Lly2 - IPC Whitelist Application

[Lly2]

BYOND Key: Lly2

Character Names: 
- Ququ Oquo
- Yulia Lavrentiy
- Jahi Buhari

Species you are applying to play: IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: IPCs exempt

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes.

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:
Outside of Aurora, I spend a lot of my time writing, and writing about robots is something that's come up again lately for me after a while away. It's always been something I've found personally interesting - to write from the POV of a character that operates in a fundamentally different way to how we do as the human reader - but on Aurora I've been busy playing my other characters, so I haven't bothered to take the time out to write up a new character until now.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:
I think the primary difference between playing an IPC and playing a human comes from their treatment by society. Regardless of which society it is they dwell in, they're always subject to some level of prejudicial scrutiny from their peers as a result of their synthetic origin. At their worst, IPCs exist as enslaved property of corporate masters; but even at their best, in places like Konyang where they blend almost seamlessly into society alongside their human counterparts, they still must deal with the occasionally unkind treatment of humans who would view them as a threat to their own livelihood (an example of this in Konyang being the purported police brutality of the National Police against synthetic citizens). This facet of being an IPC presents itself in a number of different ways depending on the details of the character, but the clearest example of how it might affect one is with an owned IPC - an owned IPC serving a master must usually place utmost priority (or may just be unable to do otherwise) upon being an effective servant, lest they draw the ire of their owner in some form, such as a memory wipe or software modification. For a free IPC, whilst this risk isn't present for them, they still must exist knowing that in even the most accepting areas of space they are thought of as lesser than human - employment opportunities, pay, the availability of suitable housing, general prejudice from their peers, their treatment under the law, etc., are all against them.

Additionally, another big one is what I touched on in the last question. Positronic brains operate in a way that is fundamentally different to organic, sentient beings. How they process some form of emotion - if they even do at all - is different to how it is done in a biological being. With a shell, the emotion they display may be nigh-on indistinguishable from a human to an onlooker, whereas with frames made not to mimic humanity the differences are more noticeable. And with these differences in how emotion is processed comes a difference in how IPCs treat almost every aspect of existence: how they may form relationships with their fellow man, or how they look upon the future, or how they look upon themselves and their place in the spur, and so on. 

Character Name: Hidetaka Scout

Please provide a short backstory for this character

In 2460, Hidetaka Scout was assembled in a Terraneus Diagnostics facility in Point Verdant, Konyang. A fascimile of a Human male in their mid-thirties, they were destined for work in the service sector. It was a subsidiary of the Gwok Group that had Hidetaka Scout commissioned; the billion credit empire had laid out a series of plans to open a number of new chain restaurants in-and-around Konyang, and as such required a number of new service staff for the workforce. Most of this workforce were simply hired employees, but Hidetaka Scout was one of the few lucky shells to have been order-made to serve as a persistent face within one of the new restaurants - a face that would eventually become familiar to returning customers, unlike the free employees that would come and go with the very rapid turnover of the service sector.

When Konyang's independence came, and with it the passing of the Emancipation Act by parliament in 2462, Hidetaka Scout became a free shell at only two years old, and with very little to their name. With the tide of newly-free IPCs looking for employment in Konyang, and the newfound concern that they now must worry about maintenance fees and the cost of electricity, Hidetaka Scout sought to immediately be rehired by the Gwok Group in a nigh-identical position to that which they had been in when they were owned by the subsidiary. Due to the nature of their expensive chassis, and the low-paying industry to which they were specialised for, the Emancipation Act was less of a boon to Hidetaka Scout than it was to other IPCs in Konyang; the then-effervescent shell had to rapidly adjust to their new environment, and the looming concern that any damage they endured to their chassis would be extraordinarily difficult to pay off, in part due to their low wage, and in part due to the poor quality of insurance that they had access to as waitstaff (besides scalds from spilled foodstuffs, there was very little in the way of danger in Hidetaka's employment, and as such only the most basic of repairs were covered by their employer's compensation policy). 

Despite the economic burdens they now endured, life as a whole was vastly improved for Hidetaka Scout upon gaining their freedom. Whilst there was very little that could be seen of it now, for way of lack of credits to finance it, there was laid plain a blank slate in which the future was now Hidetaka's to carve.

This status quo of slowly saving money and planning vacations was interrupted for Hidetaka in 2464 when a grease fire in their workplace rendered them injured. The fire had ignited as a result of some mismanagement of the stovetop by a new-hire, and by the time the necessary services arrived to douse the flames, Hidetaka had already endured a vast amount of damage to their synthskin. What once had been a high-quality facade of human flesh now served only as a charred, damaged sheathe for the intricate array of interlocking gears, joints, and cables that had previously been hidden; and Hidetaka Scout knew too well as he was enroute to a machinist that the necessary repairs to be made to look Human again were well out-of-budget.

Hidetaka's assumption bore fruit when the only repairs they were offered were those necessary for operations and a return for work, and nothing in the way of fixing the cosmetic damage to their synthskin. Those repairs would need to be covered personally by Hidetaka - or could be paid for by their employer in trade for an extension of their contract, which would come with the unintended downside of eliminating the possibility of Hidetaka setting off elsewhere anytime in the near future.

It turned out not to be the workplace injury itself that doused the effervescent personality of the young shell, but rather the reaction to his new state by those he had formed relationships with in his years of freedom. Perhaps it was merely imagined in his grief, but Hidetaka felt assured that those who had previously looked upon him favourably now judged him for his ugly appearance, and that the reduction in shifts being offered at his workplace was probably interlinked too. Downtrodden, Hidetaka Scout considered a number of options that would hopefully lead to enriching their life back to what it had been previously, eventually deciding upon looking elsewhere for work as a means to leave their current situation temporarily behind. They hadn't yet the finances to go on an extended trip away, and so a change of employment would have to do.

By early 2465, after a period of contemplation, Hidetaka was made aware of an opportunity available for service staff aboard the SCCV Horizon; the pay was miniscule when compared against that of an IPC employed on Konyang soil, but the benefits of free shelter, repairs, and electricity were too tempting to be resisted. Provided they could land the job and keep it, they would be able to at least subsist without having to care about their finances, just via those benefits alone. Whatever income they would get - or better put, would no longer be getting - was of lesser concern than the immediate stress decrease offered by the stable access to housing and power.

Besides that, the opportunity to see something else other than the interior of one Gwok Group restaurant was a pleasant thought too. And Hidetaka needs as many pleasant thoughts as they can get their hands on.

What do you like about this character?

I think it's an interesting character conceptually because it lets me explore the things that we take for granted that make us human - like complex emotions - through the lens of a character that isn't able to actually experience them in the same way. I think it'll be fun to figure out how this character who was purpose-built to be a perfect replica of a human will deal with the grief of having, essentially, been unable to live up to this expectation that was thrust upon them after having been damaged to a point in which their synthetic nature is now immediately obvious to anyone who looks at them. I also like the idea of taking this character who was born into an inherently very privileged position as far as IPCs go, and putting them into a setting like the Horizon where suddenly the prejudices they face will be massively increased.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

I think that provided I have the strong foundation of being able to take the time to write out a thorough backstory for a character I play, I'm a good roleplayer. From there, I'm pretty good at using that as a bouncing off point for interesting improvisation. My weak point is definitely improvising from a totally blank slate; stuff like being an off-station antag or a ghost role and having to just immediately make up a dude on the spot, I'm really atrocious at.

Notes:

In summary, Hidetaka will be a 5-year old free shell with a damaged appearance, working as a bartender for NT, who opts to go by neutered pronouns (it/its) until such a time that they can regain their position as a proper replica of a human via a full synthskin repair. I'll do the damaged thing by messing around with facial markings to give a look of exposed metal, etc.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Lly2
expanding on the differences between IPCs and humans

[Girdio]

I'm not super in the know in regards to synth lore (outside of basic knowledge and brief look-overs), but I have interacted with Ququ and Yulia both a few times. In general, both of the characters feel well handled for the lore they're representing, and in turn I feel that an IPC would recieve the same respect from Lly.

 

In turn, I'll drop a +1.

[Rabid Animal]

lly2 has always been a joy to play with, and I have an interest in his take on IPCs. consider this a +1

[The lancer]

Accepted