Botanist's "Human Lore Deputy" Application

[rrrrrr]

Sorry for the late reply. Real life stuff.

1. On balance, how do you see the Human Lore of the server being different with you than without you; what is something that only you bring to the table as a deputy?

Well, I like to think that I'd bring a unique perspective to the whole thing, but that'd apply to every other applicant, too. Subjectively, I like to think that I've read a lot -- and not just science-fiction, either. My favorite authors are, in no particular order: Roberto Bolano (non-SF/F), William T. Vollmann (semi-SF/F), Dorothy Allison (non SF/F), and Samuel Delany (SF/F). I'm not even going to bother putting a disclaimer saying that I'm risking sounding pretentious, here, because I genuinely do love reading and writing... my tastes are pretty broad. I'm also a published (non SF/F, not self-published) writer, as of early this year. Something I wrote was in an anthology that physically exists. I think that's pretty cool. I can provide proof if needed.

2. Something that has brought the Human Lore Team some concern throughout this application is your past body of work, and while you have acknowledged your prior immaturity in this area of things, we wanted to understand how your process in writing now differs from how it way back then. While we have a very broad swath of lore, factions, arcs, and locations, in human lore, we cannot focus on everything and keeping things tonally consistent between our 40+ planets can sometimes be challenging. What do you see as the tone/mood of our setting, what are your biggest priorities from a writing standpoint, and how would you implement them into human lore?

It's been just about nine years since I was last involved in writing for this server. I was fifteen years old. My writing process differs heavily, of course, but I'd say that a lot of the immaturity stemmed from me having been both fifteen and homeschooled. A lot of the content I'd agree is inappropriate came from a bad place that I'm going to acknowledge but not go into detail on in public. I subjected a fair number of people to a lot of verbal abuse for things that they basically had nothing to do with. It wasn't really right.

As far as tone goes, I'd say that Aurora tries to keep a semi-realistic tone. I wouldn't call it hard SF, but it's marginally more realistic than, say, Star Wars or Star Trek when it comes to sociopolitical subjects. All of the species, in-setting, have a reasonable amount of political, religious, and cultural diversity. There's no equivalent of a 'Galactic Federation' where everyone gets along and everything's just fine and dandy. None of the factions are all good or all bad. If any of them were, it wouldn't be all that interesting. It'd be pretty boring. So, basically, I'd say the tone is dark but realistic. The current overall mood, with the way things are going both on the ship and in the setting as a whole is grim. There aren't any big interstellar wars going on --- no laser light shows or that sort of thing --- but things seem precarious and unstable and, hey, another adjective, uncertain. Uncertainty is presently a big theme in the setting, I feel, and a big theme in the game itself. You don't know what's going to happen in any given round. You don't know who's going to get got --- if anyone! Nothing could happen.

My biggest priorities, short-term, would be giving extra love to some places relevant to the current area of the Spur that the ship's in and the Coalition as a whole. Gadpathur's a little one-note, which a lot of people seem to have noticed, and maybe that's the point, but it just strikes me as a little flat. I've already mentioned that there are two major planets/systems listed in the Coalition that haven't gotten any real, uh, fixing up, over the years. Crosk and Zaurghis. (Hope I'm spelling those right off the top of my head.) Beyond that, I'd like to work on some things that'd apply to all human factions --- lore on medical advancements/technology, disease, some stuff on education... as for how I'd implement them, I'm having trouble thinking of an answer other than "I'd workshop them with the team and see where it goes." Nothing is for sure and I've got ideas that probably wouldn't get past a first draft and some that'd end up being pretty different after getting worked on some more.

3. You mention wanting to focus elsewhere rather than Sol and Eridani. This is not an uncommon sentiment among the player base, as while we have a solid collection of people who love Sol and find it interesting, a general trend of opinion within the community is that we should move away from Sol-focused content for a while. The Coalition is a place that you mention as something that you want to see expanded upon, and as of this writing it is one of the lore team's primary areas of focus. Rather than how you may see the Coalition interacting with itself, we wanted to ask how you think the Horizon could interact with and be impactful within the Coalition's future developments?

 The Coalition is a big. Really big. The biggest. So, so big. It's like a blank check. You could put the Horizon in so many different kinds of situations inside the Coalition that I could legitimately see the ship staying there for, at least, another full year. It's decentralized, there aren't so many space cops, it has every conceivable type of government represented in it... and given how isolated some of the planets in the Coalition are, things could get pretty weird, in terms of who the Horizon's interacting with. So far the Horizon's been near some of the bigger, more relevant planets --- Xanu, Burzsia, near (but as far as I'm aware not visiting, for obvious reasons) Gadpathur... these places are, and I don't mean this as a knock against them, predictable. You know Burzsia's a dangerous hell-hole that mistreats synthetics. You know Xanu's a fairly stable democracy with all the amenities you'd get in Biesel. The further away you get from that, the more you can drive home the point that the Coalition is big and spread out. The Horizon could stop by places where the people have gotten downright strange over the years, colonies that don't get regular visitors, worlds that are settled but sparsely populated --- easier to run events for, since you wouldn't have to map out a whole city and populate it with a bunch of event characters --- it'd be great. The Horizon itself showing up in a system would be pretty significant, in and of itself. It's a state-of-the-art survey ship that's got nearly a thousand people on it. It's not a warship, but it's, as far as civilian vessels go, pretty well-armed. The locals outside of the major planets like Xanu could either welcome the Horizon be really put off by it showing up, since it represents corporate interests.

Edited December 1, 2023 by rrrrrr

[The7thLain]

Hello. Thank you very much for applying, I'm happy to see that we have passionate people in the community who want to contribute to the human lore of the server. Unfortunately, we've decided to proceed with another candidate. I hope that this does not discourage you from continuing to be an active member of the community who cares about human lore.