Research Notes
In Roots of Life, we require some things to be undertaken with a bit more care! To give your cat a physical disability or have them be intersex, you have to write a Research Note.
This means you'll need to research the disability or intersex condition, write a bit about it, and send a note to staff for approval. This is to make sure you have a solid understanding of your character's disability or intersexuality when writing them.
The requirements for each specific kind of note are below. Please read thoroughly about the kind of note you are planning on writing!
Disability Note Requirements
Figure out the specifics of the physical disability you’re giving your character. Knowing exactly what you’re researching is important — so for example, you can look up the differences between types of deafness to gather the details of your character’s deafness.
Once you’ve decided on the specifics, find at least three credible sources to reference. Consider how your character being disabled affects them. Be sure to cite your sources.
Standard RoL guidelines apply: avoid sensitive topics. Avoid ableism, including dehumanizing your character, making them seem lesser than others, alienating them, or generally making them out to be a spectacle or “other.”
Discriminatory treatment toward characters is not tolerated in Roots-of-Life — do not incorporate it into their backstories or feelings regarding their disability. Additionally, other players aren’t allowed to mock or bully your character or play out their own characters doing the same.
Intersex Note Requirements
Figure out which intersex condition your character has. Traits and experiences can differ depending on this, such as whether or not their differences are apparent to them, potential health complications, hormonal developments, and social experiences.
Once you’ve decided on the specifics, find at least three credible sources to reference. Consider how your character being intersex affects them. Be sure to cite your sources.
Entirely avoid focusing on genitalia when writing about your intersex character. Again, simply consider the experiences they’ve had and may have. Speaking of experiences, it’s also important to note that there aren’t particularly strong gender roles in the setting of Roots-of-Life.
Standard RoL guidelines apply: avoid sensitive topics. Avoid intersexism and sexism, including dehumanizing your character, making them seem lesser than others, alienating them, or generally making them out to be a spectacle or “other.”
Discriminatory treatment toward characters is not tolerated in Roots-of-Life— do not incorporate it into their backstories or feelings regarding their intersexuality. Additionally, other players aren’t allowed to mock or bully your character or play out their own characters doing the same.
A Guide to Writing Notes
There is no universal form for research notes, they can be as aesthetic or plain as you would like. The goal of a note is to act as both proof to staff that you’ve done adequate research, and as a guide for writing your character. It does not need to be pretty to achieve that function.
However, research notes should still include some of the same sections, given they have some of the same requirements.
Notes will generally comprise five sections: description, symptoms, psychological effects, accommodations, and sources.
Description
The description is the shortest and most straightforward section. Name the specific condition or disability that your character has, and give a basic description of it.
Symptoms
Symptoms is another fairly straightforward section. In bullet point format, make a list of any physical and neurological symptoms that directly affect your character. Avoid listing every symptom that could possibly crop up in a condition, and think more about what symptoms your character would experience specifically.
Once you’ve built out a profile of symptoms, list them with a description. For example, if you were to list chronic pain as a symptom, describe where the chronic pain is and how that might impact the cat’s movement/quality of life, and add information about things that might make it better or worse. Another example would be chronic migraines that are worsened by bright light.
Psychological Effects
Psychological effects are where things start getting complicated. This section should be in paragraph format. One paragraph is the absolute minimum, but more are encouraged, and may even be required depending on the disability. This section should contain information on how the character feels about their disability or intersex condition, and how it affects the way they interact with the world. Feelings on disability and intersexuality can be complex and varied, and you should think about what feelings would make sense for your specific character.
For example, a character who was born Deaf would have different feelings on their disability than a character that became Deaf later in life. Or, a very independent character might have more feelings of frustration around their disability than a character who is more community oriented. As for differences in perception, this applies especially to characters who have sensory disabilities. How would a blind cat feel about texture or sound when they lack visual appeal? How would a mute cat feel about being limited to slower nonverbal communication?
That being said, it is important to tread carefully to avoid ableism, sexism, and intersexism.
Cats’ feelings on their disability or intersexuality shouldn’t be wholly negative and self-disparaging, both because of ableism/intersexism and because it makes for a pointlessly depressing story to read and that’s not fun for anyone.
On the flip side, ignoring the difficult and complex feelings a character may have about their disability, and writing them off as “no big deal” ignores the very real effects of disability. Even cats with overall positive views on their disability or intersexuality will still have thoughts on it, and differences in how they interact with the world around them.
Remember, you shouldn't use your character's conditions to make them seem uncomfortable or weird to be around. On the flip side, characters aren’t allowed to mock or bully your character for their disability or intersexuality.
Accommodations
Accommodations are how a cat manages their symptoms and makes their day to day life easier, either on their own or with help from their community. For example, a cat with a bad leg may practice swimming to strengthen and keep mobility in the leg without putting pressure on it, or a blind cat may organize their den so that they always know precisely where everything is. On the communal accommodation side, a Deaf cat might have an interpreter, or a paraplegic cat may need help grooming parts of their body. These accommodations can be listed in paragraph or bullet point format, and there should be 3-4 listed at minimum.
As a note, not all intersex conditions may require accommodations. (ex. Klinefelter syndrome will, but partial androgen insensitivity may not.) This section is required for disabled characters, though!
Sources
Finally, your research sources should be linked on your note. Good source lists will have a mix of medical and personal information. We want to see, at bare minimum, three sources:
A source about how the disability would affect a cat (this may not be applicable for more humanistic symptoms)
Information on the specifics of the character’s condition (this can include resources on humans)
Personal experience from someone with a similar disability or intersex condition (you can cite your own experience here)
Although you shouldn’t use personal anecdotes as your main sources, it’s highly recommended to read through the experiences of disabled and intersex people when writing a disabled/intersex character. Any preconceived misconceptions you may have will be cleared up this way and reading the community’s side of things may give you ideas for what areas to do further research in.
For intersex notes especially, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the proper language, as certain words commonly used for intersex people have very harmful connotations.
That said, more sources are encouraged if they add additional information. For example, if migraines are listed as a symptom of an eye condition, you might want to add an additional source on migraines.
Try to avoid redundancy in your sources; each source should provide some unique information that was used for your note.
We don’t require a formatted bibliography, nor do we require citations on individual symptoms. We simply require the raw list of sources used in the note.
Once you’ve finished your character's note, submit it in the Character tickets category. You can submit it alongside your character's application, or before.
This will take longer to iron out than any ordinary review, so be patient.
As with any review, you’ll be sent back some feedback until all the information is correct. Then, your note will be accepted, and you’ll be allowed to apply the disability or intersex condition to your character.