User:Studenterhue/Mime

"The art of silence speaks to the soul, like music, making comedy and tragedy, involving you and your life. . . . creating character and space, by making a whole show on stage – showing our lives, our dreams, our expectations"

-- (Marcel Marceau)

The Mime is the quiet counterpart to the Clown, an artist who says much without saying single word at all. They spawn physically unable to speak due to a mutation and are encouraged to find creative ways to express themselves and entertain the crew, such as by emoting, drawing on the floor with crayons, or passing pictures.

They can be easily identified by their snazzy striped suit, suspenders, beret, and iconic mask. Some maps have a wooden wardrobe with extra set of these and an alternative costume consisting of dungarees, scarf and bowler hat. It's usually in the Chapel, but on some maps, it's in the Crew Lounge.

The Mime is available as a gimmick job on all days, with an extra slot on Mondays. Go forth and entertain!

The Comedy of Silence

Playing Mime is like playing a long game of Charades. You can't talk, so you have to communicate non-verbally, often with gestures and poses, maybe with drawings depending on the house rules, and the other person has to guess what you're trying to express. It's nice when that person gets it immediately, but the most memorable moments are often when they don't.

For example, perhaps you want to explain to a Security Officer that you saw a someone drink a person's blood--you think they're a Vampire! You decide to open up by miming drinking something through a straw, then you'll mime who was doing the drinking once the officer understands you're miming bloodsucking. The officer interprets this as you wanting a drink, so they suggest going to the Bar. You decide to be more specific by pointing to a nearby snack machine--it's red like blood, yeah? But then the officer thinks you want to drink a cup of noodles, for whatever reason (they've seen enough to not question it further), and hands you a couple of credits to buy some. That's obviously not quite what you want, so instead of the snack machine, you point to the officer, who's wearing a red uniform. But then they take out their taser...

And that's just one possibility. That exchange could have gone in many, many different directions. A single gesture can have multiple interpretations, and those interpretations can feed into many different reactions, and those reactions themselves carry multiple interpretations. There's almost a certain beauty to it, a branching path that leads to as much drama as comedy. In other words, it's almost like improv!

Speaking without Talking

You start with Fronal Gyrus Suspension mutation (and while you can remove it with mutadone since it doesn't have a Reinforced chromosome, it's not recommended), so you can't talk, but don't worry. You can still express yourself with customs emotes, crayon drawings, and paper and pen. Once you get the hang of these things, you'll find you don't need to talk at all!

The Art of Custom Emotes

If playing Mime is like playing charades, then custom emotes is the closest thing to playing charades on Goonstation! Like regular emotes, custom emotes signify your character's performing some sort of action, but unlike the regular ones, instead of outputting some pre-defined text, they output ANYTHING you want (within the Rules of course, especially the "No bigotry or sexual content" rule).

Let's say for example you're Jean the Mime and want to describe your character pulling an invisible rope with a custom emote. There's a few ways to go about this:

• Type in say *me pulls an invisible rope in the command bar/text parser. The me can be substituted for custom and customv. Typing in say makes the game automatically add quotation marks, but don't worry about those, they don't go into the emote.
• If you're in WASD Mode (toggle it via the Interface menu in the Game menu in the top left), you can use the talk shortcut, T. This should pull up a prompt, and you can just enter *me pulls an invisible rope in it; no need to put in say.
• If you're in WASD Mode, you can also use the custom emote shortcut, M. Similar to using the talk shortcut, you just put the pulls an invisible rope. not the say *me bits.

Notice that in all of these, you didn't have to enter your character name. The net result is the same; you'll get something like:

Jean the Mime pulls an invisible rope.

Customs emotes are very freeform, so you can have plenty of room to express yourself. Let's say for example you're at the Bar, and the Barman asks if you want a drink. You want a martini. You can might do something like the following:

Quiet turns an imaginary crank on an invisible engine. 
Quiet puckers as if they've tasted something bitter.

Three Dot makes an O with their index finger and thumb. 
Three Dot makes an O with their index finger and thumb. 
Three Dot holds up seven fingers.

Michel Marceau hums a few bars of "Tomorrow Never Dies".

These are all perfectly acceptable ways of using custom emotes. One thing that is not acceptable, though, is stuff like "Silent One curt rustle is a changeling", where you're basically using custom emotes like regular talk. Like a Clown forgoing their clown shoes, while it's not against the Rules, it is highly frowned upon. Other than that, have fun!

The Writing on the Wall

By clicking on a floor tile with a crayon, you can draw a variety of shapes and pictograms to suit your inner visual artist. How about a portrait of the Head of Security? What does "Captain smells" look like in simple geometric shapes? Can you depict the conditions of Medbay as modern abstract art? (Don't worry about your art skill--you don't need any for that one!) A picture can say a thousand words--and you don't have to actually speak any of them.

Note, S'il Vous Plaît

Click on a piece of paper or a floor tile with a pen or similar, and you'll write down whatever you put in the prompt. While you can just write what you want to say on a piece of paper and hand it to someone, and it's alright and fine, why not have a little fun and mischief? Translate your messages into French through Google Translate and watch the crew attempt to piece together what little French they know, or, better yet, reply with equally bad French. Or, instead of words, put ASCII art--the worse you are, the funnier it'll be! If the visual arts aren't your thing, try carefully describing a picture or making word puzzles. The pen is mighty indeed when it comes to miming. Guide to writing may be of use to you.

The Clown and You

On some servers, the Clown and Mime are canonically enemies, or at least rivals. You may wonder if this is the case on Goonstation. The short answer is: if it makes things more interesting/entertaining, they are!

The long answer is that the clown-mime dynamic can be whatever you want it to be (as long as it's within the Rules, obviously). You have that artistic freedom! What if, for example, you and the Clown joined together to amuse the crew? After all, sometimes, the best response to a honking wise-guy/gal's wacky jokes and antics for a straight-man/woman respond of them as if they were perfectly normal...or maybe even join in them!

The enemies relationship alone has many different variations. Perhaps you and the clown are interservice rivals, like branches of the armed forces; you and the clown may throw highly colorful insults at each other all the time, every time, but at the end of the day, the two of you are still entertainers working together to put on a good show. Maybe it's like Spy vs. Spy, in that you two are mortal enemies, but fight with deliciously over-the-top and cartoonish (sometimes literally) antics. Perhaps the clown likes to suplex you when you pretend there's an invisible wall, so you piss in their balloons when they aren't looking. Foes come in many different forms, and the resulting conflict make for some truly fun stories!

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