[Accepted]Pikl's Dionaea Application

[pickled_tomato]

BYOND Key: Pikl

Character Names: Isabella Silva, Claire Glimmer

Species you are applying to play: Dionaea

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes. I will continue to read the page and consult it if I'm unsure about anything.

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

I've been fascinated by the few (very few) dionaea I've seen on Aurora and I would love to actively play and develop one as a crew member. They can be argued as one of the most unique species of aliens that can be seen aboard the station. They're extremely interesting to me for a large number of reasons. They're naturally very curious, intelligent, quick thinkers, too, but at the same time very slow physically and are unable to articulate very much at all. They're neigh invulnerable, but, again, extremely slow, which is an interesting dynamic in situations of conflict. The way dionaea interact with their surroundings is something I believe I will naturally do well with. I say this because I'm naturally a very passive player regardless of what kind of character I'm trying to be, which I believe will actually do me well if I'm playing on a dionaea crew member. To elaborate on being a "passive" player, I'm very hesitant to act towards things in a decisive manner, even towards somebody who's very clearly doing something that's against NanoTransen Law. I actually rather enjoy chatting with a criminal and hearing what they have to say, and seeing what kind of reaction they give when they're shown something that's not violence. (I'm sure it's a pleasant change from being smacked with batons whenever they're trying to do or say anything.) Also, this type of behavior ties into dionaea curiosity, which is a rather constant part of their species.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:

Dionaea might be as far from humans as you can get in a species. From a role-play exclusive perspective, dionaea are not technically one single organism, but around three to six nymphs all joined together to create a "Worker", as the wiki calls them. I'd imagine a worker to be in-between a nymph and a colossus in terms of learning potential, being lower than a Nymph but higher than a Colossus. I'd expect the same to be true about their overall intelligence but reversed, so, more mental capacity and/or intelligence and a Nymph, but not as much as a Colossus. This seems to be a constant formula depending on how many Nymphs have actually been linked together, potentially becoming something inconceivably intelligent. For the diona form that is played on the station however, a worker would be the diona that's actually working a shift. A dionaea worker being compared to a human in terms of mental capacity will probably vary from person to person but I imagine that in general a diona is more intelligent than the average human, and thus can be argued to having to know their job well, or maybe even learning your job very fast. A dionaea would in general speak and react slower than a human normally would and can be argued to, in general, just have a slower overall pace of doing anything. This doesn't mean slower than humans mentally, but they are slower at conveying what they're thinking and they are slower at their actions in general.

I've always imagined dionaea to talk in the same manner as the ents from Lord of the Rings.

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Character Name: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary is the fused form of five diona nymphs, all of whom can trace their origins back to the vast network of back-alleyways of the sprawling megacity known as Beijing. How they got there, they're not sure. The five nymphs eventually found each-other, one after the other, and begun fusing little by little, until they became an entirely new form that was very similar in nature to many of the dominant species of the planet. The nymphs, having all merged together, had begun wandering around the alleyways of Beijing, getting into all sorts of mischief whilst taking note to quite a considerable amount of knowledge regarding what humans are like. The nymphs had also learned how to speak quite a few languages through absorbing things that contained human DNA, an example being how they learned the entirety of Mandarin rather rapidly through a single human hair they found. In notable instance, somebody had tried to rob them. The collection of nymphs simply watched curiously as the man shouted at them and demanded their money. The nymphs were then shanked a total of seven times, and to the man's surprise, they didn't react in the slightest aside from a small, curiosity filled tilt of their "head". The man stood for a minute dumbfounded until the nymphs finally reacted with one wheezy sounding word, "Why?". The man started frantically screaming, tripping over himself a couple of times while trying to get away from the overtly abnormal "tree monster" that was still staring directly at him with no readable emotion. With all of the man's screaming, people started to take notice in what was going on. They assumed the odd, plant-like creature had done something harmful to the man who was screaming like an enraged baboon. It didn't take long until the Beijing law-enforcement officers had arrived. The collection of nymphs, who had been quietly, and for the most part motionlessly observing all of the chaos that surrounded them, that was aimed at them, were then taken to the nearest law-enforcement station, where they sat in a cell for a little over a day.

It wasn't until the day after the nymphs had been jailed that a scientist, by the name of Dr. Fars had come to interact with them. The law-enforcement officers were aware of what the nymphs were and had called Dr. Fars to come in, as he was part of a team that was working to get more data on dionaea. Dr. Fars asked the group of nymphs if they wanted to come to his lab, for reasons he could't specify and the nymphs rather gladly agreed to it. The nymphs eventually found a new home in his lab and were even exposed to a few other dionaea, who they were very excited to interact with. The nymphs found out rather quickly that the other dionaea had one whole name to represent themselves, along with all of their fused nymphs. The nymphs questioned Dr. Fars about it and to their surprise Dr. Fars told them that many dionaea were named after a small segment of poetry. The nymphs actually liked this quite a lot and eventually found that they very much liked reading poetry in general. They read countless pages worth of poetry trying to find a suitable name, all the while the science lab had been performing tests on the nymphs in which they received a ridiculously large sum of money for the results of. The scientists were shamelessly using the nymphs for profit and the nymphs were aware of this. Aware being a key word though, as they were too engrossed by their poetry to mind all that much. Eventually, a month or so later the nymphs decided on a name. They didn't base it on whether or not people would like it, just the fact that they enjoyed Edgar Allan Poe's work more-so than any other author they read. Their new name was Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, after the very first few words of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, almost a month later, had exhausted all of the lab's poetry. With nothing left that they wanted to do, Once Upon a Midnight Dreary made action to leave, asking. The lab naturally said no and made a poor excuse as to why not and the nymphs saw through it. Dr. Fars made a compromise with Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, and simply bought more poetry. Once Upon a Midnight Dreary was content and these tests would go on for another month. During this last month, Once Upon a Midnight Dreary was paying close attention to a lot of the procedures that the scientists were doing. The nymphs found their curiosity shifting from poetry to what the scientists were actually doing, and to science as a whole. Shortly after their new-found interest, they had begun learning how to work the computers in the lab and within a couple of days had achieved a well understanding of them. The nymphs saw a listing titled, "Lab Assistant wanted aboard Plasma Research Facility NSS Aurora" and the nymphs applied to the position in a very eloquent fax that NanoTransen was impressed by. In the fax, the nymphs described their situation in full and NanoTransen reluctantly decided to pay the research lab, take the nymphs under their name of Once Upon a Midnight Dreary, and give them a position. Let's hope Once Upon a Midnight Dreary doesn't decide they want to leave.

What do you like about this character?

I like that they wander around, curious about everything they could find. They're adorable to me, honestly. It's fun imagining the nymphs all merged together exploring the gang riddled alleyways of a huge futuristic city in such an innocent and careless way. They just went with the flow and went with what they wanted to do. I like their intelligence and ability to learn things combined with their gentle nature, they're two really fun things to put together. They're such a unique race of creatures and if they're roleplayed right they're extremely interesting.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

Overall, I'd say my role-playing ability is a solid 4/10. 5 being the average of most players that regularly play on Aurora. I'd like to say that I believe I am a little bit better than average at conveying what my character is doing and saying through dialogue and structuring my character's dialogue to do so. In contrast to being decent at dialogue, I'm poor at conveying actions through /me in specific, but I am actively working on learning how to apply /me's towards my character's actions to make them more believable.

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Notes: I know I won't be able to play a dionaea perfectly as soon as I start my first shift as one, but I'm very eager to learn how to, and enchant players as much as what I've seen of dionaea enchanted me. I would really like to hear tips from people who know what they're doing with the mythological-like creatures that are the dionaea.

As another note: I'm sure I butchered a few terms here and there and I'd love to correct them to be.. well.. correct.

As a final note: I'd be very happy to improve upon this application through acting on suggestions and feedback. I understand that nothing is perfect and I'd imagine there's glaring flaws that I've made throughout the whole thing, I'm not ashamed to admit this, nor should anybody making an application.

Edited May 14, 2016 by Guest

[Loow]

Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs

Man, you really showed us how far two paragraphs can go, eh?

[pickled_tomato]

Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs

Man, you really showed us how far two paragraphs can go, eh?

I got carried away. I couldn't find a way to format entirely right on the forums. Sorry about that.

[Loow]

It's not a problem. Passion is good.

[Owen]

I am loving the interest you are showing in this species. You definitely seem to understand the Dionaea as a whole. I have seen your character ingame a few times and haven't really seen any issues with them. I would say that you could play as this species fairly well.

+1 really liking how much you wrote.

[pickled_tomato]

Oh, thank you guys! I'd imagine I'm missing a lot of specifics of dionaea but I definitely did look at the wiki quite a bit while making this. Some of the things there are funny to think about, honestly.

Just imagine.. you're flying through space and you see one of these. You hear millions of friendly, airy "Hello!"s greeting you as you get closer. What would you even do? I feel like it'd be one of the strongest things in the galaxy. It's honestly amazing, and slightly impossible. Just ignore it being almost impossible and we're good to go.

Singularity

A theoretical form of the Diona - a planet, or even star-sized diona form consisting of maybe more nymphs than is currently known to exist, may be the pinnacle of organic processing and thought. Uncharted intelligence. The Skrell has an order to destroy any Diona structure that could reach, or has reached, this size due to the inherent risk of intelligence singularity and other classified risks.

~ Wiki

Mandatory edit: Thinking about it though, the planet would just be one entity I believe. I might be wrong but I think it'd just be one entity consisting of millions of.. woooh.. it all gets pretty complicated. Just pretend I said "One massive, booming, friendly, and airy "Hello!".

Also what the heck is an "Intelligence singularity"?

[pickled_tomato]

I took some time to illustrate 100% accurately what will happen right before the dionaea intelligence singularity. I'm quite proud of it. Minus the already dying out dat boi meme, this picture would actually loosely represent the planet unless I'm mistaken.

 

[Killerhurtz]

What am I even reading this is awesome.

So yes. Hello hello.

First, to answer your question: an intelligence singularity is basically the step above a hivemind. More intelligences than you can fathom, all interconnected - all individuals, yet all working like a single intelligence.

Anyhow. As per protocol I'll be back tomorrow to pass a judgement. Not like I have much of a judgement to pass.

Ta-ta!

[Mofo1995]

This is probably the best Diona application I've seen since Whispering Willow, and Isabella Silva is a character I had fantastic role-play experiences with when she was my body guard. I certainly have to add my support to this application, even if its acceptance is already all but guaranteed.

[Nanako]

She's an adorable intern who really seems interested in learning, and i love to have someone to teach. fun to have around, reassuring, supportive, and reliable

Personally, i don't quite like the name of the diona, but that's because i think diona names should be nouns. Like 'Dreary Midnight in a City of Lost Souls'

But that's just me, i'm told this isn't a rule

+1 in any case

[Brightdawn]

Love them OOC and IC always great to RP with and they put a lot of thought into their characters actions!

+1

[pickled_tomato]

What am I even reading this is awesome.

So yes. Hello hello.

First, to answer your question: an intelligence singularity is basically the step above a hivemind. More intelligences than you can fathom, all interconnected - all individuals, yet all working like a single intelligence.

Anyhow. As per protocol I'll be back tomorrow to pass a judgement. Not like I have much of a judgement to pass.

Ta-ta!

Sounds good, I'm looking forward to your judgement.

As a side note, thank you for your kind words guys. I was honestly expecting to get rejected within the first five minutes when I pressed submit. It's a big boost for me to see all of this. Really.

Big Edit: This being said, I'm still very open to criticism. I'll take it to heart and improve through it. Don't want to be too confident.

[Killerhurtz]

No worries, I'll have to agree with Mofo here - it's definitely up there in the pantheon of amazing Dionaea apps. I don't even know if anyone even STARTED a lore discussion about them in their lore app, before - and that hits a soft spot because it shows, to me, that you truly care (and understand enough to joke) about the lore.

So yes, approved. PM me if there's any issues. Have fun.