OOC SECTION
IGN: The username of the account I'm using to apply for this application is robinzee. That's my main account. I also have an alternate account, robinaye. It's a play on words. From Robin Aye to Robin Zee.
Previous bans/warns/kicks:
I haven't been banned, warned or kicked the entire time I've been active on the server.
Describe your activity on the server:
Hi, I'm Robin. I started playing about a year and a half ago now. But, I haven't been involved with the community on the forums until about a year ago. I received my 1 Year Of Service Badge today (21/4/23), so that's nice.
Even though I'm a new player compared to some of the other candidates, I am a player who is already knowledgeable about a lot on the server regular player side.
Crime-wise, my first foray into the Crime faction was joining Fight Club as a bartender. This was when no regular shop would give my first character a job, so it only made sense she grew to the more legally-grey business. From there, it was a slippery slope - there was a need for a referee, so I did that for a while, helping out Toto with the things that needed to be done. Then, I became the head referee, and eventually manager, which I remain to this day. Of the current FC employees, I'm likely the most experienced, having hosted both regular and event openings. I helped Toto streamline many of the systems of FC, such as the employee payout system, the betting system and the new stat-based fighting system we use. During my time in Fight Club, I missed a small number of openings and all were accounted for using the inactivity logs system.
I took part in the Yamaguchi-Gumi V Akihito War event series, where I played a major role. I was the commander-in-chief of another event gang, Keikaku Maihemu. Recently, I was made a Black Market Dealer Associate, though if that is still the case remains to be seen since my original boss, Toto, was removed from the faction.
I joined the faculty faction in September 2022 as a Modern History professor and switched my subject to Criminology in November. Unfortunately, due to personal issues, I was unable to continue meeting the quotas, so I resigned from the faction as a Qualified Professor. I joined the Furukawa family the same month.
Besides the above-listed, I am and have been active on the forums, where I have no issues providing my opinion beyond a simple +1/-1. I'm also active on the Karakura Crime Discord where I'm always open to talk.
I am active on the server in a healthy way. While I may not spend 5 or more hours a day on SRP, I usually hop on for at least an hour a day. If there is an event scheduled, I'm always there.
Specify your Discord username (USER#0000) and if you have a microphone:
My Discord username is robbishbin#4860. I do, as you may already know, have a microphone, and, as you may already know, have no problems using it.
Specify your country of origin and time zone:
For personal reasons, I am not comfortable sharing my country of origin on the server for everyone to see, but, if necessary, I can provide it in DMs. My timezone is the Central European Summer Timezone (CEST). For reference purposes, it's GMT+1:00.
What are your motivations for applying for the black market dealer role?:
I'm applying for the black market dealer role because I believe the Crime Faction's way of managing itself is fascinating. Unlike other factions, anybody who decides they'd like to be a part of it is a part of it, no applications necessary. Anybody is free to start their group and wreak havoc or vigilante justice or make a lot of money. It's an interesting set-up and I'd like to contribute to it in a significant role by creating and writing events, writing lore, and most importantly, roleplaying. I'd like to bring the faction's reputation up instead of letting it rot due to the reputation it has in some circles of SchoolRP.
Furthermore, I'd like to take responsibility for Fight Club by serving as its director, providing my vision for how the club should be run.
What helps you to stand out from other applicants & what can you uniquely provide to the team?:
What makes me stand out is that I am a writer first. I think of myself as part of the "New Wave" of crime roleplayers who put satisfying and engaging roleplay for everyone above K/D ratios or permission baiting and acting on baited permissions.
I have a unique experience in that I've never been a part of a "proper" gang as it never made sense for my character to join one. This perspective can prove beneficial to the team, as it does not come from a place of not understanding, but from a place of wanting to understand.
I am also a very inquisitive person, always looking to hear both sides of an argument before looking for a result with which both sides are comfortable.
What previous experience do you have in working with a team?:
I am a hobbyist independent game developer and have been the project lead of a collaboration between at least 12 developers (I don't have a concrete number since I'm waiting on some devs to turn in their entries, sorry!!) I work as a hotel assistant over the summer at a boutique hotel, which forces me to communicate with a large number of people daily, employees and guests alike.
I am on the curator team of many literate roleplay communities where I review character sheets, moderate locations (chats) and plan events. On SchoolRP, I'm the manager of Fight Club, which asks me to coordinate a large number of people, including security, bartenders and fighters.
What suggestions do you have to help better the crime faction?:
The Karakura Crime faction is the faction with the most potential for storytelling opportunities, and I'd like to help it tap into that.
In my previous applications, I've championed the idea of Verified Gangs being approved to start their businesses, but seeing the community as it is now, I do not think that would be possible. I still stand behind the idea of the suggestion in that committing crime should be, while bombastic and flamboyant to an extent, also somewhat harder. I can't believe I'm saying this in a crime faction application, but proper investigation plug-in-based mechanics for officers are a must to make crime more weight behind it. After all, it's not something you partake in from time to time -- you commit to it.
Another thing I'd like to suggest are criminal tribunal events. While there are a lot of gangs that focus on mayhem and killing (or, well, majoring) without remorse, gangs that stray from that are on the rise. That is why providing a neutral ground for underground cases could be an interesting way to engage that audience. Naturally, given the underground nature of the criminal tribunals, they're allowed to be a lot more chaotic than city trials. Councils for the defence and the prosecution can get into physical fights over arguments, the punishments decided upon can be incredibly severe. Thematically, it would be interesting to examine how courts are supposed to be places for people to prove their innocence -- in criminal tribunals, everyone is guilty. Some are just guiltier than others.
I'm also open to hearing and discussing other ideas people may bring to the table.
Are you familiar with all rules pertaining to weapon profiles, combat, permissions, and player conduct on the server?:
Yes, I'm familiar with all rules pertaining to weapon profiles, combat permissions and player conduct on the server and the forums.
Are you familiar with that if you leave the black market at any point, the black market lead will have permanent kill permissions on your character?:
I'm familiar with that if I leave the black market at any point, the black market lead will have permanent kill permissions on my character.
Are you familiar with that if your character(s) is/are killed or permanently arrested twice, you will be removed from the black market?:
I'm aware that if my character is killed or permanently arrested twice, I will be removed from the black market.
Are you familiar with that you cannot reveal any out-of-character plans or potential addition to the black market to others?:
I agree to not being able to reveal any OOC plans or potential additions to the black market to others.
IC SECTION
(A folder sits comfortably on the desk of the leader of the black market, revelling in revealing information about a candidate, featuring the investigator's notes.)
(A folder sits comfortably on the desk of the leader of the black market, revelling in revealing information about a candidate, featuring the investigator's notes.)
| Full Legal Name | Akiyama, Ridley. |
| Criminal Alias | 'GESICHT'. German for face. She has a scar on her face. Great. Seems to keep changing it, though. ‘BENEFACTOR’.‘CROW’. ‘SIREN’. ‘SCARFACE’. All have been used recently. |
| Age & Occupation | Twenty-five years old. 'Self-employed', though in Karakura, that's slang for 'crook'. |
| Gender & Marital Status | Female. Unmarried. Not in a relationship, either. Seems like any relationship she'd be to enter would only be for strategic purposes only. |
| Ethnicity & Race | Japanese-American. Asian. |
| Known Languages | Japanese and English (native). |
| Former Associations/Occupations | Kabuki Corporation, Benefactor. The girl got it in her head that she can be a great businesswoman if she sets her mind to it and started a contractor agency that does anything anybody wants. The Midnight Channel, Director. A short-lived experiment in crafting a way out for people dissatisfied with Karakura. |
| Highest Level of Education | Juris Doctor (PhD), Karakura City College. Not worth much, seeing the quality of lawyers nowadays... |
| Physical/Mental Ailments | Diagnosed high-functioning Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Medicates. No physical ailments. Combat-capable, though appears to stay on the sidelines of conflict. |
(On another sheet of paper, the candidate's familial relations.)
| LEGAL NAME | RELATIONSHIP | STATUS | PLAYER |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hana Akiyama | Mother, biological | Alive | NPC |
| Ryunosuke Akiyama | Father, biological | Unknown, presumed deceased | NPC |
| Iki Saitō | Confidant | Alive | @reifumo |
| Percival Niiyama | Confidant | Alive | @houndrats |
Describe your character's appearance to the greatest detail:
Ridley has a naturally curvy body, but it's not something she flaunts. She recently cut her crow-black hair shorter, wearing it tied up. Her fringe frames her picture-perfect face, adorned on her left cheek with a scar in the shape of an inverted cross. Her brown eyes are often drawn to things other people may look away from. She wears slim prescription glasses. Her clothing is almost always formal, preferring to wear a shirt and tie, no suit. When performing criminal actions, she wears a gas mask to conceal her identity, which clashes with her formal clothing.
Describe your character's personality to the greatest detail:
(Taken from Ridley's Biography)
Ridley is a charismatic, driven young woman with ambitions to make everyone happy and fulfilled and make the world a better place. She has a strong sense of justice and believes that all people should be free from suffering and torment. She's always willing to help people and will do whatever it takes to ensure that justice is served. Despite this, Ridley is not without her flaws; she can be arrogant at times and does tend to speak before thinking. However, these are only small quirks in Ridley's personality. When push comes to shove, she'll never let others suffer for no reason.
Or so they think.
On the inside, she is a cold, calculating monster who will stop at nothing to achieve her goals. She has a dark outlook on life, considering nihilism "an ultimately hopeful philosophy". Ridley is very manipulative, nudging people into doing what she wants them to do and using their positive emotions against them by poking logical holes in their reasoning. Fortunately for her, unfortunate for the vast majority of those who get in her way, she was blessed with great intellect, capable of impeccable planning. Chess is something she enjoys.
A graduate of law, she believes that the punishment should fit the act, and she takes this notion with her into the criminal world. Homicide is, to her, one of the less severe punishments she can give out. Most issues she can simply move past. She finds murder too simple, too old-fashioned, too quick. If she were truly to punish someone... well, perhaps it's better to keep that to ourselves, no?
Describe your character's backstory to the greatest detail:
Has she always been like this...? Ridley doesn't remember.
The first thing she remembers is the feeling of disconnect she felt upon entering this world. A bright light, followed by chants. "It's a girl! Oh, how wonderful!"
That is the only thing she remembers from her childhood firsthand, though she must have had one since her mother was alive and there to tell her of the life she was dragged through. Her own story through the eyes of another, her childhood must be, by all accounts, taken with a grain of salt.
She was born on the 25th of December, a wonderful Christmas present to the Akiyama family. The history of the Akiyamas is irrelevant in Ridley's personal history since she now considers herself distant from them - no ties that bind, she is chainless. She was, allegedly, a very smart child from a young age, a girl with an affinity for logic, affection for chess and speaking, always the centre of attention. The child of a dentist, Ridley grew up around her mother's solo practice, where she gained a basic understanding of the tools of her mother's trade. She became no stranger to probes, anaesthetics, drills, syringes and the like.
Ridley is told she had a regular life until the incident. Following a traumatic event when she was fifteen years old, she lost all memories from before the event and only became armed with her name and her motor skills. She was never told what the incident was, though there are a few things she has deduced have something to do with it. For one, the lack of a father and her mother's unwillingness to discuss him, but Ridley considers this a red herring. Secondly, she appears to receive brief flashbacks while enjoying the beach. And lastly, the scar on her cheek - she doesn't appear to have it in older photos. She was diagnosed with PTSD and retrograde amnesia. Her PTSD diagnosis was not revealed to her.
Ridley sprung into a beautiful young woman, constantly smiling, kindness to others plenty, yet she never seemed to be happy or truly satisfied. Inside, she always felt empty. Upon discussing these feelings of emptiness with her psychiatrist, the psychiatrist and Ridley's mother decided that a change of environment was in order. Ridley was given a list of locales in the US she could choose to go to, but she wasn't able to choose. It all felt the same to her, no risk, no gain, there was no fun in it. New York City, Washington D.C., Salem, San Francisco, they were all the same in her eyes. She stayed there for a few months, then she'd disappear. Nobody would miss her, and she wouldn't miss anyone.
And then, Karakura revealed itself to Ridley, as treasure to a grave digger. A documentary about the South-Japanese town was recommended to her, followed by extensive research... Ridley found her place. A city where the law feared the gangs, many of the town's institutions run by a singular family, rumours of teleportation, ghosts, cults... an unpredictable environment for the girl who loved prediction.
She set out right away.
In Karakura, she enrolled in the local college, primarily studying Criminology to gain an upper hand over the town's many adversaries. During this time, she also began seeing a psychiatrist again - Dr Reina Hamasaki. Hamasaki diagnosed Ridley with high-functioning PTSD, and this time, with all the cards on the table, Ridley felt lost. The emptiness inside her grew ever stronger, her only escape being art. This emptiness manifested itself as the motif of metamorphosis in her art submissions, more often than not in the form of a blue monarch butterfly. She felt as if trapped in a cocoon, wishing for her rebirth. But the only time she felt her shell cracking was when she did something morally wrong.
Her path soon crossed Iki Saitou's and Percival Niiyama's, two highly impressionable street kids. The duo of troublemakers soon fell under Ridley's control after a series of manipulative acts by Ridley designed to get them to trust her more than anything else. Together, they founded The Kabuki Corporation, a shady agency priding itself on values of "fixing Karakura through community service", but selling out contractors to whoever paid the most - usually underworld operations.
Following the disappearance of Fight Club referee Otsuki Kenji (that she facilitated as one of Kabuki's first jobs) and FC's fall into illegality, Ridley took over Otsuki's post before continuing on her own rise to FC fame. Skipping the title of Assistant Manager altogether, she became Fight Club Manager at the age of 20, likely the youngest manager in Fight Club history. During her term there (where she remains to this day), she quickly became a trusted figure - Maeve 'TEARLINER' Fitzgerald revealed his identity to her following a close call with the police and 'DRIVER', the director of Fight Club, felt comfortable enough to share his plans for more underground businesses with her, inviting her to join him.
The Kabuki Corporation was an unfortunate failure client-wise, so she had to create a client and a job herself - The Mayonaka Channel. The Midnight Channel was an organisation that seemingly kidnapped people and killed them off in broadcasts. Ridley officially declared OPERATION MIDNIGHT CHANNEL, with Saito and Niiyama forced to investigate. Unfortunately, due to a sloppy oversight by one of her employees, Ridley was outed as the director. Saito and Niiyama confronted Ridley, with the following words leaving Ridley's lips:
"Nothing matters."
She explained that the Mayonaka Channel's victims were not victims at all, but rather volunteers who chose to leave this life of pain and suffering behind. The Midnight Channel was not a kill channel but rather means to break the cycle for many. Saito and Niiyama told Ridley off, with Saitou growing sick of Ridley's nihilistic perspective to the point of stabbing her in the stomach with Niiyama's pocket knife, ironically gifted to him by Ridley as a means of manipulation.
In the hospital, Ridley began thinking.
"I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore."
While all of this was going on, she continued to lead a regular life while in the public eye. Ridley graduated College with a degree in law, though she hardly felt like doing anything with it. This world of intrigue, Fight Club, the Black Market, was far more interesting for her. With the disappearance of her former employer, THE DRIVER, she sets her gaze upon it proper. You cannot stop a star from rising, nor can you stop a star from falling.
Describe an interaction that your character may have as a black market dealer:
Summer monsoon season. A rainy day.
Ridley sits in the woods east of the city, on a bench. In her left hand, she holds an umbrella, her right hand placed on a brown briefcase.
From the fog, a man's figure emerges. He approaches the Siren, taking off his hat as a sign of respect, then sits down next to her. Following a moment of silence, he speaks up first.
"What's the job?"
Ridley opens her briefcase and hands him a series of photographs, depicting a young man drinking a coffee in the family shop, heading to his home near the gods-forsaken power plant, and meeting up with his buddies from the Bobcats...
"Half a million." She says, not giving the bounty hunter any more attention than he needs. She shoots a look to the side at a fox, running from the rain...
The bounty hunter simply chuckles. He'd heard that this client was a very specific one, that there were some things off about her, but... half a million for a human's life is too little. He gets up and begins to leave, before he's stopped by the female's voice:
"Half a million a limb."
The bounty hunter turns around, raising a brow.
"What did you just say?"
Ridley's formerly neutral expression turns into a smile. She procures a different series of photos from her briefcase, handing it to the man. All feature the same teen, no older than eighteen, handing over different black market wares to various people, some older, some younger, some dressed in modest garb, some in formal attire. All have paid for this, all have bypassed the cross-faced, but the sinner is the boy selling it to them.
"Half a million a limb," Ridley repeated her simple request. "You may remove a limb per unique customer found in these photographs. Once you are done, you will place these items in a cardboard box and send them to the hospital. An associate there will take care of the rest." She tilts her head to one side, checking the hunter's side profile for any sign of hesitation. "If you aren't feeling up to the job, you may decline. Of course, I will reconsider taking you on for another job should you refuse."
The man sighs, mumbles something under his breath and scratches his nose. After a beat, he shakes his head in dismay. "Oh, what the Hell. This is the last time, I'm doing a damn kid though, 'Gesicht'."
"I'm sure it is, Mr Joe. Hear from you soon."
Describe any other additional information that is notable in considering your character for the role of a black market dealer:
N/A
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