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The Clipper
Jul. 13th, 2022 01:28 pmCW for weaponized/abusive positivity, infantilization, and dubious use of medical terminology
GENERAL OVERVIEW
The Clipper is a ship aggressively focused on peace, safety, positivity, and #BeNice vibes. The Nurse wants everyone to be their best, kindest, happiest self, and they're willing to do what is necessary to ensure a positive environment for all passengers.
The Clipper's inmate equivalents are called Patients, and its warden equivalents are called Assistants. Qualities of ideal Patient candidates include anger, violence, grumpiness, uncooperativeness, selfishness, independence (as opposed to communalism), and/or pessimism; qualities of ideal Assistant candidates include cheerfulness, a dedication to keeping the peace, and a spirit of cooperation. Assistants can get away with emotional cruelty if it's couched in the language of toxic positivity, but any blunt, harsh, or crude "bullying" carries some demotion risk.
SETTING
The aesthetic on the Clipper is all soft, babyproof furniture and colorful, sweet decoration. Personal bedrooms are arranged panopticon-style around a large central common area, with Assistant and Patient doors alternating. While Assistants can have regular doors, Patients only get curtains, and nobody gets more than a single bedroom with an attached toilet - it wouldn't do to encourage people to ensconce themselves in personal eating, bathing, and recreation areas when there are perfectly serviceable public options, would it? Sharing is caring!
In the center of the panopticon is a gigantic tree that's planted in the middle of a public common area on Floor 1, and stretches all the way up to the top of the ship at Floor 6. A spiral staircase (Assistant-locked at its base) winds its way up the tree, and an elevator (also Assistant-locked) is installed inside the tree's trunk. Both of these culminate in the tree's canopy, which houses the Treehouse: an Assistants-only space with large windows that give those inside a good view of both the main common area and the circular hallways on every floor. To help Assistants get a closer look, tourist binoculars have been installed at various points along the Treehouse's outer edge.
Floor 1's Common Area is the Clipper's main socialization hub, featuring cozy couches and picnic-style tables (made of spongey rubber, with no sharp edges). Board games, bookshelves, and media centers (for TV and video games) are scattered throughout, though only wholesome, non-violent content can be found. Passengers are expected to gather in the common room every morning for a short singalong, and every evening for a short storytime, both Assistant-led; not participating sufficiently in either of these is highly frowned upon by the Nurse, and could lead to a lack of progress towards graduation (for Patients) or be viewed as a sign that someone is on track towards demotion (for Assistants). At designated mealtimes, kitchen workers (teams of Patients led by Assistant supervisors) head off into the Kitchen to prepare meals, and food is served buffet-style at serving counters that face the Common Area. The Bathhouse is also located off the Common Area, and serves as a combination pool/bathing facility. The Bathhouse has soaking pools (no water deeper than 3 feet!), footbaths, and a communal shower area. All water comes out warm, with no options for temperature regulation - wouldn't want anyone to scald themselves by accident, or risk hypothermia from sitting in too-cold water!
Below Floor 1 is the Sick Ward, consisting of windowless quiet rooms featuring padded restraints, calming music, and - for particularly stubborn cases - sedatives. Patients who are violent or argumentative are brought down here until they're relaxed and ready to say sorry! In a pinch, injured Patients and Assistants can be taken here for treatment, though surely the ship's environment is so safe that that shouldn't be necessary. One would hope it's not necessary, anyway, because the facilities really aren't set up to handle anything more severe than scrapes and bruises.
The Clipper has (squiggly shaped) windows that look out onto space, but no open deck (think of the danger!). Instead, it has a smiling, painted sun and moon that shine accordingly on the ceiling.
SHIP MECHANICS
Powers/weaponry: All passengers, Assistants and Patients alike, are stripped of all weaponry upon arrival, and there are no weapons to be found anywhere on the Clipper: even the kitchen lacks anything sharper than a butter knife. Assistants may keep their abilities in full, unless they're normally so powerful as to be potentially setting-breaking; in that case, they'll be nerfed down to a more reasonable level. Patients are stripped of any and all combat-related abilities, as well as any non-combat abilities that have any potential at all to be used to harm others, including telepathy/telekinesis, shapeshifting/illusion-making, and power-stealing. Patients are never granted further use of their abilities under any circumstances; the only way for them to regain their full powers is for them to graduate.
Death/revivals: Any Patient or Assistant who dies will be revived automatically, after a delay of several hours. Should anyone die in a public space, Assistants are expected to clear away the body and clean up the scene immediately, so as not to distress other passengers. Death tolls function the same as on the Barge.
Graduation: Unlike most other Officers in the Authority's fleet, the Nurse is perfectly okay with changes that are purely surface-level: if a Patient can grit their teeth and fake happiness and positivity convincingly enough, then they can graduate, even if they're still a seething ball of hatred underneath. That said, there are complications here. Before being allowed to leave the Clipper, all graduated Patients are required to stick around and serve as Assistants for a minimum of three months, and if they don't toe the party line and perform their duties to the Nurse's satisfaction, they'll be demoted right back to Patienthood. Because of this, graduation and demotion are very common occurrences on the Clipper, and it's not unusual to come across people who have yo-yoed between Patient and Assistant four, five, and even six or more times. Additionally, the Nurse makes it clear that they occasionally check in on their "success" stories to see how they're getting on back home, and if they discover that someone has slipped back into their old violent/angry/antisocial ways after leaving, they might just be yoinked right back.
Demotion: Fighting and physical violence are strictly prohibited on the Clipper, and any Assistant who either partakes or encourages others to partake will be immediately demoted. Sparring and other forms of consensual violence are not seen as exceptions to this rule. Harsh words, blatant insults, and angry verbal abuse are also considered to be unacceptable behavior for Assistants, and though they'll be let off with a warning for the occasional slip, making a habit of it will also quickly lead to demotion. More subtle forms of harm such as manipulation, gaslighting, and extreme passive-aggression carry no demotion risk.
Pairings: Assistants only receive their deals if their assigned Patient successfully graduates and successfully completes their three-month Assistanthood trial period. If an Assistant's Patient graduates but is then demoted during their trial period, they lose all progress made, and will not receive their deal for that Patient even if they graduate again and successfully pass their trial period the second (or third or fourth or fifth or--) time around. Like on the Barge, Assistants receive files detailing the life stories of Patients that they're permanently paired with.
Communicators/the network: All passengers receive a wearable that goes around the wrist. Assistants can use theirs to track the location/status of their assigned Patient, which means that Patients' wearables are locked on and can't be removed - but don't worry, they're lightweight and comfortable! Assistants' wearables are removable (which means that they're also loseable and stealable). Pressing a button on the side of a wearable causes a holographic projection of a tablet-style interface to appear in the air in front of the character, allowing them to make audio, video, and text posts/comments. Patients may not send private messages, or filter their messages in any way; all of their network communications are public to all. Assistants have no such restrictions. Assistants also have a button that allows them to send thoughts, concerns, and reports to the Nurse, though these are rarely responded to. Patients have no way of directly contacting the Nurse.
Locked areas/general security: Assistants use Assistant Keys to access their own rooms, as well as to access the Treehouse and the Kitchen during off-hours. All Patients have a button on their wearable that they can push to send out an alarm and summon the nearest Assistant, and all Assistants have buttons on their wearable that give them the ability to mute and/or harmlessly paralyze any Patient they have line-of-sight on.
Jobs: All Assistants are automatically assigned to either the Kitchen Supervisory Team or the Custodial Supervisory Team, and all Patients are automatically assigned to either cooking or cleaning duties. On an OOC level, which one a character is assigned to is entirely up to player choice.
Ports/floods/breaches: Like the Barge, the Clipper makes regular port stops, although passengers falling overboard isn't something that happens, obviously - there's no open deck, because the Nurse values #SafetyFirst! Patients are never given furloughs - after all, they are still antisocial and unfit for broader society. They might hurt someone! Only Assisstants in good standing (that is, out of their 3-month probationary period) are permitted to depart. If they do so, it is recommended that they appoint a temporary assistant to look after their Patient in their absence so that no trouble falls through the cracks. Their wearables have a function to transfer this temporary wardship to another Assistant of their choice who is remaining on board. Floods are rare, but some similar to Barge floods have occurred recent enough memory, like emotion-sharing or truth-telling floods, as well as silly ones like musical floods or turning into cute animals. Breaches are similarly rare but not unheard of, frequently placing residents into what appear at least on the surface to be charming, peaceful utopias, presumably meant to be good examples.
Other miscellaneous info and quirks: All swearing is automatically censored in both writing and speech. Characters can try to swear, but gosh darn it all to heck, they just won't be able to say/write anything but more palatable alternatives, no matter how much forking effort they put into it. Additionally, unlike the Barge, there is no minimum age requirement for the Clipper; children under the age of 15 abound.
Feel free to use this post for questions and plotting related specifically to the Clipper: sharing ideas for what your Barge character might do onboard, discussing what its residents might have been getting up to with each other before the Barge transplants descended, and so on. Questions about the event as a whole, or non-ship-specific plotting amongst players (such as soliciting and offering up castmates, plotting out with your CR who's going to go to which ship, etc.) should go in the main plotting post here.
MOD QUESTIONS ||| REPORTING SHENANIGANS ||| REQUESTING COMM ACCESS ||| NURSE REQUESTS
The Clipper is a ship aggressively focused on peace, safety, positivity, and #BeNice vibes. The Nurse wants everyone to be their best, kindest, happiest self, and they're willing to do what is necessary to ensure a positive environment for all passengers.
The Clipper's inmate equivalents are called Patients, and its warden equivalents are called Assistants. Qualities of ideal Patient candidates include anger, violence, grumpiness, uncooperativeness, selfishness, independence (as opposed to communalism), and/or pessimism; qualities of ideal Assistant candidates include cheerfulness, a dedication to keeping the peace, and a spirit of cooperation. Assistants can get away with emotional cruelty if it's couched in the language of toxic positivity, but any blunt, harsh, or crude "bullying" carries some demotion risk.
The aesthetic on the Clipper is all soft, babyproof furniture and colorful, sweet decoration. Personal bedrooms are arranged panopticon-style around a large central common area, with Assistant and Patient doors alternating. While Assistants can have regular doors, Patients only get curtains, and nobody gets more than a single bedroom with an attached toilet - it wouldn't do to encourage people to ensconce themselves in personal eating, bathing, and recreation areas when there are perfectly serviceable public options, would it? Sharing is caring!
In the center of the panopticon is a gigantic tree that's planted in the middle of a public common area on Floor 1, and stretches all the way up to the top of the ship at Floor 6. A spiral staircase (Assistant-locked at its base) winds its way up the tree, and an elevator (also Assistant-locked) is installed inside the tree's trunk. Both of these culminate in the tree's canopy, which houses the Treehouse: an Assistants-only space with large windows that give those inside a good view of both the main common area and the circular hallways on every floor. To help Assistants get a closer look, tourist binoculars have been installed at various points along the Treehouse's outer edge.
Floor 1's Common Area is the Clipper's main socialization hub, featuring cozy couches and picnic-style tables (made of spongey rubber, with no sharp edges). Board games, bookshelves, and media centers (for TV and video games) are scattered throughout, though only wholesome, non-violent content can be found. Passengers are expected to gather in the common room every morning for a short singalong, and every evening for a short storytime, both Assistant-led; not participating sufficiently in either of these is highly frowned upon by the Nurse, and could lead to a lack of progress towards graduation (for Patients) or be viewed as a sign that someone is on track towards demotion (for Assistants). At designated mealtimes, kitchen workers (teams of Patients led by Assistant supervisors) head off into the Kitchen to prepare meals, and food is served buffet-style at serving counters that face the Common Area. The Bathhouse is also located off the Common Area, and serves as a combination pool/bathing facility. The Bathhouse has soaking pools (no water deeper than 3 feet!), footbaths, and a communal shower area. All water comes out warm, with no options for temperature regulation - wouldn't want anyone to scald themselves by accident, or risk hypothermia from sitting in too-cold water!
Below Floor 1 is the Sick Ward, consisting of windowless quiet rooms featuring padded restraints, calming music, and - for particularly stubborn cases - sedatives. Patients who are violent or argumentative are brought down here until they're relaxed and ready to say sorry! In a pinch, injured Patients and Assistants can be taken here for treatment, though surely the ship's environment is so safe that that shouldn't be necessary. One would hope it's not necessary, anyway, because the facilities really aren't set up to handle anything more severe than scrapes and bruises.
The Clipper has (squiggly shaped) windows that look out onto space, but no open deck (think of the danger!). Instead, it has a smiling, painted sun and moon that shine accordingly on the ceiling.
Powers/weaponry: All passengers, Assistants and Patients alike, are stripped of all weaponry upon arrival, and there are no weapons to be found anywhere on the Clipper: even the kitchen lacks anything sharper than a butter knife. Assistants may keep their abilities in full, unless they're normally so powerful as to be potentially setting-breaking; in that case, they'll be nerfed down to a more reasonable level. Patients are stripped of any and all combat-related abilities, as well as any non-combat abilities that have any potential at all to be used to harm others, including telepathy/telekinesis, shapeshifting/illusion-making, and power-stealing. Patients are never granted further use of their abilities under any circumstances; the only way for them to regain their full powers is for them to graduate.
Death/revivals: Any Patient or Assistant who dies will be revived automatically, after a delay of several hours. Should anyone die in a public space, Assistants are expected to clear away the body and clean up the scene immediately, so as not to distress other passengers. Death tolls function the same as on the Barge.
Graduation: Unlike most other Officers in the Authority's fleet, the Nurse is perfectly okay with changes that are purely surface-level: if a Patient can grit their teeth and fake happiness and positivity convincingly enough, then they can graduate, even if they're still a seething ball of hatred underneath. That said, there are complications here. Before being allowed to leave the Clipper, all graduated Patients are required to stick around and serve as Assistants for a minimum of three months, and if they don't toe the party line and perform their duties to the Nurse's satisfaction, they'll be demoted right back to Patienthood. Because of this, graduation and demotion are very common occurrences on the Clipper, and it's not unusual to come across people who have yo-yoed between Patient and Assistant four, five, and even six or more times. Additionally, the Nurse makes it clear that they occasionally check in on their "success" stories to see how they're getting on back home, and if they discover that someone has slipped back into their old violent/angry/antisocial ways after leaving, they might just be yoinked right back.
Demotion: Fighting and physical violence are strictly prohibited on the Clipper, and any Assistant who either partakes or encourages others to partake will be immediately demoted. Sparring and other forms of consensual violence are not seen as exceptions to this rule. Harsh words, blatant insults, and angry verbal abuse are also considered to be unacceptable behavior for Assistants, and though they'll be let off with a warning for the occasional slip, making a habit of it will also quickly lead to demotion. More subtle forms of harm such as manipulation, gaslighting, and extreme passive-aggression carry no demotion risk.
Pairings: Assistants only receive their deals if their assigned Patient successfully graduates and successfully completes their three-month Assistanthood trial period. If an Assistant's Patient graduates but is then demoted during their trial period, they lose all progress made, and will not receive their deal for that Patient even if they graduate again and successfully pass their trial period the second (or third or fourth or fifth or--) time around. Like on the Barge, Assistants receive files detailing the life stories of Patients that they're permanently paired with.
Communicators/the network: All passengers receive a wearable that goes around the wrist. Assistants can use theirs to track the location/status of their assigned Patient, which means that Patients' wearables are locked on and can't be removed - but don't worry, they're lightweight and comfortable! Assistants' wearables are removable (which means that they're also loseable and stealable). Pressing a button on the side of a wearable causes a holographic projection of a tablet-style interface to appear in the air in front of the character, allowing them to make audio, video, and text posts/comments. Patients may not send private messages, or filter their messages in any way; all of their network communications are public to all. Assistants have no such restrictions. Assistants also have a button that allows them to send thoughts, concerns, and reports to the Nurse, though these are rarely responded to. Patients have no way of directly contacting the Nurse.
Locked areas/general security: Assistants use Assistant Keys to access their own rooms, as well as to access the Treehouse and the Kitchen during off-hours. All Patients have a button on their wearable that they can push to send out an alarm and summon the nearest Assistant, and all Assistants have buttons on their wearable that give them the ability to mute and/or harmlessly paralyze any Patient they have line-of-sight on.
Jobs: All Assistants are automatically assigned to either the Kitchen Supervisory Team or the Custodial Supervisory Team, and all Patients are automatically assigned to either cooking or cleaning duties. On an OOC level, which one a character is assigned to is entirely up to player choice.
Ports/floods/breaches: Like the Barge, the Clipper makes regular port stops, although passengers falling overboard isn't something that happens, obviously - there's no open deck, because the Nurse values #SafetyFirst! Patients are never given furloughs - after all, they are still antisocial and unfit for broader society. They might hurt someone! Only Assisstants in good standing (that is, out of their 3-month probationary period) are permitted to depart. If they do so, it is recommended that they appoint a temporary assistant to look after their Patient in their absence so that no trouble falls through the cracks. Their wearables have a function to transfer this temporary wardship to another Assistant of their choice who is remaining on board. Floods are rare, but some similar to Barge floods have occurred recent enough memory, like emotion-sharing or truth-telling floods, as well as silly ones like musical floods or turning into cute animals. Breaches are similarly rare but not unheard of, frequently placing residents into what appear at least on the surface to be charming, peaceful utopias, presumably meant to be good examples.
Other miscellaneous info and quirks: All swearing is automatically censored in both writing and speech. Characters can try to swear, but gosh darn it all to heck, they just won't be able to say/write anything but more palatable alternatives, no matter how much forking effort they put into it. Additionally, unlike the Barge, there is no minimum age requirement for the Clipper; children under the age of 15 abound.
Feel free to use this post for questions and plotting related specifically to the Clipper: sharing ideas for what your Barge character might do onboard, discussing what its residents might have been getting up to with each other before the Barge transplants descended, and so on. Questions about the event as a whole, or non-ship-specific plotting amongst players (such as soliciting and offering up castmates, plotting out with your CR who's going to go to which ship, etc.) should go in the main plotting post here.
