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 November 16 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

[The7thLain]

Hi! Thank you for your application. Please pardon my delay in posting these questions, it's been Thanksgiving week and I've had little time to get to responding to you and the other candidates. I've read it over and I have a few questions for you to answer at your earliest convenience, but preferably by the end of this weekend if you can manage it. If you do not answer by then, I will move forward with making a decision on your application without the information sought by the questions below.
1. You have submitted a number of LCAs to our team over the course of your time playing here on Aurora. What does the writer position allow for you to do that simply making LCAs doesn't? You mentioned that you can contribute more than just by simply submitting LCAs, but I would like to hear your thoughts on why you are applying for the writer position specifically.
2. Your ideas for arcs are interesting and certainly seem to stick to an event-focused story rather than using articles or the like. Do you have any experience in running or volunteering for story or non-canon event rounds beyond just being a normal player in them?
3. Your thoughts on what to do for Elyra are interesting. I think the inter-faction dynamic could be a unique change to the country, but I do worry about it falling into some of the traps that some other factions in the setting have, that being a sort of frozen political conflict, where the factionalism and rivalry is stated to exist but nothing ever really happens with it. Could you elaborate some on how you would play with that dynamic in the future?

[Shimmer]

I LOVE ANSWERING QUESTIONS, thank you! You are pardoned. Now pardon my slight yappanese.

1. LCAs as a whole can be deeply frustrating for someone who wants to do more than pinpoint contributions on a specific topic they want to see changed or expanded or slightly tweaked. LCAs in their current state exist to afford community members interested in a specific topic the ability to write content for that particular content and nothing more. And that's fine for small additions you think are cool! But it enters into struggles and issues for a couple of reasons. Chief among them is a lack of planning and persistent feedback, suggestions for tweaking, deeper integration into the setting. You have to gather feedback and reviews through either private DMs, or the relevant lore channels, which makes it a lot harder to get the proper input you are looking for when working on a project.

LCAs are also, frankly, a complete and UTTER nightmare when it comes to navigating multiple lore teams. Because what feedback you do get is individual, rather than collective. It's one or two writers giving their thoughts and opinions on your work independently of each other, with little to no communication done between them until the LCA is put on the forums. Meaning that any project in which you want to involve more than one team can be a nightmare diceroll where you don't really know where your work stands. And not knowing is the worst part, you are not privy to whatever discussion is being had over your project, and it doesn't really involve you if and when it is being discussed, you are involved in writing it, submitting it, but not when discussing whether or not it makes it into the setting.

A writer position affords me that communication. I'd be privy to the discussion behind my projects, I'd be able to more confidently push for that discussion. It's about being kept in the dark much less than what an LCA affords, which, in turn, means I can write and manage far larger projects with more overreaching influence over the wider setting. It means that the responsibility for implementing this content falls down on me rather than passing on the torch to someone else. It means last second tweaks and changes, something universal to every project, can be easily pushed through, opposed to placing an LCA, having it approved, and going, 'Wait! Y instead of X and then the addition of Z would've been so much better! I wish I thought of that earlier!'

 

2. Over the course of the last two years I think I ended up volunteering for either a third or half of the major events. In the Silicone Nightmares arc I participated in the 3 high intensity events as one of the countless robo-undead and robot supremacists, and in the NPP I played one of the dying divers and the boss diver IPC who was meant to give the team going underground a big ol' spook! I even have a recording of the NPP event and the Exclusionist event. After this arc I volunteered for another zombie related event that was the PV zombie gamemode thing, and I had the most impact on this one in particular! I've written much of the general fluff, the wider idea involving the ECD and a Nanotrasen experiment was an idea I floated, and the time-table / overarching script of what happens when and who arrives when and the win/lose conditions were also my contribution. I felt a good bit of pride at how that event was received and how it went forward because of my part in it. The final arc I participated in as a volunteer was the WP7 arc, which I have mentioned previously as an inspiration for a future arc I have in mind. It was by far the arc I've enjoyed the most. It's the one arc I've actually actively participated in as a player, and even eschewed some opportunities to volunteer specifically so I could play it!

Notably, whenever given the opportunity to give feedback, I jump on it as it's a fantastic way to group together and catalogue take-aways and general thoughts about what works and what doesn't. I've done so for Silicone Nightmares and WP7 respectively, and you can see that some of my feedback rhymes between the two, certain elements I intend to put particular attention towards whenever I get to run an event of my own.

 

3. Elyra is a difficult one because the amount of effort required to give it meaningful compelling internal conflict and political flow is going to be so utterly monumental. Since the faction itself was never written in a way that promotes disunity or even factionalism, all of its conflict bar maybe a few elements I can't even really think of rely exclusively on conflict with an outside force or a foreign community that came over to Elyra. In my mind, external conflict should always be supplementary to internal conflict, it should be a consequence of a nation's political and economic situation rather than simply conflict for variety's sake. And currently, the biggest hurdle for Elyra is how exactly do you make a player care for the conflict within it, how do you make someone attach their characters to this tension, and how do you make a conflict feel compelling to take either side of it in, instead of an obvious 'this is a bad thing X is doing. Your character sides with X if they're bad and Y if they're good.'

It's precisely why the first step in restructuring Elyran tension will be removing NCPs outright. I do not believe they offer a good point of conflict, and they feel very much like an outside issue and beleaguered foreigners of whom some cause problems. We've seen this previously with the Tajara bans in the Alliance, and to me it'll always feel like the Puppy Grinder 1200, it's bolting something morally reprehensible to a setting for the sake of its moral reprehensibility.

So! That's plenty of complaining but what exactly am I setting up? Well, the conflict itself moves from one focused around an outsider and foreign enemy, to an inside conflict the consequences of which spill outwards. The idea here is to establish a hydra-state, where each head pulls the nation in a radically different direction from the other one. Elyra should be in a constant state of flux between the two, whenever one side gains the relevant influence, the state apparatus swings around and pushes the entire thing in radically different direction.

The point here is to create a political system that is fragile, delicate, and almost arbitrary in a way. The direction of the state itself should be wildly uncertain, which I believe will help alleviate the feeling of a status quo being present. A nation with deep ingrained factionalism built into its cultural and political structure means susceptibility to foreign influences that can tug and pull Elyra to their benefit. The likes of Biesel can support one faction over the other, and it can stand in opposition to whom Sol supports, to whom the CoC supports, to whom the Empire supports. Now there's the feeling of a setting and then there's what you do with it. In terms of it's external politics, I believe a hydra is second to NONE when it comes to how you can utilize it to push a narrative forward. Since you are not limited to a set path put forward by previous events pushing along a faction on a specific rail, you can immediately at the drop of a hat switch the focus on what a hydra-state does the moment the paradigm shifts to the other side. On one end of the paradigm the state can be deeply hostile to Biesel, on another this hostility is directed to the Empire instead, then towards the first this hostility is directed towards the CoC. It can be friendly and cordial to either three or none at all depending on who is briefly in charge at the time.

You can toy with Elyra's status as a regional power more when its internal system compels it to express this status more often and more aggressively. Instead of Elyran conflict involving NCPs or the Empire, it can be internal factions using a show of force to push the paradigm their way, it can be the Hydra-state coming into conflict with its neighbors as a consequence of this very thing. I guess the best way to put it into a few words is turning Elyra into a political powder keg people are constantly putting a match to!

The factions themselves will not rely strictly on political capital to achieve their goals. Either side can posses assets that are military, or industrial, or cultural in order to drag power their way. You can describe this as a cold civil war in a way, neither faction feels powerful enough to openly seize power, so their maneuvers will more of a constant gentle tug using whatever resources are at their disposal.