Clown

What is it about clowns? They seem to be a happy enough bunch, delighted to suffer a pie-in-the-face or a seltzer-down-the-pants just to make us laugh, but what dark compulsion drives these men to hide behind their painted-on smiles and big rubber noses? What madness turns a man into a clown?

-- (Dave Louapre and Dan Swestmen, A Cotton Candy Autopsy)

The unofficial mascot of Space Station 13, alongside the Staff Assistant clutching a bloody toolbox, the Clown is a figure of comedy, tragedy, grief, vengeance, and occasionally, pants-shitting terror. To put on the squeaky red shoes is to enter the long ranks of those who have honked before, ever seeking for a new way to entertain and infuriate. Are you a bad enough dude to be the job everybody loves to hate?

Disclaimers

BIG OL BOLD TEXT WARNING: Clowns are given some slack to fuck with people, but if you break the rules about outright griefing, expect to be murdered at best and yelled at or banned by admins at worst. If what you're about to do will get you somebody hating you with the seriousness of, say, a sitcom nemesis, it's probably fine, but if you're going to actually ruin someone's round, you should probably stop before you get banned. Unless, of course, you're a traitor.

SIMILAR WARNING: You don't get to kill the Clown just because he's being the Clown. Period. If he's being absolutely awful as described above, or actively trying to murder you, then go ahead and beat the shit out of him, but don't seek out and abuse the Clown for the crime of existing. Unless, of course, you're a traitor.

Zen and the Art of Honking

Newbie Clowns do nothing except stab themselves in the eyes with bananas and scalpels before tripping on their own banana peel and sailing out the airlock. Bad Clowns annoy people enough that they get hurled into space. Good Clowns are either actually funny, or enrage everybody and never manage to get caught. Great Clowns are creative and entertaining enough with their japes that nobody ever has the heart to kill them.

Clowns have no official responsibility, no access, and often no hope of surviving a round. That doesn't mean there aren't perks to the Honk Life, though! You start with your sweet clothes, your ID (doodled in crayon), an unpeeled banana, a bike horn, a "funny" (fanny) pack instead of a backpack, a box full of party balloons, and your unique PDA that's as slippery as a banana peel. There's an inherent downside every Clown spawns with, though - a genetic-level incompetence with all sorts of basic tasks, like "not tripping over your own feet," "holding the stun baton the right way," and "not stabbing yourself in the eyes with scalpels during surgery." A Clown that tries to fill in for a station-critical role is often in for a world of pain, but it'll often be pretty funny to watch.

So, with no access, and a startling inability to do anything useful without injuring themselves somehow, what's a Clown to do? Make things interesting for everybody else, that's what. You are what the common grayshirt longs to be, to the point where you'll probably have to watch out so one doesn't mug you for your costume. You can do any gimmick they can, albeit more incompetently, but any Clown that takes off their costume is a shameful Clown. In addition, you can use your bag of tricks to screw with people, make terrible puns and crack terrible jokes non-stop, see how many times you can hit the Captain with a pie before he arrests you, lay banana peels just out of sight in high-traffic areas, and more! Or, if you [s]don't want to get murdered[/s] prefer brightening the station's day, try doing some of the other jobs earnestly but in a harmlessly comically inept manner, tell good jokes, and use your own unassuming nature to save the entire station single-handedly by making the operatives think you're harmless before you blind one with a pie long enough for the lynch mobs to arrive.

A Brief History of Clowning

The Clown was previously a punishment position made to replace the Janitor; the incompetence mutation was there to make it a lot harder for them to do or use things that could be easily used for griefing. Like the Janitor, it turns out that giving griefers an entertainingly shitty job only encourages them, and it was made a regular job.

Admin opinion on a job that had open sanction to grief as hard as it could without breaking the other rules soured once they realized that for every entertaining Clown, there were 50 shitty Clowns that either plain sucked at being entertaining or actively broke the rules, thinking the job would make them immune to reprisal. The clown car was also an extremely binary item - it was either utterly worthless or round-ending for everybody but the Clown, depending on the user. So, the job was removed, but the outfit and job items were left scattered on the station for those who still believed in the true Honk Life.

The Clown was resurrected (with the old inherent issues doing things, and without the sanction to ignore the rules about griefing) with the introduction of the Job of the Day system, along with many other gimmick jobs. Eventually, it was deemed time to let the Clown have his limelight again.

Clown Traitors: [Honking Intensifies]

There's a reason that spacemankind fears the humble, lowly Clown.

Clown traitors are almost the most emblematic part of Space Station 13: not only is there a dedicated staff position for some greasepaint-wearing, helium-huffing goofus, it turns out that sometimes they're out for your blood. The Clown's own incompetence can get in the way of their own traitorous schemes, and many a Clown traitor has been brought low by their own hands/squeaky feet. However, proper Clowns know what exactly has a risk associated with it, and plan accordingly.

Bad Clown Traitors spawn the clown car, immediately drive it into a wall, fly out the windshield, and get savagely murdered. However, in sufficiently skilled hands, Clown Traitors are the stuff of nightmares. If a player is good enough to be a sneaky, murderous thug as the job least suited being a sneaky, murderous thug, they're probably really, really good at being a sneaky, murderous thug, and thus their victims rarely have the chance to scream for help. They can kill the entire station starting with nothing but a banana peel, or stuff the entire crew into a clown car and drive it into the crusher.

Clowns who take off their outfit as a sort of meta-disguise are the most dishonorable of all traitors, but there's no denying the practice can work wonders and catch even veterans off-guard. Still, there's no beating the style points from doing all your evil deeds wearing the most garish outfit on the station.

As an alternative to all the whole murder and terrorism thing, a Clown traitor can just use their traitor items for normal Clown business, like disguising themselves as a banana peel with the Chameleon Projector, popping out of a floor closet to pie someone, pulling a derringer out of places a derringer shouldn't be able to hide...your own creativity's the limit! Just don't be surprised if you get thrown in the gibber by critics.

Supplementary Video

{{#widget:YouTube|id=QHXgdtiFRNY}}

---