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Gameplay Magazine - Featured Personality: Xoriet
Our guest today is one of my favorite GPers and the one I’ve known longest, 
Xoriet! A former delegate of the East Pacific, she is currently in the Pacific and is 
WA commended with many accomplishments and contributions to the game. Xoriet is also an exquisite writer and roleplayer and was part of a Hogwarts refound that produced high quality content.
How did you first learn about NationStates? What brought you to the game?
I first learned about NS from my ex-boyfriend in 2011. He’d joined as a roleplayer. Originally I ignored it, except when it got more attention that I did on occasion, but later became curious. So I tried founding a nation that was themed on a story I was working on at the time. The original name I went for was taken, so I fiddled with possible new names until I decided on Xoriet.
So you were a writer even before you started NationStates. And that's cool you started out with your main Xoriet! Do you remember where you founded?
The East Pacific was where I founded and I didn’t move Xoriet from there (except once by accident in 2013) until I CTEd in 2017.
Oh so first love! How did you get involved in gameplay?
In the Gameplay aspects, I got involved through the Z-Day event in 2013. I’d been a citizen since March of that year, but was brought into the regional Skype chat shortly after that event. That would be how I got involved in military Gameplay. If we mean the NSGP community, that would be Raven’s doing for bringing me out of my TEP-isolated state and into other IRC channels.
Like a few players at the time you gained recognition quickly, what do you attribute this too?
Being social and active. Players tend to get more attention if they are both social and work for their region.
You've been social and active in both R\D and gameplay. What are the pros\cons of each type of play and are they more overlapping now then they were back in 2013?
2013 I was exclusively my region and hadn’t even spoken to anyone outside of TEP. I was just learning how to do things there. My actual main year of activity was 2014. Today is interesting, because you can be both social and inactive in the game, at the cost of being called an armchair player. You see a lot of players doing that these days. Back then you were taken far more seriously if you were social and active. Just activity wasn’t always good enough, because people are more likely to connect to players with whom they feel comfortable socializing and know well. People tend to be less objective with individuals they’re close to.
What is the biggest difference, in your opinion, between gameplay then and now? Players now often talk about the golden era of NS being past. Do you think this is the case?
Yes and no. Yes, because the community was less toxic to some extent. No, because back then OOC problems were not looked into or treated as relevant. Many people back then were harmful to the community and members of it. However, that ties into how the community today is so toxic. When we raised standards for the community and awareness to bring safety to people playing, we did a good thing. That much I believe. What we did wrong was allow OOC things to be twisted and used to take people down for IC reasons.
For a while I thought 2014 was so much better, but in reality we swept many things under the rug back then, or didn’t feel like it was appropriate to bring things that happened out of the realm of in character public. I can’t say that I’m happy with how OOC is treated today. It is weaponized to take people down. Genuine desire to protect the community in some is conflated by the desire to use anything to remove another player in others. The surest way to remove a player is by OOC means. We cheapen the real threats to the community when we elevate mistakes to the level of actual abuse and harassment. We went from a society that did not speak up to a society where people descend to new lows. Which is better? I can’t say.
NationStates Gameplay community still hasn't reached an equilibrium...
I will actually agree to both those points and have been contemplating how to really address this new trend of "the only way to get rid of an IC opponent is to remove them through OOC means." We say, as a community, we've gotten better with addressing OOC threats but it's an uphill battle and highly uneven in application.
Why does one player get a pass while another is burned at the stake? It speaks to the fact that we aren't cyber investigators or police officers and that some of the players taking on these roles are overzealous to the point that the lines between IC and OOC continue to be blurred. I'm really not sure if there's a way to fix it without some dialogue and shared standards but we as a community can't even have a dialogue without someone trying to use it for their own purposes.
I don’t know how to fix what has happened. The first sign I saw that this might happen was in 2016, when someone I believed was a victim used my trust to convince me that she had been abused by another player. I left NS the same day it was reported. I later found out that my trust had been used and that the player in question was innocent and I had been lied to. There are many other cases I’ve seen or heard of that were questionable at best or proven false from the outset. This was not a culture I ever wanted to see happen, but it is one that nonetheless evolved.
Looking at the parts of the game that make us want to play, what have been your best moments in NS? Favorite historical event?
My better moments in NS? 2014 with TEP and 2018 with TP. I enjoyed defending while running EPSA back then and I enjoyed operating with the Legio of TP more recently. Usually my happiest moments have been while updating actively with a military I become very dedicated to. Favorite historical event was probably the Bitcoin April Fools event with TEP. We had so much fun with it, and basically dominated the whole event. That was great fun and I’ll always look back fondly on it.
What was it like transitioning from TEP to TP?
I liked TP’s community right away, but I was still really hurt by TEP and missed it a lot. I believe I told Pergamon it was like still not being over an ex. It took a long time for that to fade away. TEP had meant a lot to me for years. It was why I came back in the first place. TP...it was nice from the start. I enjoyed the people, I got to get back into RP a bit, I had fun reporting illicit nations to the Praetorian Guard. I found that the more involved I got; the better I felt about losing TEP. I didn’t mind the government style transition. I’d seen enough of what can happen in a democratic region by that point and was very turned off the concept of democracy in NS. It was a good place to choose, although the irony is that I went there to escape drama.
The NPO is often seen as this mysterious monolithic entity. Having organized a Game of Thrones event with the region and hung out in the server a bit I'd say it was, like most regions in NS, a particular flavor of community (with a lot of interest in anime for example :P). What do you like most about The Pacific?
The community, by far. In both NS and the other branches. Most of the people are super fun to be around and you don’t get the same kind of political tensions I’ve found in other regions. Maybe it’s due to the structure, maybe just because the community is very solid.
Which NS platform do you use the most (Discord, Gameside RMB, Forums)? What do you think of these platforms and their strengths and weaknesses for gameplay?
Forums are for business largely, and I avoid the Gameplay forums as much as possible. RMB I’ll post stats on and answer questions and the like. However, my primary means of communication is Discord. Sometimes I’ll use Telegram, too. I think forums (off-site ones) are good for security as well as general solid discussions that you want to be able to find easily. Discord chats are more difficult to search through. Onsite comes with the plus of having to maintain a measure of composure so you don’t break the rules. On the same side of that, you have to be very careful what you say. It’s good practice for restraint I suppose. That’s a plus to onsite. Discord is just easier for chatting and quick access. I like that about it. However, it can get out of hand if you don’t keep your servers and channels pruned down to something reasonable. At first I hated Discord. I wanted LWU to not use it because I preferred Skype. I didn’t like the transition to Discord and Dream Killers should remember me being grumpy about them making one at all. These days I’m used to it, although it is significantly less secure than any other chat handle to me.
If you were Max Barry for a day, what would you do?
Shut down NS.
Free us all.
None of us can quit on our own. We need the help.
That’s both an ongoing joke and also a bit sad. I wonder if there are other communities out there like NS or it’s this unique bubble that gives people power or access or that something that they can’t get elsewhere. sigh. What are your hobbies or things you do for fun (outside of NS)?
Write or read. I’m working on a book at the moment but also read a lot in my spare time. I’ll go out with friends sometimes but I’m a huge homebody most of the time.
If Xoriet was a character in a book she would be a porcelain beauty of elegance.
So I've been excited about this book ever since we first started talking about it! What can you tell us about it, and what inspired it?
Well, this is the second one anyway. I finished the first one earlier this year and had a few people beta read it. So far it’s good feedback, and I’ve caught some grammar or spelling errors that way. I worked on it since 2009, although I rewrote it twice. What inspired it was actually losing a RP forum I played on for years. Two of the characters I had I brought over from that. Originally it was just giving them a new world to exist in. A year after I finished it the first time (2011), I decided to rewrite it. Ultimately I decided after I finished that rewrite that I needed to smooth it out. The last one barely resembles the second rewrite and is almost completely unrecognizable as a descendent of the original. That was the inspiration.
What I can say about it is that some things written into the book are lessons I’ve learned in my own life, some from NS, although there is no NS association with the book save one character, some of whose characteristics are taken from the worst person I ever met and channeled into a character. In a way you could say this character was part of therapy, as writing everything out made me able to understand what I’d lived through. The book itself can be dark at times as a result, but ultimately the three are supposed to not have a totally bleak ending. It’s set in a high fantasy world, as that’s pretty much the only genre I can really write without problems. It’s also the genre I read most and enjoy most. The one downside to this book is that it’s 504 pages on Microsoft Word, at 227,000 words.
That’s such an amazing accomplishment! From what I’ve seen, it’s such a cool storyline and I hope it gets turned into a TV or movie series!
What are your favorite or highly recommended fantasy books?
If you want to read lighter books, I’d recommend Name of the Wind. I call it light because my favorite author and second favorite author both write amazing books that are also pretty heavy with material. So anything by Sara Douglass or Jacqueline Carey pretty much. Those are all very large books. For easier reading, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, and David Eddings are all amazing.
Favorite music?
Favorite music. Scardino always judges me on my music. I listen to a ton of stuff but my most listened-to genre is symphonic metal. Favorite band is Muse though. Second favorite is Les Friction (thanks Syl <3).
Favorite movie and\or TV shows?
Favorite movie is The Mummy.
The 1999 one. I love it. It has all the things I like in a story and is amusing on the side. TV shows...well. Grey’s Anatomy is the show I watch with my mom every Thursday when the seasons are running. We watch Dateline every Friday. On my own time I watch Supernatural, Law and Order: SVU, or NCIS.
So you actually introduced me to Webtoons, which are your favorite webtoons that you follow currently?
Oh my. Unordinary, Lumine, My Dear Cold-Blooded King, Kubera, Tower of God.
Brilith Ruin from Kubera
You're probably the only person I know who has a horse and also have horseback riding experience. Can you describe what it takes to raise\have a horse?
My sister has three horses (Dakota, Pogo, and Chorizo) and is taking care of a fourth for a friend. I am not the best rider, but it’s fun when the horses aren’t feeling frisky. They’re very friendly and social. However they definitely require some patience. I remember my sister once chasing Chorizo around the pasture to ride him for twenty minutes before giving up. We were all laughing from inside but didn’t tell her that. When we first brought him to the farm he liked to run around a lot and had no intentions of being ridden. Okie came later, and he was pretty much the horse I liked riding. Very stable and sweet. We had to put him down two years ago, but we still have the other three.
If you could travel anywhere to the world, where would you go and why?
Probably the Caribbean for a while. I like pretty beaches a lot. Although considering how much I avoid the sun, that might seem like an odd choice.
There’s something about the beach that’s so relaxing! So you wake up one morning and a receive the delegacy of any region you choose. Which would you choose? And what would you do as delegate?
If I absolutely had to have a delegacy, I’d just choose TP’s. For a bit. There are no other regions whose delegacies I’d want. Not even this one. I enjoy being free.
Thank you to Xoriet for the interview! <3
