Wowzewow - Human Lore Deputy Application

[wowzewow]

Ckey/BYOND Username: Wowzewow

Discord Name: alsoandanswer

Position Being Applied For: Human Lore Deputy

Past Experiences/Knowledge: I've been playing since 2017, with a short hiatus in 2019 and have been developing for Aurora ever since.

Examples of Past Work: I've had a hand in a rather decent chunk of lore arcs, some minor, some larger. I've also had a hand in working on the Wiki as well as assisting in some lore-relevant PRs as well.

 

1. Why are you applying for this position and why do you believe you would make a good Human Lore Deputy?

I'm mostly applying for Lore Deputy because the scope of the work I plan to do precludes me contributing on a small scale. There are many pages I'd like to update, rewrite and maintain. Communication with the Human Lore team would be a huge boon to me as well.

 

I believe I'd be a good choice because I'm a very pragmatic and realistic person. I've got a wide depth of experience I can draw from such as my experience developing and wiki-developing. I like to do my research, with a focus on quality and consistency. I'm no stranger to dirty work that otherwise wouldn't be done from my tenure as a developer.

2. What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? What is your least favourite? (Note: If you submitted something that was canonised and is now part of human lore, you may not select your own canonised submission as your favourite or least favourite part of the lore.)

I profess, it's a rather personal favorite of mine - it's New Hai Phong. It’s very tight and well-written in the ethnicities it’s supposed to represent, with equal focus on all of them. The mixing of languages, and the knowledge of subject matter really oozes from the writing. It's a shame that there haven't been many characters from this planet. There's a lot of potential from this planet I hope that can be realized in the near future.

On the other end of the spectrum, is Gadpathur. The majority of the page is dedicated to being a vehicle for the Interstellar War and its effects, rather than a proper representation of it’s peoples - the Cadre system is a very interesting piece of writing for its culture (perhaps as an evolution of the caste system), but is very bare bones compared to Port Antilla, for example. There's nothing wrong with it, per-se, but it's not a very conducive page to write a compelling character, unless you want to do nothing but talk about the War. I could say the same for some other Coalition planets - they're rather dry in terms of character creation, but understandably, they are also rather new, so I feel they just need a little while longer in the oven.

3. What are three projects (medium to large sized additions, reworks, or arcs) you would like to do or help organize if made Human Lore deputy? (NEW PLANETS OR FACTIONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ADDITION AT THIS PRESENT TIME. DO NOT INCLUDE THEM IN YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.)

1. Improving asian representation in lore and character creation in general. For the most part, a sizable chunk of lore is very anglo-centric. Granted, I can't fault people for not wanting to write about places that are a complete continent away, sure. But that's just all the more reason for me to go "If no one else is going to do it, then I will." I've been pointed to New Hai Phong, Gadpathur, Vysoka and Konyang whenever I ask about it, but I still find them unsatisfactory. (I also plan to improve representation across the board for everyone else as well. I'm just starting here because it's where I'm most familiar with.) Ideally, most of the Human planets should have the ethnicity disclaimer and at least a small character creation guide as well, to encourage people to step outside of their comfort zone and create a new character.

Sol Common, for example, has a passing mention of Mandarin Chinese and nothing else. Dominia has chinese surnames, and other than passing mentions of people with chinese names, they aren't really elaborated upon. Same with Konyang, which, despite expressing how it represents Chinese, Japanese and Korean ethnicities, is predominantly Korean. However, I'm unsure to what extent falls under IPC team's domain and what falls under Human team's domain, so I'm going to refrain from making any concrete statements for now.

2. Updating human languages. They've been egregiously un-updated for the longest time - take Sol Common, for example, which is still (mostly) a word for word copy from Baystation. The sheer amount of factions, planets and origins far exceed what our current languages can handle, and I think it's high time we get to work on adding some more. I've kept a close eye on this, and I've seen some pretty interesting suggestions on the forums, as well as discussing this topic at length with other loredevs, so I think this would be most prudent.

We can also look into categorizing and organizing all the accents properly alongside this as well, since their numbers have swelled dramatically over the past few years.

3. Making planet pages more consistent and the New Player Experience. As of now, planets are rather unbalanced in how they are displayed - some are massive, taking minutes to scroll, while some are tiny, with a few paragraphs of length. Which really muddies the importance of from whether a planet's actually really lore relevant or that someone felt really passionate about writing about a certain planet that day.

Ideally, they'd follow how Port Antilla is structured as a cookie cutter template - better examples may exist, but basically, with a predetermined Introduction, History, Government, Culture, Military etc. categories, it's mostly just a fill-in-the-blanks for other planets that are missing them.

In addition, for New Players, there should be a "ethnic" character selection section, perhaps on the Earth or Human page, or a completely new page by itself. So let's say, you wanted to make a Eastern European character, it'd point you to Visegrad, with some disclaimers here and there. It'd save space for the cookie cutter "This is enforcable by OOC action", as well as provide a convenient place to point new players to when they are making their first character.

4. What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses?

One of the largest strengths and weaknesses of Human Lore is it's massive and absolute scope. You can basically write anyone and anything provided you have a proper origin - however, many of the planets have varying degrees of depth to them, causing a square-peg in round-hole syndrome where characters end up picking rather "safe" origins such Biesel, for example, rather than a more tailor-made origin because their planet of choice isn't well developed, unsuitable for their needs, or simply too obscure. Sometimes, some planets aren't even that bad - it's just that sometimes their formatting or writing style makes them hard to read. It's why I mostly don't plan to add any large chunks or arcs as a lore dev, because there is already so much already. I think we really need to work on "trimming the fat" instead.

Adding onto this is the varying degrees of quality of planets and factions - some are home-runs, passion projects that have cemented their place in the server. Namely, the Eridani and Dominians - Well written, and very popular for good reason, with a lot of memorable characters coming from them. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some planets and sections which are either simply unmaintained or just a means to an end for other purposes - maybe because the person writing it had left the team, or no one wanted to write for them, there are plenty of reasons.

I don't blame anyone, that's just how volunteer contribution works. Unfortunately, this can lead to a negative feedback loop where it boils down to "Why write for a setting that no one will play; why write a character for a setting no one will develop?" But I'm not going to be completely nihilistic - I also believe in "If you build it, they will come." I've seen people make concentrated efforts in trying to break the mold in making characters, using the myriads of origins, skin tones and custom clothing, and we should serve them better.

Hopefully, when I join the Human Lore team, I can start working on bringing up the rest of the planets up to scratch, as well as uniting the different writing styles from our laundry list of past contributors to be more legible and easier to understand, with my experience in formatting and organization. I'd love to do infoboxes for each and every planet, honestly, down to the very last insignificant detail of whether they drive on the right or the left.

5. What are your thoughts on the past arcs that have been organised by the human lore team?

I've unfortunately haven't been able to attent many events for the sole reason that my timezone typically makes them fall on a ungodly hour of 7 in the morning on a work day.

However, I've managed to play for a bit in the "Steel on the Horizon" event, and I think it was a rather interesting event, taking in mind of what was currently possible at the time.

6. What is an idea for a future arc that you would like to have a part in writing and organising in the future? (Note: If you provided an arc or arcs as part of your answer for question 3, you may expand on the ideas for that arc or arcs here, or you may provide another idea.)

Pragmatically speaking, a Gadpathurian arc would be one of the more exciting planets to host events on with our current server's resources. A mainly underground bunker-base military installation planet which matches majority of our assets to map to host exciting combat-oriented events. With one of the more well known premise of the Solarian War as a backdrop it'll be easy to follow and be invested in.

Hopefully, with my timezone, maybe in future, I can work with staff the on same timezone as me making non-peak hour events as well, which would be interesting.

7. Have you ever been subject to any strikes or bans of any kind from Aurora's moderators or admins? If so, how long ago were these actions and what were they for?

A ban from the Aurora Discords for some rather embarassing Relay posts I'd rather not talk about.

Edited November 5, 2023 by wowzewow

[La Villa Strangiato]

Hi there, I have a couple of questions.

On 05/11/2023 at 16:24, wowzewow said:

For the most part, a sizable chunk of lore is very anglo-centric.

1. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? Currently, we have no planets in lore with a Western European name/cultural background restriction. On the other hand, we have three planets with Asian (north and south) cultural restrictions, one with West African cultural restrictions, two with Central and Southern American cultural restrictions, an entire MENA/Anatolia nation-state, a myriad of non-white/Anglo NPCs, and many non-Western European-influenced cultures.

2. What is an existing planet or nation-state that you would want to see expanded on, apart from your personal favourite planet, and why? What, in your opinion, justifies this expansion?

3. A lot of the Horizon crew has Solarian origins. In this case, how would you write a Gadpathur arc to avoid the Solarian crew getting attacked, antagonized, or otherwise ICly-justified roadblocking?

In addition, I'd also like to note that no lore team controls language lore, and that is up to Arrow's purview.

[wowzewow]

40 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Hi there, I have a couple of questions.

1. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? Currently, we have no planets in lore with a Western European name/cultural background restriction. On the other hand, we have three planets with Asian (north and south) cultural restrictions, one with West African cultural restrictions, two with Central and Southern American cultural restrictions, an entire MENA/Anatolia nation-state, a myriad of non-white/Anglo NPCs, and many non-Western European-influenced cultures.

2. What is an existing planet or nation-state that you would want to see expanded on, apart from your personal favourite planet, and why? What, in your opinion, justifies this expansion?

3. A lot of the Horizon crew has Solarian origins. In this case, how would you write a Gadpathur arc to avoid the Solarian crew getting attacked, antagonized, or otherwise ICly-justified roadblocking?

In addition, I'd also like to note that no lore team controls language lore, and that is up to Arrow's purview.

1. I should've specified : "a sizable chunk" was a gross oversimplication, I apologize for that.

Let me preface this that this isn't like a lack thereof of representation in the planets, no. The Human Lore team has done a wonderful job of incorporating new and diverse planets with name/cultural background restrictions. Some need some polish, but for the most part, they are fine in what they achieve.

This is mainly directed towards Biesel, Mendell City, Sol, Earth - Dominia, to a lesser regard, the "generic" origins, in that regard.

Rather than Anglo-centric, I think a better term would be Americentric, in the cultural sense - the example would be the backported Bay lore, the Aliens-reminiscent Weyland-Yutani/SolGov writing that "oh, Japan China's going to take over the economy, and half the world!" And I feel that there's a lot of wasted potential here because, in lore, at most, are switching a round a few names of important people and places to Japanese/Chinese and calling it a day. Understandably, Dominia has it's own thing going with it's monarchy and planet stuff, so there's less focus on that. Despite this, I don't think it would be very difficult to implement - elaboration on how someone's heritage and/or culture influenced their decisions, how congregations of ethnicities created special regions, etc. would be a major improvement to start with. Then, we can look forward to adding more diversity if it makes things more interesting or helps to explain things better.

 

2. If it were up to me, I would change the human sections for Konyang to be more of a greater representation of the Sinosphere, namely balancing the extremely Korean-sided planet with other facets, mainly with Japanese and Taiwanese culture. (I say Taiwan here, despite it not existing in Earth lore, because it is more well-suited for what it represents culturally for Konyang - Mainland China's culture can be expressed through Sol and Dominia.) There is a definite demand for these - we've had a consistent, albeit sporadic amount of Japanese and Chinese characters, so I think it would be worthwhile to work to improve their ability to create these characters. I understand that this falls within the purview of the IPC Team, so I look forward to working with them in this project.

Understandably, since this is a Human Lore application, and not an IPC Lore application, I will provide Gadpathur as another planet to improve. Namely, the other cultural and characterization aspects, such as South Asian cuisine, it's myriads of vegetarian meals, Sports, a modified version of Cricket as an example, and expanding the non-military aspects of it. This is mainly to allow people to create more complex and multi-faceted characters, rather than being pidgeonholed into a one-dimensional "Anti-Sol" archetype.

Again, this will be not limited to Gadpathur - I look forward to updating the other planets as well to make them all equally as good.

 

3. First and foremost, I would write a pre-emptive warning in a news article, as well as in the event information, that should one choose to bring their Solarian character to the event, that they would be liable to conflict, combat, and potential death. Gadpathur is a militaristic and jingoistic planet, with a very clear modus operandi, so it should be readily-available information.

Secondly, to prevent needless heckling and antagonization, I would make it so the SCC is withholding something important from the Gadpathurians. No comment on what it would be, but the important part is that the main liasons are the heads of staff and the Gadpathur chain of command. Gadpathur, with it's rigid top-down military management would immediately snuff out any insubordination and would force its people to give begrudging respect to any Solarian SCC crew. However, the crew not completely immune - the Captain's main goal would be securing the undisclosed deal with the Gadpathurians, so they would still allow troublemakers to be arrested under Gadpathurian law.

Third, I would make use of mapping discrete zones mainly for the safety of Solarian crew - should they choose to venture deeper into Gadpathurian soil, passing border inspections and the like, they would consciously subject themselves to a higher level of caution. If they choose to stay at the docks, then they would be completely untouchable, sure, even though they would miss the action. It is not about preventing death, per-se, but more of whether one's death felt earned, and I feel that contributes to the frustration of canonical deaths.

 

[The7thLain]

Hi, pardon the delay on these questions. I've had some personal events delay these for you and all other applicants. I will ask you four questions, the first I will ask to all applicants and the latter three will be tailored to your application specifically. Consider these questions as being from both myself and my deputy.

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?

2. Your focus on the implementation of more Sinospheric culture on Konyang seems very narrow of an agenda for a deputy to have and may be something better-suited to a canonisation application than tenure as a human lore deptuy. What are some additional ideas for things that you might want to change or add outside of any Chinese culture-related content?

3. I am somewhat confused by your view of our lore being Americentric. We have planets that were colonised by a bevy of different countries and coalitions of countries in the lore, with the United States proper being mentioned in the colonisation of only a handful of planets, those being Xanu Prime, Silversun, Luna, and Venus, the latter three of which all also feature a coalition with the Chinese. Could you elaborate on how you see the lore as Americentric at present?

4. You are a developer and a spriter, and naturally this position comes with a substantial amount of influence and information in server affairs. Your positions as a developer and spriter have not played any part in our considerations about you for the deputy position, however there are some in the community who want to see "new blood" in the staff team, as in someone being hired to staff who is not already in a staff position. Do you have anything to say which may address this concern, should you get the position?

[wowzewow]

On 23/11/2023 at 13:44, TheBurninSherman said:

Hi, pardon the delay on these questions. I've had some personal events delay these for you and all other applicants. I will ask you four questions, the first I will ask to all applicants and the latter three will be tailored to your application specifically. Consider these questions as being from both myself and my deputy.

Of course, no problem.

On 23/11/2023 at 13:44, TheBurninSherman said:

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?

Perspective, for the most part, and this is two-fold. I have a fresh pair of eyes only someone from a wholly different background could only provide. Speaking of which, my tenure as a developer has greatly improved my judgement on what is possible for lore-related things - whether it should stay on the wiki, or could be implemented some way or another in an event or what-not. I know what works, what doesn't, and what to do to make it work. I'm very cooperative - I'm open to feedback, compromise, open discussion, anything goes, so long as it's reasonable and feasible.

On 23/11/2023 at 13:44, TheBurninSherman said:

2. Your focus on the implementation of more Sinospheric culture on Konyang seems very narrow of an agenda for a deputy to have and may be something better-suited to a canonisation application than tenure as a human lore deptuy. What are some additional ideas for things that you might want to change or add outside of any Chinese culture-related content?

Well, I'd like to reiterate that this is only a small part of what I plan to contribute content wise in my tenure as a human lore deputy - it's just one of the more prominent examples that I've given the most extensive thought over. It's only a small part in what is to be a greater project to mostly unite and improve all of human lore's planets to be up to code and more standard with one another, such as Pluto and Europa, for example, which lack a Culture section - not to insinuate there is a lack thereof, but perhaps needs more elaboration and categorization. Some planets have different methods of categorization, some with different styles of writing. Some have their history near the top, front and centre, Elyra has it near the bottom. It's rather headache inducing, especially given the herculean task of comprehending the entirety of Auroran lore, and I plan to amend that.

An improvement I'd like to add to most, if not all planets, would be short Character Creation Guides, outside of the OOC "This character is from a region of X, and is enforced by administrative staff". Most of our gameplay and natural exposure is not with the planets themselves, but the characters that come from them - hopefully this will seek to eliminate "Biesel syndrome", where players are more comfortable in making more adventurous characters, knowing that they have the approval of the lore on their side, rather than passing remarks and advice from the Discords.

Another major part of lore I'd like to expand upon is how faction interaction affects the minutae of daily life on the Horizon. Space opera is fun and all, but doesn't pack as much of a punch as I'd like to. There's already inklings of factional interaction on the Horizon already, for instance, the rivalry between Biesel and Sol, Dominians grouping together for events. There's a lot I feel that can be explored, and make selecting one's faction have a much greater impact - perhaps Dominians would look down on Coalition of Colonies' people for being welcoming to IPCs? Bieselites, Elyrans and COC members being all buddy-buddy from their shared heritage of being freed from Solarian authority? Not to mention all the non-human factions I'm omitting. There's a lot of unlikely friendships, conflicts and player interaction that can stem from this, as well as real-life geopolitics we can take inspiration from. Perhaps a faction relationship chart would be in order, but I digress.

On 23/11/2023 at 13:44, TheBurninSherman said:

3. I am somewhat confused by your view of our lore being Americentric. We have planets that were colonised by a bevy of different countries and coalitions of countries in the lore, with the United States proper being mentioned in the colonisation of only a handful of planets, those being Xanu Prime, Silversun, Luna, and Venus, the latter three of which all also feature a coalition with the Chinese. Could you elaborate on how you see the lore as Americentric at present?

To elaborate on Americentric, I am not referring to being focused on the United States, the country, specifically.

My main point was more focused on American cultural zeitgeist, namely as a basis for the main point of view for writing other cultures, being the baseline, "generic" culture.

It's not entirely anyone's fault, but it just so happens due to the nature of the fact that a portion of lore writers, present and past, are American, and are used to writing this way.

I've gone over this in more detail in my response to LVS, but again, it's akin to the Aliens, Weyland-Yutani style of writing that focuses on how Japan/China would affect the United States primarily - joint colonization, corporate mergers - "this is how X would affect the US, therefore, this is how X would affect the world as well." rather than how each country would seperately interact with the world.

It's hard to explain, but it's a bit of a disconnect from how Wikipedia presents itself in more of a diplomatic, United Nations-style globalist and neutral style of writing.

I'd like to again reiterate that I am not of the view that the entirety of the lore is as such, only parts of it.

On 23/11/2023 at 13:44, TheBurninSherman said:

4. You are a developer and a spriter, and naturally this position comes with a substantial amount of influence and information in server affairs. Your positions as a developer and spriter have not played any part in our considerations about you for the deputy position, however there are some in the community who want to see "new blood" in the staff team, as in someone being hired to staff who is not already in a staff position. Do you have anything to say which may address this concern, should you get the position?

I can see the sentiment, but for the most part, my duties as a developer and Spriter are far divorced from writing lore - even for helping out with events, I am mostly there to discuss feasibility and the in-game mechanics of such, rather than having any involvement in how the event or greater repercussions in lore, or any arc that it resides within. Although I can understand how one may draw similarities from Developers and Lore writers as being "creatives", I believe it wouldn't be much different from having a member from the Administrative staff be a Lore writer, and as before, there have not been any issues with them.

 

[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.