Omicega -- IPC Application

[Omicega]

BYOND Key:
Omicega

Character names: 
Alicia Parker -- Security Guard
Sophie Harper -- Atmospheric Technician
Ly Thi Hanh -- Paramedic
Junko Tsutsumi -- Forensic Technician
Nikarete Komnenoi -- Detective

Species you are applying to play:
IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character?
I feel like this question is mostly meant to crop up for Skrell or Unathi whitelists. I'm planning on making a shell, though.

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?
I have, and I feel as if I have a good overview of them.

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?
Long story short -- I really liked playing synthetic on CM-SS13. I've held the whitelist there for years now and would consider myself one of the more prolific players of the role. It's never been a 'flavour of the month' thing for me; the unique design of Alien universe style synthetics is just something I really vibe with. Aurora having shell IPCs allows me to get something that at least approaches that style of character and gameplay in a higher roleplay environment overall, and I'd really like to explore the same general themes of synthetic 'life' as opposed to organic life here rather than just as an often-overlooked backdrop to a humans-versus-aliens team deathmatch game.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a human.
There are any number of things that you could put here -- an IPC can be a literal slave in the Aurora setting in a way that no playable human can really be, for instance. The main one as I see it, though, is definitely their societal and legal status. Every organic from a human to a Skrell to a Vaurca is covered under a different set of laws and societal norms to even a free IPC -- the distinction drawn in the Corporate Regulations between murder and automacide is a great example of this. The potential for IC debate, disagreement, and discussion about what constitutes 'life' is another concept I would love to get to grips with in more detail. I like the idea that IPCs come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of capability -- from a distinctly robotic and cyborg-esque industrial or security chassis; to a more middle-of-the-road IPC that is able to emulate emotions to some degree without being able to genuinely experience them; to a fully-realised free and unbound shell IPC capable of enough emotiveness and self-awareness to hold belief and faith in the Trinary Perfection.

Basically, there are so many differences that it's difficult to get through them all in any reasonable length of time, and it depends massively on which kind of IPC someone is looking to play. I'm definitely leaning more towards a middle-of-the-road shell IPC that straddles the line between designed to be human-facing while maintaining a distinctly robotic and artificial 'offness' about them, so aspects of IPC roleplay that play into that would be a big factor.

Character Name:
Esprit

Please provide a short backstory for this character:
Esprit is the public-facing name given to a NanoTrasen shell IPC previously assigned to security detail at the Nouvelle Java -- a high-end club and cocktail bar high in the skies of Cytherean Venus, close to the edge of the planet's atmosphere. The model marries a higher-than-average level of personality imitation to an effective and robust suite of policing and enforcement protocols and heuristics, aiming to strike a balance between a pleasing customer-facing exterior capable of upholding corporate professionalism and holding superficial conversation with the unerring reliability of a synthetic not easily deterred by rowdy patrons or less agreeable clientele attempting to gain entry.

The Nouvelle Java made use of Esprit and several of its companion units for four years before the aerostat as a whole found itself purchased by Idris Incorporated; the interstellar banking concern continuing to reinforce its grip on the tourism and service industry so close to the heart of Sol. While the Nouvelle Java itself formed part of the package deal, the banking conglomerate expressed no interest in the NanoTrasen IPCs nominally tied to the property. Only Idris service units could properly staff an Idris facility to the company's exigent standards, in their own words; and so Esprit and its companion units found themselves packaged back off to NanoTrasen themselves, surplus to requirements.

It didn't take long for the positronic to find a new line of work, however. Its existing programming and capabilities were already well in line with standard NanoTrasen corporate policing -- the unit was already well-acquainted with the concept of low-gravity and zero-gravity operations, for one, given the Nouvelle Java's position so high in the Venusian exosphere. The unit's previous blend of corporate professionalism and superficial personableness made it even more of an ideal choice for a melting-pot environment where it could better represent NanoTrasen's public image, and Esprit soon found itself assigned to the internal security detail aboard the NSS Aurora in line with this assessment. As a corporate environment full of a multitude of different species, cultures, and competing corporate subcontractors to NanoTrasen itself, it is hoped that the newly-updated and lightly-refurbished Esprit will meet with the company's expectations and perform to the same standards as it did during its four years high above Venus.

What do you like about this character?
She was fun to write for. I had a couple of concepts in mind for a security character based around the same vague concept of a repurposed and/or reassigned shell designed more for a customer-facing environment than out-and-out beat-the-criminal-with-a-stick law enforcement, but it took a bit of thinking through and running some ideas around various people to figure out a nice way to slot it into the existing lore. Characters from either level of Venus are not something I see played a lot in game, personally speaking, and I hope to represent the region and its lore a bit more by means of her in-game accent and character development. 

In addition to that, walking a fine line between a clinically robotic tone and an upper-class, often obsequiously polite Cytherean attitude is something I really can see being fun about her; I like the idea that she is deliberately designed to not seem too human so as not to disquiet people. In effect, I want to play up the concept that she straddles the boundary between being a polite and efficient "not robotic" member of corporate staff ready to assist and smooth along a workday while also exhibiting a very obvious "robotic" level of rigid professionalism and deliberate lack of more nuanced emotion so as to make her co-workers acutely aware that she is, in fact, meant to clearly be an IPC and not a more sophisticated shell trying to pretend otherwise.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?
I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. I think I could stand to emote a lot more -- there are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole.

Notes:
As with my other race whitelist app, I tried very hard not to play wiki regurgitation here, and to give more of a background to Esprit rather than fleshing out her potentially limited potential for really deep personality. I like the idea that a character is what you make of it; I think it's possible to play an extremely memorable and engaging character without needing a whole plethora of unique and specific quirks and elements of depth to them. A lot of my characters have tended to be basically 'everyday' people working everyday jobs, and I'd like to double down on that by playing a character like this. I've been playing synthetic on CM for well over two years now and while this character differs massively from the character I play(ed) over there in a whole ton of ways, I see a lot of similarities in the way I enjoyed portraying an almost-human robot over there and the way I could see myself enjoying it here too.

As a side note, I am aware that I only just pushed through a whitelist for Skrell. I know this might be a bit soon to put in a second whitelist application for a separate race, but I've always been something of an altaholic and I enjoy creating new characters even if most of the ones I've mashed out in the Aurora character creator never actually made it into the game. I'd like to stress here and now that I'm not really looking to play whitelist poker and collect a full house; both Skrell and IPCs were races I had a lot of interest in going into Aurora from other SS13 contexts, and I hope that the lack of time between these two applications won't be a sticking point. It was basically a fifty-fifty as to which one I was looking to get invested in first, in other words.

[Burrito Justice]

Hello, smoldering burrito here, late to Omi's first application but in time to blast root for them them in this one:

Omi is a big silly person with big silly characters with a big silly way of typing, and by that I mean their writing ability and understanding of the English language far exceeds anyone else's capabilities in my circle of friends, therefore I can say that despite their recent arrival to this server, their roleplaying ability should not be discounted; they really read into what they're interested in, and I'm glad that IPCs caught their eye. I've seen Omi grow good characters, and I'm glad to say that I had the pleasure to take part in their growth, because they're fun to be around.

I wanna see 'em beep. +1

[niennab]

Thank you for applying. Your application demonstrates an understanding of IPCs, accepted!

21 hours ago, Omicega said:

I know this might be a bit soon to put in a second whitelist application for a separate race

Technically we don't have any rules on how soon people can apply. So no worries there.