Mofo1995

I'm a big fan of Kyres. They're a good friend, and a talented writer. They were unbelievably helpful as my deputy, and I think they would be a good fit for Cael and that they would be able to gel well together. 10/10 Mofo seal of approval +1

All at once?

The praises I had on their last application still stand true, so in summary I think Faye's a good bean! +1

Maybe it isn't fair, in the sense that most of the issues the current batch of candidates are looking to fix are issues that resulted from my lackluster performance as loremaster... HOWEVER, of all the applicants so far, I think Alberyk is the strongest and most likely to succeed at helping Cael, uh... fixing my mistakes. Tajara lore writing is ascendant and far beyond any of the quality I had ever produced as taj writer. Alb is also far more active than I was and would probably be a great fit for Cael and likely to keep up with their pace and needs. I get people's concerns about conflicts of interests and consolidation of too much power under one individual. After all, I gave up head CCIA when I took on loremaster for similar reasons. My memories kinda spotty on it, but I think I volunteered to do that instead of being required to? Either way, for about 6 months I was deputy loremaster and head CCIA concurrently. I think they're legitimate concerns, and I get why people would have them. Though from my time as taj dev with Alb as my deputy and later as loremaster with Alb as one of the writers, I can confidently say they never leveraged their position as head admin to influence lore team politics. Or at the very least, never leveraged their position against me to make me do things. As far as I'm aware there wasn't any abuse of power like that going on. The past isn't always an indication of the future, but I have faith and confidence in Alb to appropriately separate the roles given their good track record of doing so over the past two and a half years. I am worried about the workload of so many positions at once! But maybe that should be taken with a grain of salt, since that's coming from someone with no free time who can't really imagine, well, having free time. It would obviously be far too much for me to imagine handling, but Alb's a lot more committed than I am, so maybe its within the realm of their possibilities. I talked to Cael about potential good deputy loremasters before taking my leave, Alb was certainly one that came up. They were also on my personal wishlist for good deputy loremaster picks back when I last had deputy applications, so I'd say they have a very consistent and strong performance on the lore team. S'posing they can work it into their time schedule, I feel Alb would be perfect for the job, and has my full endorsement!

I beLEAF strongly in Nursies capabilities as a role-player. They have deep ROOTS in this community which they have been a part of so long. I'm happy to see them BRANCHING out into other species to give playing them a try. I think nothing but good role-playing could STEM from giving them a diona whitelist. It Chlorophylls me with joy! +1

I think it's a fair cop to say my friendship and nostalgia have blinded me, but I in no way was intentionally misrepresentative. 1.) Why I did nothing There was no mechanism for anonymous complaints at the time for handling bad behavior in invite only spaces. The power of loremaster didn't expand to that jurisdiction until last winter, by popular demand. Marlon did approach Garn about it, but at the time there wasn't the whole "confidential complaints" thing, so Garn wanted him to out with. Not throwing Garn under the bus, dudes a great lad, but I also told Marlon the same things. 2.) Why didn't I defend Marlon at the time? I was a coward and a bad person. I've come to a lot of controversial friends defences many times, even to their defences against each other, but you're right, I let Marlon down and regret it. Making a random public post or announcement in their defence would be weird and awkward, but I've spoken highly well of them many times in the intervening time, despite not making any big grandiose announcements. 3.) I legit do not remember the scrap you're referencing between you and Marlon about the bad faith thing. But thats totally fair criticism anyways. 4.) No really, the skrell deputy thing actually is what did him in. Yeah there was brewing discontent, but thats what kicked off the whole riot and really force multiplied everything else from like a 5/10 to an 11/10. It's also what really cast them down from the favor of the head devs, since they explicitly told us 2 deps only. At least from my perspective and whatever access I was privy to in head discussions. Not defending that whole ordeal either, or even my complicity in it since at the time I had forgotten there was already two deputies when Marlon asked me about the applicant and I told him the applicant was gr8 and to bring em on. But anyhow, things really probably weren't going to boil over even closely to how they did without it. Anyhow, I've always deeply valued your abilities as a critic. If I had to say what my agenda really was, it was a heated and passionate and emotional defence of someone I cherish after a long night at work, hastily typed out in a flash of passion and gesture of friendship. But you're right, I've fairly clearly shown my bias, actively worked to try and cover my own ass, and glossed over or downplayed their faults as a loremaster, albeit largely through the blindness of my feelings of friendship and nostalgia. I still stand by the idea of the Marlonian Paradigm and that were still fundamentally working with the core concepts and ideas which they established, and that there isn't enough hespetch for it. And they still have my support for unathi deputy. Thanks for taking the time to point the flaws in my narrative to me, and I hope I can take it to heart constructively.

For those who aren't into reading long-winded praises and shameless endorsements, Let me start this off by saying +1 . Full send, no regrets, I literally cannot endorse nor give Marlon a higher endorsement than I'm about to. There's a big and extremely unfortunate tendency on the lore team to wholesale reject, hate on, and big time badmouth any lore dev who was on the team previously and leaves. In my 5 years on the team so far, I can say that at this point I'm just convinced it is an eternal and immutable aspect of the team. It's just something that will always happen unless a dev was completely inactive, and even then they will get mad backbiting about that too. It is far, far, far easier to highlight old lore and then project it and compare it to contemporary lore to paint a picture that "wow, this lore all sucked." With little to no appreciation that the lore landscape of the past where it might've fit in perfectly fine and well, was different today. I think there's also not much appreciation that the next generation of lore team folks are going to feel exactly the same way about our current lore writing endeavors. I am going to state several things before writing an emotionally charged post about the superlative and arbitrarily high opinion I hold of Marlon. 1.) Marlon either directly personally established the foundation of nearly every single major lore faction and species over the course of their tenure, or oversaw, debated on, compromised, and approved every single etc. Nearly every single piece of our entire lore setting either originated from or was worked on to some extent by Marlon. The entirety of lore development since their departure as loremaster is still entirely within and working under what I'm going to call the "Marlonian Paradigm." Their efforts and work are so monumental and titanic, that to leave the Marlonian Paradigm would mean having to completely retcon nearly the entire setting and start from scratch with a completely different one. 2.) While older lore was tonally far more light hearted, modern lore is still within the Marlonian Paradigm as it has shifted to the more grounded and serious tones also established by Marlon while shifting away from the more light hearted aspects. In other words, balance between two aspects of the same foundation has shifted, however the whole work is still just the redecorated interior of the same thing. 3.) Marlon was a super-human coordinator of people with absurdly indefatigable energy, able to pour in a massive amount of interest at any time divided among large amounts of different projects, and they did it for five whole years. 4.) Marlon has almost always been completely reasonable and wide open for discussion and compromise, and a master negotiator. Traits which I admire greatly. These have fundamentally established the expectations for the role of loremaster. Marlon was also extremely friendly and welcoming, and helped encourage and fan my interest in our server's lore when I was still a brand newbie whose only proper friends were MetaphysicalPersona and my college roommate. 5.) Almost the entirety of the current lore team rules and regulations were created under Marlon. All I did was write them down. In an ironic way to how they replaced his official "Lore Bible," they are the gospel of his era's rules and regulations according to me. 6.) Marlon was the single greatest lore writer to have ever been on our lore team, and in my opinion, is the undisputed Greatest of All Time. Let me begin by painting a picture of when I was new to the server. It was fall of 2015, I was new to roleplay as more than a game-y experience, and I hated all Tajara because I thought they were all furries. I was entering a new community in a new game that I never seriously played before other than an abortive attempt in January 2014. The only friend I had with me was my college roommate who told me to try it out with him, and soon after a very interesting roleplayer who would later get banned for their crazy characters. I was nervous and anxious about making new friends, and from what I could tell, the community was very elitist and insular against outsiders and newcomers. This was back when the server used to go hidden on weekends to avoid large influxes of new players, after all! Taking some uneasy steps, I started not just playing on the server but also interacting with other people on the forums (This was all before discord!) and trying to make new friends. I started reading news articles and getting interested first with skrell lore, before becoming more interested in all of the lore. It all seemed so rich and vast, despite being tiny compared to today. Nervously, I posted open ended questions about aspects of Skrell life and the federation, and I was greeted by a friendly and welcoming person who eagerly answered my questions and even wrote new lore just to get answers when there weren't any. That's actually how Grand Councilor Weashbi Jrugl was added. Marlon added him just to answer a question I posted about who was in charge of the Jargon Fed. In a time when I was a shy, wide-eyed, nervous newbie, there was a kind and encouraging person who eagerly made my acquaintance and helped show me the ropes in a community that felt very insular and unwelcoming to outsiders. With that positive energy, I eagerly started delving deeper into the lore, reading more articles and voraciously consuming all of the information on the wiki pages. Marlon wasn't the only one at the time to fan my interest in lore, as I made fast friends with HiveFleetChicken and Loow who were both on the lore team in the Spring of 2016. They were both likewise very supportive and full of encouragement, always happy to talk about Tajara and Skrell lore with me and discuss different ideas for all of it. On the skrell side of things, we even formed a skrell metaclique where we would randomly flood the station with our skrell characters and get up to wacky deadpan humor skrell antics to mess with the silly humans. And it was awesome! Lore back then was so freeform and experimental, and Marlon strongly encouraged players to really get out there and make their own stories with it. When HiveFleet was removed from the team following a big scandal, tajara applications opened up. By that point I had fallen in love with Tajara lore, and fortunately was picked for the position by Marlon in October of 2016. Despite being a mostly new player, still largely wet behind the ears and figuring things out, Marlon was nothing but helpful and supportive and very naturally assumed the role of a mentor and friend who helped me figure everything out and always gave insightful and constructive input to help me make the best writing that I could. He personally extensively helped me with the Tajaran Military Structures page, which was the first page I wrote, and even took the time to lecture me on color theory and work with me to make the graphs less of an eyesore. They even went out of their way to make a full map for Adhomai after they already made maps for Moghes and Biesel! Old lore team was far more... "catty" and "aggressive" I'd say than current lore team. Current lore team has its dramas, sure, but old lore team (and by old, I mean like pre-2017) used to have large and bombastic arguments on the regular. While they didn't do a perfect job and I've still failed to render a perfect job, Marlon did great at bringing down the tension and cooling things off. Marlon often knew when to admit they were wrong and work on and compromise out mutually agreeable works on the lore team. Coming into spring of 2017 at the weeklong super event culmination of the second antag contest, Marlon worked extensively with Loow and I, as well as the admins and the rest of the lore team, to pull together an event that was wildly popular and much beloved at the time. There was praise from all sides, everyone seemed to love the hell out of it, and if it wasn't for Marlon's intervention, it was going to be a super boring player referendum to decide the end! Most modern event arcs ever since essentially follow the template established by that weeklong event, which we owe largely to Marlon. Circling back to the much detested light hearted lore that used to be all over the server lore landscape. I'm gonna drop a truth bomb here and tell everyone the entire lore team setting is full of little inside jokes between old lore devs. It was extremely common up until like, 2018/2019 for there to be straight up joke articles, internal lore memes, and all other kinds of inside jokes. Back during the golden age of Skrell, there was an absolutely absurd amount of skrell metaclique inside jokes just being churned out all the time. Chad "Danger" Supreme, Tegucigulpa being a city on Qerrbelak, "Jargon" being a joke on humans not being able to pronounce it, Swamp Rap, too many for me to even remember let alone count. At the time, it was official lore that the first song shared between humans and skrell was "Come Sail Away" by Styx. Something which I think has some great symbolism for that bright and early future, but I'm getting off topic. It was an environment where lore writers were aware that we're all just amateur sci-fi writing volunteers, and we had a fun time with that self awareness and turning the mirror on ourselves to self-deprecate and poke some fun at the disproportional gravity we sometimes assign to it all. A self awareness which I often lacked greatly in my quest to make everything "gritty" and "grounded" and "believable," and ultimately, edgy. Pointing to those old articles as examples of Marlon being a bad writer isn't fair in the slightest, because everyone was having a bit of fun with their own lore in their own ways too. It was a different time where the expectations about the writing weren't so formal and regimented like I've made them. This is also not to mention that while it's easy to point out the articles that are dumb in hindsight, I'm often astounded at how people ignore the massive body of work comprising all the rest of their contributions which we still active use and build upon today. In a few years if our server shifts back to being more on the goofy, silly side of writing with occasional serious item, people then are going to look back at us now like we've got sticks up our bums and were edgelords. I know I've been guilty of it [being a 2serious 2edgy boi] plenty of times. Marlon left the team in winter of 2019 after months of pretty much everyone and their mother who had an axe to grind with them came at them following their demotion from loremaster, and would not stop coming at them. It was a full on dogpile where they could not say nor do anything without everyone coming out of the woodwork to put them down. In that time, we had also discovered there was even a metaclique explicitly coordinating what I can only call a group effort of bullying, after a good Samaritan began leaking and feeding us logs of it. I encouraged Marlon to bring it to light and file a complaint, since at the time there really wasn't a methodology for handling complaints like that confidentially. However, disenfranchised, disheartened, and constantly under public shame, ridicule, and attacks from all sides which were explicitly coordinated and malicious in nature with the intent of forcing Marlon out, they left and felt it better to not kick up any dust on the way out, honorably bearing the brunt of all the malice and shame. In the time since Marlon has gone, there's been this growing "legend" of them that they were this spectral boogyman of old lore. People who weren't even around when they were who came in during the hiatus even spout the same lines about how their writing was bad and they were a mean and unreasonable person, based entirely on the gossip they've gathered up. I've even had some clueless folks among the playerbase try to josh around with me about "That Marlon guy was crazy and his lore sucked right? lol" without realizing how monumental they were, without realizing how much of a dear and close friend to me they are, and without realizing just how much our entire lore owes to them. In time, the titan who lifted up and built our lore became ridiculed and hated as its destroyer, despite all current lore still being entirely within their direction. And what did Marlon do to get demoted from loremaster such that I took the position? Chiefly and primarily, above every other consideration, Marlon was removed from loremaster because they told skrell team to take on a third deputy despite our bosses imposing the two deputy limit. Not for the quality of their writing, nor necessarily their personality. If Marlon hadn't made that grim mistake that essentially spawned a lore team riot, they'd might've still been loremaster today. I can't point that out enough, that in the eyes of lore team management, the only strike on their entire record was being demoted from lore master for breaking that rule. In other words, a mistake that only someone in an administrative position could even make, yet they're applying for the low responsibility position of deputy, and honestly, are far less argumentative and quarrelsome than some of our current deputies, deputies who themselves are still within the bounds of acceptable behavior according to the lore team rules and regulations code of conduct. Can't praise them enough. Marlon's a dear and close friend, mentor, and role model. And despite some of my other close friends hating his guts, I cannot help but love them entirely.

@Marlon P. I harumph at you good sir! Harumph!

LORE DIARY ENTRY #9 This is a lore diary entry for OCTOBER 2021. See below for changes to lore in this month! Major changes in the spoiler below! There's 1 Tajara, 1 Vaurca, and 1 Skrell entry. Medium-sized, niche changes in the spoiler below! There's 4 Tajaran, 2 Diona, 1 Vaurca, 1 Diona-Skrell, and 3 Skrell entries. Small additional fluff in the spoiler below! There's 2 Tajaran, 1 Diona, and 4 Skrell entries.

Likewise, apologies that my input so far has been very defensive in nature. (Post script: I do think the following is also fairly defensive, but I've actively worked to keep it as non-confrontational as possible. Also, sorry about all the comma splicing and run-on sentences.) I don't have anything else to add about the skrell writer application, every single possible factor about my motivations and justifications regarding it has already been as elaborated on as I possibly could, and I sincerely don't believe I could have gathered any more information before making my decision without knowing the right questions to ask and who to ask them to. And I feel as though I couldn't have known those right questions to ask and who to ask them to without having already an idea of the answer. Particularly, I'm referring to the correspondence you had with Cael in DMs. Since in that case I would have had to of suspected Cael of tomfoolery and then either accused them of it and demanded they fork over the correspondence that I didn't know was going on, or suspected them and then approached you for it. The result being that, I don't think there's anything I could've done differently other than pick you on the same set of facts and opinions that led me to pick Ryver instead. Maybe that's a false dichotomy and I'm not thinking outside of the box, but I really don't feel it was misconduct on my part (though it's not for me to judge), and I certainly intended no malice. Now that I know, what specifically, you want more clarification on, I'll let you in on the circumstances of your original deputy application denial. But first I want to stress a few things. The first thing I want to stress is that as far as I'm aware right now, you did absolutely nothing wrong. The second thing I want to stress is that the following is not intended to detract from your character. And the third thing I want to stress is the background of the situation in lore team back in spring of 2021, which I'll launch into now. Back around late winter/early spring of 2021, there was a massive influx of complaints coming in about lore staff conduct. I think around the time of your skrell deputy application, I was handling about 6 complaints at the same time. I would have to dig back through discord chat logs to actually know precisely now what was back then though. It was extremely hectic and stressful, and probably one of the most dramatic periods of my tenure as lore master so far. When you submitted your application, Cael liked it and approached me and told me they wanted to bring you on board. But there was a snag. Someone brought to my attention that you were in a private discord, and alleged that there was a lot of bad mouthing people on the lore team going on in it, and produced some screenshot about a group of people planning to brigade in favor of another for something or another. But nowhere was there like, direct evidence of you actually doing anything wrong. All the same, it made me suspicious, and given the chaotic climate of the team at the time, I was in a state of mind where I felt an overabundance of caution was in order. I thought on it for like, a week or two with Cael occasionally checking in to see if they could bring you on, and I decided to err on the side of caution and vetoed your application. Cael asked if, after 3 months and no further issues, you could reapply and get brought on board. I agreed to it, and the rest is history as already thoroughly described in my previous post and essay. At that point the ball was out of my court, and after 3 months there most certainly was nothing new beyond those original suspicions, which were thoroughly dispelled after nothing new happened. I'm not 100% sure why Cael closed deputy applications entirely. I thought the idea was to hold that slot for you and then reopen them and bring you on board, since Mono was occupying the other deputy slot at the time. But as I already described, I wasn't really actively thinking about skrell deputy applications in any capacity and didn't think much of it. As far as transparency goes, I think I largely left it up to Cael on how to communicate it to you. If I'm wrong on that though, they're free to drop in and call me out. I've never dropped in on a vetoed application (something I think has only happened maybe 4-5 times in the past two years, I didn't keep count) and announced that they were shut down, or otherwise publicized it. At least outside of the lore team itself. I think it would be a bad practice to do, because it would introduce an element of shame into the already disheartening sensation of being denied. Whereas a denial post on an application can be fairly delicate and courteous, there really isn't a positive way to say "Not only have I declined your application, but I went out of my way to decline it." In every other case where a veto was exercised, some of the few vetoes that happened being repeat applicants, it was because the person had a very bad reputation with big problems. In your case, dropping in and announcing, or even me personally going and telling you that I vetoed your application wouldn't have been ideal. For one, I was wide open and receptive to the possibility of three months going by without incident and then you coming aboard the team. And for two, acting under the assumption that in three months deputy apps were gonna reopen, letting you down hard could've discouraged you from reapplying. And lastly, three, alerting you to the concept that you were being checked for potential bad behavior along with the the exact time frame of when that check was going on would skew the results and not provided helpful information, assuming it didn't outright discourage you as per point two. If applications had opened in May/June according to the original plan, none of this would've happened. I think you would've come aboard as deputy, and then being deputy for some months at the time of Cael's resignation to focus on deputy lore master, would've been my obvious choice for skrell writer. And being skrell writer, would've probably opened deputy applications and brought on Ryver, who probably would've applied. It would've been a great meta-narrative of suspicion turning into the meteoric rise of a talented writer and an absolutely stacked skrell team. But that's all speculation on a present that doesn't exist, and the pains of the opportunity cost aren't lost on me. I don't mean to throw Cael under the bus by any of this. Kyres' resignation from deputy lore master was very sudden and this is but one of many things that suffered from the fallout of the event. Cael had their reasons which they outlined in their posts, and while I see where they're coming from, I still feel that I personally would've handled it differently. My approach would've been to bring on an heir as deputy and use the intervening time to bring them up to speed before resigning to ensure a smooth transition. I never really considered the "fresh start" angle, since I think the advantage deputies get for writing position applications is high enough that a non-lore team applicant would have to have an absurdly better application than a deputy to be seriously considered for the position. This latest application round wasn't nearly that dramatic in qualitative difference. While I think it would've been grand if everything went according to that original plan, I hadn't the authority to force it to go that way. Cael was well within their rights as a lore writer to pursue their fresh start idea and bring us to the situation where we had all non-deputy applicants. Assuming no foul play, it would be a competition on equal footing. I say assuming no foul play because, hey, every other time I've included "assume" and Cael in the same sentence in this thread so far, it's been assuming the worst of them. May as well assume for the sake of argument something good intentioned of them at least once. [Post-Script: Along with anything else that comes out of all of this, any lore dev who might be reading this present or future, take this as a case to learn from about the importance of utilizing the deputy-heir system.] So now, that is the entire and conclusive story of my involvement in your first application, to be combined with my previous posts about your second application, to now provide the comprehensive story of my everything to do with you in my life so far. If you need clarification on any of that, let me know.

All right, I'm home. I'm going to begin with some background from the lore team rules and regulations, namely about the deputy appointing and applications process. Lastly, I would like to include the essay I wrote regarding why I chose Ryver over Hugh. It comprehensively covers the entirety of my reasons, based on the information available to me at the time of my selection for the skrell lore writer. CutMySliceIntoPizzasThisIsMyLastResort.txt With that background out of the way, I have a disclaimer to make. Although all my actions have been within the confines of the lore team rules and regulations, I understand that does not mean that they are all within proper staff conduct as well. I do not believe I am guilty of any misconduct, but all the same, I do want to make clear that I recognize the supremacy of server rules over lore team rules. With all of that out of the way, I'm not entirely certain what I'm being charged with. Or even slightly certain, really. All I can make out for 100% sure is that I've allegedly committed an act or acts of staff misconduct. I will answer, however, whichever points I believe I have understood correctly. Point 1: "Understanding of how two writers working in conjunction managed to go three months without clearing up what was a simple communication error is beyond me." There is enough space on the lore team for up to 23 lore staff. There are seven different departments, each can have one writer and up to two deputies, and then the lore master and deputy lore master, assuming the deputy lore master is not concurrently serving as a lore writer too. The lore team generally hovers around 20 members at any given time. Each having their own needs, each making proposals, asking questions, filing complaints, or even just casually talking to me. At no point later on did the subject of skrell lore deputy applications ever come up (that I can remember), and this summer saw a lot of turbulence as I had to go through the new deputy lore master process and a very contentious IPC writer application process. Skrell deputies were very far from my mind in terms of priority. I'm going to lead into point 2 to continue. Point 2: "Those three months came and went without a word of elaboration from Mofo or Cael, and in contrast to what I was told in DMs, the slot was never re-opened and that chance to have another go at applying for skrell deputy never came. I was offered no further information on the subject until earlier this month, a whopping seven months after my initial deputy application, when I was contacted by Mofo with the following. (4)" As the lore team rules and regulations outlined above earlier, the right to open deputy applications and to select a deputy is reserved to lore writers. The entirety of my jurisdiction on it is the power to veto applicants who I do not believe would be a good fit or have other concerns about. This is where the miscommunication came in, as Cael was under the impression that they needed my approval to open apps. For my part, I didn't really think anything of it since I just figured Cael would open applications whenever they were ready. And if they didn't, they were well within their rights to not bring on deputies. My apology to you still stands, but I was certainly under the impression myself that if Cael knew they could unilaterally open deputy applications during their skrell tenure, that they would've. I'm actually surprised that they've said otherwise here. It's not the approach I would have taken in the same situation, but they were still within their rights to not open deputy applications. I bring all of this up to highlight that, firstly, I do not have the power to force deputy applications to open, and secondly, it's outside of my jurisdiction to track down and contact potential deputies to staff the team with. Had I contacted you and told you to apply or anything along those lines, I would've been writing checks that I wouldn't be able to cash. My advocacy on a deputy application would surely be weighty, but I wouldn't be able to guarantee anything. Point 3: "However, frustration remains within reach given that a major reason for my denial, as cited by both Cael and Mofo, was a lack of lore written and put to the forums. I can't help but wonder whether or not a lack of lore written would have been such a big issue had what I wrote left my DMs with Cael at any point or if my prior attempts at seeking a lore writing position hadn't been stymied over a communications error." All of the information I had available to me at the time of my selection is already outlined in the essay I wrote about my selection. I was completely oblivious to the conversations you might have been having with Cael behind the scenes. I have not read the logs Cael posted, namely because it's a broken link with a blank page for me, but there's really no way I could've known about it unless if you or Cael had told me. I understand if the implication here is if the feedback Cael provided to me was dishonest or deceitful. But assuming that is true, I'm left wondering why I'm being accused of misconduct and egregiously mishandling your application. Continuing on the assumption that Cael was deceitful and misrepresentative to me, there was absolutely no reason up to that point for me to suspect them of being untrustworthy. There was no smoking gun to cause me to respond to their feedback with accusations of lying to me. Even if we suppose all of that, and that Cael is a no good rootin tootin lyin scurvy dog, there's still the facts highlighted in my essay that 1.) I already felt I preferred Ryver even before I got Cael's feedback on it and 2.) I felt the content of Ryver's application thread had more potential and more engaging ideas for lore that I thought would wind up all around better. So even if it came to light that you submitted lore to Cael in DMs and had discussions, it still might not have tipped the scales. It's hard to say for sure, since at this point we're working in what-if scenarios and hypotheticals. I'm not going to dig into Ryver's performance at all though, since those justifications would be retroactive. Ultimately, you were not eternally denied entry onto the team or barred from the team. Had you decided to continue as a deputy application, though I don't have the power to accept the deputy application myself, I believe you surely would've had it. I wholeheartedly endorsed and supported it personally along with a lot of other great people. I clearly wanted you on the team even though I felt another applicant was a better choice for the writer. However, you chose not to. And while I thought I understood that perfectly fine, when you then filed this staff complaint, (which I think is alleging that you've been unfairly kept off the team?) I'm a bit at a loss. The door was as wide open as it could've been, and I did my best to unroll the red carpet as neatly as I could've, but the VIP was a no show. Although the question posed to you was in a hypothetical denying an applicant due to lack of skill, something which I believe you certainly are not lacking, I close with the following quote to surmise my position on the allegations of egregious misconduct regarding your skrell writer application. "Applying for a position at all is inviting the possibility of denial, hopefully this is something that my Skrell-enthused friend would understand."

I'm at work at the moment, but will reply when I get home. ETA 5-6 hours.

I think Faye's really cool, and fun to talk to. Of their characters, I've only really interacted with Yhara, but they've been consistently an interesting and engaging character to roleplay with. OOCly, they're a reasonable and amicable person who are open to discussions. Their answers to many of the application questions inspire confidence, and I believe they have both a good vision for prudent moderation and the qualities necessary for it.

Thanks for all the guidance you've given me so far. Gonna miss you and your level, yet skull shaped, head.

LORE DIARY ENTRY #7 This is a lore diary entry for AUGUST 2021. See below for changes to lore in this month! Major changes in the spoiler below! There's 8 Vaurca entries, 2 Human entries, and 1 Unathi entry. Medium-sized, niche changes in the spoiler below! There's 2 Vaurca entries, and 4 Tajaran entries. Small additional fluff in the spoiler below! There's 5 Vaurca entries, and 3 Tajaran entires.

This application is fairly strong, not only in support but also in the clear vision demonstrated in both of your essays. I love your ideas for de-insulating skrell from international diplomacy. Your plans really feel to me that they harken back to the skrell dev that was around years ago and a great friend of mine, though his failure in execution ultimately arose out of the webs of plans being impenetrable in their subtleties. Your responses throughout the thread also show a great sophistication of thought, and you're a very active player on top of it. I have decided to choose your competitor, however, I would like to extend the offer that this application remain opened and rebranded as a deputy application for the incoming dev to consider. I would be delighted to have you aboard the team, and if you choose to make this a deputy application, I'd be happy if this post could also be considered a +1 from me.