[Accepted] Naelynn IPC application

[Naelynn]

BYOND Key: naelynn
Character Names: Aimee/Lea de Belmond, Sabael Kyledes, Akemi Smiles, Vale Rigby and Maint/Con drones.
Species you are applying to play: Integrated Positronic Chassis
What color do you plan on making your first alien character: White & Blue
Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes sir.

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question.

Why do you wish to play this specific race:
  Short answer: They are cool, and I think I finally know enough about the game.

  Long answer: I've always liked to have characters with prosthetic limbs - I like the idea it presents of man+machine working together to allow someone to move again after an accident and etc. IPC's would allow me to try this from the other perspective: Instead of man becoming more like machine, what if the machine was to become more like man? I'd like to figure out the answer for myself.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:
  IPC's are a curious case - they are expected to operate on logic based reasoning and follow regulations, but simultaneously they have the spark inside their .. heart? that makes them different from cyborgs. There are several IPC's I personally think are played in a peculiar way that made me finally want to apply for a whitelist after having this acc for like a year or something. Those are:
Copper, the recently NI-recruited ISD IPC - he feels like a slightly malfunctioning posi that got way over it's head but managed to scrounge a way to survive. He's brash and a bit derpy.. but he has a clear personality, and that stood out to me.
Another one is IRU Divinity - I don't even know why, but I've grown to like her and want to understand why.
Next one I think the name is Fixer.Ai, but I'm not 100% sure. He's a roboticist, who's always polite and does his best to help, even if he doesn't really like it. And his lab is always so organized! I guess my point is that IPC's are unique and each has their own quirk.

There's also another thing, that is, there are characters that will just despise an IPC, and there are characters who will like them just because of who they are. Humans are a lot more.. milktoast? when it comes to this. Oh, and paychecks. IPC's get paid a lot less!

Character Name: BC-V41  ((Bishop Cybernetics - Variant 41, designation "Val"))

Please provide a short backstory for this character
  Val was first employed as a standard stationbound unit serving across Zeng-Hu operated facilities. During a pirate raid, Val has managed to save an official's life by putting herself into line of fire of hostile forces, giving security forces enough time to complete their work without further harm. The android chassis Val was operating at the time became completely unusable due to the damage it has suffered, however, that was not to be the end of Val's life. Miraculously, the positronic brain was not damaged, and the official acknowledge the android's potential and requested Val to be moved into a Bishop Accessory frame. 

  Val was quickly transferred into a new body and after a brief adjustment period was reassigned as a 'personal assistant' to said official. It was a difficult time for the freshly minted IPC, as for the first time her's cpu had to deal with things like emotional response simulation and optimal behaviour calculations. Val was overwhelmed at first and made mistakes very often, which caused her emotion processing circuit to return preposterously low confidence numbers. This caused an overflow error and resulted in minor damage to said circuitry. However, thanks to support from the Bishop staff, Val eventually adjusted to her role as a personal secretary.

  Being an adjutant to a medical & cybernetic research official had it's perks, as Val's data banks were soon filled with high quantity of information on surgery and cybernetic fields, and the IPC didn't have any issues using gained medical knowledge to assist other personnel, both living and synthetic. This at first voluntary work soon became Val's main source of income, allowing her to eventually repay her own manufacturing costs after years of diligent labor.

  However, everything wasn't coming up all 1's on Val's calculations, as due to her chipped emotional processing circuit her crisis management abilities have been steadily altering over time. It started during a high pressure situation, where the usually serene and polite IPC pinned an unwilling patient down and forcefully sedated them before proceeding with further medical attention. 

  This condition only worsened over time, resulting in one particular incident where Val entered combat with a malfunctioning stationbound whilst emitting high-pitched screeching over the radio after being repeatedly taunted and eventually damaged by the stationbound. This altercation was defused by lockdown of said stationbound unit and physical removal of Val from the premises. 

What do you like about this character?
  Val is an IPC who, under normal circumstances, will execute her job (Surgery, general medical care and basic robotics repairs) to the point of perfection while doing all the required paperwork and emotionally supporting her fellows. However, should the situation escalate too much, Val's positronic brain may not be capable of handling the situation appropriately - she could start swearing and screaming at people, or maybe her emotion module will experience a hard crash causing her to become hollow and mechanical. 

  If Val was a human, she would be someone who struggles to cope with pressure and should probably be prescribed some emotion-surpressants.

  Why would someone hire Val? If nothing goes wrong, she's one of the best at her field, and, despite the outbursts, she still retains her protective subroutines.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?
  I think, overall, I'm good at role playing, but I do have some bad habits I fall into. In general, my characters tend to be on the 'above average' skilled side, but... I don't think it's too much of an issue. While yes, I am constantly thinking 'would the character even know this?' to try and reduce that, I'm also very open to critique - sure, sometimes it takes me a bit and I have to swallow my pride, but I will listen to your point, consider it and then address it to make the situation better.

Notes: I like robots. They are cool. *Ping. 

Edited May 26, 2019 by kyres1

[Cnaym]

Aimee/Lea de Belmond are two of my all time favourites, the ability to project french personality without beeing a native speacker hints at Naelynns ability to RP.

Vale Rigby is one of the new officers in the ISD and a contractor like my character Hannah Williams and together we tried to project the professional and competent nature that would be required by contractors. 

Overall i'd give her an 7/10 in terms of RP and i'm glad to see that she mentioned the fact that, to my knowledge, at least Aimee tended to know to much and she toned it down a lot by restricting the character a lot. 

To the mentioned maint drone play: Naelynn is often online with skeleton shifts and as such she has often put the needs of the station before her own characters and used drones to help us out a lot when no engineer player was arround to keep the station running, which in my oppinion is a great thing to do. Putting the manifests needs before our own will to play our favourite character and spending time doing the important thing instead of the one we want is something i see rarely on skeleton shifts.

When playing as antag i found Naelynn on the RP side of things, not just blowing up the whole station but creating storries where others can IC decide on which side of the conflict they want to be.

 

The two examples she offered for IPCs with odd personalities are good ones, Copper and Fixer.OS are hillarious to play with. I'd like to add Aimmo to the mix as i love that little guy, having it's own conflict.

A qustion i'd have about the character you build here is wether or not the emotional conflicts bother Val. This is something that is often not as well portrayed as it should be in IPCs. The fact that even during times of high pressure and action they can break is fine for me, but after the day is done they are still mashines calculating and reviewing their actions from a numbers perspective.

Apart from that question i realy like the concept. I see Val having interesting conflicts with Taps and Sterben due to the nature of her emotional instability, while still doing her job. The picture i have in my head right now is an IPC who judges situations different than Sterben for example and will try to argue it out after the lives of patients are saved / lost, trying to rectify their particular viewpoint.

 

Overall +1, hope to see that character IC soon.

[TheSleepyCatmom]

While I give the app a +1, I'd like to say it's actually irritating AS a native French speaker to interact with de Belmond. They intermix their language much too often for it to be realistic, it'd be confusing and difficult to use a lot of French in English contextually, and doing so is irritating to read and agitates me to no end. Beyond that though, I haven't had any actually negative experiences with your characters beyond that gripe, so I have hopes you'll improve later.

 

Your characters here have neat sides but it's not like a lot of it hasn't been seen before, so I hope you can make it unique and special to you. Beyond that, though, your reasoning and specification of 'What if a machine were to become more like a man' is very concerning to me as someone with a Synth whitelist who hates people that RP like metal-men. So let's not fall into that pattern! ❤️

[Naelynn]

It's only been few hours and there are already two replies, this is amazing! 

I'd like to thank both of you whom have taken the time to reply and post my own thoughts to the problems you have posed in said replies as well as some clarification that a friend from discord brought up:
 

2 hours ago, Cnaym said:

A qustion i'd have about the character you build here is wether or not the emotional conflicts bother Val. This is something that is often not as well portrayed as it should be in IPCs. The fact that even during times of high pressure and action they can break is fine for me, but after the day is done they are still mashines calculating and reviewing their actions from a numbers perspective.

I actually put some thought into this while writing the background for Val, but I think I did a poor job of elaborating on it, so I'd like to do so here (I don't want to really edit the main post)

  The breaking-under-pressure thing for Val is very much like a disability would be for a human - she understands that it is because a part of her posibrain is damaged and is unhappy with the circumstance. With that said, there really isn't a particularly easy way to fix such a small portion of such a complex machine without realistic chance of damaging the core of what she is, as such she bears with it. To her, the fact that she 'malfunctions' under pressure is something to be ashamed of.

There is a second thing that has to be said here: This is *NOT* an excuse to self antag. The behaviour this is meant to encourage is still meant to fit the character, which is what I was trying to point out with the two examples in the backstory - the time she forcefully subdued an uncooperative patient is meant to show that this flaw in her core will manifest itself as an exaggeration of what traits she already has, rather than a reason to just do as she pleases. She is still bound by her programming.

The second example may cause this 'self antag' perception even more so than the first, so I'd like to go a little deeper into it as well. That one was meant to highlight that even in situations that normally would be no big deal (A stationbound coming in for a quick patching up) can quickly spiral out of control for her if something goes wrong (the stationbound in this case was malfunctioning and perceived her repairs as attempt to damage it, and retaliated in accordance with it's laws) - this situation caused her emotion circuitry to go haywire and amp up whatever emotion/thought was in her head at the moment, locking her into a behavior until calmed down by being removed from the situation (The behaviour being: Oh shit, I'm being attacked, I must protect myself -> Registered as aggression on her circuit -> circuit overloaded amping up what it was processing at the moment to billion -> locking her in super aggresive mode towards what attacked her). Just to clarify: SHE WOULD NOT HAVE ATTACKED ANYONE ELSE IN THE SITUATION and also, should the borg surrender in the situation she will stop and probably bluescreen or something because she is processing extreme amounts of agression behaviour with no valid target for it anymore. - didn't think that part through yet.

  There also is the part about her having to retain a machine-like traits in her acting, which I am striving to do by aiming for complete and enforced internal consistency of reasoning. I hope to be able to have a set of values and principles worked out for Val that she will adhere to regardless of circumstances - including during a 'emotion overload' period -> For example, Val will always strive to minimize damage to every employee, while not being too concerned about damage to the station itself. This manifests in both the above examples: In ex. 1 she processed that if the employee is not treated, they will end up suffering even more damage and that scenario should be avoided if possible. While calm Val would only rely on reason and let the man go if he declines, an overloaded Val believed she knows better and proceeded with the medical attention because it is in accordance with her values. In the second example this rule was manifest in her striving to protect herself while only seeking to cause trivial or easily repaireable damage to the cyborg. You might have noticed in the post that the fight ended with the cyborg's lockdown and her removal from the scene - not with either side being unable to continue the fight, and this assumed that it took others a certain amount of time to be able to react to the situation. 

All of these things should have been clarified in my post and I'd like to apologize for not doing so properly.

 

 

2 hours ago, TheSleepyCatmom said:

de Belmond. They intermix their language much too often for it to be realistic, it'd be confusing and difficult to use a lot of French in English contextually, and doing so is irritating to read and agitates me to no end

Completely understandeable : ) I thought it would be a nice gimmick, but I do think I'm overdoing it on them lately. I've actually recieved this critique before, and it is the reason why Vale doesn't have any faux accent or vocabulary issues - I've wanted to do it originally but it's been mostly proven to me that it annoys more people than it charms.

 

2 hours ago, TheSleepyCatmom said:

I hope you can make it unique and special to you

I hope so too! 
 

 

2 hours ago, TheSleepyCatmom said:

. Beyond that, though, your reasoning and specification of 'What if a machine were to become more like a man' is very concerning to me as someone with a Synth whitelist who hates people that RP like metal-men.

I'm a little bit unclear as to what you mean by 'metal-men', so I'm going to reply to both interpretations I can think of - if I missed your point please reply and I'll get on it : )

  Interpretation 1: They are just acting like normal people, except they're made out of metal. - This is actually one of the reasons why it took me so long to make myself apply for a whitelist. There are inherent differences due to biological makeup of races that influence how they act - and this is true for IPC's as well. I personally believe that IPC's should have a set of internal laws.. like... a code of honor that they will follow even to their detriment, because some things are hardcoded in them. Furthermore, at the end of the day, positronics might be a good simulation of how a brain is, but there are differences - everything is still processed in 1's and 0's, and this matters a lot to how they process things. Most notably, I think positronic characters should struggle with the concept of 'grey zone' - They would like to quantify everything because it is how their thinking pattern works. Assign value to how much danger a person must pose before you should consider a course of actions that leads to minimizing damage to yourself. Is it 10? 5? Does the person having a baton on their belt increase the value by 1? Or does it go down by 1 because it's not in their hands? Does it matter if they shout or speak quietly? What if they are wearing a piece of armor? Does that increase or decrease this 'percieved threat' value? 

 Interpretation 2: people who rp Iron-man: I know I wrote in my rp style that I have a tendency to overstat my characters, but I try to do my best to keep them in line. If I will realize I am over the line, either by myself or by having it pointed out by someone else, I will re-evaluate how Val would perform and either remove certain pieces of knowledge she would have access to otherwise (like how Aimee is no longer able to perform research or toxins work). Furthermore, if I feel like my character is hogging the spotlight of a situation, I have a tendency to back down and let others have a good time - I don't aim to be a hero in my story at the expense of someone else's.

Thank you very much (to both of you) for taking the time to reply and read my application, as well as the +1's you've given to me!

[Bear]

A far superior RP'r in comparison to myself, her chars are among some of my absolute favorite and so diverse. I always love to see them on the server. The char concept is one i find personally very interesting. Id love to see you add another character to the roster!!

 

+1

[Nekonyan123]

Naelynn has a solid rp and she makes you enjoy playing together with their chars.

Giving her the possibility to play as IPC would give more space to come up with good characters that are fun and engaging to interact with, so why not giving her the chance?

 

+1

[kyres1]

Sorry for letting this sit so long.

The feedback is good and I have seen good things from your characters myself. My outstanding issues are with the application itself, which I'll cover now.

Specifically, what I am strongly averse to is the interpretation of how Val, being a robot, would come to the conclusions you've provided here. Screeching, responding violently to stress, easily breaking under pressure and insulting with little reason is not something I seek from any IPC, especially one propped up as a character on an application.

With that said, I do appreciate trying to shake up the formula as much as you did, and seeing something new is a breath of fresh air. What I don't want to see is Val doing any of the things it is said to do on the application, under any circumstance. I can't accept this immediately with all that in mind but I will allow you to rewrite the application itself to be more suitable to what's listed on the IPC page.

This is a very, very big thing, and it's in bold characters for a reason. While it may be fun to play a malfunctioning bot, save it for antagonist rounds, and do it tastefully if you do, else it doesn't make sense that NT would continue employing or maintaining the bot in the first place. IPCs are expensive, and even though they can eventually maintain themselves through freedom albeit at a high risk to their own integrity, they still have to deal with the fact that failure to live up to expectations would mean unemployment, and unemployment means a fast death.

The answers here are good save for the backstory and what's directly related to it. Just change that up, preferably with a rewrite, and I'll process this soon.

[Naelynn]

2 hours ago, kyres1 said:

With that said, I do appreciate trying to shake up the formula as much as you did, and seeing something new is a breath of fresh air. What I don't want to see is Val doing any of the things it is said to do on the application, under any circumstance.

Fair enough! I always try to go towards the creative, and sometimes it just doesn't work, and that's fine! 
 

2 hours ago, kyres1 said:

Rewrite the application itself to be more suitable to what's listed on the IPC page.

Here goes - 'quoting' the original post. Some parts that I believe are fine are preserved, but most will be changed. Original post is unchanged.
 

On 23/05/2019 at 20:03, Naelynn said:

Character Name: BC-V41  ((Bishop Cybernetics - Variant 41, designation "Val"))

Please provide a short backstory for this character
  Val was first employed as a standard medical stationbound unit with designation ZH-M1019-V serving across Zeng-Hu operated facilities. During a pirate raid, Val has managed to save an official's life by putting herself into line of fire of hostile forces, giving security forces enough time to complete their work without further harm to the crew. The android chassis Val was operating at the time became completely unusable due to the damage it has suffered, however, that was not to be the end of Val's life. Miraculously, the positronic brain was not damaged, and the official acknowledge the android's potential and requested Val to be moved into a Bishop Accessory frame. 

  Val was quickly transferred into a new body and after a brief adjustment period was reassigned as a 'personal assistant' to said official.  It was a difficult time for the freshly minted IPC, as for the first time her's cpu had to deal with things like emotional response simulation and optimal behavior calculations. Val was overwhelmed at first and made mistakes often, which caused her emotion processing circuit to return preposterously low confidence numbers during those early days.

 However, being an adjutant to a bio-mechanical research director had it's perks, as Val's data banks were soon filled with high quantity of information on surgery and cybernetics, and the IPC didn't have any issues using gained medical knowledge to assist other personnel, both living and synthetic. This at first voluntary work soon became Val's main source of income, allowing her to eventually repay her own manufacturing costs after many years of diligent labor.

During her long years of service to Zeng Hu's goals, Val has built up a reputation for quick and quality surgery work. She became acutely aware of how useful this reputation is when she was chosen to perform a life-saving surgery on a high-priority patient over one her of human colleagues. She took great pride in this, and proceeded to rewrite surface-level outwards-interactions protocol to encourage others to understand that they can trust her with their lives.

Eventually, this reputation as a superior surgical professional has reached outside of her company and presented her with a rare opportunity - to represent the quality and level of Zeng-Hu and Bishop Cybernetics work to the employees of NanoTrasen aboard NSS Aurora as a contracted specialist. An opportunity she cherished and accepted as the highest honor from her now elderly director.

What do you like about this character?
  Val is an IPC who has a very rigid value system based around taking pride in her work and emulating her director and mentor. This is primarily because she sees her work as continuation of the work that her director has begun. Most of her mannerisms and skills have been copied from this one person whom has single handedly changed her fate. She sees it as her prime directive to continue on the man's work, even when she is no longer able to directly consult him. Furthermore, since the man is dedicated to his work and company, she sees it as imperative that any possibility of staining Zeng-Hu's or Bishop's reputation be prevented.

 

[kyres1]

A benevolent Zeng-Hu contractor IPC who honors the man who freed them through their work. This is fantastic, and I'm glad you redid it. It's a blurb of personality encapsulated in a way that actually complies with the rules presented on the IPC wiki page.

Application accepted.