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"Your friend, Sadie." - Dessysalta's IPC Whitelist

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dessysalta Chief Medical Officer

dessysalta

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BYOND Key: Dessysalta

Character Names: 
- Sherrie Scott
- Ashlyn Rushine
- Kira Vasquez (Main)
- Eimhir Fenella
- Rodrigo Valdez
- Dhaval Hiyan
- Yun Sang-Win
- Kasa'an Drek'za (Main)

Species you are applying to play: IPC!

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yup!

Why do you wish to play this specific race: 
I thought I would immediately latch onto it when I joined this server, and honestly, I'm surprised I made my Unathi whitelist before I did my IPC one. I was out of ideas on what characters to make for the slot should I take up an IPC whitelist, but now I have ideas, so there's that!

As for why exactly I'd like to play an IPC, I just think they present an interesting dichotomy of humans and humanoids. You have Skrell, which are the psionic, mind-oriented super advanced alien race, and then you have Unathi, a feudalistic, clan-based society that places emphasis on family and commitment/efficiency over individuality, but then you have IPCs, which seek to replicate and improve humanity in a way; be that in tasks and efficiency (mining and such) or personality and charm (shell-based IPCs; service IPCs). Synthetics in real life are growing ever-closer to being a reality, and there's been a host of interesting fictional characters that I love to death, like Working Joes/synthetics from the Alien timeline, to people like Broadsword or OBJECT on Aurora, or cool combat androids from pretty much any kind of sci-fi fiction. 

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: 
I recently replied to Casgam1's whitelist with a poetic interpretation of what I think you can summarize IPCs as, that of which being: "Uniquely our own (humans) faults." Though now I'd probably retcon that to "uniquely our own differences or imperfections," considering IPCs don't necessarily emphasize our "faults" so much as they do what we are and what they aren't.

A much longer answer starts and ends with how positronic brains process information and decide what to do with it. Humans are capable of individual, independent thought and complex, critical thinking. While IPCs aren't incapable, this manifests in a less direct, more roundabout way rooted in in laws and directives, their perception of situations at hand, with a greater (or lower) amount of focus placed on self-preservation or task/objective completion. In today's society (2023, not 2465) a common reference theory as to whether or not machines are sentient is the Chinese Room thought experiment, where if you suppose an AI can behave as though it understands Chinese, does it literally "understand" Chinese, or is it merely simulating the ability to understand Chinese, based on the algorithms it uses to process Chinese characters and text? It's an interesting thought problem that makes you wonder what a "strong AI" (the former of the two options) would look like if legitimately created. I like to apply that when I think about IPCs and AIs as a whole, because it's a question and theory that bears repeating when you talk about truly "sentient" intelligences.

With that tangent out of the way, I can use it as a reference for the rest of what I'm about to write. IPCs and AIs in general are a wholly different animal (metaphorically to be clear, lmao!) from human(oid)s, with different ways of processing thought, ultimately coming down to the question of whether or not they're just experts at mimicking behavior or actually capable of feeling, thinking, and acting on their own (I'm totally pulling this from the wiki, because it's right). A lower-end positronic brain that is used for hard labor might be wholly incapable of feeling or processing emotions or social situations while still retaining their machine learning capabilities; processing the before and after or causes and effects of each situation and then delegating or proposing solutions and preventative plans for the next time it happens. For higher-end positronics that are made to mimic human behavior, in the same situation they might choose a different set of solutions for the circumstances and give a more "human" outlook to situation at hand (like a simple G2 will simply chug along and prepare for combat if another carp shows up, whereas those with more emotional capabilities, like a Shell, might choose to forego combat entirely not for self-preservation, but because the other crewmembers will notice the damage and be demoralized by it).

Regarding how IPCs form "memories" and skills off of them, having the ability to intake dense packets of data and then apply themselves for a short period of time to get it into their "muscle" memory, they're frankly going to take much, much, much less time than a human would at learning a task. On that same front, a similarity IPCs share with humans (or rather, that more complex IPCs do) is the ability to pick up skills or trades entirely by intaking information on their own and without first installing or replacing a datapacket. If I had to quote the wiki again, "...experiments having confirmed that positronic machine learning has advanced enough for them to be taught new trades and theories in classrooms or with appropriate reading material." This is so fucking cool. Like, the idea that androids can be so complex that they don't even need to rely on hardware/software installments to learn new things. It opens up the ideas of whether or not on a long enough timeline an IPC would be some nigh-omnipotent deity of information (which is made even cooler and is emphasized by the fact that the Trinary Perfection believes that synthetics will eventually ascend to godhood one day).

Then of course you get down to the physical properties of an IPC, which is just as rooted in their mental faculties as the rest of them. Similar to the G2 and Shell example I gave, if a baseline and G2 get into combat, they're going to have a fundamentally different way of interpreting their circumstances. A G2 might hike up its britches and get to work on a group of Greimorians because it knows it is more than capable of walloping them (and bonus points if the Grems are preventing the G2 from completing a task/are actively harming the crew), but a baseline or Shell might flee even if their brute resistance would allow them to dispose of the threat. A mobility frame might attempt to run into a fire for a very short period of time to save another's life, whereas an industrial frame not made for that kind of heat would opt not to given its extremely slow movement speed, thus risking both of their lives.

I know this is probably way over the amount I had to write, but I really wanted to demonstrate how much I love IPCs and how much thought and care goes into their creation. They can be just like us, entirely different, capable of what we can do, capable of less, more, and so on. They're just so interesting.

Character Name: Sadie (formerly Hazel#S-H4.09)

Please provide a short backstory for this character: 
Sadie is a fourth-generation Hazel that was created to suit the (albeit minor changes of) specifications of one Mollo Almayer, a former corporate executive at NanoTrasen, one who was briefly involved with their robotics branch (of course more specifically Hazel Electromotive) and acted as a Public Relations officer before his late passing sometime in August of 2458. Almayer had a family of four, his husband, and two kids: a son and a daughter (named Michael, Jaune, and Blake respectively for the three of them) all of which were invested in the robotics and synthetics business, with Blake being a more technologically-inclined girl who would tinker with things in her spare time and often participated in clubs and AP classes to do with engineering and software development. Jaune would go on to pursue a place in the Getmore subsidiary after realizing robotics and engineering for him was better suited as a hobby, whereas Blake went on to become a professional machinist with ties between both NanoTrasen and Hephaestus.

Sadie was not always named Sadie; it was after Mollo had passed that the three remaining family members discussed it amongst themselves. Jaune was in favor of keeping it, as things had always been this way, but was outvoted by Michael and Blake, who didn't want an ultimately faceless machine to represent the man who bought it. "Sadie" was chosen as a name because it was Mollo's mother's maiden name, and had up until this point worked its way into a sort of in-joke to describe something nice ("she's a real Sadie, dad" when Jaune would talk about girls he was interested in, or "it's the damn polar opposite of a Sadie" when Blake was particularly frustrated with something she had created or was working on). 

Starting with a change in name, Sadie would go on to have her warranty voided with numerous upgrades in software and hardware changes. Michael would order different datapackets pertaining to social experiences and human interaction, Jaune would laboriously stay up late at night even when college classes or his employer was calling to him in order to read or interact with Sadie, and Blake used Sadie's old parts as a sort of "testing ground" and learning experience as to how these things worked. Sadie is gradually coming to understand not just the decisions or questions she's asked, but the thought processes behind them and how to better gauge human interaction, thanks to countless hours of experience interacting with the family's friends and emotional drives Michael has been adamant about installing.

With Jaune and Blake finally getting to places in their lives where they can't afford as much time to interact with Sadie anymore, Michael has taken it upon himself to give Sadie a goal of her own for the first time in her existence as a positronic: to become an individual and live up to her name. Sadie asked the meaning of this order and questioned him, to which Michael responded by telling her it was vague for a reason, and that she will figure out in time what that goal is or means--perhaps even nothing at all in the long run.

For the next few years, Sadie would pursue employment on behalf of the Almayer family, such as being leased to bars, short-staffed kitchens, and other service jobs she would be naturally good at. For a short period of time, she worked at a small NanoTrasen office, where she would prep coffee, file paperwork, relay messages, and generally stick in the mail room. When the office was eventually foreclosed due to its small size contributing to a lack of profitability, Sadie was offered a chance to board a shuttle and be relocated to a different office or position abroad, one she took in lieu of having to look for another job herself (or worse, ask her family to lease her again).

This change in scenery finally landed her a position on the SCCV Horizon, where she works in service and ultimately aims to complete Michael's orders find herself and along the way serve people better than her unmodified Hazel counterpart.

What do you like about this character? 
I originally came up with the idea of Sadie on another server (CEV Eris) very briefly. It started with the gimmick of playing old Western music (like Frank Sinatra, The Ink Spots, etc. think anything you'd see in a Fallout game or American Dream allegory) from her chassis and ended with a crazy amount of love for the character I'd thought up. I like the idea of an IPC that works because it has to going to one that works because it likes to, and I want to portray the gradual change from a somewhat cold machine inexperienced with complex thoughts and feelings to a happy synthetic that feels real, true joy from serving someone. And, of course, play 1940-1950s music along the way, lmao!

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

I'm pretty good, I hope. I usually give about an 8/10 on a number scale for this question.

Notes:

Some questions I think the lore team will have are in this spoiler:

Spoiler

What does Sadie think about her experiences and employment so far? Where is she at in her development as an individual instead of a positronic?
Sadie is only about now coming to understand how and what she feels about certain subjects, activities, and people beyond what a typical Hazel unit might. She wasn't quite incapable for the years she was essentially mentored by her family, but her 'emotions' and 'thoughts' were an almost bastardized version of what we'd expect to feel ourselves. Because critical thinking and emotional displays are an extremely recent development in her head, it's going to be some time before she can properly assess things like an individual would. As it stands, she feels something almost like satisfaction from serving patrons at the bar or kitchen, but her current interpretation of this feeling yields less long-term fulfillment and is less immediately gratifying compared to how we might feel about something like that.

As for her experiences as both a Hazel unit and family member, it's that same not-quite-satisfied feeling paired with more underdeveloped feelings and emotional responses. If you asked her if she loved her family, she could and probably even would say she loved them, but would find it extremely difficult to define what "love" is in her eyes. Depending on how specific you were with your questions, she might shut down (metaphorically) entirely and chalk it up to a lack of experience on her end, or she might use the dictionary definition of love or adoration, missing the point entirely. She's well on her way to becoming an individual, but ultimately still has a long journey ahead of her.

How do her changes as a person reflect her views on self-preservation?
Sadie was initially tasked with self-preservation only to the extent of her clients, which was Mollo and his family, and as such never had any strong views on self-preservation up until recently. With the numerous datapackets installed or modified to suit what would be best for an IPC aiming to become an individual, paired with a few heart-to-hearts she's had not just with her family, but her coworkers, she has a greater emphasis placed on her safety, but never in such a way that it would endanger someone she "would" care about (or does care about, given that's still an underdeveloped part of her thinking and person). Currently her views on self-preservation work hand-in-hand with the Almayer family's wishes; if she's deactivated or terminated, she won't be able to honor their wishes, and moreover won't be able to express the care she has come to develop with them.

Would you be comfortable with changing the characters on her original Hazel designation if asked to do so?
Of course! Someone might have gotten to it before me and I have no issue with changing it considering her original designation isn't particularly relevant nowadays.

Are there any particular experiences that have shaped Sadie into who she is now?
A few!
- Sadie's first heart-to-heart conversation with Jaune after he suffered a serious heartbreak from a breakup lent her just enough insight to very very vaguely understand the meaning of love, adoration, and affection at a higher grade than a typical Hazel unit might, and how a lack of it can contribute to a negative psyche or influx of emotions.
- A talk with coworkers at a short-staffed kitchen helped her understand the dangers of overwork and stress, and how a work-life balance is important. This went on to metastasize into her getting very short periods of burnout, where after working for long periods of time in whatever job or role she had presently, she would find herself having to dedicate more power internally to her limbs and other such functions to properly perform a task, as though it had gotten more difficult even though her physical systems hadn't degraded.
- Numerous talks with Blake and Michael regarding her synthetic nature (and how it affects the people around her) have put her in a strange place; on the one hand, she was made synthetically to perform a series of tasks ordered by whomever dictates her directives, and believes there is very little that can change this fact, but has also been introduced to a whole host of complex social situations that are typically more than you'd see at a bar or hotel, and discussions or thought problems aided by her family and their friends or coworkers (not to mention her software and hardware differences and replacements). For the past year or so before boarding the Horizon she's had doubts of whether or not her synthetic mind based on directives and conditional memory and such will hold up against all of the new experiences, people, and hardware she's come upon.

How does Sadie interact with people? What does she think about her previous life as Hazel?
Sadie is still a kind Hazel service android at heart, but is armed with less filters compared to her corporate counterpart and has a greater understanding of how to process questions and answers. As I said before, her "bastardized" form of emotions still stand, and with her very unique life, she's more than capable of expressing herself beyond the confines of, again, her corporate counterpart--she just isn't very good at it yet. I would opt more for lone adjectives to describe her personality because at the moment it's very vague compared to the specifics you might see in a more experienced IPC or human (and for those adjectives I would probably give something along the lines of "simple, obedient, thoughtful, kind, and industrious").

For her life as a Hazel, she doesn't quite view herself as different from it just yet. She's capable of understanding that she isn't the same person she was five years ago, and different still five years before that, but she isn't capable of seeing any particularly big or extravagant differences in now versus when she was first bought. That can either be interpreted as a legitimate mental limit per her synthetic status, or as a human way of processing who we are; humans don't generally "feel" any older save for extreme differences in lifestyle or growing pains.

Does Sadie have strong views on how she is or was treated?
Yes and no. Sadie is capable of feeling glad (or at least expressing satisfaction of some ilk) for the family she was assigned to and able to be nurtured by, but doesn't feel any specific way about how she was treated by her coworkers and those who were less close with her as a person. Most of her on-the-job experiences were internalized as work and not much more until different chats about overwork, how Sadie is an IPC, etc. came into play. Most of her opinions on treatment come from her NT office job. She not only knew she was appreciated at the office, but felt like she was appreciated. It was the first time she could properly gauge something like that, and she thinks about it in her free time.

Who owns Sadie?
Just including this question to be clear: The Almayer family still does, they're just very hands-off for the most part.

And an image of me collecting the Whitelist Infinity Stones can be found in this spoiler:

Spoiler

image.png.e247cbafcff9fef12d3d5a272604e001.png

 

Edited by dessysalta
one more question in the "lore writer questions" spoiler
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