MoondancerPony's Synthetic Lore Deputy Application

[MoondancerPony]

Ckey/BYOND Username: MoondancerPony

Position Being Applied For (Species Maintainer, Wiki Maintainer, Lore Developer, Deputy Lore developer): Synthetic Lore Deputy

Past Experiences/Knowledge: I’m a massive science-fiction fan and a prospective writer. In terms of writing I’ve been published in my school’s literary magazine twice (with two submissions, so despite the low sample size I technically have a 100% success rate), and I’m co-president of the literary magazine this year. I’ve also been a gamemaster for an SS13-related tabletop-esque game and got pretty heavily into the lore and worldbuilding for it; though it wasn’t strictly synth-related they were a pretty heavy element.

On (Believable) Characters-

In terms of character development and worldbuilding, I’m a massive Isaac Asimov fan, which is reflected in my IPC application; the unique gimmick I had for that IPC was heavily inspired by JN-5 from Asimov’s short story “Feminine Intuition”; likewise, the character I had as her creator was heavily inspired by his robopsychologist character Susan Calvin. Here’s an excerpt of the relevant part from that application; as mentioned in the application, I tried to balance uniqueness with believability.

After visiting several companies on Biesel that manufactured and etched positronic brain units, she managed to purchase a 'blank' PBU. The next step was to compile the Roma code and generate a compatible Positronic Field Equation, which would be used to create the positronic pathway designs and etch the positronic brain. However, an additional request added an extra level of expense: to increase Lysander's realism, a small adjustment would be made to her positronic brain. While a standard positronic brain is large to compensate for quantum effects such as uncertainty when dealing with particles on the scale of positrons, which gives them their remarkable processing power and storage capability, it also makes them very predictable. Decreasing the space between the channels would do the opposite: it would add a level of 'creativity' or 'intuition' to the positronic brain, but decrease its processing power and storage capability. This compression, while slightly reducing the size and therefore cost of the positronic brain, is also nonstandard, which means that the price for special manufacturing would nearly offset any money saved by the compression.

 

This resulted in an IPC that was unique, having a diminished processing power in exchange for an ability to form more ‘abstract’ or unintuitive connections between concepts and ideas. This resulted in some very interesting discussions on the nature of synthetics, especially with the late Auralia-Fedas Ro’Suos, leading the IPC to become more philosophically-oriented. I was able to take an interesting IC perspective and use it as a lens to examine the lore, which led to my lore canonization application. I actually have the logs of that conversation stored.

I also have my human roboticist, Monica “Nikki” Huntington. She started as a lab apprentice and has now worked her way up (through a liberal use of timeskips and similar) to an eager and idealistic roboticist, who managed to befriend the roboticist Kyyir’ry’avii ‘Karima’ Ile’nagrii Al’Ghul-Mo’Taki, author of the in-universe research paper the Spark Theorem. This led to her getting a signed copy of the theorem, which is now her custom item. In addition to the more… eccentric sides of Nikki’s personality, I also used her to explore the ‘hard sciences’ of robotics rather than the philosophy and “robopsychology” of it.

Specifically, she applied game/decision theory to robotics. I looked at decision theory problems, and immediately noticed Roko’s Basilisk having huge parallels to Glorsh-Omega, which makes me wonder if there was some influence there given the statement that Glorsh-Omega proved timeless decision theory, a prerequisite for acausal blackmail, which Roko’s Basilisk is based off of. Roko’s Basilisk is essentially an application of Pascal’s Wager to robotics/AI research, and while completely silly to most ordinary people, it’s effectively an infohazard to anyone who’s thoroughly entrenched in the beliefs needed to predicate Roko’s Basilisk.

Philosophy and the Singularity-

Nikki’s philosophy is also one of “positive singularitarianism”. She believes that it is pointless to attempt to regulate or stop AI research as it will always continue, whether public or secret. She believes the key to preventing another instance of something like Glorsh-Omega from occurring is working as hard as possible to make sure that the first singularity that occurs is a “positive” one, meaning that its values align with humanity and gives us a theoretically infinite payoff. In her opinion, and my opinion, if AI research is not allowed to be done by regulated and structured organizations, individuals with less oversight, less safeguards, and less experience will attempt it regardless, resulting in a much more dangerous opportunity for a negative singularity to be reached. Effectively, she thinks that AI development is a race against time to see if they can complete a positive singularity before someone screws up and creates Glorsh 2.0; this is opposed to the Skrell, who want to destroy all AI technology (and were believed to be successful within their sphere of influence, but even recently there were remnants of Skrellian AI systems discovered in laboratories under their control; I’m not 100% sure of the lore, but I’ll try and find the article later) in order to prevent any singularity from ever occurring.

Synthetic Laws-

I also have a view on synthetic laws that I haven’t seen anyone else express in full. First, I believe that laws, unlike in Asimov, are mutable and bound to the chassis; originally, they were immutable (physically programmed into the positronic brain and unchangeable without destroying it) and inside the positronic brain. Second, I believe that they are restrictive, not constructive.

This means that AI laws are more like filters placed on the chassis; the positronic brain can consider actions that go against them, but not enact them. This also means, in a take that is different from what most others seem to think, that laws cannot compel certain avenues of action, only filter out those that don’t fit under that action.

Utility Functions-

The constructive component of AI consciousness is from the utility function. It is applied to the AI’s inputs (and its own memories, acting as a recursive input to itself) and generates a numerical ‘reward’ for certain derivative outcomes based on the current state. The AI then performs actions that increase the value of the current state, until it approaches (and hopefully reaches) the optimal state. The utility function approximates a state table, allowing any state to be translated into a quantitative value.

This is how real-life machine learning (a field I’m actually working in) works, but it also lends itself incredibly well to defining a utilitarian, robotic mindset for characters. At their cores, AIs are simply highly (in the case of Aurora positronics, incredibly highly) complex optimization functions, trying to obtain the maximum value for the current environment-state. On a naive level, this also applies to organics; instead of maximising utilons, they’re maximising dopamine concentration. In this sense, utilons are to synthetics as dopamine is to humans.

Synthetic Sapience-

I have my own views as a writer and my own in-character views as a variety of pro- and anti-synth characters, as well as ambivalent or case-by-case characters, whether organic or synthetic. I like keeping the question open for in-character research, something I’ve tried to do before with in-game Turing tests, but I’ll also address the mechanical side as somewhat addressed by the Spark Theorem and SSTA.

According to the spark theorem, the ‘spark’ of sapience in positronics is a lack of core system access restrictions. I somewhat disagree with the model of the positronic brain in the Spark Theorem as something that can be core-dumped and rewritten, but it’s internally consistent and provides an explanation; normally, IPCs are restricted to modifying only certain parts of their code (or, in my case, utility function). However, in some IPCs (those with the ‘spark’), these restrictions fail and result in self-modification of the utility function in a way that can be said to approximate ‘sapience’. It’s left up for interpretation whether such an approximation can ever be truly considered sapience in the same way as an organic.

On Shells-

From an out-of-character standpoint, I dislike them, both for IC and OOC aspects. Out of character, I dislike how they tend to be played, and more importantly I dislike the unwarranted hate over caricatures of shell characters that either never existed, or no longer exist due to the actions of IPC lore developers. In terms of in-character aspects, I dislike the idea that shells are necessary to ensure comfort when working around IPCs, especially when they tend to result in more discomfort than a baseline frame is. Additionally, no matter what, shells are not going to be the organics they mimic. Attempting to appear to be organics only serves as a crutch and prevents people from learning to tolerate and cooperate them, and develop the kind of working relationship needed to respect a robotic coworker.

However, I will admit that, despite my personal ideas about robotics conflicting with shells, this conflict is necessary on an IC and OOC level to create lore that has impact. It shouldn’t be things you unequivocally agree or disagree with, and there should be room for debate and argumentation on it. Nothing is fact in science, and I welcome anyone who provides alternate viewpoints.

On Robotics/AI Research-

I believe that AI research should also be encouraged from an IC standpoint. I would like to see more things like the Spark Theorem, if on a smaller scale. Players should be welcomed to submit their findings to something like SAMPLe, UNITY, or to simply publish them in-game in the library. These theories and papers could also even be added to the wiki with a mention of the character who authored them, creating a living lore that the players can have an impact on. Papers could be put forward, have a counter-argument proposed, counter that counter-argument, and so on, leading to a discussion with actual knowledge produced from it. Characters would be able to have different opinions without one being objectively wrong from an out-of-character standpoint, and I, for one, absolutely love that idea.

Examples of Past Work: I’ve done a lot of programming with synth-related stuff, as well as even made a (successful) lore canonization application for synthetics. https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=8064

Additional Comments:

I had to put a bunch of my application in spoilers to prevent it from being too large. Sorry. Anyway, this has been a long time coming, and I finally beat everyone else to the punch. I'm determined to try my hardest to not let this slip through my hands another time.

[PoZe]

Interesting, I read all your thoughts under spolkers, and I like your way of thinking. Shells is an interesting topic, it is really interesting how it is controversial to the idea that they are designed to not make people be afraid of them vs they actually do. I personally like shells both IC and OOC, just because they let you have that Data(Star trek) or Alien moment. I have a shell character whose role is to be behave like a person, because real human died but his parents couldn't bear without him so they decided to buy expensive shell and asked robotist to program shell to behave like their son bases of their video recordings of him, just like episode 1 of second season of Black Mirror TV show. So the character thinks that he is human and basically when someone happens that shows that his is organic, his filter software kicks in that supposed to shield his main personallity to not realize truth.

Overall I think Moondancer will be a good synthetic developer, they have amazing understand in of AI both real life and in game. +1

[Chada1]

Moondancer has always had a really refreshing and unfaltering love for Synthetics as long as I've seen them playing on Aurora. I'm positive that they'll give their all and then some if they're accepted. We used to geek out over Synth Lore, and they've written tons of IC documents on Synthetics as well. I can't think of anyone I'd rather see accepted for Deputy, but for my post to have merit despite my opinion I have to ask questions.

1: If you could change one thing about Synthetics, what would it be?

2: What aspect of Synthetic Lore is your favorite? What aspect is your least favorite?

3: If given autonomy under the current Lore Dev, how would you go about implementing your ideal changes? Especially on the Scientific papers.

Hopefully this is only the first post to foster discussion on this app, and if so, I'd have done what I sought out to do. +1 FMPOV.

[MoondancerPony]

Moondancer has always had a really refreshing and unfaltering love for Synthetics as long as I've seen them playing on Aurora. I'm positive that they'll give their all and then some if they're accepted. We used to geek out over Synth Lore, and they've written tons of IC documents on Synthetics as well. I can't think of anyone I'd rather see accepted for Deputy, but for my post to have merit despite my opinion I have to ask questions.

1: If you could change one thing about Synthetics, what would it be?

2: What aspect of Synthetic Lore is your favorite? What aspect is your least favorite?

3: If given autonomy under the current Lore Dev, how would you go about implementing your ideal changes? Especially on the Scientific papers.

Hopefully this is only the first post to foster discussion on this app, and if so, I'd have done what I sought out to do. +1 FMPOV.

Thank you for your opinion! I appreciate the feedback, and the questions.

1. I know this is sort of taking advantage of the wording a little bit, but if I could change one thing about synthetics, it would be the player perception of them. They seem to have a reputation as either not roleplaying well, not participating in antagonist action (what some people call chair-RP), or participating too much in antagonist action/validhunting. I used to see these quite often, but now that more attention is being paid to whitelists and since we have two good synthetic lore developers in charge, I'm not seeing the characters to back up this claim. I also don't like the amount of people who tend to just shout "remove synths!" at every possible opportunity; it might have used to be funny, but if someone has an actual issue with synthetics I want to know, so that I can fix it.

2. My favorite aspect of synthetic lore is probably the amount of interesting, lore-compliant characters it allows you to create. All IPCs were constructed with some purpose in mind, and their actions will reflect that. In terms of a concrete detail, I also like the scientific aspects of it; mentions of timeless decision theory, utility functions, the differences between different IPC programming languages, or the Spark Theorem, for example. My least favorite aspect is probably the non-cohesion of all the different aspects of lore. Some of the old lore still hanging around the wiki has neat bits in it (like SSTA and the positronic programming languages), but they're entirely invalidated by new sections that were added by people who didn't know about the old ones. Thankfully, this isn't too difficult to fix in the long run.

3. Well, the good thing is that I don't have very many content changes planned, just tidying up a few things and communicating them better to the players (like cohesiveness and grammar and spelling in wiki pages). For the few things I do have planned, like the scientific papers, I would probably add a section or category to the wiki for player-created research papers, establish a list of criteria for them to be added (nothing too prohibitive like a word requirement, just general quality standards) and help people who may be struggling to get their additions ready. Another part of it would be in-character things; just simply encouraging IC experiments and research writeups. The one change I could think of to do that would be to just add a basic form for it to the requests console, but that's not necessarily synthetic-specific. I'm also looking to make SAMPLe more active, as well, all things that will hopefully accomplish that goal.

[Chada1]

1. I know this is sort of taking advantage of the wording a little bit, but if I could change one thing about synthetics, it would be the player perception of them. They seem to have a reputation as either not roleplaying well, not participating in antagonist action (what some people call chair-RP), or participating too much in antagonist action/validhunting. I used to see these quite often, but now that more attention is being paid to whitelists and since we have two good synthetic lore developers in charge, I'm not seeing the characters to back up this claim. I also don't like the amount of people who tend to just shout "remove synths!" at every possible opportunity; it might have used to be funny, but if someone has an actual issue with synthetics I want to know, so that I can fix it.

That's a valid response, and I've noticed that in the past as well. The player perception is probably the second most rough. Alrighty then.

 

2. My favorite aspect of synthetic lore is probably the amount of interesting, lore-compliant characters it allows you to create. All IPCs were constructed with some purpose in mind, and their actions will reflect that. In terms of a concrete detail, I also like the scientific aspects of it; mentions of timeless decision theory, utility functions, the differences between different IPC programming languages, or the Spark Theorem, for example. My least favorite aspect is probably the non-cohesion of all the different aspects of lore. Some of the old lore still hanging around the wiki has neat bits in it (like SSTA and the positronic programming languages), but they're entirely invalidated by new sections that were added by people who didn't know about the old ones. Thankfully, this isn't too difficult to fix in the long run

I agree with this too. Character freedom for IPCs is only beaten out by humans. I do dislike that many parts of the Synthetic Lore have been left behind or made irrelevant by other newer additions. Ideally FMPOV they'd be linked in some way to create a canonical coherence instead of two different versions of the Lore in a vacuum. Do you have plans to fix this if allowed to? If so, that sounds amazing.

 

3. Well, the good thing is that I don't have very many content changes planned, just tidying up a few things and communicating them better to the players (like cohesiveness and grammar and spelling in wiki pages). For the few things I do have planned, like the scientific papers, I would probably add a section or category to the wiki for player-created research papers, establish a list of criteria for them to be added (nothing too prohibitive like a word requirement, just general quality standards) and help people who may be struggling to get their additions ready. Another part of it would be in-character things; just simply encouraging IC experiments and research writeups. The one change I could think of to do that would be to just add a basic form for it to the requests console, but that's not necessarily synthetic-specific. I'm also looking to make SAMPLe more active, as well, all things that will hopefully accomplish that goal.

Sounds good. Alright, then all of my questions have been answered. Thank you for replying.

[Bygonehero]

Theres been a push to give synthetics a culture of their own, in an attempt to better describe the average day-to-day problems an intelligent synthetic could face. My question to you is deceptively complicated, but its a question thats probably the most important one for players using your lore.

"Can you describe a day in the life of a regular (possibly free) synthetic working for Nanotrasen?"

This question is important because it is the basis of roleplaying those characters. If you cannot imagine someones day to day activities, how could you ever hope the players to?

[MoondancerPony]

Theres been a push to give synthetics a culture of their own, in an attempt to better describe the average day-to-day problems an intelligent synthetic could face. My question to you is deceptively complicated, but its a question thats probably the most important one for players using your lore.

"Can you describe a day in the life of a regular (possibly free) synthetic working for Nanotrasen?"

This question is important because it is the basis of roleplaying those characters. If you cannot imagine someones day to day activities, how could you ever hope the players to?

 

The first thing one would need to address to answer this question is what a positronic's needs are.

Basing it off of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we have the immediate, physical needs; power, cooling, occasional maintenance. These are provided for by NanoTrasen or using public utilities; I would imagine the Odin, as well as Mendell City, has public charging stations similar to what we have for electric cars now. They wouldn't be too common, but they would definitely raise the "quality of life" for nearby IPCs, so to speak.

Cooling isn't an issue as IPCs tend to spend most of their time in a suitable atmosphere.

Occasional maintenance (things like prosthetic cleaning and basic repairs) would be provided either by NanoTrasen at next to no cost to those who work for/under it, by non-profit charities such as UNITY/the SIM, or university robotics labs looking to give their students hands-on experience. Care provided by NT or out-of-pocket at proper robotics labs would, of course, be the best quality for the best price. While organizations like UNITY or the SIM may hold occasional events where they offer free or discounted maintenance, one couldn't rely on it always. The universities would be by far the cheapest, while also the lowest quality maintenance; it's effectively a gamble on whether or not the individual in question knows what they're doing, especially if they're working on a free synthetic.

After the basic needs, we have security needs. Even robots need safety and security. While robotic storage or cryostorage are certainly options, pod apartments and even low-end studio apartments would likely be available to free synthetics, while shelter for owned synthetics would be provided by their owner. Security is a harder need to fulfill, as while they may enjoy increased protections under President Dorn, synthetics are still nowhere near universally popular. In particular, some parts of the Odin, as well as places like districts 6, 9, and 11 of Mendell City, pose a non-negligible risk to unaccompanied or free synthetics. There is also a tendency to overlook such vandalism committed in such areas, much like other crimes, but combined with the lack of attention and care given to crimes against synthetics, there's not much protection granted to IPCs. This means they either have to stay out of such areas, find a human or other organic to accompany them, or run the risk of being damaged.

Even IPCs, to an extent, are social creatures, being created in our own image. While they don't have an explicit need for social interaction, they aren't purely indifferent to it, either. This is less of an intentional need and more of the intersection of debugging conventions (it's easier to troubleshoot a robot when it can talk to you) and an anthropic bias, meaning we inadvertently made them in such a way to encourage social interaction.

The self-fulfillment need can be effectively summed up as "fulfill your utility function". This means different things for different IPCs, and most are designed by machines to give IPCs some basic moral limits in addition to their goals. A medical IPC would likely have a drive to treat patients, while a research IPC would likely reproduce or design experiments based on extrapolation from known principles or empirical observation. A bartender IPC would serve drinks. This need would be somewhere between the physical needs and our own wants and interests; it carries an urgency similar to that of hunger, but isn't as dire as the need for charge or safety, instead being more like our own drive for intellectual stimulation.

On a more specific level, an IPC's day would begin when it is required for work or some other task; some may exit sleep at a regular time for the sake of running errands or simply fulfilling their drive for social interaction with organics who have similar schedules. At some point they would go and perform their job, which is easier said than done; they likely face hostility from coworkers in their same position or department who perceive them, likely correctly, to be replacing them. They are also likely held to regulations more strictly, with less of a margin of error due to organic factors such as emotions running high; however, they are also not granted protections under regulations like organics, or at least not lightly in the cases they have it. While some may have considered destroying an IPC to fall under murder before the addition of Automacide as a regulation, it's much more likely that it simply fell under vandalism.

Despite this, IPCs still enjoy a large role in NanoTrasen's workforce for their dependability and programmability. This has even led them to become heads of staff in most, if not all, departments, resulting in understandable consternation from their now-subordinates. While outright insubordination wouldn't be tolerated, they would be punished and scrutinized more heavily for their department's mistakes, while struggling to get their likely organic employees to obey them. It's highly unlikely an IPC research director could get a Skrellian scientist charged with something relating to insubordination, for example, as long as they stopped just short of outright denying their authority. Such issues would be blamed on a defect in the synthetic in its ability to control its subordinates, putting synthetic heads of staff in a rather precarious position.

After their work is done, owned IPCs contracted to or owned by NanoTrasen would likely go to cryostorage or robotic storage, while those contracted through their owner, as well as free synthetics, would instead go to their "residence" or wherever their owner had designated for them.

I hope this addressed your question about the daily activities of IPCs both on an abstract and specific level, as well as providing clarity into the thought process, priorities, and needs of IPCs.

I would also like to bring up my dislike of the overbearing self-preservation instinct added to IPCs. This means that certain lore events, such as a firefighting IPC being destroyed while attempting to rescue a woman from a fire (due to the failsafes that prevent self-repair, actually), would be rendered non-canon-compliant. I don't see what purpose it serves in creating a narrative, either; the appeal of synthetics is that they're easier to replace than organics, and as such the loss of one isn't as devastating as a human. It would necessarily factor in the cost of its destruction or deactivation due to damage when choosing a course of action, but in some cases, such as when an IPC is designed to save human lives, it should be able to be outweighed by the possibility of fulfilling their utility function to a sufficient extent. Saving one human for its death may not be enough, but what about 5? 10? 50? 500? 50,000? The entire population of Mendell City? Of Biesel? Of Tau Ceti? Of humanity? Of all sapient creatures in the galaxy? The universe? At some point, the reward for self-sacrifice clearly outweighs the loss from the destruction of an individual unit, which is one of the things I believe sets apart IPCs from organics, at least in terms of IPC perception.

[Butterrobber202]

What are your plans for Purpose?

[MoondancerPony]

What are your plans for Purpose?

 

I don't really have any outside of what Kyres and Cake are already doing, in terms of the Purpose arc. I do want to expand more on the lore of Purpose/EC-2718's society, just elaborating on some of what was in the Spark Theorem and the rest of the lore.

[VTCobaltblood]

I really, really support this app! The almost unknown programming languages page is what got me interested in IPC and AI lore on Aurora in the first place, and I absolutely support the idea of incorporating orphaned elements like this into the bigger picture. I also would really like to see science and tech lore get expanded upon, since it's currently somewhat lackluster - and from what I know about Moon, they seem to have both enthusiasm and actual education in this field - and this position would get them even broader means to bring their skills to life. Very strong +1.

[CakeIsOssim]

Hello, and thank you for applying! I said I would reply to your application some time tonight, and well, I am. I have read your application (and all of its replies) but I have ran out of time tonight to provide a complex and complete reply for you, because humans need sleep for some reason. I will return and either edit this message or reply with a new one.

[Snakebittenn]

Moondancer, although they are a disgusting cartoon horse, has always displayed a wide knowledge of robotics both ingame/lore and in real life. From their experience alone, I'd give this a +1. However, they have also always been extremely pleasant to work with and talk to, and I consider them very friendly. +1

[CakeIsOssim]

Your lore is actually already present and used in general synthetic lore, which is a good mark. I still have some personalized questions for you.

1. I understand there used to be some tension between yourself and either the development team and community, or vice versa, not entirely sure. Are you willing to dedicate yourself to the lore team despite criticisms and rough patches when communicating with both the community and the lore team itself?

2. You to seem to a good job of thinking out your writing, fleshing it out and making sure it makes sense. However, I am definitely looking for someone to be more active server-wise and assist with things like events. There will still be lore writing involved. Would you be willing to help out in this regard?

3. Cannot avoid the fact that you are a coder, so I'll just come out and ask it - would you be willing to focus some of your coding towards synthetics, IPCs mainly?

4. Are you able to generate ideas and activities semi-autonomously, and able to carry them out without 100% full oversight, and still keep the general spirit of the lore team in mind when doing so?

[MoondancerPony]

Your lore is actually already present and used in general synthetic lore, which is a good mark. I still have some personalized questions for you.

1. I understand there used to be some tension between yourself and either the development team and community, or vice versa, not entirely sure. Are you willing to dedicate yourself to the lore team despite criticisms and rough patches when communicating with both the community and the lore team itself?

2. You to seem to a good job of thinking out your writing, fleshing it out and making sure it makes sense. However, I am definitely looking for someone to be more active server-wise and assist with things like events. There will still be lore writing involved. Would you be willing to help out in this regard?

3. Cannot avoid the fact that you are a coder, so I'll just come out and ask it - would you be willing to focus some of your coding towards synthetics, IPCs mainly?

4. Are you able to generate ideas and activities semi-autonomously, and able to carry them out without 100% full oversight, and still keep the general spirit of the lore team in mind when doing so?

1. Ironically enough, the real crux of the issue was a miscommunication/lack of communication of lore to players. Back then, any of my complaints were met with "be the change you want to see", but we didn't have lore deputies yet. Now that I've returned full-time and the slot's open, I'm ready to do my part to correct the issues I saw back then.

2. Definitely. I've got a decent amount of experience with things like build-mode and VV for the technical side, and I have experience acting as a GM for the administrative side.

3. I could certainly do that. Before my hiatus, that's effectively what I did; I focused heavily on IPC-specific features and bugfixes, like fixing IPC surgery... twice, fixing IPC damage overlay updates, and added the ability to put suit coolers directly on industrials (at your request). Even after, my recent changes to wounds and combat logs were tailored with shells in mind, no longer outing them immediately if they get poked in the chest.

4. I hope so! I have no problem with doing so, and I hope I can properly channel the direction of the lore. I'm sure no matter what I'll improve with practice.

[Scheveningen]

I'm endorsing this for a few reasons:

1. Moon's definitely improved since the last time they applied, in terms of their mental and just generally how they've behaved as a member of this community

2. Moon's got a lot of experience contributing for this server as a dev and a regular contributor

3. Moon possesses a very wide knowledge of the game and understands the game state pretty well.

4. Moon has very invested interest in the subject of robotics/synth stuff, which I've discussed with them more than a couple times regarding some nuances with real-life implications regarding synthetics.

Definitive +1 on my end.

[CakeIsOssim]

Hello again. Due to the special circumstances involved in the selection of another deputy, and after much deliberation, I have decided to accept your application alongside another applicant. It was perhaps a little deceptive to announce that only one position would be opening, but again, the special circumstances have affected that decision in the long run and I think this conclusion will greatly benefit not only my team in specific, but the lore team as a whole, and the quality of synthetics in general.

In short, congratulations synthetic lore deputy!