[Accepted]Head of Staff Whitelist Application: Synnono

[Synnono]

BYOND key: Synnono

Character names:

Zahra Karimi (Active)

Stefanie Matis (Needs whitelist! Hopefully coming back!)

Isara (Shell from old code, needs rework)

Bridget Bynes (Old code, lost in the move)

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How long have you been playing on Aurora?: About one year, with a significant break in the middle.

Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: Because one of my main characters was in Internal Affairs with aspirations to join Command, and her job is now whitelisted. This is a good chance to get her positioned for both again.

Why did you come to Aurora?: I saw 'Heavy RP' in the BYOND hub and clicked! Stayed for lesbay, obvi.

Have you read the BS12 wiki on the head roles you plan on playing?: Yes.

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each.

Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about:

Roleplay is collaborative storytelling, accomplished by assuming a personality within fiction. By creating characters and putting them through scenarios, we enable ourselves to explore ideas and behavior that we may not get to encounter in day to day life. In the context of a game it's usually just for fun, specifically done for my own enjoyment, and that of the the people I'm playing with. For me personally, it's also a fun way to test certain thoughts or plots for other writing that I do, since roleplay comes with built-in feedback from the people around me.

What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?:

For me, the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is to give the other players in a round a focusing point for the story being told in that round, whether that's by just enabling their departments to do their work, or by helping to deal with an emergency. Their ability (and obligation) to serve as authority figures at the center of the station's operations means that they are best placed to receive, process, and relay information to the characters who need it most in order to address a situation (and hopefully have fun doing it) during a round. They can both enable constructive player behavior and mitigate destructive player behavior with their IC authority. They can also control the escalation of a round using their IC position, by contacting Central's ERT or by making the decision to evacuate the station and end the game.

Internal Affairs players, while not strictly playing a head of staff position, have an additional OOC/out-of-game purpose by being an impartial component of the Incident Report process. They can independently document and preserve information received in the process of creating these reports, that may later be used by CCIA to resolve Duty Officer investigations.

What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?:

Whitelisted players are being trusted to know the rules of the server, the regulations of the station, and (most of) the workings of their departments. A whitelisted player has a responsibility to be accessible to the people who rely on them to enjoy themselves in a given round, and to control their character in a way that is believable and consistent with player expectations. They have a responsibility to be communicative, inclusive and receptive to the players around them, since Head characters can be the bottleneck for allowing the crew to take a variety of actions. I also think that while there are definite exceptions, a Head character should be played as somewhat hands-off when it comes to actually doing the work of their departments. In my mind, Heads are administrators before they are workers, and enabling another player to perform a task is much more important than making sure that task is done 100% correctly or efficiently. To that end, a Head should also be willing to help teach players on their teams about job tasks they may not be familiar or comfortable with.

 

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Please pick one of your characters for this section, and provide well articulated responses to the following questions.

Character name: Stefanie Matis

Character age: 41

Please provide a short biography of this character (approx 2 paragraphs):

Stefanie is a lifelong Company woman, who had targeted NanoTrasen as her employer from her second year in university. Holding degrees in business management and finance, and independently certified as a financial auditor, she's served at nearly a dozen facilities over the course of a nineteen-year career. With careful planning, she has worked her way up from supervising a small storage complex outside Mendell City to serving in Internal Affairs on vessels all over the Tau Ceti system. Since she was trusted by the company to hold a clipboard, she's proven to be an ambitious and effective administrator, whose pursuit of efficiency and careful adherence to regulation has allowed her to distinguish herself from her peers, and secure several valuable promotions. Today, she sees a transition to Command as a high watermark of personal achievement, and has committed to pursuing a Command post aggressively, before positioning herself to target CCIA as a final step on her career path.

However, success in her career has taken a toll on the rest of Stefanie's life. She is distanced from her family and her small network of friends, and her marriage, a rocky, uncomfortable arrangement with another NT auditor, has just ended after a messy, eighteen-month divorce. As she moves inexorably toward middle age, menopause, and a closing window in which there's time to plan for a life beyond NanoTrasen, she finds herself with a crumbling support network, and no time in which to re-evaluate her life. As a coping mechanism, she's thrown herself back into her job, but her loyalty implant makes her head ache like never before, and for the first time, she worries that control of her life might be slipping out of her hands. Time will tell whether she can reconcile her professional purpose with her motivations, and her work with her conscience.

What do you like about this character?:

I love Stefanie as a character because she's a good woman who has been conditioned to suppress herself in favor of NanoTrasen. There's an inherit conflict in being a good person and a good Internal Affairs agent at the same time, and walking the line while doing the job is something I find to be a lot of fun to write. She is someone who needs to know she's done right, as well as done well, and the two are not always possible. I also like the idea of playing a character who's always had it all planned out, only to have the floor pulled out from under her. Even though she needs to step back on a psychological level, she can't escape the path she's laid out for herself, and the only option is to carry on and manage the dissonance in her head as it grows. She sees being responsible for other people as a means by which to validate her own decisions, and so having her in a position to work with the crew as a superior is interesting to me.

What do you dislike about this character?:

I dislike that so much of the developments I like about Stefanie have basically taken place offscreen. It would be a great thing to have some real movement on the conflicts in her head as a result of direct interaction with the crew. This can be be hard sometimes due to her position, and a need for IAAs to be impartial and distant. While I had some success when I roleplayed her before the IAA whitelisting requirement, I'm hoping that the ability to eventually play her as a HoP or maybe even a Captain will give her more options for RP with the crew at large.

What do you think makes this character fit to be a head of staff?:

In-character, Stefanie meets and exceeds the requirements for several head positions, and has targeted the Command Staff as a career goal for years. She is very concerned with the correct and efficient operation of the station, which includes the happiness and safety of its personnel. She has also been tested a couple of times in emergencies (non-canon nuke/merc rounds) where she was able to resolve situations without excessive loss of life or property, indicating that she can function under pressure and display leadership qualities. She is not only accustomed to procedure and delegation, but is written to excel at it, which makes me believe she'd feel at home on the bridge, or in the IA office.

 

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions.

How would you rate your own roleplaying?: Memes/10

I hate questions like this because they feel either self-serving or self-deprecating to answer. I feel like I give my characters and stories enough thought to call myself experienced. There will always be someone better or worse than me.

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Extra notes:

I've been off the server for a while, before August, and I will need to brush up on any changes in IA or command staff policies from early in the year, but I'm ready to do so. I'll hunt on the forums, but if anyone has important things to link me, I'd appreciate your help in the thread below. Thank you!

Edited August 31, 2016 by Guest

[TrickingTrapster]

+1. I know this player, I recognize their characters. Both good and the characters are well played out. No objections to a head whitelist here.

[November]

In-character, Stefanie meets and exceeds the requirements for several head positions

 

What positions specifically? My biggest irk with heads are the ones designed to do way too much.

[Synnono]

What positions specifically?

 

According to the requirements on our wiki, she's educated and experienced enough to satisfy the mechanical requirements for IAA, HoP, and Captain. In terms of backstory, she has management experience that would qualify her to be a Head of Personnel or a Captain, who to my mind are Very Important Managers, but are still, ultimately, managers on a civilian research station. She's in no way qualified to work as an RD, CE, CMO, or HoS.

As an IAA she was usually concerned with maintaining good process, good work efficiency, and reliable communication with central command. Most of her career experience is as a civilian manager of facilities, which is the approach she'd default to while running things as a Head of Personnel or a Captain. Her backstory and my prior RP with her on the server had her targeting a spot on the bridge in one of these roles.

A Head of Personnel is possibly the most direct manager of people and business on the station, and would be a natural extension of her job duties from other facilities prior to her work in IA. Playing Captain adds more responsibility for the safety of the station and crew, but is not extraordinarily different in my mind. She would definitely need help with decisions that arose from security, medical, engineering or scientific concerns, but as a someone who should be delegating, she expects to have experts and staff to handle those decisions, and a Captain can comfortably defer to them in all but the most outstanding circumstances.

For clarity, I am applying to have her play IA again, but would like the option of transitioning her to Command as well, since it's one of her character goals.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Guest

[November]

What positions specifically?

 

According to the requirements on our wiki, she's educated and experienced enough to satisfy the mechanical requirements for IAA, HoP, and Captain. In terms of backstory, she has management experience that would qualify her to be a Head of Personnel or a Captain, who to my mind are Very Important Managers, but are still, ultimately, managers on a civilian research station. She's in no way qualified to work as an RD, CMO, or HoS.

As an IAA she was usually concerned with maintaining good process, good work efficiency, and reliable communication with central command. Most of her career experience is as a civilian manager of facilities, which is the approach she'd default to while running things as a Head of Personnel or a Captain. Her backstory and my prior RP with her on the server had her targeting a spot on the bridge in one of these roles.

A Head of Personnel is possibly the most direct manager of people and business on the station, and would be a natural extension of her job duties from other facilities prior to her work in IA. Playing Captain adds more responsibility for the safety of the station and crew, but is not extraordinarily different in my mind. She would definitely need help with decisions that arose from security, medical, or scientific concerns, but as a someone who should be delegating, she expects to have experts and staff to handle those decisions, and a Captain can comfortably defer to them in all but the most outstanding circumstances.

For clarity, I am applying to have her play IA again, but would like the option of transitioning her to Command as well, since it's one of her character goals.

 

That's what I was looking to clear up, since the app is a little vague on your exact motivation. As a character she seems empty, but in a good way. In a way that speaks to living a career as a life, while full of workplace accomplishments her social highlights are few. It does present an obstacle for how I would think an effective HoP would operate, but I haven't seen many social HoP's to beging with.

Overall I definitely think this is a full application, though I expect the character to grow quite a bit once she's actually out there on the server, regardless of the fact that she's been played before.

+1

[Mofo1995]

Well, I don't really know about Stephanie Matis, but this application sure tells me a lot about them.

Synnono is one of the nicest people on the server, and easily one of the best roleplayers too. I don't think they have a single chuckle-fuck bone in their body, while also not being a stick in the mud either, and so I really think they are above and beyond the bar of expectations for a head of staff. They certainly have my +1.

[Timmato]

I like the character description and her motivations, suddenly realising that she may be in too deep yet too proud/stubborn/incapable of changing her life, the character definately has potential and I appreciate Synnono as an RPer so I think this will be an IAA that I might not hate ICly maybe?

But I do want to see where this is going and a workaholic IAA has potential to involve other characters and expand into the group of adorable little spessmen that litter the station.

In summary its a +1 from me, as its not only a cool character but as Synnono said themselves "having her in a position to work with the crew as a superior is interesting to me." Who knows may even be good experience for the player as well as the character o.o

Anyway, thats my yearly forum post. Time to crawl away into the shadows.

[Roderick Grey]

Doctor Zahra is great +1

[Synnono]

Doctor Zahra is great +1

 

While I appreciate the sentiment, she's just a lab tech with a chameleon kit fetish

Also, if you have any thoughts on the application itself, they are much appreciated!

[dre9889]

I've had the pleasure of playing with Zahra Karimi on multiple occasions. She is always fun to roleplay with, and I've never been left with a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to spending the majority of a round with her. I have no doubt that this player possesses the roleplaying ability and the OOC understanding to play a head role.

While I haven't seen the character they used for their backstory before, Stephanie seems very fleshed out, and I was able to garner a clear understanding of who she was and what she stands for just through reading this application.

I'm sure if I really did some hard analysis and it wasn't 30 minutes after waking that I'm writing this, I could find something to critique, but I don't really feel the need. It's a solid looking app to me. +1

[Blingx3]

I've known this guy from the first day he was here, and have roplayed with all of his characters, so in short. You'll come across few that can roleplay quite like him, he has amazing depths to his characters, and I enjoy every round we play together. I'd support this application happily, and I urge everyone to do the same.

[VileFault]

+1

I am sorry that I only saw this now! I play Dr. Simon Bard, and have spend maybe ten rounds at this point with Zahra, which is practically a full 24 hours. This character pretty clearly demonstrates to me Synnono's admirable ability to limit their character and separate their own feelings from those of their creation.

Despite Synnono's obvious competence regarding most everything in the science department, Zahra tends to stick to simpler tasks like feeding materials to the machines, linking the telepad, collecting deliveries, and whatnot. Even when she does sometime more complex, like max out the protolathe's research levels with blinding speed, she always is careful to phrase her actions in terms of aiding the fully fledged scientists, ask questions, and generally defer to ICly more competent people (even when they are OOCly less competent).

More impressive than this, in my opinion, is Synnono's ability to undertake role-play wherein they are neither respected nor the star of the show, and yet still add to everyone's experience. By way of example, I would cite Zarhra's response to my character Dr. Bard, who is often dismissive, absentminded, and rude. In the past, I have had lab assistants react to the slightest perceived insult pretty violent and vulgar ways that make me believe that they as a player were personally insulted. Not only is having proxy internet arguments boring, it is unrealistic; screaming at your boss because he isn't being nice enough to you is a quick ticket out of the workplace. With Zahra, we can actually develop a dynamic in which she tolerates Simon, tries to appease him, and then occasionally bitches about the good doctor to her other colleagues. It takes a lot of control and presence of mind to tolerate and making something out of a situation like that.

[Pyrociraptor]

Synnono is serious, great roleplayer and not a chucklefuck.

+1

[Superballs]

After multiple encounters with Zahra Karimi, I feel confident that Synnono deserves their Head Whitelist. As for the character who's to be whitelisted, it's quite interesting to see an application solely for being an Internal Affairs Agent rather than a Head of Staff position. On board Internal Affairs Agents are quite rare nowadays.

+1

[Absynth]

This app is barely even needed, of course Synnono is gonna get it. +10

[Tequilajoe]

Zahra Karimi's fame on the station is not unfounded: She is easily one of the most well-played characters I've ever seen. Her RP is so good it makes me envious. +1

[Faris]

Late to the party but I'd also like to pitch that I've interacted with this player in both IC and OOC. In game, I don't think I've had a negative experience with her from any of my characters and have thoroughly enjoyed playing with her with a certain character. I feel like they will be deserving of a +1.

[Owen]

I remember Synnono and their characters from the old code/station and they all were pretty solid overall. Since the return of Synnono, I really have only interacted with Karimi and they are a very good character who is enjoyable to roleplay with. I would trust Synnono to receive the Head of Staff whitelist and feel that they would be a strong Command member if given the chance. A definitive +1

[HouseOfSynth]

App wise, I like it.. A nicely done backstory and good answers to the questions. Although I have not had too much interaction with Zahra, the interactions I have had have been pleasant; being that she always seems to be doing her job well and professionally.. From an OOC standpoint I have no problems with Synnono, they're a good roleplayer who plays well on the server and follows the rules.

No problems here and would love to see them get accepted.

+1 from me and good luck!

[Synnono]

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read the application and leave feedback in one form or another. I appreciate it!

It's been one month since I posted this. I've previously contacted an admin asking how to proceed without a response, so this is just a selfish bump for hoping the thread might be looked at and assessed.

Edited September 23, 2016 by Guest

[hivefleetchicken]

I'd never admit it in OOC or otherwise, but Synnono has always been one of my guilty pleasures. I love every single one of their degenerate characters. They no doubt can handle the responsibilities of a head whitelist if they purely want to play IA for Matis, or if they want to expand into other head of staff characters.

Support from me.

[ChevalierMalFet]

Oh, Zahra Karimi? +1, no question.

[Nikov]

My whitelist app was also open for a month, but it had spirited debate. This has been pretty well unanimous.

Yet another +1.

[Loow]

Application Accepted.