Apparently the staff have been cracking down on ''civilised'' florans. Honestly I don't feel this is necessary or ok. Besides the ridiculous ''All florans must hiss'' rule, which goes against the official Starbound lore and limits character creativity, it limits many interesting roleplay opportunities. The vast majority of florans are vicious, tribal, savage and bloodthirsty towards other races yes. But the florans that do not behave like this, whilst a minority are a very important part of Starbound lore. Roleplaying the interaction of tribal and civilised florans also creates interesting scenarios where tribal florans feel that ''civilised'' florans are traitors that have abandoned the floran collective ''Flora''. Tribal florans can cry and kill, imprison, or convince ''civilised florans'' to return to the collective, whilst civilised florans can try and convince the opposite. It's one thing to make a floran character that is pretty much a human, it is something else entirely to have a player with a floran character that acknowledges the floran side and roleplays the interesting situations that rejection from your own kind, racial stereotyping from the other races, and exposure to tribal florans might bring. Or a floran brought up outside floran culture might be torn between their human friends convincing them to retain their civility and florans they meet trying to convince them to adopt the culture of their race. Florans have scientists (though rare), florans have doctors, and not just tribal witch doctors, but doctors that administer change inducing drugs with modern syringes. Florans have a lot more to them than ''Ssstab ssstab floran ssstab meat'' after you scratch the surface of their lore. I would argue I have been one of the biggest proponents of more tribal florans on the server in my opinion. I created my first floran character because of the lack of truly tribal florans I encountered. I created my floran tribe faction because I felt the floran faction on the server was too ''nice and civilised''. But I stll believe that the ''civilised'' florans if roleplayed with the background of their race in mind, and with racial related character development a possibility, they can be done right. It's not as if the server is overflowing with civilised florans right now either. Forcing an entire race to be one dimensional stabby monsters is extremely dull, against the lore, and reduces rp scenarios and creativity.
For the record, I completely agree that Florans shouldn't be cutesy Plantsuits who throw away absolutely everything that a Floran is with no internal conflict what-so-ever. Heck, all of my Floran characters have all had hisses in their speech and whatnot. However, if all Florans are simply relegated to being absolute savages, then all Florans would have to be Chaotic Evil/Stupid, and there'd be absolutely no reason to allow any Florans into any public colonies at all. I mean, why let something in if it's just going to eat everyone? It would effectively kill any reason to play as a Floran, since you would not be able to interact with the vast majority of the server most of the time, and even then, traffic to the server's not always that high now-a-days anyways. Basically, trying to impose this much restriction to Floran characters overall is not the direction this server should be going, I think.
Only thing I care about is the hiss part. You can do whatever the hell you want with your character, but keep the hiss.
The hiss is as a result of not having lips. So, they're biologically forced to do so. However, civilized florans are now canon, as a result of the Outpost florans. However, I can understand staff not wanting to encourage the mindset, due to it potentially tying to a clear case of Snowflake Syndrome. I think there's a happy medium we can find out of the two sides. Florans are supposed to be violent as part of their primal instincts. But that doesn't mean that they can't become civilized. The point to make here is, your floran doesn't have to be a bloodthirsty, homicidal maniac. Use the flawed traits of your race to your advantage to create an interesting character. That's the fun of roleplaying!
Florans don't have to hiss as evident by the outpost floran and the fact that the player character floran doesn't hiss every word. Again the hiss being gone but then coming through when the floran gets excited or angry is a way that a usual lack of hiss can be beneficial to RP
Ever heard of 'Throwing the baby out with the bathwater". Yea, as throwing babies out with bath water is now so routine for society, that the babies have formed their own society in the outflow pipe. View attachment 3442
Really I'm the opposite. I don't care about whether there is one 's' or twenty 's'es. I like to see characters that aren't already developed to their conclusive point. If you are a civilized Floran, and some other part of your character provides you the internal hurdles you have to jump to develop as a person, that's fine. If you are a Floran trying to battle down your violent urges and prove to the galaxy that yes, you can be civilized, that's great too. It's obviously not a biological issue, because the Floran at the outpost has no hiss. And that very likely ISN'T an 'oversight' by Chucklefish. The community has reached a point of flawed thought. We strive for balance, because we think that winning is what matters in combat. People who partake in combat often do so with the constant and explicit intent to kill, because that's another notch on their rifle, or because 'conflict isn't real if OTHER people don't die'. We strive for lore, but only when that lore adheres to our personal head-canon. We strive for realism, but only when that realism doesn't account for our actions. And we strive for normalcy, because we've made being unique something to be ashamed of. What matters to me as a mod is that your character doesn't break the rules in place. What matters to me as a writer and player, however, is that you enjoy yourself and that your character provides something to the universe and the community. I don't think these things have to be mutually exclusive. If you ignore the hiss just to have another 'unique' trait thrown onto your character, then it's an issue. But not having a hiss is not inherently a character issue. I once thought that the community should be able to police itself, but in allowing the community to police itself, we have allowed it to become a constant battle over bias. "It's only okay if I'm okay with it."
My argument is florans have no lips so therefore lisp. Inb4 avians have no lips, birds have a special speech organ. I could care less if you had a FTL scientist floran.
Dude they are aliens, the floran and the avians. Why the hell should the way they speak be dictated by the way humans, or earth birds speak. Your argument fails when the creators of a fictional species outright provide proof that you are wrong. This isn't a game based on some true information where the game might take creative liberties. The creators of this fictional race literally decided to portray them as not having to speak in this specific way. Hell, maybe the scholar floran has a speech modifying universal translator or something. It's the freaking future, and everyone apparently has universal translators. Some tech that modifies a races' mode of speech is WELL within the technology level of the Starbound setting. Though personally I feel a taught change in accent is more interesting. It doesn't matter how. What matters is that people come to a Starbound roleplay server to roleplay within the Starbound setting, and that includes florans that can talk without a hiss in order to distance themselves from their savage kin. So, A: The creators of this race say they can speak without the Hiss B: Civilised/tribal floran conflict is an interesting roleplay topic, especially if like I said before, a floran struggles to maintain their ''civilised'' way of speaking when they get angry or excited and experience internal conflict about who they really are. You're basing telling people they can't play their lore-friendly character in a lore friendly way because an alien species should talk in a certain way based on human anatomy. Wut Also it's ''I couldn't care less'' ''I could care less'' means you do care and literally means the opposite to what you meant.
For this arguement to be valid, they would have to have a true lisp and not just a 'hiss'. As it stands, Florans can pronounce 'puh' 'fuh' 'mmm' 'buh' 'wuh', etc. with no problem. The hiss caused by not using your lips is insignificant compared to these other missing sounds. It comes off as almost a sharper, airy 'ss!' sound, seemingly taking heavier emphasis, but not an elongated, predatory 'sss' sound. So for missing lips to be the argument, we have to take into account that Florans have no issue pronouncing other sounds that require lips. Or... we can say, 'they're alien, so they can pronounce these sounds', but then that excuse can also be used to say 'but then they might be able to learn away their hissing, as aliens'. As to whether or not 'civil' Florans should be allowed, I feel that for a long time we pushed to make all Florans tribal barbarians. We as a server, and including myself. There are things to take into account with Florans, certainly. They are naturals at reverse engineering alien technology, but that doesn't mean they can reproduce it. They can read, or at the very least understand the gist of binary as a computing language. They have difficulty tackling new cultural and educational concepts, but it isn't impossible for them. They have inborn violence, but again, it isn't impossible for them to overcome this violence in all but an emotionally agitated state. Once they have learned something, they tend to be enthusiastic about it. Not necessarily for the better, like with writing. They approach things with the single-minded approach of a hunter, in which they view their goal as their prey. They are clever hunters, using trickery and round-about thinking to accomplish their goals, rather than simple tactics and straight-forwardness. These traits far exceed, and whether or not they are present or absent in a Floran character, exceed whether or not that character has or doesn't have a hiss as far as I am concerned.
I don't know about you but to make sss sounds I push my tongue up against the roof of my mouth near my teeth. My lips don't come into it.
Dang. I was trying to get that ninja edit in before you replied. But yes. The presence or absence of lips can shape the 's' sound, but it doesn't directly influence a 'snake-like' hiss.
I'm a firm believer in the hiss because I find 100% "normal" Florans boring. The hiss adds a little touch to it. But my major focus is that the Floran has some kind of aspect of tribal culture to them. If you are "civilized" you should have to struggle against the tribal nature in some way, be it struggling with violent urges, not understanfing and struggling to adhere to social norms, etc. If your floran completely disregards and shrugs off tribal culture and just acts like a regular person, that's going into plantsuit territory.
I don't mind unless it gets in the way. It usually isnt a problem, but it kind of bothers me when a particular floran character behaves like a notfloran. As in, he speaks completely straight up like human speak, is a super smart brilliant guy and that kinda stuff. I dont have anything against him personally, it just has always bothered me. Other than that one guy I haven't encountered any problematic floran. I think this should be handled on a case by case basis, as it really should be dependent on the quality of RP, not really strict lore adherence stuff. Let's not be obsessively technical, even though I love to go into detail about stuff, simplicity is best.
More of this, please. I understand what you're trying to say, but this is an exaggeration. Unless something's changed since I last checked, the rule's only specificity is that a Floran should speak with a lisp (Without specifying how frequently or continuously). I don't believe the rule dictates that a Floran has to use the sss extension in every sentence that uses an appropriate consonant, so sure, Floran A could say sss less often that counterpart Floran B because of some explanation. It doesn't seem that the rule explicitly forbids that, and it's not a crippling reduction to creativity. This thread seems to capitalize a disagreement with a rule, and if that's the main issue, I'm pretty sure you could make a case about adjusting or clarifying the thing. Fel the restart monkey is here, isn't he? I could make a necklace out of these.
I roleplay a Floran that... -Is confused about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' -Is afraid because of being 'rehabilitated' of her sympathetic thoughts, that seeing meat as something more then meat is a 'bad' thing. -Is arguably both tribal and civilized, albeit prefers being tribal just because of the 'being against the collective is a bad thing'. I have fun with it. Y'all making too big of a deal over it. No offense, but there's no real reason to get worked up, or to hold back Florans that don't have a lisp. (I like the lisp..) Yes, there needs to be rules. But from what I've seen this is a server where people are here to RP and have fun. There's no real.. Powergaming, or some sort of OOC contest on whose the best. The admins go out of their way to try and keep everything nice, neat, and non-offensive as possible. Instead of having this become an OOC thing, why not just.. Let it be an IC thing. Hell, make Plantsuits an IC term. Something a Tribal floran uses to insult a civilized one. I wouldn't mind RPing a Floran that mocks other Florans for -not- having the lisp. Like legit, cruel, malicious mocking on an IC level. That'd be fun!
I agree with this thing. I agree with it a lot. Treeknife, for example, is a Floran who attempts being civilized, because his entire knowledge about biology originated from civilized societies. When he came back to the server, he referred to people as "Tasties" for a while before he was told that it makes him harder to trust. It's OKAY to have a Civilized Floran. It's okay to START as a Civilized Floran. It's NOT okay to go "Okay, my Floran is a tribal who's going civil" and do it with no conflict whatsoever.
I don't get where the "Florans have to hiss" thing even comes from to be honest. Humans have lips and we don't even use them to produce the "S" Sound with our mouth. It's made by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth and forcing air through. It has nothing to do with lips at all. On the other hand actual letters that do use lips like the letters "B, M, P, and W" wouldn't necessarily be hard for them to pronounce because they still have the locking jaw necessary to simulate those sounds. Try it yourself, fold your lips into your mouth and attempt to pronounce those letters, it's just almost as easy as doing so without lips.
