Mime

CIVILIAN DEPARTMENT
Mime
Mime	Difficulty: Easy Requirements: None Access Level: Maintenance Additional Roleplay Access Level: None Supervisors: Captain, Head of Personnel Subordinates: None Responsibilities: Making the crew laugh through more subtle arts Guides: This is the guide.

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. Easily identified by their fashionably archaic black and white clothing, eerily pale skin, and iconic mask, they spawn physically unable to speak due to a mutation, which also silences their screams and can't be removed through normal means, 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.

Unlike the Clown, another entertainer job, you cannot spawn as a Mime at roundstart. It's only available to people who join after a round has started. That said, there is a Mime slot every round, as part of the standard gimmick jobs lineup, so it's mime time any time--availability willing of course.

Life in Black and White

The most important part of being a Mime is, of course, the outfit. You spawn with a striped suit, suspenders, beret, and mime mask (yep, it's not makeup, it's a mask). Some maps have a wooden wardrobe with a spare set, plus an alternative costume consisting of dungarees, a scarf, and a bowler hat. It's usually in the Chapel, but on some maps, it's in the Crew Lounge. Extra sets of both mime outfits are sold by, believe it or not, Geoff Honkington, who lurks in the Clown Hole.

Because everyone associates Mimes with France, you spawn with a loaf of French bread/baguette in your bag. You also get a special crayon, and in order to prevent those diaboliques cleanbots from ruining your precious crayonwork, you also get a janitor whistle to redirect them and turn them off.

In addition, all Mimes know how to juggle; it's a simple matter of inputting say "*juggle into the command line on the bottom, like a emote.

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 a version of the Fronal Gyrus Suspension mutation that can't be removed via Genetics machines or mutadone, 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 using 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 Bartender 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 Jacques 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. This is more serious than a Clown forgoing their clown shoes. Not only is it highly frowned upon, but it's also against the Rules. 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. Additionally, you can talk to the AI via these papers by holding the paper to the camera, I.e. clicking on the camera with the written on paper.

Who's The Dummy?

Here's a technique that can supplement the above: click on a plush toy or toy figure to make it talk. You're essentially playing two characters. For example, you can be a talkative, boisterous type through the figure/plush, while your mime character is quiet man/woman of action who can hold entire conversations without actually saying anything, like Silent Bob. Get more figures/plushes, and you can have an ensemble. Create a whole cast of characters for your mime show!

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 to respond to 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 put slip them when they try to juggle. Foes come in many different forms, and the resulting conflict make for some truly fun stories!

Job Rewards

If you're a Vaudeville Fashion Visionary, there are two Job Rewards available to mimes that can be claimed freely. That means that no job levels are required to collect these, and they are available as soon as you spawn in without having to exchange any items for them.

Name	Lvl. Req.	Icon	Description
Fancy Mime Suit	0		A suit perfect for more sophisticated mimes. Wait... This isn't just a bleached clown suit, is it?
Mime Dress	0		You may be trapped in an invisible box forever and ever, but at least you look stylish!

---