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Jade's Skrell Lore Deputy Application


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Ckey/BYOND Username: MoondancerPony

Position Being Applied For: Skrell Deputy Lore Developer

Past Experiences/Knowledge: Former lore team member x2, former developer x2, wrote the (kind-of misexplained, unfortunately) utility function lore, re-did the Clockworks, helped Snakebitten with a lot of Skrellcode and Shellcode and Hellcode, my ideas were used for the current iteration of Glorsh-Omega's lore.

Examples of Past Work: My Glorsh-Omega overhaul was ultimately taken, had large swathes of it cut out, and turned into the current Glorsh-Omega lore. The Clockworks were redone by me out of respect for Nebulaflare's lore and characters, which still hold a special place in my heart; Aveo'Kluup-Olesh Ioblakku is a strong reason for my interest in Glorsh and Skrell lore. I also wrote lore for utility functions that got kind-of lost in translation through the lore canonisation app.

Additional Comments: Pre-empting the usual question of "why will this time be different than last time/what's changed since then":

Hestia. Unironically. I thought Aurora was awful but once I got a taste of how bad a server could actually be I missed Aurora so much. Even if people on Aurora's staff had some disagreements, even some really bad ones, and there were occasionally bad actors, it was never a concerted effort by entire swathes of the staff team to push a malicious agenda.

As a note, I've also worked hard on developing mindfulness and self-awareness. I've developed an ability to step outside of my current thinking and recognise that I'm not always thinking rationally which is a good tool to have to de-escalate conflicts. It unfortunately doesn't help me to retroactively solve problems; I am not going to suddenly be best friends with the people I've failed to get along with in the past. The things we said to each other still hurt and I was to blame for at the very least my part in escalating those conflicts. However, I'm not going to let past conflicts weigh down the ship or color my interactions with the team in the future. If it ever does impact my ability to write lore, I'll let Snakebitten help me handle it.

Oh, and my essay. It's a bit of a long read.

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33 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

Hestia. Unironically. I thought Aurora was awful but once I got a taste of how bad a server could actually be I missed Aurora so much.

I really, really don't like how you phrased this. Can you elaborate on this, because I feel like you don't actually want to be on Aurora, going off of Discord talk and this alone. On the Discord you yourself said "I came back to Aurora because Hestia was the Dark Mirror version of Aurora." You should be able to see the problem here.

Furthermore, I'm very doubtful that you significantly improved. You've not been back for long. Last time I brought this up to you in your staff application you said you'd change for the better. I trusted you back then and supported you. I lack the trust to actually do that this time around. You've not given enough reason for us to actually believe that you turned your behaviour around - because you said it once and broke that promise.

Edited by MattAtlas
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I have to echo matt for most points. I really don't trust you to be in any staff position for some time; you made a lot of excuses for your behavior over and over and none of them were very good. 

I'd like to see a longer period of demonstrating that you're not all talk in your "What's different this time" section. It's easy enough to behave for a month or two, but that's not necessarily a change of character. Honestly it seems like you're just back here because another server left a foul taste in your mouth. Fair enough reason for coming back, not really a good enough one to show your change of behavior, especially when it comes to becoming staff. 

TLDR; seems a bit premature. Stay awhile and I'll revisit my thoughts for the future.

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2 hours ago, Doxxmedearly said:

Honestly it seems like you're just back here because another server left a foul taste in your mouth. Fair enough reason for coming back, not really a good enough one to show your change of behavior, especially when it comes to becoming staff.

 

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

I really, really don't like how you phrased this. Can you elaborate on this, because I feel like you don't actually want to be on Aurora, going off of Discord talk and this alone. On the Discord you yourself said "I came back to Aurora because Hestia was the Dark Mirror version of Aurora." You should be able to see the problem here.

I really, really messed up explaining this, thank you for pointing that out. Looking back on it it definitely comes across as "Aurora's awful, but Hestia's worse so I guess I have no choice," which is absolutely not what I meant. I talked it over with someone and I think that a more accurate way to put it would be this:

I thought Aurora was shit but it took Hestia to put things in perspective. Aurora is imperfect but its flaws, wherever they may be, are not insurmountable and they're nowhere near as bad as I thought they were. I'm not going to say Aurora has no flaws. I am going to say that Aurora's flaws are not malicious, and they're not insurmountable. I used to think that they were. Hestia showed me what a server would be like if that were actually true, which made it clear that not only was Aurora better, but that I had actually, genuinely misjudged it by assuming malice where there was none. I think I can safely say that I made a mistake describing Hestia as the "dark mirror" version of Aurora. More accurately, it actually has what I incorrectly believed Aurora's issues to be. With it as a reference point, I can now accurately judge Aurora and say that my assessment of it was incorrect.

I left, originally, because I thought I was being (maliciously) ignored and made redundant (something that did actually happen later on Hestia). A lot of that was due to Resi's use of my Glorsh lore without my permission, which we've since talked about and mended some fences over, both acknowledging mutual fault in what happened (though at the time of that resolution I blamed a lot of it on Aurora as a whole, rather than the culture of Aurora at the time, which was influenced by the people who were there at the time, influencing the people who influenced the culture of Aurora--hey this is actually a lot like that whole spiral thing I talked about in my essay). There were also some other issues complicated by me, again, taking criticism of my demeanour and actions as malicious attacks on the rationale, opinions, and beliefs that informed them. Specifically I interpreted being told to be less abrasive (a valid criticism and something I've tried to do recently) as being told not to disagree with people at all and to just fall in line, which in retrospect is absurd; the current Skrell lore team proves that you can disagree with people and criticise their lore without being an asshole to them.

I'm not here because I've exhausted all my options, or anything. If I just wanted to feel important or have power or something I'd have stuck with any one of various projects I've made or been working on. I'm working on Aurora (even during my beach vacation, actually) because I find it fun. You guys make it fun. You're, all things considered, pretty chill and allow for a lot of really interesting and cool things when it comes to lore and mechanics; a big one I can point to that I did is makeshift chemistry. It's a weird mechanic (and still kind of riddled with bugs that I need to fix, oops) but it's a neat and unique one, and you guys chose to add it. Instead of being super-serious and no-fun-allowed (the common accusation against Aurora), you guys choose to add a lot of weird but fun stuff and make it all work together cohesively.  It may not be completely super-serious, but it's fun, and it works, and it's (mostly) internally consistent. I, honestly, really like that.

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

Furthermore, I'm very doubtful that you significantly improved. You've not been back for long.

 

3 hours ago, Doxxmedearly said:

I really don't trust you to be in any staff position for some time; you made a lot of excuses for your behavior over and over and none of them were very good. 

I'd like to see a longer period of demonstrating that you're not all talk in your "What's different this time" section. It's easy enough to behave for a month or two, but that's not necessarily a change of character.

 

3 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

I concur with the tldr by @Doxxmedearly

That's fair, I suppose, given that I can't prove I've changed, I just have to demonstrate it. However, I've been talking with people about Aurora lore stuff since before I left Hestia, and in fact I wrote a bit of (alternate Vaurca history) lore based on Aurora lore while I was there. I also was tempered a lot by working as head dev on Hestia; I had to deal with a lot of stuff (both in terms of job responsibility and in terms of people) and only after unsuccessfully looking for a replacement since mid-March, going through about three or four headmins, being unable to hire any competent devs, and having a host who constantly circumvented me did I give up.

Some other things that happened stemming from my time on Hestia, though not directly related, also led to me trying to develop better self-control and conflict resolution skills. This time I wasn't on my own, having several people to help me learn and, yes, to yell at me (deservedly) when I fucked things up. I'm obviously not done learning and improving, and so I still talk with these people regularly; in addition to being my friends they also just, y'know, give good advice.

As an aside, I'd like to add that if what I'm saying still doesn't make sense, or comes off as ambiguous or really just not something someone would mean, then maybe talking about it in DMs would be better because I'm better at writing short-form conversations than long-form ones. The longer a conversation segment is, like a message or post, the more you have to anticipate the other person's reaction which is a department in which I'm currently lacking. Writing lore, however, is essentially just writing a note rather than a conversation; you don't need to simulate someone else's thought process and anticipate their future response in order to write lore. I'm still trying to improve at long-form conversations (hence this post) but it would definitely be a lot easier to clarify things when there's not long gaps of time between massive posts to contend with. I actually wrote different sections of this post in different orders, for example I'm adding this specific sentence to the end of this paragraph right after writing the third paragraph, which was written after the last paragraph, so some things may come off as disjointed. While I can try to explain any confusion in this topic, I'd much rather explain in DMs and if you feel it's relevant you could post the conversation in here.

I'd also like to thank all of you for giving me a chance to be heard out. To give you I guess some kind of look inside my head: The last time I received criticism like this I definitely took it too personally and it colored my interactions with everyone for the rest of the time I was here. I thought people personally disliked me and didn't want me to be on lore because it was riddled with cliques, not because they had in-good-faith, genuine concerns about my behavior. Ironically, I wound up proving them right.

This time, however, it's different. I still had that instinctual gut reaction of "people hate me" but I was able to ignore it and look at things objectively. Does it make sense that Matt hates me and is getting some kind of sadistic pleasure out of trying to publicly beat me down? Of course not. Matt's not trying to criticise me as a person. He's made it clear that he can work and talk with me just fine outside of the context of a staff app, so clearly it's specifically to do with whether or not I'll be good as a member of staff, which is a valid concern. Any doubts about the good faith of the criticism that I had left after that I was able to talk through with someone and completely dismiss.

Improvement isn't just a thing that happens. You can't take a break for a few months and be better out of nowhere. It's an active process and one you have to keep at and practice and sometimes you still fuck up and have to pause, apologise, and step back from things until you have a clear head. I thought I could do that before but, for one example, I blew up at VT over an argument when they asked me to calm down because I was acting really unreasonable and I, still acting unreasonable, didn't think I was acting unreasonable.. Later in the conversation I realised I was in the wrong and apologised, but the damage was already done. Being able to actually listen to people and take feedback, even when it seems like something that feels completely incorrect and wrong to me, is important, and I've learned to take that kind of feeling-of-wrongness as a sign that I'm being unreasonable and need to take a step back and think things through objectively rather than as a sign of hostility or malice.

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To echo the sentiments above, I would be incredibly wary of having you onboard the team. While acting as the synthetic deputy you were generally inactive, had no projects, wouldn't respond to me and were constantly getting into arguments with the other team members. I spent a fair share of my time early on as the maintainer not doing maintainer duties, but reigning you in. Remarks I should add that were never responded to until you decided to resign.

When I took you on as synth deputy you said you changed, and after a week or two it became apparent that you hadn't. As such I am afraid that you're doing the same again. I recommend contributing as a player and proving that you've changed before applying. Given that skrell and synthetic teams often have to work together, I do not feel comfortable working with you.

Edited by niennab
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I feel like it's for the best and good for transparency that I reiterate what I've said on Jade at staffcord, here. The gist is that I can attest to Hestia being an incredibly hostile (I'd use toxic, but I hate the word) environment to develop both lore and code in to any capacity. Plagiarism is day-to-day, staff recruitment is scraping the bottom of the barrel as of recently, changes have a tendency to be devolve into 'I am adding/removing this because I want to, fuck the rest' and the turnover is so large twice-retired staff have to return to stop the boat from sinking. Needless to say, this isn't a fun place to work on for any sane person.

Despite all this, I can vouch for Jade handling all issues encountered either borne from malice or incompetence with far more patience and goodwill than the other side was willing to give. If there's any questions as to burnout and abrasiveness after this, I'd love to remark that her off-Aurora experience doesn't strike me as that of someone who would end up sitting on the slot for nothing but fights. Unless we're incredibly, laughably bad judges of character, the Skrell team can put their trust in her fully to be both a creative lore writer and a team worker; as no longer present lore staff have demonstrated, having just one of these traits doesn't work out. One doesn't even have to leave the thread to see proof on this, given their essay and the time they've taken to respond to criticisms.

As an aside, there are not a lot of people I can name who would want to return after having their work stolen and mangled by a supposed team player, or who've been in the same spot at all. Cooperation is a two way street, and we can't really get to a functional team without being willing to cooperate in the first place.

Onto the point of 'inactive and had no projects', the very essay is a massive overhaul project if we were to incorporate it to existent and planned Skrell lore. Not only that, but I distinctly remember her IPC lorestaff application as touching upon the nature of positronics beyond the expected robot tropes, and an alternative Vaurca history document which had been floating around. To repeat, this doesn't strike me as someone who would end up occupying a spot for nothing, even if they hadn't gone through the effort of a detailed application essay and sitting down to respond to whatever issues are brought up. Nobody else springs to mind when I think about available, innovative writers you can approach who would want to work with the Skrell team.

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It hurts to have to read over what was posted already in this thread, and equally hurts just as much for what I'm to post.

The sentiments already posted here are on justified grounds, in my opinion. I don't personally think jade is unqualified for lore writing, but rather her qualifications as a staffmember are questionable from how she seems to treat people, from hot/warm/cold flashes of emotion to outright unpredictable outbursts towards people she disagrees with.

Assuming whatever happened on Hestia did indeed happen, I'm sorry you had to go through with that. But I'm rather skeptical about your sudden change of heart about this server, considering how you seemed rather happy to get away from (and also harshly criticize) Aurora when you signed on with Hestia initially. And prior to that, I have recollection of past tensions between the two of us before we mended that divide and became better friends after having overcome our issues before. But then that didn't last, either, because I experienced a rather vile outburst by you not too long ago to the point where I had to rethink things. I don't think anyone can really get a read on you for the most part, I'm really skeptical as to whether anything you've posted here is actually what you think, because not a few months ago you had a very different opinion on things. You can contribute in other ways, jade, but I don't think stepping up to the plate of staff this soon is what's best for you or the rest of the lore team.

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Thanks everyone for your feedback, after mulling it over for a while I've decided that this application was premature and I will most likely reapply later, working on various projects and contributions to the game and community in the meantime. I'll ask to leave this open for any final comments from Lore People and such.

The return of Hgluk Tzqi's Basilisk will have to wait...

For now.

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I will be deliberating on this soon once I get a word in with my boss.
In the meantime. When commenting on future applications, I would rather nobody post feedback in a fashion such as
 

23 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

I'm really skeptical as to whether anything you've posted here is actually what you think, because not a few months ago you had a very different opinion on things.

This is neither necessary nor wanted. Please try to keep things respectful with the person that has been offering this much respect to those that commented.

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Right.
Thank you to everyone for depositing your feedback. It has been vital in making the decision that I will be making today.
I will be giving Moondancer no less than three months from today's date to
1) Be active and a good person in the community.
2) Contribute to Aurora through PRs and lore canon apps if willing.
I will be not only working alongside her, but monitoring her behavior to ensure that her improvement actually has effect. At the end of this three months, she will apply again. We will see what we will see when that happens.
With that, and with my complete inability to add any more meaningful sentences here, I will be closing this application.

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