To Lusternia:

As some of you who are familiar with the character of Iytha are aware, pestering people from other organizations and talking to them about things and trying to get them to cooperate with some crazy scheme is huge part of it. Back when I was playing in Magnagora (as one of the only Elostianites in the city at the time), this usually swimmingly. Awesome people like Telperion, Neos, Saaga, Saoirse, Sipelus, Faragan, Azula and many, many others would all indulge in a debate on theology, contemplations over ethics, a discussion on the nature of aquamancy, the existance of souls, the size of Basin and just about anything else. It was great and, as far as I am aware, a great deal of fun for both sides. I know that other Magnagorans had similar experiences and that, overall, the intellectual rivalry between Celest and Magnagora was a deep and rich source of RP.

Sadly, this has not been my experience with Gaudiguch and Hallifax. So far, every time that I go to some person in Hallifax, even those in the Scientific Caste, with an interesting question, a new theory about the nature of gravity, some experiment or another, or a request to know anything, I get brushed off with a terse "Classified." that blocks off all avenues for dialogue or meaningful and interesting RP. Some players have even gone so far as to just make up blatently BS ministries, persons and forms just to get me to stop inquiring and speaking to them. The Ambassador, when asked about the possibility of perchasing slaves from Hallifax, simply refused to answer, and the other ministers, when asked, told me to bring up my questions and complaints with the Ambassador. The Institute, when asked about experimental proposals has informed me that "No citizen of Gaudiguch is allowed to be a scientist and we will not accept any scientific findings from your barbaric city." So, eventually I just gave up. I don't bother trying to engage people from Hallifax in RP, since nobody in the city is interested in interactions with the outside world beyond "Let's go kill :censor: on Vortex again and balestone anyone that's stupid enough to come into our meld."

Frankly, Hallifax's RP characterization of "obstructive buearucrats" is as harmful and toxic to the city's RP as Gaudiguch's characterization as be about "booze, weed and sex" or Serenwilde's as "the forest of happy snuggly bunnies". Neither of them should be true of all citizens, because that stifles the game and makes the whole thing suck for everyone in the org or outside. I'm glad to get that off my chest. It's been bugging me for a while.

-The Player of Iytha

We're not like that 99% of the time. I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but the only person I know that we're really obstructive to is you. Most of the Hallifax leadership sees you as an annoyance that they try to ditch on someone else as soon as they can. Hell, there have been debates over the Board of Directors over who they're going to ditch you on or ways to get rid of you. I've never heard that kind of thing for anyone else.

To Iytha:

Sometimes people don't want to talk to others, flat out. Sometimes they just don't want to talk to people outside of their usual social circles. Sometimes you just have to be greatful that 'Classified' is at least some RP compared to a blatantly OOC or hostile response about not being in the mood to talk. Sometimes we just throw obstructive, made-up Ministries at you because it, at least, is amusing to us.

Sometimes people can't really help you roleplay buying slaves; either because they don't want to think or don't believe 'slavery' as you know it exists in Hallifax, or because they genuinely have no idea how one would go about roleplaying the purchasing of, or otherwise humouring the purchasing of, slaves therein, as that would require the creation of various denizens and any response in general would be obstructive to the organization's PR.

Sometimes one must pause and realise that Hallifax, at its darkest core, is the Collective; a society which will, if one is lucky, simply dismiss outsiders that do not wish to serve it, and that there comes a time where interaction is simply not in that organization's wishes - instead, spontaneously exploding retarded room attack gems is a better way to feel like you're winning the game as an organization.

That said; Iytha the Character is one of five Gaudiguchians that Hallifax would probably tolerate speaking with. At face value, this may appear to be a good thing - but in reality, this is in fact a bad thing. Sometimes the least common denominator makes one want to avoid the whole fraction in its entirety. The poor characterization goes both ways.

xoxoxoxo,
A Hallifax Player
Repetitive Minister of the Ministry of Redundant Ministries

For the record, this mostly gets handled by the Institute/Sentinels. I rarely heard of Iytha's experiments while Mayor except from newsposts and requests to interview for the Gossip. And both guilds I've mentioned rely pretty heavily on having "classified" items. Lots of Hallifax is xenophobic; I recall foreigners trying to get library cards in Hallifax and the Ministry of the Librarian not wanting to give them that kind of insight, saying what needed to be seen in Hallifax's library was already open to the others in the Basin (fun part of being CR7: you get to read secret documents in the restricted section ). In fact there are things that Sylandra is sworn to never talk about that the Institute and Sentinels have told or shown her. Secrecy is kind of a big thing, yeah.

I don't know what experiments you were planning. I don't know how you were going about them.

I do know however that Iytha can come off very nonsensical to Hallifaxians and that combined with the Gossip might make them less likely to her seriously - or at least distrust her, not knowing if their words will be twisted. If you want to have a discussion, it probably doesn't help to call people cowards. It probably doesn't help to call them quacks. It probably doesn't help to complain about the fact that things are classified.

Be sincere and be official. Pay attention to your audience. I don't know enough about the situation to give you more information than that.

From the sound of your post though, you're ready to give up, anyhow.

I was going to bring that one up too, but forget to mention it. We have a border-guard directorate for a reason. And no one in Hallifax knows anything about diplomacy.

Oh no...another thread that will be about Hallifax. Oh well. What can you do. Oh and, one thing Iytha- Mag and Celest do have very rich, interesting history and roleplay. Love it.

I don't mean for this to sound snarky. This just sounds like what you should expect from the way Halli and Gaudi have been set up. Even in the histories, Hallifax only barely tolerated Gaudiguch, and generally dismissed them even when the two cities were being diplomatic. Most Hallifaxian characters I can think of wouldn't have any reason to even associate with a Gaudiguchian, let alone take them seriously.

Well, my character has been one of the people who turned Iytha aside, so I thought I would comment.

From an OOC viewpoint I would really love to let Iytha do her thing, but my character would never allow it, so he does not. Really, personally I think the idea is awesome, but I can't just start ignoring established facts about my character, such as the fact as he would never allow a Gaudiguchan to work with something that is even just a little bit related with aeonics for any reason whatsoever. It is rather unfortunate, but it is a case of not breaking character, at least for me personally. It concerns itself with a far longer reaching story and there is certainly a good reason why my character (and I can guess most others, but I can't speak for them) would not allow a Gaudiguchi to do what Iytha wishes to do. It ultimately boils down to the fact that I am playing to immerse myself in the mindset of my character, and I would not do something that I do not feel is logical to my character, even if I as a player think something else would be a better idea. There just is no way (in his current mindset) that my character would take a Gaudiguchi seriously.

So, well, sorry about that I guess? Hope you somehow get someone with more power than my character convinced.

Meh, it's just the standard mindset. A servant in hallifax is generally "superior" to most foreigners and so on.

There is little point in seeking the approval of the Institute as they have only as much influence as they are given by those interacting with them/admin for events. That being said, if you are actually bringing interesting discussions up and they are ignoring you for the lols then they are kinda failing... hard.

Perhaps trying to steal those with talent from other orgs is not what hallifax does... which is kinda weird if you expect that they would want to encourage such people to join them.

I think it has more to do with the fact that those who handle stuff like this in Hallifax (of whom I am one, experiment security and all) just don't take anything from Gaudiguch seriously. Had it been a representative from another org the chance would be much greater. From the viewpoint of a Hallifaxian bureaucrat I reckon this seems most of all like some elaborate prank by Gaudiguch that if taken seriously the city will just be waltzing into.

It's just in-character bias

While this might be so for you, after seeing several ooc group chats for several months there are many with an OOC bias against Gaudiguch and its players for very amusing and sometimes ironic reasons.

Though I often feel most people prefer to ignore Iytha because talking to her can be intimidating and can sometimes be a test of your own ability to be creative. Especially to those that use real life science as inspiration and need to read up on stuff first. Though once you get over that talking to Iytha is really fun.

It's bias, yes. Just kinda sad that this could be an opportunity for hallifax to play up the "borg-side" but instead they are just defaulting to their standard bureaucracy jokes. Hallifax and Gaudiguch began primarily with people from the other orgs so it is impossible to claim that great minds do not exist outside of Hallifax.

Whether or not Iytha is one, I do not know. However, it seems much more interesting to observe there is little need to just open the doors wide.

That being said, if I am reading Anisu's post correctly then perhaps Iytha should take all of these obstacles as compliments, because obviously the alleged great scientists of hallifax are afraid that her mind is greater than theirs.

Discussions about science in Lusternia can get pretty annoying anyway unless everyone is cooperating, because A) most people don't know much science - well, it's complicated! - and a lot of what we do know doesn't necessarily work, or it's less interesting if it does work, in the context of Lusternia.

Philosophical discussions are all well and good because they are so abstract but the last thing I want to do with my afternoon is have Iytha argue with me about some annoying detail of molecular chemistry that would prove some point of hers that my character has been standing against...I am not saying this is what she would do (hasn't asked me), but it would put me off trying unless I had some kind of assurance of good faith.

If you feel like you need Hallifax's validation to be a scientist, then you're doing it wrong. That said, if you still want some scientific RP with Hallifax, try the Aeromancers. The way the RP is set up, we seem to attract all the open-minded people, and I promise that any proposal to Tulemrah will not be dismissed out of hand.

EDIT: Also, "It's classified" is almost always code for "Hell if I know".

Whereas we, the Institute, attract most of the cold, hard liner types. I do promise you that were my character someone else our interactions might well have gone differently, but the default stance of Halifax in both the histories and the modern game seems to have been one of dismissal. I, as a player, enjoy Iytha (even.when our shameless making stuff up is working at cross purposes), but I would be lax if I ignored the whole dismissing thing. Sorry!

I like Iytha's character IC and OOC, though I will admit that from an RP-standpoint; I'll state that before going on with this post. I tried to be of help, I like to think of Ilyssa as a sympathetic character, but in truth she is 'just a guard' as she sometimes points out. I didn't mean to pass you off if it appeared I was doing that, and I apologize, it's just I think I was caught up in this whole bit and frustrated you because of it.

I can't speak to the merits of people being turned aside when requesting information and so on, other than to say, they have the right to do so. However, IMO, that doesn't keep anyone from doing anything (other than something directly requiring cooperation from someone in Hallifax, like buying 'slaves' from there or something).

If you want to do science, who cares if Hallifax doesn't recognize you? Do it anyway! Write up a scientific paper about some thing or another and publish it. Brag about it on the public board even. If they publicly decry your work, publicly call them out to disprove it. If they refuse, call them charlatans and mock their inability to do good science publicly. If they do try to disprove it, well, you've gotten what you wanted! A scientific debate!

If someone closes a door, open a window, you know?


eta: Maybe people don't want to have a scientific discussion in real-time communication (says/tells) cause they're not all that scientifically minded IRL and need to look things up and prepare. I know if someone tried to have a discussion like that with one of my characters, I'd try to put them off. While, on the other hand, if someone wrote something and I thought it was interesting and wanted to suggest a different angle on it, I'd be perfectly happy writing up a 'paper' showing an error in their research and an alternative result or something. Cause then, I could look things up and take the time to apply them to Lusternia without the pressure of someone standing there waiting for a reply. Cause I don't do well under pressure. I tend to babble and make nonsense.

Without knowing anything specific about this incident other than what has been posted here:

The obstructive bureaucrat routine winds up being like any overplayed stereotype. OOCly, it starts out funny, then it's kinda cute, then it's tolerably stale, then its cliche, then its annoying, then its "yeah, ok, whatever, idiot." Qualitatively, it isn't any different than a Gaudi character pretending to be too drunk to answer. While it may be an "IC legitimate" way to avoid conversation, it's also kinda stale and arguably OOC lazy, regardless of the length of the title of the made of form that needs to be completed, or the incomprehensibility of the faux drunk speak. (Both usually being equally illegible, the latter perhaps just being more honest about it.)

I mean, not that you HAVE to indulge Iytha, but there's probably better ways to do it. Like, if I were in Halli, and didn't want to talk to Iytha, I would probably respond with "I do not waste my time conversing with extremist propogandists.", which, ICly, is mean, derisive, and an exaggeration, but also more honest and direct then making up some paper work BS that's quite impossible to call me on ICly.

This isn't to say I've never engaged in stereotype behavior either. While I was in gaudi, I actively tried to push things away from the "omg drunk/high" stuff to the more spiritual/mystical end of things, with mixed results. I think perhaps because coming up with stupid little riddles is slightly more effort than faking inebriation or stringing together made up form names. But in any case, there's moderation to be had, and there comes a time when one should hang up the hat on that sort of thing, or at least back way off it and only leave it for when it is most appropriate.

More generally, regarding IC science, the problem with conversational science ICly is that, to reference Toy Story, its prone to forcefield dogs. You can belt out some theory, pretend its backed up by evidence you OOCly made up, and if someone questions you on the absolute veracity of your statement, you throw the made up evidence in their face like its truth. Argumentative form of "nyah nyah, I have a forcefield dog and you can't hurt me."

So instead, it devolves into a contest of who can be the most obnoxiously wordy and condescending. Which can be fun, in very small doses.

You just need to find the correct people to interact with. Outsiders have a hard time breaking into cliques. Look for those outside the cliques.

Well, there's your problem!