Furrycactus' Human Lore Deputy Application

[furrycactus]

Ckey/BYOND Username:
Furrycactus

Position Being Applied For:
Human Lore Deputy
 
Past Experiences/Knowledge:
Nothing in Aurora lore, but I worked on the lore teams for the last three roleplay communities that I was part of before coming to Aurora. I did apply to be Skrell Lore Deputy during VTCobalt's tenure as the maintainer, but retrospectively, that app was a bit of a flop, and looking back it feels like a bit of an embarrassment. I guess I also play a lot of D&D.

Examples of Past Work:
My Skrell Deputy App can be found here if people are curious, but I don't really think it's super relevant, and I like to think I've improved a bit more in my writing ability since.

Additional Comments:
My essay for this application can be found here. I wrote it in two parts, the first one giving a brief summary of my feelings on the Human factions, and the second being an example of some of my potential ideas on how to make the corporate influence on our setting more prevalent, starting with the Eridani Corporate Federation.

[Haydizzle]

I'm honestly pretty glad Josh ended up applying for the position. I've gotten to know him fairly well over the last six or so years, and in that time, I've gotten to see him mature both as a person, and also in the creative department. His ability to think worlds into existence is pretty impressive, and as a DM, I wish I had even a fraction of the talent he does for creative writing.

However, I'm not going easy on his application since I know he can handle it. ?

So, for some questions:

1) what do you see yourself working on in the future, should an ideal situation arise where you're satisfied with changes to Eridani lore?

2) what do you feel like your biggest weakness would be as a lore developer?

3) you mentioned that intergalactic relationships feel lacking in your essay. How do you rate your ability to work with others and come to compromises, since making intergalactic lore with other factions would mean working in a more close-knit way with lore developers for other species?
 

Thank you for your time, and good luck with the application!

[furrycactus]

Thank you for taking some time to look at my app and ask some questions! Your kind words make me feel all fuzzy inside.

 

3 hours ago, Haydizzle said:

1) what do you see yourself working on in the future, should an ideal situation arise where you're satisfied with changes to Eridani lore?

 

I'm making a conscious effort not to get ahead of myself with potential ideas, but I'd very much like to work on further development of the Republic of Elyra and making them more active, both with their own national things and with the galaxy at large. What I'd do specifically, however, I couldn't say at the moment.

 

3 hours ago, Haydizzle said:

2) what do you feel like your biggest weakness would be as a lore developer?

 

Writing in a concise fashion. I've always had a bit of a problem with going off on tangents at times and extrapolating needlessly on unimportant fluff, though I like to think that I've been improving on that lately by making revisions and slashing unnecessary content. Working with a team however, I think I would be able to manage this better, and I'm always going to be making a constant effort to improve on it as well, as it's something I've struggled with for years, and I'm eager to see it dead.

 

3 hours ago, Haydizzle said:

3) you mentioned that intergalactic relationships feel lacking in your essay. How do you rate your ability to work with others and come to compromises, since making intergalactic lore with other factions would mean working in a more close-knit way with lore developers for other species?

I would like to believe I'm good at working to compromises with people, especially when it comes to writing and story development. The server is a collaborative effort, thus, collaboration and compromise is a necessity. Not being willing to give as well as take is only going to be harmful and more limiting in the long run, so I would strive to consistently seek to avoid such a thing as much as possible.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Hi! Again, very sorry for the wait. I very, very much liked your essay. I have a couple questions first:

• Other than Eridani and interstellar relations(which are both things I very much want to do, too), do you have ideas for any other factions in our lore?
• How do you feel about writing news articles? It's something we don't really do that often nowadays, which is rather disappointing, when you look at the past.

Looking forward to your answers and wish you good luck. I'll be making the final decision on who to accept in a few days.

[furrycactus]

4 hours ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

Other than Eridani and interstellar relations(which are both things I very much want to do, too), do you have ideas for any other factions in our lore?

To the extent that I wrote about in my essay, not yet. However, I do have a couple of more broader ideas. I'd like to see the Sol Alliance shrunken gradually, but that's a rather broad thing that could happen in a lot of ways. I'd like to see Elyra become stronger and no longer the punching bag of the Orion Spur, and see them make meaningful interactions with other groups, like potentially taking steps towards smoothing things over with the Izweski Hegemony. I do also, as I very very briefly touched on in my essay, have a larger idea concerning Zeng-Hu specifically and the area of genetics/cloning, however that's a pretty LARGE idea that I didn't want to nail down and refine a bunch yet as it would likely need a lot of discussion with lore people.

 

6 hours ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

How do you feel about writing news articles? It's something we don't really do that often nowadays, which is rather disappointing, when you look at the past.

The idea of writing news articles is something I'm genuinely extremely interested in, and something I very much would want to do. This might be naivety as I might not know how annoying they could actually be to write, but as it stands currently, I really want to write news articles. I always love reading them when other lore staff post them, and I'm sure there are other people that like them too, so if I could help make articles for the various human factions more commonplace, I'd love to do it.

[NewOriginalSchwann]

Hello, and thank you for applying! I just have a few quick, general questions due to Borya beating me to the punch.

1. What is your plan for working together as part of a greater team? There's a lot of overlap in human lore with other groups, and the overlap isn't always in agreement. I'd like to see how you intent to handle this cross-area cooperation.
2. How do you intend to manage bloat as a lore developer? Namely, how will you determine what does and does not need to be included in the final draft of something?
3. What are some areas of bloat that we, as lore developers, could trim down?

[furrycactus]

7 hours ago, NewOriginalSchwann said:

What is your plan for working together as part of a greater team? There's a lot of overlap in human lore with other groups, and the overlap isn't always in agreement. I'd like to see how you intent to handle this cross-area cooperation.

Primarily I see the server as a whole as a cooperative effort, and ideally I'd intend to approach a lore position in the same way. There's give and take required for any cooperative effort, and discussion and compromise are important things when trying to work on a form of narrative with multiple people. Humanity's overlap with other lore groups is a big part of the appeal for me, specifically because it offers these opportunities to engage with other bubbles of lore rather closely - IPCs and Vaurca especially. I've always wanted a greater deal of cooperative lore, so I'd approach the prospect eagerly, and to the best of my ability, with an open mind and a willingness to negotiate towards a satisfactory outcome for all parties involved.

 

7 hours ago, NewOriginalSchwann said:

How do you intend to manage bloat as a lore developer? Namely, how will you determine what does and does not need to be included in the final draft of something?

I'd be sure to give something several read-overs, and ultimately anything that seems to drone on about information that isn't particularly relevant to anything I would be sure to cut. Information that doesn't provide any meaningful information for players to use when making their characters falls into this area for me. I'd also run things past other team members for their input if they're willing, though, that's of course not to say that I'd be pawning off all my work onto others. 

 

9 hours ago, NewOriginalSchwann said:

What are some areas of bloat that we, as lore developers, could trim down?

I think things aren't actually super bad for human lore in terms of bloat at the moment, but in the past, much larger amounts of information on politics and military stuff fell into the field of 'bloat' in my opinion. A little bit of information on these things can be good to help flesh out a faction and give people an idea of what the rough political climate in a nation is, but extensive information on parties, and wiki pages and news articles doing little more than parading around information on big spaceships with big guns offers little tangible stuff for players to make use of with their characters, and this kind of thing shouldn't be around. Avoiding this kind of thing is good to keep bloat trimmed down, and trimming the few cases where this is still present can help further, like the "random information" on the Sol Alliance Military page, for example.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Congratulations, you're accepted!