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TLV - Graduations & Demotions
Inmate graduation is a vital aspect of the game, and occasionally, warden demotion crops up in play as well. If you're planning to graduate your inmate or demote your warden in the near future, please fill out this short form!
Graduations and demotions are character decisions made at player discretion, but in the rare situation that we find ourselves concerned that a graduation or demotion is premise-breaking, the player will be contacted privately. Once we've read through a comment and confirmed that it doesn't contain anything premise-breaking, we'll reply with a confirmation.
Once a graduation comment has been confirmed, the warden of the graduating inmate should reply to their inmate's comment either confirming that their character will be fulfilling the deal laid out in their application, or - in situations where they changed their mind about their deal during their time in-game - receive a verdict about whether the new deal idea is doable.
GRADUATION
DEMOTION
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Character Name: June Harris
Path to Graduation:
June arrived onboard and, despite being a willing inmate and despite being nominally interested in graduation, made no progress whatsoever for approximately a year. Mostly, this was because she was in deep denial over what specifically graduation would entail: she held fast to the theory that she could good-works her way to the finish line, without any substantive self-reflection, without facing her past actions, and without any real internal (rather than merely external) changes. Once she finally accepted the idea that this was accomplishing both jack and shit, she immediately rolled all the way in the opposite direction, spending the next six or so months insisting that graduation would clearly require her becoming a fundamentally different person at her core, a goal that felt completely unattainable - and this, too, she used as an excuse not to put in the necessary work, because why bother if none of the changes she made would ever end up being big enough or good enough?
In short, she was very whiny and very self-defeating, and all her CR deserves a medal for putting up with her.
But little by little, over time, her excuses and justifications were chipped away. Her warden finding out the full, unvarnished truth about her history and not immediately abandoning her was a good first step, as it put a big hole in her justification that she had to lie about her past because nobody would ever accept her if they knew the truth. People continually calling her out on her bullshit was also key; some were patient and diplomatic about it, and others were more harsh and hard-hitting, and both approaches working on her in tandem went further than either would have on their own.
For obvious reasons, the last 6-7 months have been by far the most productive in terms of actually attempting to walk the walk rather than just endlessly talking the talk. While this period still had its fair share of missteps and "I'll never make it so what's the point in trying!!!" defeatism, some important milestones included:
1) Pushing William into the path of a zombie to save herself... and then, later, owning up to what she'd done to his face even though she feared the potential consequences, taking actual responsibility for her actions rather than trying to excuse them, and accepting that he owed her neither forgiveness nor future trust.
2) Being her true, messy, disagreeable self on the network (and to others in private, but the public component was key), rather than slipping on a more palatable persona. She certainly wasn't her best self, but she was her real self, which in this particular case was the most important thing.
3) Having tough, honest conversations in general, rather than doing all she could to avoid them. Right up to the end, she'd still occasionally deflect, withdraw, or otherwise fall into bad old habits - but then she'd force herself to come back and deal with it, even when it was scary.
4) Living a whole-ass year in Flotilla without conning people or screwing people over. She never morphed into a Big Damn Hero (though she did convince Jacobi to help her save a guy's life rather than leaving him for dead!) or developed a self-sacrificial streak, but she didn't need to, because that was never the point: the point was finding a solid, workable middle ground between all-out heroics and the extreme self-prioritization that landed her on the Barge in the first place. By the time the Barge crashed near Flotilla, she was already very close to graduation; her Flotilla year both pushed her over the edge, and gave her a hefty dose of extra time to show her that she really could do this without sliding back into old habits.
Post-graduation, what she'd really like to do is to jet off to another world, leave her baggage behind, and start fresh with some new, better habits under her belt. Instead, she's going to grudgingly but determinedly head back to her own world, make sure the Robinsons all survive sailing through the storm, and put in the hard work to show that she really has committed herself to redirecting her life. It's not the easy choice, but it is the right one - and the fact that she's making it is further proof that she's ready to go.
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