ShimmerIsTaken - Human Lore Deputy Application

[Shimmer]

Ckey/BYOND Username: ShimmerIsTaken

How long have you been playing Aurora: I've had two active periods with a large break between them. My first active period was during KoTW arc under the username Timirald, which lasted around give or take a year (leaving shortly before the NBT was released) before I went on a large hiatus. I've returned I think around 2023 ish and have stuck around with spurs of activity and burn-out and activity. So depending on how you count it, either 6 years or almost 3 years, I'd personally say almost 3 as I've little memory of my time during the KoTW arc.
Position Being Applied For: Human Lore Deputy
Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yes, I have.
Past Experiences/Knowledge: I haven't gotten any experience working in a lore team so far, but I have written a decent amount specifically for human lore before. 
Examples of Past Work:

This was also meant to be pushed as an LCA sometime in the future, and is around 80% of the way complete. Not really a 'past' work and more of an ongoing work, I believe it's still good insight on my writing style and documentational thinking, and my ability to round off and improve on a foundation set both by others and myself. It's an effort to try to introduce more elements and avenues to a setting I'm passionate about.

 

Why are you applying for the position of human lore deputy writer? Why do you think that you would be good in the position?

I'm applying because human lore is my favorite part of Aurora as a whole. It's the most compelling part of the setting to me, the most diverse, the one with the most moving parts that manages to keep me interested and engaged, and I'd like to contribute to an even greater capacity than I can with LCAs.

I would be good in this position because I adore writing on subjects I am deeply passionate about. Aurora is sci-fi, a genre I love and have been writing little bits and pieces that have been lost to time since I've first gotten into writing. I'd also like to see Aurora lean more into space-opera themes because in my mind it's the best way for a character-driven setting to function, and to that end I'd be ecstatic to write on it.

What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? If you submitted something for canonisation that was indeed canonised you may not select that as the answer to this question.

Tough question because if you enter something for canonisation that by default becomes something you're particularly passionate about. 😛

But Callisto would be the obvious and boring answer anyways that doesn't give insight into exactly what it is I find compelling that isn't related to my own writing. What I'll choose is going to be Xanu Prime and the wider CoC as a whole, and here's why.

Xanu Prime is a fantastic example of the type of passion and detail I adore within human lore, where a society's setting and people are described to a cohesive point where it's possible for different characters to easily bounce off of one another. It's also a great way for a powerful origin to be detailed, emphasizing it's importance not only to the CoC but to the Orion Spur at large.

The CoC itself exemplifies another element I enjoy and would like to expand on more in the future - internal strife and conflict within Aurora's various origins. The CoC is a hodgepodge made up of a variety of different nations and ideologies that don't just disagree with each other but have almost come into a shooting conflict with one another, like Galatea and Gadpathur. I like internal conflict and instability for the various character building hooks it provides in game, and the CoC is my favorite example of that.

What do you believe are ways that the Human Lore Team could best implement the phoron scarcity to our various factions and locations throughout the setting that would reflect the gravity of the in-character situation without grossly compromising the out-of-character things that make each faction and location unique and compelling?

The phoron scarcity is a difficult one because I believe it leans on an aspect that not all that many people find compelling enough for character making and that serves very little purpose towards establishing culture, personality, narrative beats that relate to characters specifically - the dreaded dreaded economy. An economy is often not something you can read into and go 'oh i can make use of this this can be a character beat' because at its core an economy is a background element establishing a setting and origin and how it is brought about.

That doesn't mean an economy can be entirely detached from a character - quite the contrary, if you write the economy to fit in the themes of a certain setting, and the themes of this certain setting cyclically take from the economy, phoron can tie in quite nicely to the respective origin and most importantly the character made with this origin.

For example; lets take Konyang. Phoronics are a necessary component in the creation of modern positronic synthetics and thus by extension access to phoronics affects two VITAL thing that pertain to the planet - its population growth AND one of its exports. Lessened access to phoron means less supply by Konyang of its primary industry, it means a lessened population growth thanks to a stunted production of IPCs, thats NOT GOOD. That means day-to-day life gets more expensive, that means the local government now has reasons to look for alternatives, that means characters living on Konyang now have a direct, evident effect on their life thanks to the phoron crisis.

This needs to be expanded through every setting in the game. How reliant are their industries and exports on phoron? How would phoron affect their economy and livelyhood? Would it be crippling? Would they notice? Would it change anything?

Notably, it shouldn't be misery all across the board! Some origins should be deeply affected by it, while others shouldn't notice at all. That's just kind of the nature of a resource like phoron, it'll hardly directly affect absolutely everyone.

To achieve that, first human origins need to have an established export and contribution to the galactic economy as a whole. It's impossible to tie in phoron to the origin if what a setting produces is so... Undefined and nebulous, how can phoron affect a setting if we don't even really know what impact phoron has on it to begin with? What exact industries it effects, what taking phoron away would change? The phoron scarcity should be the final thing that ties into what is written, rather than defining it to begin with.

What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses? Please do not mention offworlders in your answer to this question. We know that they are a weak spot and that they require action and would prefer to hear perspectives that do not highlight this area of human lore.

The biggest strength of human lore are by far the sheer diversity and variety available for players to use for the sake of character making. You have so much choice in what to work with and what to do and how to shape and chisel a particular character that I've gotten my fair share of choice paralysis when wanting to make a new character. And that's fantastic, it means very few ideas you have get relegated into the space of headcanon, because the majority of those ideas can be made to work with an existing origin with very few modifications and changes.

At the same time, this very strength is also a massive weakness. With such a weight of origins, planets, settings, and themes, its extremely difficult to keep all of them up to date, and even more difficult to maintain each and every of those settings to a high standard with compelling hooks, narrative themes and personalities that bring people in to play those origins. My focus as deputy will be to bring up as many of the more neglected origins up to speed with the rest of them, placing a particular focus on player hooks and plot beats that a player can meaningfully play around with and that properly establishes how a character should behave, what their cultural outlooks are like, and anything that comes up in common interactions and conversations as well as beliefs. 

What are three projects (medium-to-large size additions, arcs, or reworks) that you would like to complete during your tenure as a Human Lore Deputy writer? Please do not mention new locations or factions in this answer.

The biggest rework I intend to do is going to be my personal pet-peeve with human lore as it stands - Elyra. Currently Elyra is just in a bad place from a narrative perspective, it's too perfect, it's too isolationist, it has too few issues and the issues that do exist don't actually affect the population of the nation as a whole. It really comes across to me like a utopia that has Puppy-Grinder 1200 taped onto it as to not make it too utopic, which doesn't achieve its intended goal and just feels a little... Weak. How would I go about fixing it? Elyra would need to be rewritten from the ground up, it'll no longer be a utopian welfare state where its citizens get essentially free everything, where the entire faction is united with very little internal tension, and the bad stuff it does is being done strictly to immigrants and foreigners, an extremely minor and insignificant portion of the setting. The concept of NCPs should be entirely nicked as I don't feel its compelling to Elyra, abused immigrant populations is something already explored by Biesel and done so in a much more compelling and interesting angle, which feels much less tacked on. Instead, Elyra's revolution will be rewritten in a much more disunited and chaotic manner, with further ties to the Interstellar War and importantly the Coalition of Colonies. Elyra's Revolution will now be made up of two components - the winning faction which pushes for an Elyran nationhood and took the lead during the revolution, and a Coalitioner faction that was dragged into Elyra's revolution but whose ultimate goals were union with the wider CoC. The Elyran state will be subdivided into two powerful factions rallied around their respective leading planet, vowing for more influence: The Republican faction maintains a fierce sense of independence and notably expansionism, an ideal that the Elyran Republican dream shouldn't be isolated strictly to Elyra. The Unionist faction seeking deeper ties if not outright membership with the CoC. In either case, the purpose is to turn Elyra from isolation to relevance, it should not longer stick to itself and actually seek out to expand its influence and power throughout its region like the supposed regional power it is. Thusly, it'll be brought into more meaningful conflict with the likes of the Empire and Biesel. Tension! Politics! ITLL BE RELEVANT!!!!

An arc I had in mind (and has partially taken place already?) is political tension and eventual breakdown of the Alliance's governing coalition, some kind of coalition crisis around Strom not quite doing what a Sol First BOOYAH STRENGTH coalition should have been doing and behaving. This isn't to say Strom is going to be ousted or anything of the sort, but it doesn't make much sense to me that a Strom-Sumida coalition, ostensibly nationalists and ultra-nationalists don't push for more aggressive war-drumming measures against neighbors that quite literally occupied the Alliance's sovereign territories. So what is the idea? It'll be a coalition I expected to have happened at first, and one that would've made more sense for an Alliance that seeks rapprochement with its neighbors as opposed to open conflict, a Strom-Renaud coalition akin to Germany's Grand Coalition, the CDU/CSU and SDP forming a government despite their ideological differences. With a Strom-Renaud coalition multiple angles and opportunities open up for where exactly to take it, further parliamentary tensions, partial rapprochement with the likes of Konyang, actual reconstruction of places like Mars which have been in a desperate need of it. It creates an Alliance that is basically a two-headed hydra, pushed and pulled into opposing directions that create more interesting tensions and snuff out more boring and overdone conflicts. 

As for an addition - I'll be going right back to my personal favorite, and round off exactly just how the Jovian system is administered and how the three Galilean moons relate to one another. A united administration made for Jupiter would be a great way to characterize the three as ultimately tied to one another, and goes forward to establishing the Jovian system as a power block within the Solar system that is second to Earth-Luna. The idea is to put the Jovian administration on Ganymede which by extension means that a Jovian Administrative addition will ultimately be an expansion on Ganymede as an origin as well. 

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

Taking an example from the most recent event Aurora had, Warp Lane 7, my idea for a future arc would try to lean into the space opera aspect that worked so damn well for that event. The idea is to have the Horizon be what primarily pushes the arc forward, and the outcome and consequences entirely dependent on the decisions made by it and its crew. It should be something that characters can come away with and talk about, and share experiences of, and theorize about etc etc etc. It should also lean a lot more into the fantastical, Aurora is a science fiction setting afterall, and trying too hard to stay within grounded and 'realistic' places limits a lot of what can be done with an arc.

So the narrative will draw on a tiny snippet of my character's backstory expanded out into something that can involve the Horizon as a whole: A former Solarian colony sitting on Light's Edge bordering the Lemurian sea, evacuated during the Interstellar War as a result of it being unsustainable with the war's outbreak.

The planet itself would be a digsite managed by Zeng-Hu and Assunzione, discovering ancient alien relics and anomalies with a paranormal-ish angle to the entire thing under the guise of Unexplainable alien Technologiestm, the Horizon being called forward thanks to its advanced phoron detecting sensor suite that upon arrival picks up a massive yet undefineable / unpinnable concentration of phoron somewhere within the planet.

The crew would be tasked with uncovering whatever phoronics are present on the planet, and while they're at it, they will be piecing together what happened to the colony, it's history, what this mysterious alien presence is, how it relates to the colony... And maybe how it wants the people on that very colony gone. It'll be a mix of themes and narratives inspired by the likes of Stalker, Starsector, and Signalis, entirely dependent on what the possible scope is and what would gel well with an arc, with a good emphasis on Solarian Hegemony and its lore.

I'll try to use it as an in to finally allow the Horizon into Solarian space for a time! Into Sol System proper, given that as of now this particular setting is entirely off-limits to the Horizon and that makes me sad.

Have you ever been subject to any warnings, strikes, or bans from the Aurora moderation team? If so, how long ago were you and for what actions did you receive moderation action for? Answers for this question should include actions taken on the game server, discord servers, and forums.

I've only received one warning a year ago during the Silicon Nightmares event, where I got snappy and mean-spirited in an argument over the killing of Konyang's infected IPCs by an army ghostrole. I've not received any moderation actions since.

OPTIONAL: Do you have any miscellaneous comments or remarks for the Human Lore Team or the community?

I like blueberries. They're good. 

Edited Sunday at 19:30 by Shimmer
final edit

[LforLouiseeee]

+1 Elyra mentioned

No but seriously, Shimmer has already shone with her previous work, parts of which was the reason I stopped with the Elyran characters only meme, and actually made a Callistean, and though I also believe there are other fantastic applicants (such as lily or dahlia), Shimmer gets my 'vote' (not that this is an election. I'm just. you know. +1ing it. lol). I am sure she will continue to push and provide fantastic and immersive lore for (hopefully) years to come. Unless she explodes or something, that wouldn't be cool cos then we don't get more lore