Award winner – Lt Karen Stendhal, USS Octavia E Butler (Xalor Clan Xifilis Award)
Join us for another in a series of interviews with winners of awards from our 2024 Awards Ceremony. Our goal is to give you insight into how our fleet’s best simmers write, and imagine their characters as well as their out of character contributions and achievements.
This month we’re interviewing the writer behind Lt Karen Stendhal playing a female counselor assigned to the USS Octavia E Butler. She won the Xalor Clan Xifilis Award which is awarded to simmers who overcome a disadvantage throughout simming. This award was initially known as the “Rachel Garett Pendant,” but was renamed for the 2000 event to commemorate a valued StarBase 118 PBEM RPG simmer who died that year.
We had the chance to sit down with Lt Stendhal to learn more about their process
Nilsen: Why don’t you tell us a little about the writer behind the character – where in the world do you hail from?
Stendhal: Greetings to you, fellow writer and the talented mind behind Lt. Lhandon Nilsen. I’m writing to you from Italy, the land of Dante and pizza. A country brimming with vibrant colors and paradoxes. We Italians are known for our noisy nature and warm hospitality, but also for our creative flair and, let’s say, our relaxed approach to timekeeping.
We sing, shout, and wave our hands as we speak. We love shoes and fashion, but we make a mess of everything.
Tell us about the language barrier and your experiences simming in English.
That’s a really good question. At first, I was quite confident, thinking to myself: ‘I know English well, I’m fluent.’ But then, sometimes while reading, I stumble upon a word I don’t understand or confuse it with another, which completely changes the meaning of the sentence. Especially in technical conversations, I sometimes trip up.
Idioms are my biggest hurdle. Proverbs often express a meaning using words that, when translated literally, make no sense to me.
Then there are different writing styles. Everyone has their own unique style, influenced by their culture and experiences. Every place has its own dialects and slang. In a mixed group of people from different parts of the world, when these styles collide, things can get really confusing for me. That’s why I do much better in one-on-one dialogues and interactions.
Another difficulty for me is character names. I often have to check the wiki and the crew file multiple times to make sure I don’t get it wrong. Or sometimes I just put down whatever I remember, even if it’s incorrect. It adds an element of playfulness and characterizes my character in a certain way.
What does your writing process look like?
Initially, and also to practice, I used to write directly in English, sometimes using Google Translate to help me.
I draft my writing on my PC using the basic Notepad, and on my mobile using Google Keep notes. Google Mail often helps a lot, its search functions speed up my writing process considerably. Other times, Gmail leads me astray, messing up the order of incoming emails or even losing some of them.
Lately, I’ve been relying on and writing with the help of some new tools, I’ve tried many. I’m finding thst DeepL and Google Gemini very useful at the moment.
They are powered by AI, and I can finally write in my native language and then get a good translation. Sometimes I even mix Italian and English in my notes. Then I feed them to Gemini and it produces a more than decent translation to which I might add something else.
What suggestions or guidance would you give to other simmers whose English is not their first language?
Every now and then I regret not having chosen an Italian-American PC, it would have been simpler for me.
So, what I can suggest is to make the right choice when it comes to the species and race of your character. Something you like and that makes you feel good will undoubtedly help, but not too difficult otherwise it will slow you down and become difficult to manage.
Initially, I wanted to choose a Dokkaran for my PC, a very interesting sentient plant-based race. But then I opted for something simpler, a Betazoid. Looking back, I would have added something more Italian and less French to Karen’s human part. It would have been easier to characterize her and would have justified any typos and errors.
Initially, I made another mistake, that of choosing a station/ship with a slow pace of play, thinking that this would help me.
It was a mistake because with fewer sims, I had fewer interaction possibilities and so I was always borderline in terms of the minimum number of SIMs.
This almost made me stop playing and moreover, I think I drove my mentor at the time crazy.
One month I would do 11 sims, then 14, then maybe 9. At some point I felt like I was drowning because the mentor my mentor was asking if it might be better for me to take an LOA. I didn’t understand and I replied No I don’t want to go on LOA: I want to keep playing.
Things went on like this for a while, until I had the brilliant idea of introducing a secondary character so as to have those two or three extra sims that would have allowed me to stay afloat. That’s how I introduced Una Qualunque. Fun fact: Una Qualunque literally means ‘Any One’. So every time someone put ‘Any One: \ Response… ‘ Qualunque (Any) Una (One) would pop up! YES Like a Beetlejuice, even in the most bizarre situations.
I was very happy in the last mission when even Una got her first Ribbon, for example! 🙂
Another recommended technique is to jump in when participation with an MSNPC is required. So often I’ve thrown myself in headfirst, even without understanding anything. Understanding usually comes along the way.
This is how some of my most memorable characters were born, at least for me. Do you remember Alto’Belaranto or the Ant Queen?
On base 118 I introduced Zara Saan (alias Sara Zaan), an Orion who even tried to seduce Commodore Sal!
So to recap, if you’re having trouble keeping up with the 12 Sims, try introducing a secondary character, whether it’s temporary for a mission or permanent. This will double your chances and often the fun as well.
In your presentation, our CO said, “Her sims are filled with clever twists and fun dialogue!” I remember when you made a copy of your character that turned feral like an attack tribble and another time when you created these adorable anthropometric rats. Where do these ideas come from?
Oh, the duplication of Karen and then the attack on Brzezinski! Can I say it’s all Amanda’s fault? In a good way, that is.
Amanda, as my last mentor (poor thing, she had to put up with me as a mentee too 🙂 ), noticed that I did well with Una and was always able to advance the story by adding many more tags at the end.
With Una, I don’t know why, but it’s quite simple for me, with Karen I slow down a bit in certain cases. I was a bit afraid of breaking the narrative structure and going off-topic, perhaps.
With this input, I found myself in situations where, to move the story forward, I had to push things in a creative way and when I didn’t know where I was going, I’d turn things back on Karen herself, thus dragging the others along too.
I have to say that everyone on the OEB was very good at following me and indulging me.
There was this alien device, the characters were being influenced by it, there was the out-of-phase story, so I started to exploit that.
The final duplication of Karen was a consequence of that, but I couldn’t duplicate the others directly, it would have been forcing things on other PCs.
Initially, I didn’t know what to do with Karen’s clones, but it seemed fun to me, even if a bit crazy.
Others obviously asked themselves the same question, so we opened a chat with the scene participants on Discord, and it was Brent who suggested that the cloned Karen was an evil and somehow demon-possessed Karen. 🙂
I feel a bit freer when it comes to secondary characters, so I threw in the attack on Bizanschi (I just can’t remember the exact name!)
As for the anthropomorphic rat-like traders that appeared in the last shore leave, well, they just came out that way, it seemed like a cute thing. I always loved fantasy and magic things indeed!
I don’t have an explanation and maybe only a real psychiatrist could figure it out!
Thanks for your time, Lt Stendhal
