[Accepted] Littlelilyflower IPC application!

[lilyflower]

BYOND Key: littlelilyflower

 

Character Names: Summer Valiere

 

Species you are applying to play: IPC

 

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A due to IPC

 

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes I have! As well factions associated with IPCs

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race: 

 

I’ve always enjoyed Android-type characters, and feel like there is a lot of potential to explore with them. I’m still pretty new to the server and other races still feel a bit complicated, while IPC are a step away from humans but retain some familiarity that’s make roleplaying one easy enough to get into.

 

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:

 

They are not emotional beings; they are always logical and practical and not prone to emotional outbursts. Their speech is very precise typically as they don’t use slang and such, using words for their proper definitions for example. They don’t have their own culture and usually just adopt the culture of the place they work or even then sometimes not, all these things can often make an IPC come off as cold and distant. Much of this can make people feel uncomfortable with IPCs and thus they face discrimination which isn’t helped by their mechanical attitudes.  Most IPCs also tend to be owned by someone or a megacorp. This means they have fewer rights and protections as organics, and even some restrictions such as needing to be tagged. They are able to however buy their freedom as one of their two basic rights, should they choose.

 

Character Name: Stanza

 

Please provide a short backstory for this character: 

 

A shell originally commissioned by a small time entertainment company for the purpose of being a singer. They had her built thinking that they could pay the shell less than what they would have to pay a proper artist, but after having her star in a few venues they quickly realized that her upkeep far outweighed what they’d save. Largely this was due to the fact that IPCs and specially shells, still faced discrimination. One of her firsts venues expounded on this as hardly anyone showed up to watch despite the publicity spent on the venue. It wasn’t that the music produced was strictly bad, but it was foreign to most people and would be critiqued as being to robotic and lacking life. By the second venue there were even fewer sales, and thus Stanza was deemed a failure. This resulted in the company risking going bankrupt.

 

Originally the company had wanted to lease her out to other various megacorps, but no one would sign such a lease for something that failed and eventually the company went out of business. During this process however Stanza had gained a few fans and they had wrote to her, mostly other IPCs, but there were a few humans who also seemed to have enjoyed Stanza’s shows. This was noted by the Republic of Biesel during her sale and it caught the attention of NT. They bought her and began to employ her, deciding that there was potential there and that some small time company just didn’t have the money or resources to expand on it. It was then decided that Stanza would be stationed on the Aurora, with the directive of entertaining the other crew members and studying the effects of how music might increase productivity and influence the mood of the other employees. This study would be used to help evolve Stanza’s music and performances for future prospects.

 

 

What do you like about this character?

 

There is a lot, I think. She’s experienced failure over something that is largely beyond her control and has to figure that out. Failure is her start line and there is a lot you can do with that in terms of story and character growth. She essentially has to learn to mimic emotion, and I know that will be a struggle as everything she does will be always have that cold robotic logic to it, which will make writing songs for her a challenge for me. I also just love music inspired characters really, I think music is just a huge influence on cultures of all type and it’ll be interesting to see how I can really approach that with an IPC.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

 

I don’t like rating myself, but others always claim that I’m fantastic at roleplaying. I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and I know how to characterize well and adapt to many situations and roll with whatever gets thrown my way. The reason I don’t rate myself is cause I think there is always room for improvement and thus strive to do better.

 

Notes: updated her backstory after the below discussions and changed what I like about the character.

Edited February 27, 2020 by lilyflower
Edited to flesh out background better after the below discussions.

[TealPinniped]

I've seen Summer in action. There is definitely a good player behind that character. I'm excited to see what thetll5 play as an IPC. 

+1

[Toast]

Summer is a Character that my Paramedic sees on a regular basis, from the first time she was a Medical Intern to now when we end up being regular EMT partners. She is really knowledgeable in her characters role, and pretty great to be around overall. Definitely +1

[niennab]

Typically I prefer people apply three months into joining the server so to make a presence in the community and familiarize themselves although exceptions can be made. However, the bar for quality is raised.

With that being said, why was a singer repurposed to be a Roboticist? Through diagnostics, what prompted them to discover they were a Roboticist?

Additionally this line. What does it mean?

20 hours ago, lilyflower said:

If it did something wrong in the past, it could learn so it wouldn’t do something wrong again.

Also you mention this but, what is there other right?

20 hours ago, lilyflower said:

one of their two basic rights

[lilyflower]

13 minutes ago, niennab said:

Typically I prefer people apply three months into joining the server so to make a presence in the community and familiarize themselves although exceptions can be made. However, the bar for quality is raised.

With that being said, why was a singer repurposed to be a Roboticist? Through diagnostics, what prompted them to discover they were a Roboticist?

Additionally this line. What does it mean?

Also you mention this but, what is there other right?

1.  This honesty was one of the few parts I wasn’t sure on; given how expensive shells are to make, I thought it’d be a waste to just have it scrapped yeah? For the company who made it, that is. Better to sell it and have it updated to do something else.  Considering how much IPCs are being used and maintained, having an IPC that can work on other IPCs just makes sense - to me that is. So since there is a growing need for robotocists and there is a mostly fresh shell that can be used, seems efficient. It wasn’t that they discovered they were a roboticist, through diagnostics but that were originally built for singing. The diagnostics was just something routine, kinda like how it’s just good practice to get a check up or scan your computer. 

 

2. If you discovered you were changed and had no reason as to /why/, you’d be curious what happened or what went wrong yeah? It’s easy to assume failure and thus think you did something wrong, and it’s self-preservation to learn what you did wrong so you can change it and not risk getting yourself wiped or junked again.  At least that was my idea on it.

 

3. The other is that once tagged, they are added to a registery that tracks their progress towards freedom and is kept mostly accurate. Also that IPCs without owners in the tau ceti system are property of the republic of biesel and oft just sold to mega corps.

[niennab]

Thank you for answering the questions.

More my question was in regards to why Nanotrasen would purchase a shell but refit them to be a Roboticist? After all, in the slew of units available to them, they could purchase a unit manufactured for or familiar with Robotics. Although oddities occur, I wanted to inquire as to a reason, since the story, from a conceptualization standpoint lends itself better to an IPC in service. 

[lilyflower]

27 minutes ago, niennab said:

Thank you for answering the questions.

More my question was in regards to why Nanotrasen would purchase a shell but refit them to be a Roboticist? After all, in the slew of units available to them, they could purchase a unit manufactured for or familiar with Robotics. Although oddities occur, I wanted to inquire as to a reason, since the story, from a conceptualization standpoint lends itself better to an IPC in service. 

yeah no I agree, having it stay in service makes more sense! This is just where I think still being mostly new kinda bites me. I just wanted to follow lore and thought a megacorp like NT wouldn’t deal with something as niche as a singer. I could totally work with that all on its own if they would. Otherwise I thought it made more sense to repurpose the shell.

I could just uplay the singer angle cause otherwise yeah I think being repurposed would just be an oddity. I just thought there was something to explore with learning that you were one thing and then changed to do something else! As an oddity itself that would be easy enough to explain though, that they caught the eye of another roboticist and got made into their assistant and slowly repurposed over time by said roboticist until they could work as one on their own.

[The Stryker]

I'll throw in my two cents here.

Quote

A shell originally designed to be a singer so that the entertainment company didn’t have to pay the artist very much, it was quickly discovered that this wouldn’t be sustainable due to the cost of maintience, unpopularity, and discrimination to IPCs. It was then sold to NT and repurposed to fulfill the role as a roboticist.

Quote

yeah no I agree, having it stay in service makes more sense! This is just where I think still being mostly new kinda bites me. I just wanted to follow lore and thought a megacorp like NT wouldn’t deal with something as niche as a singer. I could totally work with that all on its own if they would. Otherwise I thought it made more sense to repurpose the shell.

Play who you want to play within reason, but frankly we can justify the presence of a lot of things on the Aurora. Arguably a singer would be in higher demand than a bartender or somesuch owing to how few we seem to have. That's not to say that the roboticist angle is impossible, but you have to justify it because singer to roboticist does seem like quite the jump if Nanotrasen could find something much cheaper or efficient to fill the gap.

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While it continued to work with what is still its main directive, it would try to collect data on music, singing and the art itself as away to correct the mistake that lead it to being repurposed. It would do this so that it could one day buy it’s freedom from NT and restore itself to the original purpose it had been built for.

It seems a little strange that a robot would turn to singing to earn its freedom, but I won't stomp on personal preference. I'm personally intrigued by this story, but it seems that it being repurposed is a very big deal. Can you expound on it being unpopular?

Quote

Their speech is very precise typically as they don’t use slang and such, using words for their proper definitions for example. They don’t have their own culture and usually just adopt the culture of the place they work or even then sometimes not, all these things can often make an IPC come off as cold and distant. Much of this can make people feel uncomfortable with IPCs and thus they face discrimination which isn’t helped by their mechanical attitudes.

As a side note, we do have slang for IPCs that come from certain backgrounds. I do like the fact that you recognize IPCs tend to adopt the culture of their surroundings.

Flesh out the application a bit more and I think you'll have something here!

[lilyflower]

4 hours ago, The Stryker said:

I'll throw in my two cents here.

Play who you want to play within reason, but frankly we can justify the presence of a lot of things on the Aurora. Arguably a singer would be in higher demand than a bartender or somesuch owing to how few we seem to have. That's not to say that the roboticist angle is impossible, but you have to justify it because singer to roboticist does seem like quite the jump if Nanotrasen could find something much cheaper or efficient to fill the gap.

It seems a little strange that a robot would turn to singing to earn its freedom, but I won't stomp on personal preference. I'm personally intrigued by this story, but it seems that it being repurposed is a very big deal. Can you expound on it being unpopular?

As a side note, we do have slang for IPCs that come from certain backgrounds. I do like the fact that you recognize IPCs tend to adopt the culture of their surroundings.

Flesh out the application a bit more and I think you'll have something here!

I do want to point out one misunderstanding: it’s not that they would have turned to singing to earn its freedom, it’s that after earning its freedom  there is the idea it could choose to once more return to that directive. The idea was meant to be a sort of an internal conflict that would have been fleshed out through RP.

I didn’t personally realize that repurposing it would be a big deal but I am entirely happy to rewrite Stanza’s back story to remain as a singer since it seems it is reasonable to play an IPC with that sort of angle. I only just woke up at the time of responding to this post, so I’ll update her back story sometime today!

[lilyflower]

Which I have now edited to update back story! Took the singer approach and just ran with it~

[niennab]

Thank you for addressing the concerns! The issue more in lies that in writing a whitelist application, you're presenting a believable character that should reflect the lore. Exceptions can be made but it means for requiring a stronger case to back it up.

What role will this character be on station? Assistant?

For a final pass could you clean up the paragraph breaks in your app as well? Just for easier reading heh.

Edited February 27, 2020 by niennab

[lilyflower]

56 minutes ago, niennab said:

Thank you for addressing the concerns! The issue more in lies that in writing a whitelist application, you're presenting a believable character that should reflect the lore. Exceptions can be made but it means for requiring a stronger case to back it up.

What role will this character be on station? Assistant?

For a final pass could you clean up the paragraph breaks in your app as well? Just for easier reading heh.

Yeah assistant, as it makes the most sense for this type of thing..and edited the paragraphs. Sorry I wrote this all on my phone originally, since I had just moved and lacked internet. (For whatever reason I could connect to byond but little else worked, but the internet guy is just about done setting up my new internet yay).

[Zer0Winds]

Robot singer. I like the idea. Also because I really like vocaloids, and this is close enough. It's different, and, if done well, could be really interesting to see on the station. I have no doubt you are a good player either, I see you often, and you aren't bad at all.

[niennab]

I convened with my Deputies on your application and they're willing to give you a chance. Therefore, I am willing to accept your application with the clause that if I see any concerning behavior, only because your account is still very new, the white-list will be revoked. However, you were adaptable to change, which is appreciated. Accepted.