Hey, everyone! We have some news about Mini staff, and changes to how staff will be hired going forwards.
Following the last round of hiring, one of the most consistent pieces of feedback we received was that the staff test had become too long and arduous, especially given that its relevance to the actual work of staff is frequently a loose approximation at best. After some soul-searching, we are inclined to agree with this assessment. As such, we're trying something new.
We will be trialing a new system which will use a heavily abbreviated staff test, left standing open to applications as a general state of affairs, followed with a more in-depth, hands-on process in which prospective staff members actually assist in the running, planning, etc. of specific versions.
How it works is pretty simple. To apply, please submit the following:
Handler Name:
Why do you want to be a moderator?
Which version or universe holds greatest appeal to you to help run?
What do you feel like you could contribute to the forum that others couldn't?
What is one quality, attribute, or obstacle that you feel may hinder you as a moderator? How do you propose to work around, eliminate, or improve said hindrance?
How do you handle sometimes stressful situations?
What is one change or improvement you would like to see made to the Mini experience?
Generally speaking, how familiar are you with the Mini settings (The Program, SOTF-TV, Virtua, and Second Chances)? Be as specific as possible.
Can you commit to a workload of roughly ten profile critiques per version, as well as to reading roughly 10% of any given version?
Do you have any prior experience—forum, school-related, or otherwise—that you feel is relevant to your application for a position as moderator?
If you could recommend one other person for the job of moderator, who would it be and why?
Additionally, please complete
one of the following tasks (your pick):
- Draft a profile that you think would be worthy of approval, and that you think could be used as an example to members of what a good profile looks like (you may submit this profile to a future version, but profiles submitted here should not yet have undergone staff critique).
- Critique one of the following profiles as if you were a moderator:
- [+] Profile 1
- Please critique the following profile as though it were submitted for SC2. For testing purposes, please treat the profile as a valid submission (where normally it would be invalid due to the no-survivors-in-SC rule) and note any formatting errors but give a full critique despite their potential presence:
Name: Kimberly Nguyen
Gender: Female
Age: 17
School: P.J. Hobbs Senior High School
Hobbies and Interests: Poetry, guitar, horror novels, the "emo" scene
Appearance: Kimberly is a short (5'4") girl. She is thin, weighing only 125 pounds. Her figure is not particularly feminine; she has few curves due to her lack of body fat. She has shoulder length black hair, a lock of which she has taken to bleaching. She usually brushes her hair so that some of it is in front of her eyes. Kimberly has dark brown eyes, and wears square glasses at all times. She is somewhat nearsighted, but eschews contacts, feeling that they don't match her image.
Kimberly wears almost exclusively black. She prefers tight jeans and bulky sweatshirts, which she uses to draw attention away from her modestly-sized chest. She often includes elements in her wardrobe that are almost costume-like: fedoras, spiked collars, elbow-length fingerless gloves, so forth. She wears large amounts of makeup, principally black eyeshadow, which does not contrast with her tan skin as well as she would like. She has good complexion; on the rare occasions when she does break out, she gets pimples along her hairline, which she hides under hats.
Kimberly is half Vietnamese and it shows, particularly in the shape of her eyes and nose.
Biography: Kimberly is Vietnamese-American. Her maternal grandparents moved to the United States in 1984, fleeing Vietnam because her grandfather, an outspoken proponent of the American intervention that had occured during his younger years, had drawn the ire of the government and feared reprisal. Kimberly's mother was born a month after their arrival in their new country, in Denton New Jersey, where the family was able to rent a home and find work.
Kimberly's mother was not a particularly cautious woman, rebelling against her parents' strict rules at every opportunity. She got pregnant in her sophomore year of high school, and continued her schooling, leaving the newborn Kimberly to be raised by her grandparents. They were more than happy to take her, being somewhat disappointed with how their own daughter had turned out. Her mother moved away after high school, and while Kimberly speaks with her often and sees her several times a year she feels much closer to her grandparents, who she lives with full time. Kimberly met her father when she was younger, but he went his own way later on and she has not seen him in years. He still sends some child support money to Kimberly's family, though, and sends her a card every year on her birthday.
Her grandparents raised her very liberally, hoping to avoid the mistakes they made with her mother by teaching her restraint through example rather than punishment. Kimberly was always allowed to voice her opinions, and was rarely disciplined in any way. She grew to expect to be able to do whatever she wanted. This has given her great self-confidence, but it has also made her pushy. She often does not consider the feelings of others, assuming that they'll do what they like and leave her to do the same. She does not understand that her friends often do things her way just to minimize conflict. Though she conforms to her social group in appearance and behavior, she always likes to be in charge of a given situation. When she does have conflicts with others, she tries to convince them of her point of view, but if that fails she simply leaves, walking away in the middle of sentences if she feels the conversation is over.
One downside of Kimberly's upbringing is that her grandparents rarely express any disapproval of her whatsoever. If they don't believe that she is doing something well, they simply don't say anything, letting their silence speak for them. They are not particularly encouraging when Kimberly does things well, either. This, and her distance from her parents, has lead Kimberly to feel somewhat emotionally starved at home. She fell in with the "emo" crowd because she is fascinated with people willing to express their negative emotions and dissatisfaction with the way their lives are going. She writes poetry about the hardships of her own suburban middle-class life, albeit not particularly well. Her true artistic talents lie in music. She learned to play guitar from a friend's father, and has fallen in love with the music of the 1960s and 70s, which she was introduced to in her elementary school music class. She particularly likes Vietnam War protest songs because she feels personally connected to them; she does not realize at all how upsetting this is to her grandfather, who has never explained to her that the songs are hurtful to him.
Kimberly's favorite subject in school is English, and her favorite part of the class is reading Gothic novels. She finds that horrific tales of the supernatural really allow human courage to shine through. She is a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Chambers, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, and Stephen King, and recommends their books to her friends at every opportunity. She does not like realistic literature of any sort, particularly mundane horror, which she finds too frightening.
Kimberly is a fairly good student. She is smart and willing to put some effort into her education, so she mostly gets As and Bs, with the occasional C. She does not call attention to this fact among her friends, though, feeling it would harm her image. Most of her friends are just barely passing, and view school with great disdain. Because of her desire to fit in with her peer group she pretends not to care about school at all, never participating in class unless forced to.
Kimberly's grandparents mostly failed at keeping her behavior more moderate than her mother's; she's just safer about it. She has experimented with drugs and alcohol, along with her friends, and smokes semi-regularly. She has been in a few relationships, three sexual, all relatively short. The one area in which her grandparents did influence her successfully was birth control; Kimberly has taken precautions to avoid ending up in the same situation as her mother.
Advantages: Kimberly is smart, and decently dedicated. She has good self confidence, and is willing to keep at things even when they get hard.
Disadvantages: Kimberly does not work well with other people unless they follow her. She is prone to simply leave a group if it doesn't do things how she likes. She also sometimes alienates people by being overly forceful, something she is completely unaware of.
Original Profile: Kimberly Nguyen
- [+] Profile 2
- Please critique the following profile as though it were submitted for TV3. For testing purposes, please treat the profile as a valid submission (ignoring previous submissions if applicable) and note any formatting errors but give a full critique despite their potential presence:
Name: Wichita Ravenborn
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: Mangrove Garden
Hobbies and Interests: Science fiction, the internet, playing the cello, playing the timpani, music, film, gore videos, alien conspiracy theories
Appearance: Wichita is at the taller end of average for her age, standing at 5’9” and weighing roughly 129 lbs. While there has been some muscle built in both her arms and core due to years spent playing the timpani, Wichita is overall scrawny for her age, with a straight figure and barely any fat on her body. She is caucasian in skin tone, and due to time usually spent inside notably pale. Her hair is straight, thin, and goes down to her waist. It is a very faded brown — almost taupe — in colour, and is fairly ratty, messy, and filled with knots, Wichita very often noting her bedhead in the morning and then forgetting to actively do anything about it, and often resulting in her having to continuously bat her hair aside so that she can see in front of her. She has a button nose, hazel-coloured eyes, and assorted pimples and blackheads all across her forehead, nose, and chin. She does not wear makeup unless on occasions such as school dances, weddings, or funerals, finding it too much of a pain to put on otherwise.
Clothing wise, quite like the rest of her appearance, Wichita does not put in a lot of effort. She dresses far more for personal convenience rather than to look good, and she often tends to pick randomly from her piles of clothes in a way that results in a haphazard, mismatching fashion sense. As such, often t-shirts, tracksuit pants, and sneakers are what she most often wears. Oftentimes, she’ll wear the same outfit several days in a row, typically only switching out and throwing them in the wash in the middle and the end of the week. For the most part, she dresses fairly conservatively, partially to try and not show any skin and partially so that she can get away with not having to shave as much. Recently, she’s taken an upturn to buying items of clothing that look weird or against the grain, but she rarely does so while also keeping the rest of her wardrobe in mind, often just buying things from op shops that she thinks look cool and not questioning whether they’d actually be something she could wear until later. On the day of abduction, Wichita was wearing a dress which is black around the sleeves and waist, and above and below show a picture of a cluster of dead trees looking up at a starry purple, blue and white sky, slightly tilted and cut so that the right shoulder is covered by the clothing, while the left shoulder is covered by a strap — bought for her by a friend in an attempt to glam her up. She also wore ripped and faded ankle length denim blue jeans, knee length black stockings, blue and white sneakers, and a silver lotus flower necklace.
Biography: Wichita Jane Ravenborn was born in Miami Hospital on the 29th of October, 2000, to parents Andrew Williams and Rainfall Ravenborn. Both Andrew and Rainbow were raised in a hippie commune off in the outskirts of Manitoba, and — while knowing each other for nearly their entire lives — only because emotionally close during their late teenage years, bonding over their shared resentment with the community and a wish to see the rest of the world. They eventually left together, and roamed both Canada and the U.S.A as nomads until Rainbow became pregnant, the two of them deciding to settle down for the sake of their child and choosing Miami, due to its quietness and because of its close physical distance at the time. To this end, the couple found an apartment and attained jobs, and were living a stable life by the time Wichita was born. Her name was initially a hyphenation as the parents were not entirely sure which last name to give the child, but as the two parents formally married six years later Wichita’s last name became her mother’s, Rainfall doing so because the child thought it was cool and Andrew doing so as he was fond of how much his wife resented her former last name, given to her by her father in the hippie commune.
Growing up, Wichita was an introverted child, yet energetic. While she preferred to read or play in the grass rather than interact with other children, she did anything she was asked to with gusto and did her best to be an attentive, eager student. However, oddities began to emerge with her during this period of pre-school/kindergarten. In class and out, Wichita would feel physical urges to continuously nod or shake her head, and would often flick lightswitches on and off upwards of twenty times while trying to use them. Later on, Wichita would often repeat what others would say back to them verbatim even during periods of a serious tone where she was supposed to be silent, and would often find herself unable to complete sentences of her own as she would be continuously stuck on and compelled to repeat certain words or sounds. When discipline or repremandment from teachers did not result in Wichita stopping these patterns, and when Wichita’s parents found out that she was unable to stop these behaviours, she was taken to a doctor and properly diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, with her specific tics involving echolalia and palilalia. Wichita, at this point, was not particularly bothered by the diagnosis, not really understanding how in particular she was specifically different to other kids and only particularly wanting to get better so that her teachers wouldn’t tell her off when she acted on her tics.
Her parents were significantly more concerned at this diagnosis than Wichita was. While they did know that Tourette’s wasn’t too much of a major issue and sought to give their child a happy life over making sure she was healthy, they did know that the syndrome would cause problems for her and sought out ways to alleviate it a bit. Through research, they found that learning an instrument apparently helped to suppress symptoms of Tourette’s, and as thus asked Wichita whether she wanted to learn how to play an instrument, and if so, what she wanted to play. Wichita, having seen people play their instruments while at school, decided that she very much wanted to learn one, and eventually settled on playing the cello, primarily because it had the funniest name out of all the instruments she could find. Her parents found a local teacher, and were able to have Wichita begin to learn. While learning the instrument, Wichita began to become passionate about it in a way more than just finding the name funny, liking the rich timbre the cello made when she played it well and finding a little bit of pride in being able to control something much larger than her in size. Over her elementary and middle school life, she kept going to cello lessons twice a week, and started rising up through the grade levels of the [system] system. She never really performed or played for anyone other than herself or her teacher, but she practised every day, and slowly began to get better at the instrument.
During this point in time where Wichita was in elementary school, Andrew’s work as a milkman — delivering milk to food service companies and school cafeterias — and Rainbow’s job as a bartender often meant that they worked during nights and slept during mornings, meaning that Wichita often did not have much time in the day to spend time with her parents. To compensate, the one night of the week where nobody in the family had work, the three would always go out of their way to watch a movie together, either at the theaters or on TV. While Wichita often enjoyed most everything that she watched — being a child and as thus having no critical thinking skills — the movies that brought the best reaction out of her were ones produced by LucasArts and/or directed by Steven Speilburg, with particular favourites at this time being the six Star Wars films, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and E.T: the Extra Terrestrial. The main reason she loved all these movies in particular was due to the fact that each movie had aliens — Wichita loved the idea of living beings from outside of her Earth, and tended to love any movie or book that had aliens in them, which would be a founding point for her love of science fiction and her growing belief in aliens later on in her life. The family has kept their routine of watching a movie each week throughout the years, although there are often extended periods of time where one family member couldn’t make it due to their work shifts changing. As of Wichita’s senior year, the family movie nights are only attended by Wichita and Andrew, with Rainbow currently indisposed. The two currently use it to watch movies considered so-bad-they’re-good, both using their talking over the movie as father-daughter bonding moments and with Wichita currently considering them to be one of the few weekly reprieves she receives.
The first half of elementary school passed by without much note. During lunchtimes, Wichita would often be by herself, and while she was sometimes pushed by teachers to try and talk to other people, she was happy the way she was not having any friends. However, in the third grade, a new student from the grade above decided that they were going to pick on her, making fun of her Tourette’s whenever she could and oftentimes kicking what she was playing with. Wichita, while considering it, did not contact teachers or supervisors about this bullying, as she was worried about what the bully would do to her if she snitched. However, eventually, someone stepped in — namely, one Tobias “Toby” Hawke, who directly witnessed the bully doing what they were doing to Wichita, and then responded by directly raging at the bully until they got scared and stopped bothering Wichita. Wichita took a little bit of a liking to Teddy because of this act of protection, and Teddy — despite being unnerved by Wichitas tics — also took a liking to Wichita because of their shared hobby of reading. The two became friends, and June invited Wichita to a friend group. While Wichita still tended to like being by herself during playtime periods, eating times and classes were often spent interfacing with this group, and eventually Wichita grew to start interacting with them outside of school in terms of playdates and sleepovers. This period of Wichita being involved in the friendship group lasted for roughly the last two years of elementary school, and went by without much note. She tried her best to practise and get better at the cello, went through classes and tried to do a good job, and hung out with either her friends or her parents whenever she could.
However, things got quite a bit more complicated during the transition from elementary to middle school. Due to economic issues — namely, that the Williams-Ravenborn family could not afford transportation to any school outside of the one in their school district — Wichita’s parents were unable to get her into the same middle school that Tobias’ group went to, and due to lack of internet in the Williams-Ravenborn household, Wichita was not able to find other means of communicating with her friend group save for meeting them in person. While Wichita tried to take this separation in stride, and attempted to try and make friends in this new environment, she was very quickly ostracized from the social order. While mandatory grouping activities would often place Wichita in groups with other people, they would often find her weird and freaky to interact with due to her Tourette’s and try to abandon her as soon as possible, meaning that she was nearly always alone during lunchtimes. To add onto this, the bully from elementary school had happened to transfer to the same middle school, and started to pick on Wichita again now that she had no friend group to protect her. When other people within the school started to also bully her, she reported it to parents/teachers and tried to get it to stop, but due to her parents coming on too strong during the initial meeting discussing the bullying and due to the school’s fairly strict zero-tolerance policy meant that very little was ultimately done to stop it. As thus, Wichita — not being able to transfer to another school due to the economic constraints that led her to enrol in the first place — was stuck alone during middle school, spending lunchtimes by herself in places hidden from other students and oftentimes cycling through hiding places in order to stop herself from being found out.
However, during that same school year, Wichita’s life did also change for the better. This was mainly because, during Christmas that year, Wichita’s family was finally able to afford broadband internet. While Wichita wasn’t particularly interested initially — the purchase mainly being so that Rainfall could access things for her job, in addition to allowing both parents to job hunt more easily — exploration of what her parents were looking at while neither were using the computer and ads Wichita found on webpages led her to flash game sites such as Crazymonkey, Nitrome, and Kongregate. Wichita found the games — particularly, the ones on Nitrome — particularly addictive to play through, and would often go on the computer in her spare time. Eventually, looking for walkthroughs on particularly troublesome levels led her to YouTube and general Let’s Play, and she eventually started to use the internet as a method of communication with other people. She greatly prefers this communication method to talking in real life, mainly because she has all the time she needs in order to reply to what people are saying and also because it's a place where her Tourettes doesn’t flare up. While Wichita would often become silent and stay in the background when she interacted with people in high school, on the internet she became notably more lively and talkative, something that allows her to maintain friendships with the people who manage to get close to her.
During middle school, most of Wichita’s friendships with her group in elementary school did not hold. She tried to keep connected with them through email and visits to their houses, but the fact that the rest of the group had transitioned into a different — and seemingly happier — middle school life left Wichita left out of their conversations and resentful that she couldn’t share that life with them. This led to her eventually drifting away from and ghosting the majority of the group roughly a year into middle school. However, Wichita eventually found other friends during this period in time. The first was a boy in her middle school named Gail Honeyman. He, like her, was effectively by himself in the middle school hierarchy, and did not seem to be quite bothered by Wichita’s tics, which she saw was something that they could bond over. She hounded him over the course of several days until he gave in and decided to be friends with her, and the two were friends ever since, bonding over shared isolation and musical instruments, and finding a sort of fun in escaping and hiding from the people who bullied Wichita.
In addition to this, in the midst of her relationships with her old friend group fading away, she was able to maintain and strengthen her friendship with a boy named James Dashner. After her initial leaving of the group led to her severing ties with them, James made a point to chase her down and make sure she was alright, worried with how she seemed to be vanishing out of the rest of the group’s lives. Eventually, she told him the truth about why she was drifting away, and came clean with the bullying she was receiving at school. He was receptive about this, and came clean with why he was worried — namely, that he had been diagnosed with depression, and that some of the signs Wichita was showing were things he saw in himself. He offered to keep contact and be a friend for her, and she accepted, spending a lot of time out of school hanging out with James and being each other’s main venting recipient — the friendship getting closer and closer before eventually, in 8th grade, entering a romantic relationship with one another. While middle school was a tough time for Wichita socially — her bullying being active throughout her entire stay there — the friendships she held throughout this period helped her through this time, and made it not as bad as could-have-been.
The last notable thing Wichita did in middle school was start learning how to play the timpani. During her YouTube binges, Wichita went through several LPs of Pokémon Black and White versions, and, amongst other reactions, fell in love with the battle theme for the final boss. Something about how heavy and pounding and non-traditional it was made Wichita really wanted to know what instrument was providing the melody for the song, so she looked it up. After finding out about the existence of the timpani, and listening to the song on loop over the next couple of days led her to decide that she wanted to learn how to play the timpani as an addition to playing the cello. She asked her parents, and they were willing, but while they were able to order a timpani online for her, they weren’t able to find anyone in the area who could teach her the instrument. Undeterred, Wichita found YouTube tutorials which would help her do the same thing, and began to learn how to play the timpani. She was able to get the basics down before the start of high school, and through playing in the high school’s concert band she has been able to advance herself and learn how to play at a higher level. She likes playing the timpani for similar reasons as she likes playing the cello, but in addition likes how physically demanding the instrument is to play — the process of making it through a long song often leaving her exhausted, but proud of herself in the end.
Eventually, middle school made way for high school, and this meant a significant change in her social situation. While her, Gail, and James were all able to go to the same high school, as it turned out, Tobias and the rest of the group also ended up in the same high school as one another. Given Wichita’s previous existence within the group — and their notably quick forgiveness for her ghosting them — and James’s current existence, the three of them, including Gail, were absorbed into the group. However, while Wichita did have a group of friends and also a boyfriend, she did not have anyone else in her social circle other than that. This is because the experiences Wichita had middle school — while not having much overlap with her current high school — left her notably scared of trying to talk to people and/or expanding her limits past her current circle of friends. She joined the school’s concert band and string ensemble, but often found herself on the outside of off-topic conversations and activities. While she understands her own role in her own isolation from the school at large, she also bears a notable amount of resentment and envy towards others for being able to make friends easier than she can. She overthinks the effect her Tourette’s has had on her, and blames it for the other issues she has with socializing — oftentimes cringing and dropping out of conversation if it ever flares up — while also possessing bitterness that others aren’t as aware with her issues as she herself is, finding it patronizing when people express sympathy or try to celebrate her Tourette’s and wishing others knew about what her bullying felt like so they could understand why she doesn’t find physical communication easy.
The early parts of high school, aside from said feelings of resentment emerging, were a fairly calm period which Wichita used to pick up on new hobbies and expand on some previous ones. Being in the concert band and string ensemble, in addition to being friends with Gail, led Wichita to start getting more into listening to music herself. She mostly likes music of the indie and folk genres, finding their approach to sound and storytelling unique and personally appealing. Recently her tastes in music have begun to reach gloomier territories, both because of Gail’s tastes leaning that way — Wichita being overly reliant on Gail in terms of finding new music — and due to Wichita finding it to be more fitting and relatable to listen to. In addition, being in high school — and an environment where people actively didn’t shun her — allowed Wichita to get a little more into film. She joined the school’s movie-watching club on a whim, and, while being as silent as she usually is, was able to passively listen in on conversations regarding the more technical aspects of film construction and gain a little bit more appreciation for the art of film-making in general, having a Letterboxd account and regularly rating the films she watches. In particular, her favourite films are generally of the science fiction genre — mostly because her childhood love of aliens had not gone away — films with a slick, fun sort of tone, and films which go for artistic achievement rather than commercial safety. She doesn’t tend to watch movies outside of those she can find for free or those she watches for her family’s movie nights, but occasionally she is able to catch what’s currently popular by going out with those in her friend group.
However, at the end of sophomore year of high school, the group of friends Wichita had became fractured. James — Wichita’s boyfriend — revealed to the group that due to his parents being able to get a higher paying position in another state, he was going to have to move out of [city] and leave the group behind. While the group as a whole had varying reactions to this given James’s lack of warning about this move, none were sadder about this than Wichita. She was heartbroken at the idea that this move could cause their relationship to end, which resulted in her trying to put more effort into trying to make it work. After the move, Wichita tried to communicate online with James nearly every day — even managing to work up the funds to visit him at one point — but eventually James replies began to grow more sporadic and sporadic, something which Wichita hopes is because he’s busy or trying to deal with his depression. She keeps trying to uphold the relationship, and is attempting to stay what she sees as chaste and pure, but ultimately finds it hard to do so, her resentment and envy often bleeding into the happy couples she sees around school and with her oftentimes entering gloomy periods whenever James is nowhere to be found.
Around the same time, Wichita also began to start looking at conspiracy theory websites — particularly, ones in regard to the existence of aliens. She devours any news or new theories that ‘prove’ the existence of aliens, and latches onto the idea that they exist as a coping method to deal with parts of her own life. She knows that she still has scars from the bullying she received in middle school and that her relationship with James has been falling apart over the process of several years and that she doesn’t think her life is going to go in a good direction and so she dreams that one day aliens will be able to take her away from her life and place her someplace new. She is convinced in the impermanence of her own life — believing that she’s merely just a speck of dust in an infinite universe — and, during the moments where that idea is latched at its hardest, tries to use these conspiracies as a way of trying to convince herself in her gloomier moments that there’s hope. Truth be told, while she and her parents are unaware of it themselves, Wichita lives with manic-depressive bipolar disorder. She often swings from an upbeat, energetic almost childish state of mind to a more depressive state plagued with obsessive and uncontrollable thoughts. Oftentimes while can be notably enthusiastic about the things that she does she can just as easily slink back into a state where she can barely muster the willpower to do the same activities. It’s been something that has been present since middle school, but now after she and James’s relationship has become more fraught it has become significantly more pronounced, and informs more of her actions than before. Her obsession with aliens is motivated by this subconscious aspect, her desperate belief that they’re real being used as a coping mechanism during her more depressive moments and often reaching unrealistic levels during her more manic phases.
Academically, Wichita does decently. She puts in the required effort in classes and assessments and generally gets Bs for her work, with the occasional A or C. Her best two classes are Science and English, both mainly due to outside factors bringing genuine passion from Wichita while doing the material. Her worst classes are PE and Geography, the former due to the lack of interest she has in doing exercise and the latter due to the difficulty she has in understanding the complicated classwork. Socially, Wichita is generally a non-entity. She has her friend group and she has since managed to pick up a couple of acquaintances outside of said group but otherwise, she’s most well known for being a member of the string ensemble and concert band and not much more.
Sexuality wise, while Wichita has always been drawn towards the opposite sex — and is still in a complicated state of relationship with a boy — she’s never particularly felt any sort of sexual attraction towards James or others. She believes that that makes her some flavour of asexual, but doesn’t know enough about the specific terms and ideas regarding asexuality to really know what she is for sure. While Wichita is unsure about whether she’s going to be able to have a future after high school — being genuinely unable to envision what life would be like after since school’s been all she’s known — she has received offers from local orchestras for her to join, as her qualifications as a young person playing the timpani are notably rare. While she has yet to actually pick up any of the offers, she is intending on trying to see whether she can perform in orchestras at a professional level, once her current high school workload eases off. Her relationship with her parents is still notably strong, as even through periods such as middle school and the current situation with James they have stuck by her and been nothing but supportive through things such as gifts and movie nights, which Wichita appreciates. While she has not been fully open with them about everything — namely, her more hopeless thoughts and what she does on the internet — she displays a notable amount of care for them and seems to love them as much as they love her.
Advantages: Wichita’s experience with hiding and staying away from bullies in middle school may be of help when on the island, allowing her to stay away from potential predators and potentially perform certain tasks without anybody noticing her. Her status as a non-entity on the [school] social ladder could serve to her advantage within the game, her forgetability possibly allowing her to get away with things her more well-known classmates couldn’t. In addition, her prior experiences with watching SotF and other gore videos could make her more capable of adjusting to certain realities of the game, the sight of gore or killing likely not being as much of a distraction to her as it would be for others.
Disadvantages: Wichita has nearly no friends outside of her very small social circle which means that she will have barely any — if less — preexisting allies once the game begins. Her issues and difficulty with real-life communication and her self-hatred and premature isolation resulting from said issues might make attaining new allies harder for her than it would be for others. In addition, the level in which her bipolar disorder affects her — and given Wichita’s complete unawareness of it — combined with the stresses of the island might result in Wichita losing mental stability and performing actions detrimental to her survival.
- Write an announcement, including fluff, for the following information:
- [+] Announcement
- It's announcement time! Unfortunately, everyone else is currently unavailable, being either Away, ill, or working on a different staff job already. That means it falls to you to write the announcement!
For the purposes of this exercise, we're in the TV universe. Specifically, this is the third announcement of TV3, featuring Rhiannon “Ritzy Daggers” Durett as announcer. Announcement fluff should be included. For context, here are the first and second TV3 announcements.
The characters who died this month are:
Assume that all of these characters are TV3 characters, and that this is taking place in the TV universe, on the Flotilla. You pick the Danger Zones. Now, write that announcement!
If you have recently applied for staff but withdrawn, you may ask for your previous application to be considered in lieu of completing a task. We may periodically make adjustments to the tasks or requirements for application, and applicants are welcome to update their applications at any time.
When we feel that we need new members of the team, we will offer applicants a spot on the staff of a specific version, akin to the role of an AU staff member. We will likely only extend this offer to between one and three handlers at a time. Chosen handlers will serve as staff in the context of their specific version, with access to the version-specific lounge, character approval powers in that version, etc. They will operate initially under supervision, but will be allowed to contribute to design, fluff, and so forth as they desire, so long as it fits with staff's overall vision.
Version staff
will not be part of discussions of overall site trajectory, disciplinary decisions, rules changes on a macro level, etc. unless a specific exception is made for a particular reason.
If we feel a version staffer is gelling with the team, we may offer them a spot as a full member of staff once the version is complete (or close to). If a version staffer does not want to stay on, that's totally fine. If a handler specifically likes being version staff now and then but does not want to ever join the core staff, that is also fine. If someone's not quite there yet, it won't bar them from serving on version staff in the future, and not getting added to the full team is in no way a knock on anyone's abilities.
We specifically want to note that the bar to serve as a version staffer is not incredibly high. We're very interested in letting members try their hands at the behind-the-scenes side of Mini, and expect that most folks will do some growing into it if they want to join the full staff team. That's okay! The whole point of this change is making staffing more accessible.
There will be judgment calls involved when it comes to which applicants are picked and in what order, but we will try to offer a good number of members the opportunity, assuming interest and need exists.
Please note that we are imposing one additional requirement for being full staff: full staff members must be at least eighteen years old. This is because staff occasionally have to deal with serious RL issues, and also because we have at times had to clean the site of some pretty gross pornography disgorged by spambots. Members under eighteen are, however, welcome to apply to be and serve as version staff, and if all goes well may do so on a standing basis, with a full staff offer made upon turning eighteen.
Additionally, at this time we are announcing the suspension of
the Main/Mini Staff Transference program, effective thirty days from now. Back when this program was established, the staff tests for both sites were very similar, making use of the design created in the early days of Mini, and the primary decision on who to hire was made by the same people on both sites. In the years since, staffing philosophies and test design have drifted in different directions, and it no longer makes sense to maintain an infrequently-used program that will require effectively administering a fresh test anyways, especially with the time-sensitive element of testing now removed for everyone. Any currently-serving Main staff who wish to petition for addition to the Mini team may do so during the thirty day span prior to the sundowning of this program. Please note that, as is the case under the current program, any staff member petitioning as such may see additional information requested (including their most recent staff test), may be required to supply additional testing material, and must be approved by both admins with no more than one third of the rest of staff dissenting. Once the program has been fully discontinued, Main staff who wish to be considered for Mini staff may apply as version staff and follow the typical process.
