Genuine Questions.

[hivefleetchicken]

Why do people like Uneth/Tajarra so much?

And furthermore,

Why is it that an Unathi/Tajaran/SSL that's barely good at talking trash and takes things way too far with their metagrudges and cliques is considered robust, badass and cool?

Why is it that with this mentality, an average professional heterosexual - or a professional homosexual, as long as they're professional - human that can talk trash well and back it up even better is considered a whiny bitch 'cause they're too cruel and sadistic for defending themselves when the big Unathi player from the department down the block starts stepping on their toes?

Why does seemingly everyone suddenly agree at that point, from then on, no one will include that character as a result and instantly exclude and reject them from most RP?

Every human character I've played, I've been called some derogative term by an Unathi or Tajaran character, and that was just to my face. I have no clue how many times one of my characters has been the subject of interspecies jeering in another language that my character can't understand. Why do we make so many of our characters with ANY intention in mind of them being mean at all to anyone?

 

So I deleted all of them. All of my characters, even the nice ones, (just not the one I have a custom item for). And I'm sorry about all the bitchy characters I've had in the past. That was wrong.

I'm just putting it out there, I have deleted every one of my characters and come up with new ones.

All the new ones I have are in place as friendly helpful people, but completely impatient with your everyday Schoolyard Lizard Bully.

So if you talk smack at me, I'm not gonna' talk behind your back, you're just gonna' get hit back, and it won't be /you/ chasing me down the halls with a knife this time.

You've been warned, Xenos.

[Frances]

The Unathi/Tajaran cliques are probably the only instance of cliques I've actually witnessed on the server. And it's a quasi-universal phenomenon (no, I don't mean they all do it, I mean that there's no organization to it and that anyone can integrate the Unathi/Tajaran "badass hivemind".)

The reason I'd advance, as hilarious as it sounds, is furries. Yep, furries.

There's more to it than just furries (and a lot of people who play these characters don't associate with the furry fandom), but overall, I think most can agree that playing anthropomorphic characters resembling animal species makes you feel cool and badass. Skrells don't have the same problem because they don't follow "cool" conventions, they're really alien-looking and sorta bumbling and ridiculous. In comparison, you have anthro cats and lizards, both of which are popular enough tropes that an entire corner of the internet is dedicated to people roleplaying them or wishing they could incarnate them irl.

If I had to remake SS13 from scratch (or build my own server), I'd get rid of Unathis and Tajarans altogether, and come up with some genuinely alien replacements for them. Catpeople and lizardpeople are just way too attractive options for people desiring to get a "cool" bonus, in contrast with their intended (?) purpose of simply providing different RP avenues.

---

As for why they're so well-received, I don't know. I hate shitty Unathi/Tajarans, and I'm sure a few more reasonably-minded people hate them as well.

[VoltageHero]

If I had to remake SS13 from scratch (or build my own server), I'd get rid of Unathis and Tajarans altogether, and come up with some genuinely alien replacements for them. Catpeople and lizardpeople are just way too attractive options for people desiring to get a "cool" bonus, in contrast with their intended (?) purpose of simply providing different RP avenues.

 

 

This is completely understandable. The issue is that, (as much as people would like to deny it), Unathi and Tajaran take quite a good deal from other games, done to their speech-patterns, and naming styles. Why? It's easier, and it's more simple, and whoever came up with them knew that. People also will go to them because they're rather safe, in that people are able to play these races, without jumping in as a character with a huge downfall to it. As you stated, it's any easy race that's "cool" to play as, and it has the security-factor of the already set-in-stone base build from the games they were taken form.

While it would be great to see some completely original SS13 alien races, the truth is that it'd be way too hard for most people to do. I know you weren't stating "I'm going to go make my own races today", but I thought I needed to throw that out. Most of your sci-fi races probably took sometime to come up with, and I dunno if anybody in the SS13 community can get something on par with the Star Trek, Star Wars, or Mass Effect races. So, while it would be cool to see an original alien race in SS13, the likely-hood of something coming around that isn't piggy-backing off something else, is pretty slim.

[Frances]

You bring up a good point.

However, I think we can have some semi-familiar alien races that aren't literally space furries. Obviously, another problem remains that anthropomorphism is desired, as we want to roleplay characters we can relate to, not Qxxrtlag-37 the seven-headed ¤{}¤ from planet Orange.

Mass Effect races might be kind of a good example, though I'm genuinely curious whether the robust, warlike Turians would quickly earn Unathi status or not. But as a whole, a lot of sci-fi media already demonstrated that it's possible to create relatable aliens without directly porting a random Earth animal onto a human frame.

I would actually consider the Skrell a very, very good race. They have the right mix of easy-to-relate and outright bizarre traits.

[rrrrrr]

I once tried to tell a knock knock joke to a Tajaran. He responded by calling me inferior and going on about how humans are trash. After the rant I tried to tell the joke, so he decided to threaten to make an incident report.

Tajaran players: not even once.

[Guest]

What's funny is that you'd think Unathi being fucking on the verge of all being declared warcriminals and Tajaran being very rare lorewise as they don't even have a space program, would be acting REALLY nice to humans at work.

Humans have more pull in the corporation, if your human coworker puts forward a complaint about a Xeno colleague, the Xeno is PROBABLY going to end up fired.

This is why I stood by lore restricted roles for the species, it taught them the fucking humility and bounds they should be roleplaying within.

Tajaran's are technologically inferior in every way to human. Unathi are at a mexican stand-off with the single biggest alliance in the universe, the SA/Jargon alliance. Which itself is the union of two fucking massive unions. NanoTrasen of all corporations, have started the conflict with Unathi, probably would be firing them left and right for simple fuck ups.

But no, 'let the players play' has removed all hope of ever having racism in our lore.

[Frances]

But no, 'let the players play' has removed all hope of ever having racism in our lore.

If most players don't want to be racist, you can't force them to roleplay something they don't like.

This is the main problem with the current main "downside" of Tajarans/Unathis. It's not really applicable, and would be hard to apply.

[cdb]

It's not even necessarily a question of if the racism is allowed, it's whether or not IC behavior on the part of central, duty officers, etc(generally admin controlled things) falls in line with the lore itself. Which generally...isn't the case, at least from what I've seen.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

My 'main' character is a Tajaran, and finds the entire culture trash. If a Tajaran snowflake little shit tries to be a blizzard around him, he nips it in the bud. He's also abandoned third person, and is trying to assimilate into human society to remain in a position of power. That's where the fun is for me personally; being caught between two cultures, trying to assimilate into one even though that superior culture won't ever really offer any more advances or fully accept him.

As for what you can do; fight fire with fire. Don't start lynch mobs over every argument, but if you find a genuine asshole with a stick up their ass, utilize your resources to make their lives hell. I mean my own HoP cat is quick to throw a demotion at an asshole that's bringing down their department with inane bullshit. And I will admit it's a fucking blast to see them get in a huff and try to storm off without giving me an ID. Security usually maces them on green or blue and drag them back in cuffs. On red I just tase them myself and let them spend 2 minutes standing still getting out of cuffs with their new title of janitor.

Or, if you feel it's beyond the realm of acceptable, contact me with evidence of bad behaviour. I'm really lenient for getting a whitelist, but have little patience for people abusing it.

[Vittorio Giurifiglio]

What's funny is that you'd think Unathi being fucking on the verge of all being declared warcriminals and Tajaran being very rare lorewise as they don't even have a space program, would be acting REALLY nice to humans at work.

Humans have more pull in the corporation, if your human coworker puts forward a complaint about a Xeno colleague, the Xeno is PROBABLY going to end up fired.

This is why I stood by lore restricted roles for the species, it taught them the fucking humility and bounds they should be roleplaying within.

Tajaran's are technologically inferior in every way to human. Unathi are at a mexican stand-off with the single biggest alliance in the universe, the SA/Jargon alliance. Which itself is the union of two fucking massive unions. NanoTrasen of all corporations, have started the conflict with Unathi, probably would be firing them left and right for simple fuck ups.

But no, 'let the players play' has removed all hope of ever having racism in our lore.

 

Disagree with forcing, but just another point-

Said giant union, is also half lead by Human Supremacists

[Guest]

But no, 'let the players play' has removed all hope of ever having racism in our lore.

 

This policy has actually shown to turn its ugly head now. I used to support this philosophy, but only because my role in it was still falling within the lore and my characters didn't conflict with the rules or lore at all.They're good workers with the intention to keep their job. They still have different personalities and roles and such, (Vira is less than patient, Talia doesn't give a shit about criminal activity unless it threatens her own work space, I've a couple other characters none of you know about or have seen) but the core similarity I keep there is that they are competent and do their job without question. Because it's practical and realistic, for any long-time employee to keep doing the same good job over and over again, so as not to disappoint anyone. Any deviation from what is acceptable within the bounds of the company is honestly unacceptable, and my characters know Corp Regs in varying levels. It is a shame that other characters exist to exploit this new-found policy the staff are following, now. You might be thinking, 'gee, Delta, did you intentionally make perfect characters?'

No, not intentionally. There are far worse instances of this occurring. Hell, a lot of my other characters have rather glaring weaknesses, yet people tend not to see them because they're not critical like an attitude problem or a severe lack of humility and respect from a Tajaran. Not unlike any real person, they hide their weaknesses and fluff up their strengths to be more appealing to interact with. When it comes to character creation and storytelling, I follow what is called Hegelian Dialectics. It's a philosophical theory, though it can be said to be a fundamental truth that has a wide variety of potential applications. The fundamental premise is to envision history as a sequence of "dialectical" conflicts. Each dialectic begins with a proposition, a thesis. This thesis is your character that you spent 40 minutes or maybe even 5 minutes creating. Which inherently contains, or creates, its opposite - an antithesis. The antithesis being the upcoming challenges and story developments that will stand to test your character. Thesis and antithesis. The conflict is inevitable, and your character stands to gain some, lose some, or lose it all in good faith of the story. But the resolution of the conflict yields something new - a synthesis - eliminating the flaws in each, leaving behind common elements and ideas for you to use for your characters. Whether they live or die, the premise is that by the manner in which the story develops, something new will be born in its wake. Conflict is inevitable, and so is its resolution. But if it seems more befitting to defend the practice of defending faulty character stereotypes that have no place in a storytelling environment besides to plug ideological values... so be it?

Human players have different expectations than most Tajaran players do. This happens to extend to Unathi as well, but they practically float in the same boat as the Taj. Taj are expected to not completely go off on a tangent from the established lore such as this wonderful example:

 

 

But if we wish to devolve to that level of storytelling, equivalent to deviantArtistry or fanfiction forums, then... so be it?

Clearly, half of the community has more fun in griefing and rolling in fire. Should we make this place a medium RP server or something?

[Guest Menown]

Most of my meowing black horde(tm'd to Jackboot) consists of respectable cats. However, because they're not loud/mean/played more than once/ they're not ever noticed. People notice the loud, instead of the quiet. All I can say is, find the quiet, and ignore the loud.

[Frances]

Most of my meowing black horde(tm'd to Jackboot) consists of respectable cats. However, because they're not loud/mean/played more than once/ they're not ever noticed. People notice the loud, instead of the quiet. All I can say is, find the quiet, and ignore the loud.

I do believe there's some decent Taj/Unathi players (I had my fun playing around and against Tajaran tropes myself, and none of my characters were ever overly uptight or zealous). The bad ones get noticed a lot, but it's also hard to deny there's not a lot of them.

However, in a dream world, I'd still love to axe Tajarans and Unathis alike. Their good RPers would be more than capable of roleplaying other unique races - at that point, the qualities of these races remains a matter of preference.

[the_furry]

honestly i just hate him cause he is a bald. *spreads bald hate*

[Vanagandr]

As I understand it, le spess raycism isn't workable as a character concept because at the slightest hint of intolerance, half the crew- and not just the ayylmaos either -will jump in to deliver an after-school special PSA about how terrible it is to call a rude lizard shitbag a rude lizard shitbag and how the responsible party should shut up and check his spess privilege.