstepped a line this time. What I did was not, by any stretch I can currently agree with, erotic. Evidence/logs/etc: You guys should have those, I don't Additional remarks: Sorry about the confusion with the previous thread.

Looking at other threads, it looks like this is actually supposed to be a staff complaint. My mistake.

As I mentioned, I didn't go over the line before, and don't know where the line is now. I don't want to escalate this just to get any explanation of why I'm doing something wrong.

“Please note that appeals for bans that are 24 hours or under will most likely be ignored” Yeah, that’s fine. I’m not necessarily asking to have it repealed, I just want to talk some more. I think I look pretty bad to the staff, and I don’t want to. If it turns out staff made a mistake, that's bonus. BYOND Key: Sniblet Total Ban Length: 24 hours Banning staff member's Key: peppermint96 Reason of Ban: Said “I don’t care what year it is, maybe I just don’t want some lady pulling out my dick for me.” We do not allow sexual content of any kind like this. You’ve been spoken to aboutt suggestive stuff before. Knock it off, next will likely be a perma Reason for Appeal: Bear in mind I’m coming RIGHT off of that round and I’m still a little upset, but I’m trying to take my time as I think this over. So here’s the ERP rule, since I’m quite sure that this is what I’m banned for breaking: ERP, also known as Erotic RolePlay, is not allowed on the server. While displays of romantic affection and romantic scenes are acceptable, scenes of a clearly sexual intent will be broken up. (Again, use common sense for this. Sexual tension up to a point is acceptable - sexual acts in themselves are not.) And here’s some context: I’m the technomancer. I kind of didn’t want to be, and it turned out to be a sucky round. I broke tcomms first thing, didn’t really get to interact with people much, had a bad gimmick where I acted like an immature idiot IC and declared myself king. An admin talked to me about that, too. Woops. I turned technomancer off a little bit after giving up to sec, I really just don’t know how to solo antag. I’m not feeling very happy at the point leading up to the ticket. So I’m in cuffs, being processed, being talked to by an IRU shell about my villainous behavior. They tag out, and let the female warden in to get me dressed for prison. I bring up something I saw on the Security Officer page about how prisoners should ideally only be changed by officers of the same gender (female warden, male technomancer). She says no, that’s not a thing, and someone else says “it’s 2464, you’re gonna complain about having a woman do this?” or something to that effect. I say the quote in the ban reason, and the admin PM soon follows. Someone probably has the exact ticket logs, but I don’t. Basically, Peppermint feeds me the quote and asks what it’s about – I go “oh, was that over the line, ok” – Peppermint tells me it’s really bad because minors play here – I’m balancing this conversation with talking to sec as I get put away for HuT – Peppermint says I’m getting a tempban because I’ve been talked to about this before, I ask to finish the round first, I get the ban mid-conversation with sec. Didn't really get to talk to Peppermint about what was going on, and probably couldn't have made much of a case in the moment anyway. Alright. That’s the facts out of the way. Here’s why I think this – by which, especially, I mean the “next will likely be a perma” comment – is unfair to me. 1. I’ve never engaged in ERP on Aurora (or any other server, if that means anything). There was and is no intent here. 2. I used some immature phrasing in this case, like an immature idiot technomancer might have. This was not ERP. Who's getting off to that comment? 3. The time I was talked to before, was me approaching staff to ask about how far I can go in a flirty PDA exchange with Kexi Danjuma. It wasn’t me actually breaking, or toeing the ERP line, but asking how not to. That was not ERP. It could only have touched on ERP if I hadn’t talked to staff about where the line was – what I ended up doing was "sending a pic" of my character reading in the library and smirking over her glasses at the camera: picture some tame CG in a visual novel. (what I had in mind before the talk, and did not do, to be clear, had to be thrown out, and I'm not gonna describe what it was here at risk of getting hit again.) I’m okay with the tempban, if talking about dicks like a middle schooler would is over the line. But I'm really very surprised if it is, and I’ll need some work (and help, probably) to reassess my sense of where the line is. Last time I was talked to, I was told that ERP is simply roleplay that’s erotic – this time, I’ve been tempbanned for something that I feel was non-erotic. Help? I especially don’t understand why a permaban is on the table for next time. I’m not willfully disobeying anybody, and I’m not trying to get anybody’s spaceman into bed. If I make another mistake, it will genuinely be another mistake, and I probably won’t have any idea what I should have done better, if these two talks make a pattern. I've been playing on Aurora a lot lately. It's nice to actually RP with people in my spaceman game. It's been a cool new experience. Thank you for your time.

BYOND Key: Sniblet Character Names: Iphigenia Konstantinou, Liiri Alie, Karen Stahl, Natascha Marikova, Anahi Avalona, Lilija Larsdottir, Ayla Shanae, Kalini Shanae Species you are applying to play: Skrell What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Not white? I don’t think there’s a complete list of options written down anywhere outside of character setup and the code, only one of which I can access. I guess purple, super provisionally. Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Most of them! My eyes hurt. Why do you wish to play this specific race: No one else does. I'm on my way to trying every job on the Horizon at least once, and this is the obvious Best Species to use for a psychologist. Maybe a surgeon too. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Synthetics are terrifying. Your face doesn't move. You're constantly aware of your government standing somewhere behind you, watching. Conforming to all expectations is the only way you can get anywhere in life. The air is always too dry. Nobody but your own kind really gets you. You allegedly get a sense of what other people are thinking before they've expressed it, but this isn't mechanically supported. But you’re used to it. Character Name: What even are Skrell naming conventions? All that’s written is that an apostrophe in the surname represents a “marriage,” and a lot of their names and words (and Nral’Malic ingame) look similar to slime language. It looks like the Qu’ prefix means “of,” but I haven’t seen it used in a name anywhere that I can recall. Who’s to say it couldn’t be, though? Qu’aqea Qualia This can be shortened to QaQ, or Quack, convenient and fun for a medical Skrell. I’m imagining here that Qualia is a Solarian loanword that means what it does in English, so the first name means “Of-aqea” and the surname means “Quality.” I’ll then pretend that aqea means “what,” so the full name is the question, “Of-what quality?” “What are you?” Please provide a short backstory for this character: Surgeon main, answers to Zeng-Hu. Axiori, from Tresja’s submerged area. 4'8". ~84? years old, two degrees, one in international culture (Human culture track, because I don't know anything about any others lemao) and one in medicine. Seeking a holistic understanding of all organic life, intending to start outside the Federation and move inward over decades. SCS of 6.4~~~ish?, limited by her age. She’s a model citizen, mostly. QaQ has interacted with humans enough in her education that she’s, firstly, taken on a pronoun, but also put together a means of expression that lets her overcome the firm hands-behind-their-back straight-postured mastermind image that most humans have of the species. She speaks with heavy use of emphasis, pitch, and volume, her body language blurs the line with dance, and she likes to throw around nicknames and weird unconventional slang. She’s probably gonna call Aelia “the baroness,” or something. She calls most humans sparks. What do you like about this character? Another new job and personality archetype to try out, and a new species, but the mechanics don’t seem particularly significant seeing as doing anything with the Srom is a crime. I think there’s a lot that can be done with an 80-year-old that acts like, and by her nation’s conventions is, basically a child. How would you rate your role-playing ability? Always developing? I’d like to emote more. Skrell, and QaQ particularly, having unique means of expression might push me to do it. Notes: Imagine: your surgeon is almost an entire foot shorter than you, calls red-alert situations "riptides" for some reason, dances while she talks, and is a squid. Now imagine that that's not a surgeon, that's your CMO. Someday.