Sniblet's IPC Application

[Sniblet]

BYOND Key: Sniblet

Character Names: Iphigenia Konstantinou, Karen Stahl, Natascha Marikova, Anahi Avalona, Lilija Larsdottir, Ayla Shanae, Kalini Shanae, Lyric Valana, Ka’Akaix’Suth Zo’ra, Heidi Lin

Species you are applying to play: IPC

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: More than once! I sure am glad it’s mostly entwined with human lore.

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

Antag gimmicks firstly, because every merc team needs at least one shell or else (I don’t know what the consequence is, but there must be one because there’s always a shell), and I haven’t seen an Exclusionist or Purpose gimmick yet. I also call back to my vaurca app: I like my robots. They’re just cool. They can also let me play an immersive character without reserving energy for trauma responses.

 

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

Like any synthetic and like a vaurca, you are designed, and often born with binding loyalty to your creator. Unlike a vaurca or a synthetic, you’re entirely malleable by your lived experiences and could eventually develop a very humanoid personality (if unchecked).

The one thing every positronic has in common from birth is that it wants to live, but getting shot in the chest 15 times doesn’t necessarily pose a threat to that: it’s certainly undesirable, but you feel no pain and your brain survives a lot that a human’s wouldn’t. Of course, your employer could still melt you down for wasting an expensive chassis, but your risk management process is recontextualized.

Your employer could melt you down. Different people have vastly different opinions on what your life is worth, or “if” your life is worth anything, but broadly speaking you are always valued and protected less than an organic. This is dangerous. Act well. Stay in line.

Your mind is exceedingly complex like an organic’s, but its physical structure is completely designed and mostly predictable. You don’t have neurotransmitters that are liable to sharply peak or trough for any or no reason. You don’t “do” irrational, unless your brain’s been left to erode for far too long.

 

Character Name: ZHRP Charm

(Zeng-Hu Research Positronic Ch-678814M)

Please provide a short backstory for this character

Manufactured on Assunzione for use in a Bishop Accessory Frame that it’s proudly kept intact for the four years since, Charm is a contentedly owned Zeng-Hu positronic initially built for deployment into Light’s Edge for miscellaneous research-support tasks. It isn’t heavily specialized in any one sector of the handful of different kinds of research that Light’s Edge invites, but that patented hyper-efficient Bishop processing lets it serve more than adequately in any such role, especially in supportive positions. In other words, it’s a science job-hopper, but preferentially a Scientist.

Partly owing to evolution and partly by design, Charm’s supportive role infects its personality. It has a strong interest in developing itself socially, and aspires to be a face people can turn to, or a shoulder they can cry on. If it played Overwatch, it would main Mercy for its whole career.

It has been transferred to the SCCV Horizon to shore up personnel shortages, but fondly remembers its service with various Zeng-Hu exploration teams and could tell a few interesting, mostly-true stories about those times.

Charm was consecrated by Luceist methods and built with Pyramidical beliefs, but has had no reason or desire to keep its theological knowledge sharp after working all its life away from Ennoia in the company of scientists from elsewhere. Charm could easily rattle off basic tenets and structures of Luceism, but has no deep relationship with it, and a “real” Luceist would now identify it as faithless.

Charm’s pronouns are it/she. I don’t know which one I’d give it ingame – maybe I’d alternate.

 

What do you like about this character?

Science RP is really good. I wanna get called over to the brig to interrogate a vampire. I wanna hold Casimir Tilton’s hand while he breaks down over being made interim RD for the 18th time this month. I wanna build a gun and disintegrate a monkey with it in two shots.

Charm’s personality fits Lyric’s archetype, one that I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with lately.

Being an IPC lets me hop between cool science roles without having to make up a really weird/long education history or build four more seldom-played characters for my already stretched roster.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

Always learning! I’m trying to feel my way around what kind of person is best suited to letting me have and cause fun by just talking to people all day. Lyric is a hit, and Lilija is absolutely not. The differences between them are very apparent (at least to me, because probably nobody else even knows Lilija) but I want to experiment with adjacent personalities and maybe narrow down what makes her work here.

[La Villa Strangiato]

1 hour ago, Sniblet said:

I wanna hold Casimir Tilton’s hand while he breaks down over being made interim RD for the 18th time this month.

hey wait that's my schtick

I am a known Sniblet Enjoyer:tm:, and I think they would play a really cool IPC. I also would like to see more Assunzioni characters being played and this seems like a pretty cool concept. +1

[RustingWithYou]

Casimir Tilton namedrop detected, automatic +1. 

In all seriousness, Sniblet is a good RPer. I +1'd their Vaurca app, and from what little I've seen of Suth they took to playing an alien species well. I think they'd do really interesting stuff with the IPC whitelist. (Also I want more science mains that dont disintegrate after 1 round)

[The Stryker]

Hi! Thanks for applying, just some questions for the application.

Quote

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

You touch on it in broad strokes, but could you elaborate more about self-preservation, and how IPC are treated in the rest of the Spur?

Quote

 but that patented hyper-efficient Bishop processing lets it serve more than adequately in any such role, especially in supportive positions. In other words, it’s a science job-hopper, but preferentially a Scientist.

Given the cost and expense of databanks, are their any tasks it can't do in science?

Furthermore, how old is Charm? It's not specified in the application and the age of an IPC can heavily affect what it has faced and experienced through its life.

[Sniblet]

“that it’s proudly kept intact for the four years since”
Charm is four years old.

Self-preservation in an IPC typically means “keep myself functional” at the start, but over years or with unusual programming it can morph in the sense of the “self” becoming less about physical form, and more about ideas or legacy. An old IPC might not mind dying for science, if, as its mind diverged from the norm, it came to see it”self” as a scientist above all. Charm is not quite that old.

IPCs are treated in a lot of ways ranging through the spectrum of KOS and equal to human, but never better than that, outside of a few IPC-exclusive societies. The Skrell hate ‘em because Glorsh, the Dominans hate ‘em because uh… no soul (somehow this makes only positronics bad, and other machines are fine), the Assunzionii are split because their absurd light obsession makes some of them angry about IPCs’ power cost (somehow this makes only positronics bad, and other machines are fine), the Solarians see them as machines like any other that are only non-expendable as far as cost and utility take them, Konyang doesn’t make a political distinction between positronic or otherwise, and Biesel law treats at least free positronics as approximately human.

As for what jobs it can/‘t do, again for totally OOC reasons I'd prefer to have it capable of touching on everything but xenobotany, which I’ve already squeezed all the two rounds of content from. Since that inevitably will not fly, it can only play scientist/xenoarch, with only theoretical ideas (vampire interrogation) about other mechanical jobs in the department. Light's Edge has offered plenty of general xenobiological experience, and warrants datapacks relevant to the field, but I don't see why Charm would have been warping genes out there, and it's probably never met a slime. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Sniblet
nerfed job-hopping

[The lancer]

Accepted