As a certain someone I knew from another server would say, "there's a lot to unpack here". So, I'm going to address your posts paragraph by paragraph. Some may be skipped simply because I have nothing to add or it does not involve me, so I will post snippets of what's being talked about so the paragraph spoken about can be found.
Foxfoxfox wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 1:38 pm
Snip of post no.1
1. "Before I address my own character and make an argument, I would like to address the arguments against M.L. Vellen first, as I find them to be lacklustre. A lot of the things written above are hyperboles, hear-say and skewed information, I won't point out every mistake, but I'm confident that should it come to log-digging that the truth is much more in Mary's favour than presented here by the stories made about her."
This statement is harsh for quite a few of the things discussed. Is my own statement about her ordering engine parts every single turn and doing so without permission every time hyperbole? Perhaps, but the reason I said this is that it pertains mostly to my first hand experience and my experience only with the character. She made it
feel like she constantly did large and potentially dangerous projects in silence every time I was on to see it. As for the log-digging, that is a
lot of information to dig through and quite frankly, I don't believe
anyone is willing to do so due to how absolutely tedious the effort would be. Had I known you were going to be difficult about this and ask for such a thing instead of allowing players to post what they recount with the trust that it is accurate to the best of their abilities, I would have saved every. Single. Log. About my interactions with Vellen. I was hoping that it would change between now and then and was not expecting to be asked to provide logs, so I didn't.
2. "About the "singularity on the surface" scene, now Sid leaves out the part where the vote was deemed impotent, as no arguments against Vellen's competency could be found."
Now, this sentence is incorrect. ICly, they were arguing about her competence because last time she set up an engine on the surface of a planet and it almost destroyed everything due to the recounting of several characters who were present for it. They were also arguing about her underhanded attempts to order singularity parts without communicating with the team nor her superiors. "But Cargo delivered and I was going to ask Dane to open the crates after I got them." That's a poor excuse if you're going to go there. Cargo delivered possibly under the pretense that you had permission to order such things because if you ordered them and Dane (the only CO for engineering at the time as Overseer) said no, that would be a waste of points with expensive,experimental technology that will now collect dust. Competency does not always involve someone's work in specific, but also in communicating with others which
is a part of their job as it is one of the most important things. Know-how means nothing if you cannot coordinate. In that department, she fails. As for the vote, it does not matter if it did not matter or not; it just simply showed that out of all the team members there both on and off duty, only
two supported her- and their players are so far are also the only ones to defend you here as well, which does not entirely mean anything as of yet, because this discussion is still in it's early stages I feel.
"So eager and hostile was her team, that Sid can be quoted saying "I will do everything in my power to sabotage her efforts.", and he made that statement right after the discovery, before asking anyone for an opinion, not taking a moment to self-reflect, but taking the first reason to be toxic against Vellen and trusting its merit."
This is because Sid did
not trust her after previous interactions with her and he was afraid because this woman who he could not trust, who he knew to be rebellious and do things behind other's backs, had a very dangerous, very powerful piece of technology now in her possession. You know how he is; he's loud, he's boisterous, and yes, he can be dramatic because he has difficulties handling his emotions at times. By "sabotage", it would mean at most taking away and holding a crate somewhere else
only to postpone the project so they could all have the time to properly talk about it because absolutely nothing was communicated with the rest of the team; only that crates silently showed up at the department with Vellen carting them. And with the way of how Vellen has the bad habit of still continuing her work despite a command member telling her to stop? I'd say that it was not entirely an outlandish thing for him to do. He simply wanted for things to stop so they can discuss it and clear things up- if she had maybe apologized for doing things in silence and told everyone her intentions, he would have been absolutely fine with her setting up the engine after they came to an agreement of where to best set it up (basically somewhere on the asteroid and not on the surface of V4). But no. Instead, she lied, she argued, and she insulted. Sure, Sid did the same, but it was after she had insulted him. She was also insulting others who did not wrong her but instead were calmly speaking to her. The biggest part of the discussion that destroyed his trust in her? She lied to the Overseer, no matter who it was, about the papers blatantly despite the fact that hard evidence proved otherwise.
3. "Another thing I would like to point out is the case that Allakai described, the one with the engine set up. The interesting part about this is that Allakai wasn't involved in this at all, the information they have is from hear-say, so it is questionable to begin with why someone would talk about a story they never participated in, perhaps they were told by Lucifer and are retelling their single perspective, but weren't there, they weren't investigating the case, and as such the information they provide is skewed like a rumour would be - but the notable part is, they still present it with confidence in this thread."
As proven, your claim about Allakai was proven false and I'll address this in the next section of this post.
"Take a little note, there is an example right here in this thread, as Neinbox in the OP asks for other characters to step forth, but will not mention me, Mary's player, to step out and state my point of view. I'm going to come back to that part"
And I shall bring up once more from my original post:
As this is a complaint specifically about the character Mary Louise Vellen and their position in the Engineering department, I would like for those who have dealt with the character specifically in said department, as Security, or as Command staff to come forth and discuss with me the matter to the player and staff.
I did in fact
include you. Please take the time read through everything if you are going to respond to a post. I understand that some things are misread or accidentally forgotten, but there's a lot of finger-pointing going on here.
4. "For now, I would like to try and debate the IC arguments. Frankly, to be bold, they are all fundamentally built wrong and thus can be dismissed."
The entire point of this thread that I made was to discuss her IC behavior from an OOC perspective. It does not prevent me nor others from explaining IC actions to clarify some things, but I would like to try to keep this all OOC. The problem is that action
has been taken through the company several times. Your character has either been detained, demoted, one or the other or both, and returned to Central with such "on her record" ICly.
"And if any action is taken, it will be done from the perspective of the company."
The problem in this case is,
there are no solid representatives of the company ICly. Sure, we have IAA, but are they are not the ones who have the IC authority of if characters get to be permanently fired from a position, as that is actually a decision to be made by
admins. To make certain, I've even had a discussion with someone who is staff and IAA:
- Me: Okay, so. Are IAA ICly capable of permanently firing/suspending an employee? As in, they fax Central or something similar to do such an action? Or is it all "handled at Central"?
- Them: They do not have that power. They can fax central about the details of someone breaking SoP. But the decision to fire someone rests with CC themselves. IAAs can not do that. They are, in a manner of speaking, glorified lawyers. Permanently firing a character from a position is an admin choice only, and will only ever BE an admin choice
- Me: And ahelps/complaints are the best way to bring it up, correct? As in, admins cannot keep track of everyone and instead rely on the community to bring forth a problem and present it to them so it can be recognized as a problem and looked into?
- Them: Ahelps, faxes, or complaints. We aren't omnipotent, cant see everything that goes on. It's why we constantly encourage people to ahelp
Basically, it boils down to this: This is in fact, OOC representation of the company- rather, it is the admins that participate in the discussion who do so. Every character has done what they can ICly, and now it is time to involve "the company" here. My suggesting IC changes were for an IC explanation of the OOC outcome that happens here, if any, as there is no other way for the company- aka the admins- to reach a decision without a fax, ahelp, or complaint, which is exactly what's happening here. I felt that you have an unbelievable character who should not be working in the position that they are in, and so I have created this complaint.
5. "She had several shifts where she set up everything on her own on a skeleton crew, always there to respond to engineering requests, she's a hard worker."
This is irrelevant as this post itself refers to Vellen's ability to interact and work with her coworkers. While a small team on a quiet shift can count, what matters most is how she acts on more lively rounds where there are more people and things happening. Not a skeleton crew, where everyone tends to keep to themselves anyways.
On the flip side, there is exactly one demotion [edited: two] filed and two low-level infractions.
I will be honest, I am not one-hundred percent trusting your word on this either, which isn't a bad thing. Humans are imperfect creatures, and none of us have perfect memories. Also, none of us here can dig for logs outside of administration. But no matter what, she still fights a
lot in the department- both with her co-workers, and her superiors. It does not strictly speaking have to do with Sid. We are examining the big picture here. And frankly, I feel it is unacceptable at the frequency that it appears to me to which she is demoted/brigged/argues/fights, which is very nearly every time we both play. It seems to occur at
least once a day from my standpoint, which is, again, ridiculous.I've been playing later lately, so I haven't been able to see anything else.
There is a mental posture I sense here, and hopefully I am mistaken, but it seems to me that Neinbox feels entitled for my character to provide them with comfort.
This, I can assure you, is not the case. What Sid does is what he does, and he deserves to receive the consequences of his actions or he will never learn or grow as a character. But please remember that this is about
your character from an OOC standpoint. "With how much trouble they always get themselves into, to the point that it involves a head of staff and/or security, how are they even still employed?" That was the original point of this thread that I was attempting to discuss, so please, do not deflect the conversation to him.
Foxfoxfox wrote: ↑Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:36 am
Snip of post no.2
1. "Either way, such a discussion is not very fruitful in the end, "fun" is a term that can be used to describe anything, there are no agreed-upon parameters and boundaries."
In this case, the others are referring to your character to the equivalent of rule number 1. They are difficult to approach and interact with, quite a few of whom would rather outright avoid her. Yes, I know, everyone has their own definitions of fun and the like, however there is a number here that follow a pattern: they see the character as being unpleasant to deal with. I have seen ICly the words uttered, "I don't know how she's still employed", and there's a joke going around now about engine techs helping set up engines and the "dreaded c-word".
"Set out a definition for your roleplay character philosophy of fun, but beware, if you actually end up with something and want to make heads roll, you will have to chop off quite a few before you raise the bar high enough to chop off Mary's."
I am very much not liking the tone of this sentence. Not only is it somewhat haughty, but it is also aggressive and edging further into negativity. We cannot make judgements about how wonderful our own characters as that is quite clearly bias; it is up to others to decide how good a character really is. Right now, that is being addressed in the thread here.
"Either way, I don't see my original argument being disputed. Vellen is very much believable, employable, profitable even when it comes to her employer's perspective."
This is purely your personal perspective on your character, and it is very clearly being challenged here. Were your claim true, this thread would never exist.
2. "Should you look at the amount of time I've been active as Vellen, take a look back at the thread, make a rough estimate of how many shifts are being addressed here as problematic and how many shifts she spent on the server - you will find that these issues represent but a fraction of the time spent playing."
The thing, again, is how often it has become recently within the past couple of months. As I have said, memories are imperfect and the views that we are sharing basically mean that it is starting to feel like it is a constant. On top of that, both characters and their players can change over time, and as it appears, the way of how you present Vellen has made a turn for the worse.
3. "Allakai, you may have been present during the event, but you still stated the wrong information."
This is where things are starting to tick me off in a player-to-player aspect and while I will remain civil, it is clear you are becoming aggressive at this point. I have corrected Allakai because not everyone cannot remember everything correctly; no one in this thread is attempting to be malicious towards you nor your character. But at this point you are attacking Allakai because they remember things differently from you- the basic details may have been remembered incorrectly on accident, but the main one remains: Your character was somewhere they should not have been at the time considering the position they had signed up for, and proceeded to make a fuss with security. That is the main detail that matters. On top of that all, as Allakai has stated, you backpedaled but still remain assertive and firm in your belief that your character is a saint and has done very little wrong, still calling some of those with opposing viewpoints out as having false claims while not addressing others too much- it just seems to primarily be the ones with the most substantial amount of interaction and knowledge on a situation and I am starting to feel that you are defensively lashing out.
But this thread is, again, not about players. This is
specifically about Vellen, and you are once more attempting to deflect and attack everything else and not handle the actual issue at hand. You are not asking for constructive criticism or engaging with an investigative question such as "why do you feel like this? Can you give an example?" or any such positive player-to-player interaction so far. It is simply aggressive defending that skirts the fact that there are several people with the same view and you refuse to accept that, which is frustrating. We have a concern and would appreciate it if you were to work with us and discuss our feelings on the matter. No, you do not have to agree with everyone, but I do suggest hearing you hear us out for what we have to say and try to come up with a solution. It's five against three in here and instead of fighting, we should instead be accepting the fact that this many players means that there is in fact an issue, and that we should be discussing our thoughts and figuring out a way to best address this. Simple things such as "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was upsetting anyone, I'll try not to tone down the arguing" etc works rather well, and is very easy to do- despite that, it is also incredibly appreciated.
4. "Yes, I've read what you've said, Allakai, but I'm not letting you have the cake and eat it, too."
I don't have much to say on this except again, it is very assertive and this is getting a bit more on the side of posting that I was hoping to avoid.
5. "No, I'm not trying to meet Neinbox halfway, because the arguments presented I find to be flaccid."
I would not be bringing any of this up if I nor others were finding your character difficult to interact with ICly and frustrating OOCly. The main argument here is that we all have the concern that while argumentative characters aren't entirely a bad thing, she goes absolutely overboard. To completely dismiss the concerns of others in such a fashion is downright rude and honestly irresponsible. This post isn't meant to outright ban or harm you OOCly in any way and yet you act as if it is there to personally attack you with the way of how you assertively defend her actions. Complaint forums are meant to be a place where all parties involved can voice their concerns and attempt to understand one another and come to a compromise with one another. So far the exact opposite has happened; everyone spoke about what bothered them and instead of attempting to understand their concern about Vellen's IC actions you OOCly attack them despite the fact that they have not even come anywhere near attempting the same.
6. "Mary's rebellious nature and aversion against theoretical thinking make her think less of people in leadership positions, yet she has friends there and is even dating command."
This has nothing to do with the post whatsoever. It's not about her relationship with others, this post is strictly about whether or not her seemingly outright rebellious nature is considered appropriate and realistic with how frequently she has had arguments with the team and head of staff. I am not making assumptions of Vellen outside of the fact that she seems to be needing a talking-to every single game and it is strictly work-related. Sid has not approached her whatsoever outside of just being co-workers because usually by that time she has been spoken to about her work ethics he is fed up with her, she is hauled off, or she runs off somewhere else. There has literally been no chance for him to ICly interact with her as a character and not as a co-worker because her projects usually get her in trouble first from my point of view, and by then he no longer wants to put up with her and instead cool off and relax. Sid cannot be faulted for behaving in a way that his character is meant to.
Perhaps had she told everyone the project she wanted to work on and gotten permission and allowed others the chance to work with them instead of keeping radio-silent about it, he would have been eager to help and perhaps even gotten the chance to know Vellen while they observed teamwork with one another and thus have a different opinion, but as I said, Vellen has disallowed such opportunities. Sid doesn't generally care what people do, but when it involves dangerous materials and technology, you're breaking his trust if you don't communicate your intentions with them because he sees it as a threat; he's been through one too many accidents with every thing and has experienced everything that could have gone wrong at
least once due to the negligence of incompetent co-workers. I know that trust is earned, but Sid operates a bit differently; he gives everyone just enough trust for him to give you a chance in the shift if he's in a good mood because he already has a strong dislike for people in general. If you do something that makes him not trust in you, that's it for the rest of the day. When she behaves like that, he shuts down. "His loss", whatever, I know. But you explained something about Vellen, so I'm explaining something about him in turn.
TL;DR big-time if you don't care to read it all, which I don't blame you:
Generally, I'm not appreciating your OOC approach. This is a platform meant for people to come and discuss their concerns and attempt to come to an understanding and hopefully an agreement, which I am in want of. Not one person here has spoken negatively about you OOCly in a negative way nor have they judged you in such a way, but so far you are beginning to communicate in an almost hostile way and attacking players and deflecting the situation back to them and also their characters. Our main concern is that the character is far too rebellious and argumentative to be realistically employed without undergoing a review or some sort of correction etc because it is problematic and overall stressful to deal with because realistically, that would create a danger in their profession.
I have read through every single post and read every single word by every single user, and all of them are valid within their own rights for their feelings, thoughts, and opinions. If there wasn't a problem or a disagreement, no one would be posting and this thread would not have been created at all. I personally made this thread so I can attempt to reach an understanding with you, my main concern being that your character is
too argumentative ICly and is OOCly a bit frustrating to deal with and was hoping that you could perhaps tone it down so there
could be a chance to get some positive interactions for others to change their opinions of the character both ICly and OOCly. I
know that there is a chance of a good character being there, but the opportunity for quite a few of us has not presented itself for us. And for those who have gotten the chance either got along well enough off the bat, or had to fight tooth and nail first before they could do so. But not everyone has the resolve to do so, and when a character has become so frustrating to deal with that it starts upsetting a player OOCly, there is in fact a problem.
This is supposed to be a
game, something
fun, and I'd like to make it that way again. After reading Brimcon's response I have hope that there is in fact a chance for me to understand Vellen in an IC perspective when Sid interacts with her. So please, reconsider your approach to this situation. I hope that you can come to the same conclusion. Admin interaction doesn't have to happen. All that I want from you after a little consideration on my part is just a bit of toning-down Vellen's rebellious nature to make it a little more believable and allow other characters to have a chance to get to know her.