[RP] Character Complaint: Mary Louise Vellen

[Nik707]

Right.

So having read most of the responses, Vellen's included, I have to say that I feel they hit the nose with it. It's amazing how much people mis-perceive things based on their own personal feelings. They are entirely correct that they are often spoken of as if they'd been demoted several times, and are constantly in trouble. Realistically, that isn't the case. They're nowhere near as bad as they get colored to be, and most of the people who've issues with them, as I've said before, are people who don't put in the effort and seem to want everyone to be easy to socialize with. The reality is, throughout life there will be people you won't like, people you won't easily get along with, people who won't want to be everyone's friend. You have to deal with that. Just as you would here, in this situation. I see nothing here that is worthy of any OOC consequence, if nothing else she's probably riding the line of a temp suspension from Engineering though IC means based on attitude. But, she isn't breaking rules. She's just difficult to get along with, but approaching her with the right attitude is all it takes. Uwasv literally can't seem to do that, and any time she's around he jumps to being a dick about it. Like when he left immediately after shift start after saying in engineering comms to "suck his dicks." Sometimes you just have to grow up, tbqh.

[Kazkin]

I have little contention with Vellen IC or OOC despite her very blatant antagonistic behavior. I and by extension my character have very thick skin. To quote a friend who plays on the server "I'd need a foot long knife to draw blood Kaz, that is how thick your skin is." As such how Vellen acts even being a jerk directly to me doesn't matter to me. Equally, in my original post I pointed out the debatable actions IC as I have no concrete evidence besides what I was directly involved in and saw myself first hand. My posting was more looking at the simple fact that Vellen is so heavily hated by her fellow team member and multiple members of command that she actively brings down the quality of roleplay of the server and causes people not to play.This extends beyond engineering and applies to security and command as well. This I have seen first hand both IC and OOC. I have nothing against the player or his character but that is due to my thick skin and perspective. I'm not even opposed to IC relations even after all this. I put my input, as rushed and typo laden as it was before I got ready for work in the morning, because I've seen enough to understand the issue.

Outright dismissing all criticism and denying responsibility for any actions is not a good way of looking at it. Their wasn't even an attempt to meet Neinbox halfway and come to an understanding. Just because consequence was narrowly escaped in character so far does not absolve you of any wrong doing. The problem others have is you make the game unfun. This is a common enough sentiment among more than a handful of people that it becomes concerning.

[Nik707]

Saying they make the game "unfun" is entirely subjective, and honestly seems pretty hard to stand by from an OOC punishment standpoint. I have plenty of fun with Vellen, for instance. You can say anyone you dislike makes RP "unfun," the answer usually is.. to avoid that person.

[Allakai]

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. Why is this important is that, again, the attitude of the opposition shows a pattern of latching onto any possible catalyst - if something bad was said about Mary, don't ask her for her opinion, just trust the word and spread it. 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.

This, is amusing. I am the officer that arrested Vellen. So the point of everything I said was 'hearsay' is laughably and demonstrably false. You painting yourself as a victim and claiming I do not know what I am talking about when. I was the one that was dealing with Vellen and had put up with her outlandishly rude behavior.

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.

I don't think you have read any of the responses Nein, Kaz, or myself have stated. Waving your hand with dismissal and saying everything is false and 'if we just look at the logs' doesn't clear Vellen's actions. Vellen's actions and behavior is more than just 'unfun'. It is to the point where very few people want at all to interact with Vellen. And at the absolute worst, multiple departments do not trust her. If it is seen that your character is on the manifest and several people want to leave, that is not good. You must understand that this is more than just 'she isnt fun'.

[snow n' chrysanthemums]

I was a ghost on the mutiny and then a CMO as Zuo during the red alert. I have not had significant contact with MLV before this at all.
Icly, Zuo is a zealot in a sense. He was for executing every one of the mutineers, mainly because he is vindictive and won't tolerate people questioning him, or any other command staff. Old fashion aristocrat is what he is. Although, he does end up realizing that may be a bad move and leaves the execution of the others aside from Dallas to their discretion.

OOCly however: I think if the actions Vellen did (stealing the stamp, telling their boss to fuck off, etc) is unacceptable. Some heads may tolerate it to a degree, but anyone doing this multiple times will get fired the second they step off station.

Regarding the whole "Forced into the act thing", unless she was at gun point, I literally do not think that would be acceptable. Mainly because mutiny would likely end up in an execution, and the fact that they can literally go to IA or the captain with a pda message of "I'm being blackmailed /whatever". The reason is simple. It would be in IA (and thus NT's) interest to fire blackmailers (Although, to the degree Vellen would be taken seriously is another matter).

Edit: A "cotton" in every sentence might be a bad accent, but one of the chars I play literally drops all his h's and other syllables. If I am doing something wrong please tell me.

[Foxfoxfox]

Hey again,

thanks to those for keeping the debate going. I read everything is continuing in a rather civil manner, apart from a few irrelevant hiccups, which is pretty nice. So, let's keep that productive approach going, everyone.

First I would like to note that the discussion has gone through quite a shift. As you can read in Neinbox's original post, the angle they discuss is that M.L. Vellen is an "unbelievable character", as quoted from the reason for the complaint. Now we seem to have stepped away from it, the topic is much vaguer and abstract, discussing the philosophy on which characters should be founded. "Unfun" being key word thrown into the ring, I'm not sure how to interpret this, are the people arguing against my character retreating into the abstract to shift goalposts? I don't know. 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. As Nik said, it could be twisted either way, yet the argument here is being presented like "unfun" solely applies to Mary Lou. I'm not going to stop you, there may be an argument there, but if you want to actually form something that is worth listening to - define it. 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.

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.

I am sticking to my story that the vast bulk of complaints against Louise are inflated and I'd like to bolster my defence. If any administrator can spare little time, they can check the playtime in my player panel, I know from other servers that it is divided into the various jobs, so you can easily tell the time I spent in her shoes by adding the percentages. 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. In the original post it reads "constantly breaking corporate regulations", but as Nik said, realistically this isn't the case, and frankly, it is an absolutely absurd claim to begin with.

Allakai, you may have been present during the event, but you still stated the wrong information. Twisting information to have Sid a more favourable job type than he actually picked. Skewing information from an SM engine to a Tesla, which only serves to make the atmos technician seem less favourable. And of course, after having Mary repeat her arguments in front of you in both the engine room and the brig, all you could remember is "for whatever reason". Despite you being there, your unwillingness to find a piece of empathy inside you to consider Mary's perspective for just a moment has lead you to a perspective in the quality range of Chinese whispers. My point that you responded to, that my opposition developed an incredibly hostile tunnel vision on all Vellen issues, stands uncorrected, despite your answer.

Yes, I've read what you've said, Allakai, but I'm not letting you have the cake and eat it, too. Regarding your earlier post, I fail to understand how you can play an emotionless, soulless, security equivalent of the drone from Alien:Isolation, even going as far as actively choosing to engage with Vellen, when two other officers offered to take over the case for you, yet there you are, complaining that she insulted your character, that has no capacity for feeling insulted, while you made a conscious descission to roleplay with me. I also fail to understand how you can complain against Vellen's failure to follow standard operating procedures, yet in the same post complain that she uses legal texts to defend herself, you don't get to have that double standard.

No, I'm not trying to meet Neinbox halfway, because the arguments presented I find to be flaccid. There is a regular non sequitur I keep reading here, people tend to equate an action against their roleplay persona as something that unpleasant and undesirable by default. An example would be the case involving Allakai in the role of the officer, Sid and Lucifer: do note how Allakai presents Mary showing his character a middle finger as something that fundamentally should be avoided. I'd like to note that Lucifer, being the main adversary of Mary in that whole case, despite the Vulp throwing insults and twisting laws as far as possible, despite robbing the CD of an hour of their time for a low-level infraction, actually came up to me OOCly afterwards and jokingly said that they should "get Lucifer to arrest you more often", point being, not everyone equates an unpleasant IC event to being displeased OOCly, a good portion of players feels the opposite way, they value good roleplay instead. And I'd argue even, that those people are right, your inability to detach yourself from your character is your own problem. Roleplaying is a niche form of entertainment, if you do not bring the traits required with you necessary to get some distance between you and your avatar, and feel like leaving when you see a certain name on the manifest instead of grabbing the opportunity for character development, then don't make it my problem, you're on your own here. I'm not saying that conflict is the foundation of fun and that all things need pain to be enjoyable, I'm merely pointing out that the many cases presented here in the vain of "Mary acted badly against a character." do not equate to "Mary is an unfun character." by default. No, and a good chunk of the players that played with me are aware that it has quite the potential to be the opposite.
Though, this is all drifting away from the original complaint reason and getting into a much more broader discussion on the nature of writing a character.

I'd like to end this post by revealing a little IC information, just to help break the narrative that is being created against the girl.

Mary Lou may have her difficulties with security, yet she has more than one friend in the department. 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. Why is that? Because Mary is not fundamentally on the offensive against everything around her, as some people in this thread seem to think, she has more than enough capacity to break through bias. Take Scryden Sako for instance, a Tajara that developed such a distaste for the Vulp lady, that he'd make sure to make a comment akin to "Not her again..." every time he checked the manifest, he would go on to demote her not once, but twice and his blood would boil to the point where he would greet her with "Fuck you!" only from having her in the same room as her. Scry and Mary have mended their bridge now. What did it take Sako to perform such a feat of social interaction? A single PDA message. Mary tends not to bite a hand when you reach and offer it to her. Characters like Sid do not have what it takes to give up their comfort for just a second to make a relationship work and as such, create their own suffering.

Thanks again for reading.

[Allakai]

Allakai, you may have been present during the event, but you still stated the wrong information. Twisting information to have Sid a more favourable job type than he actually picked. Skewing information from an SM engine to a Tesla, which only serves to make the atmos technician seem less favourable. And of course, after having Mary repeat her arguments in front of you in both the engine room and the brig, all you could remember is "for whatever reason". Despite you being there, your unwillingness to find a piece of empathy inside you to consider Mary's perspective for just a moment has lead you to a perspective in the quality range of Chinese whispers. My point that you responded to, that my opposition developed an incredibly hostile tunnel vision on all Vellen issues, stands uncorrected, despite your answer.

Yes, I've read what you've said, Allakai, but I'm not letting you have the cake and eat it, too. Regarding your earlier post, I fail to understand how you can play an emotionless, soulless, security equivalent of the drone from Alien:Isolation, even going as far as actively choosing to engage with Vellen, when two other officers offered to take over the case for you, yet there you are, complaining that she insulted your character, that has no capacity for feeling insulted, while you made a conscious decisions to roleplay with me. I also fail to understand how you can complain against Vellen's failure to follow standard operating procedures, yet in the same post complain that she uses legal texts to defend herself, you don't get to have that double standard.

I do not even know where to begin in this entire thing. I am truly and absolutely baffled. First I would like to say you are back pedaling on your words. You claim everything I know is hearsay and made up, then when proven wrong I suddenly still have all the wrong information. You have done absolutely nothing to make me want to meet you halfway at all as you yourself admit you will not meet Neinbox halfway, so why should I extend you the same favor? I would see eye to eye with you. Sure Vellen is 'a strong and rebllious character'. Which is a fine trait, sure. What is not fine; however, is that that Vellen takes a fine trait and turns it into what has to be one of the most uninteresting and downright annoying flaws in a character. She does not act professionally. If that were the case, she would not have been demoted several times and have several departments, including her own, despise her.

I am not skewing information as Neinbox had actually corrected me. I am not an engineer, I did not know what the engine was. To which Neinbox thankfully corrected me on and directly quoted me, go back and read Neinbox's post with my quote. Because if you had read it, to which you said, then there would be no issue and that point of the argument would have ended. Yet due to you wanting to argue this point, fine it will continue. Vellen was an atmospherics technician trying to do the Supermatter engine. Yet, why does it matter? Because Vellen, I will say again: an atmospherics technician does not have the authority over the engine when there is literally an engine technician on staff. Instead of persistently claiming I do not know what I am talking about, why not bring this up now instead of just saying vague statements? You have done little to actually prove me wrong that Vellen was not over reacting and acting incredibly rude and DISOBEYING security commands as well as a command member's orders.

Regarding your earlier post, I fail to understand how you can play an emotionless, soulless, security equivalent of the drone from Alien:Isolation, even going as far as actively choosing to engage with Vellen, when two other officers offered to take over the case for you

This actually is my favorite part of your post. I can play an emotionless and soulless machine, because I am capable of more than one personality. I can play in impartial and unbiased character that does its duty. I have a notepad with easy copy and paste phrases because well, its an automated machine, one of my quotes I remember using it "You will report to security". You do know what your action was? You did not do such until you were forced to do so by security. Tell me, how is that good employee behavior? Would a mature, understanding, and dare I say, professional character be so absolutely childish as to not just come to security to pay a fine of 500 Thaler or spend 5 minutes in the brig over something they clearly were in the wrong for? Yet instead Vellen went out of her way to make it so unbelievably difficult no one wanted to deal with it anymore. That is not professional or mature behavior. That is childish behavior.

I'd like to end this post by revealing a little IC information, just to help break the narrative that is being created against the girl.

You keep saying you are professional but here you are saying the Vellen is just a girl. She is a grown woman that is receiving the consequences of her actions.

do note how Allakai presents Mary showing his character a middle finger as something that fundamentally should be avoided.

The fact you are simplying the entire scenario and only demonizing me and making me look like I cannot handle rude gestures is eye-rolling. Mary Louise Vellen was asked several times to report to security to pay a fine. To which she flipped an officer off who was being relatively neutral to the whole situation. That behavior is something a child would do.

Vellen is very much believable, employable, profitable even when it comes to her employer's perspective.

Considering how she has been demoted several times and is a constant issue with security. I do not think so.

[Simon_the_miner]

Heya, player of Vack Tinav here as per request of both Nienbox and Allakai to give my own two cents with Vellen. To start this out (especially because I play a synthetic who is capable of only simulating emotions to a decent level of accuracy), I want to quickly bring this comment up.

I fail to understand how you can play an emotionless, soulless, security equivalent of the drone from Alien:Isolation, even going as far as actively choosing to engage with Vellen, when two other officers offered to take over the case for you, yet there you are, complaining that she insulted your character, that has no capacity for feeling insulted, while you made a conscious descission to roleplay with me.

Vack Tinav does fit some of these modifiers, and I've had some brief (although not very pleasant) interactions with Vellen as him. Vellen has told Vack that he has no sense of humor, nor prioritization of what's important when it comes to leading an engineering team on the first shift he had ever served as command staff, ever (as well as my first shift doing so). This was all because Vack made it clear to Vellen that he was not planning on screwing around or allowing anything possibly dangerous and or stupid because it was his first shift and he wanted to make as good of a first impression as possible in hopes of a future promotion to chief engineer. I will also add that this was while Vack was in the chief engineers office (aka shortly after he walked in) Vellen followed him in without even checking if it was ok for her to enter (although Vack never said anything about it). While she was in the office she demanded that Vack teach her something new, and when Vack responded with "What would you like to learn" she responded that she wanted Vack to decide. Vack offered to teach her basic emergency synthetic repair and she blew that off as well. While in the office she picked up the stamp and stamped a paper she wrote reading soley "I do what I want" with the CE's stamp, right in front of Vack. Vack took the stamp and kept it on himself for the remainder of the shift because if Vellen was willing to pick up and stamp a random paper she wrote herself he thought she would be willing to stamp anything she wanted and try to pass it off as legitimate; he is also going off of his own personal mildly negative experiences with her, including her getting mad at him for not being able to properly understand him and telling him not to touch her again after trying to help her up after they fell over from severe phoron poisoning. Vack was once again trying to make it clear that he did not want to ruin any chances of promotion this trial shift would bring. Vellen had also pressed the buttons in the chief engineers office after asking which one did what but before Vack could respond. I had an OOC thing I needed to attend to (IRL phone call, took a few minutes) and they did leave the office, when I came back the lights were off (not sure if it was out of courtesy to give other players the hint that I was AFK, or they just wanted to despite the tint being on the windows).

Fast forward to later in this same shift (the one the mutiny happened in) Vack asked Vellen to go repair a camera that had been damaged. Vellen asked where it was and Vack told her were, and gave layman's terms instead of "Starboard hallway" after some clarity was asked for. Vack leaves his office later to go look for the camera since it still wasn't repaired and Vellen is sitting in the engineering lobby talking about how she can smell the scent of dick on the head of securities' breath, with another officer, instead of fixing the camera I asked them to. I leave to go fix the camera, security called for Vellen over the radio and I told them to go to security and see what they needed help with at the time being (I was under the assumption there was a broken window or something, nothing major and that security didn't want to bother the chief engineer over it). As I'm looking for the camera I get called to the bridge because the HOS is being held hostage by his officers and Tam said she needed someone quickly to put the station into red alert. The whole mutiny stuff happens, we learn that Vellen let the officers inside the HOS's office and even disabled the camera for them, and the entire time Vellen didn't inform me of what was going on until I directly asked her over the engineering radio channel what she was doing and why she was doing it. Never was it mentioned by her that she was being pressured into it until the HOS said something about it, and even then it was still iffy coming from Vellen. ICly considering that Vack overheard the dick breath comment he was assuming that it wasn't true and that Vellen was participating by their own choice.

Later when Vack was informed that Vellen was deemed innocent and was indeed pressured into acting the way she was by agent sent by Central Command Vack sought them out to personally apologize over an earlier comment about his disappointment in her lack of communication and willingness to participate in the mutiny. Her response to the synth owning up to a mistake and apologizing for it was a direct insult to him and how he was a synth with no family (If I am recalling her exact words correctly), and that she no longer had any respect for her. Vacks response was that he lost respect for her inability to accept an apology over a miscommunication and that she thought it was acceptable to insult her at the time boss over his mistake. OOCly I was just so infuriated by the character at that point that I almost broke character to tell them to fuck off, say some other vulgar things to her, and go tell the rest of command that I wanted her removed from the department for as long as possible. I did stop myself before anything was said, wrapped the conversation up as quickly as I could and left. I spent the rest of that shift interacting as little as possible with Vellen, who went off to do whatever for the remainder of the shift while I continued on my own things. Now to tie this up with the quote, Vack is technically an emotionless, soulless machine who can only emulate emotions and ultimately still makes his choices entirely off of outcome in the end by using 1s and 0s.

Throughout the shift I technically had the option to flat out refuse to speak to Vellen and go about my business, it would have been incredibly poor RP and a very poor IC choice considering Vack's desire to make a great first impression in the role of CE, which typically requires communication with the engineering team. So when tam had directly asked me to figure out what kind of engine Vellen was building I went out and spoke to them. Turns out they weren't building anything, just trying to find people who were experts on what me and Tam presumed to be the Rust engine, since any attempt to clarify by the synth because of what Vack blamed to as poor translation errors to his original language resulted in minor insults and a direct repeat of the original phrase. I told Tam and made sure to specify (I even repeated it I believe) that Vellen was only looking for experts to ensure that the engine was going to be set up properly, assuming that it even does get set up, so the argument of me going out of my way to try and screw Vellen over for building an engine without initially communicating it is out the window. I will however admit that I do not enjoy finding out that someone was attempting to build a singularity engine without any proper permission on the surface level, and that all I was told was that it was an unauthorized singularity engine being built on the surface, not at all where or any other context. I was under the impression that a blatantly dangerous engine was being built too close to people for no other reason than because "I want to" and was on the edge with any engine in general due to having to rescue several SM engines (never fun and still kinda am, who wants to have a good round ruined by a tesla barging in to a super enjoyable RP interaction). This soulless and emotionless machine had all the chance to not ever have to speak with Vellen, instead I did because it was either expected of me as the Chief engineer that round or would have been poor form to walk out on a conversation like that when I had no IC reason to, or possibly would have broken the "Don't be a dick" rule by flat out ignoring and telling someone repeatedly to fuck off in Vack's special little way of "I do not wish to speak with you as I don't find it pleasurable or worth my time."

A final note, while I was in command for that one shift, almost everyone had grievances they ICly voiced about Vellen. All pretty much minor things that their own characters found about Vellen, but when you have a majority of your managing staff disliking and having issues with an employee, no matter how skilled they are, chances are they are going to let them go and find a replacement unless its a job that they literally can't find a replacement for (and the engineering department probably has enough people to do so).

[Brimcon]

Hello, Scryden here.

After reading through all these posts and mulling it over, I wanted to put in my own two thallers, while keeping it brief.

As one who has gone from utter hate of the character to tolerance and acceptance, I can say that I regret most of my actions against MLV and feel that most of them occurred due to her (in my opinion) near unreadable speech and rather aggressive attitude.

To further explain the first part, I as a player found it hard to read thus having my frustration leak into IC. This gave me the impression that the character was "Unfun" on the whole. I have already apologized both IC and now OOC, and while I do not interact much with the character as is, I have taken steps to mend a bridge I thought I had nuked to hell in the first place.

The Aggressive attitude is something that I believe we all have in some part of our characters due to how SS13 plays as a whole. While it does not excuse or allow one to ignore Rule 0, it is still very commonplace.

In the end, I feel there is a good character here, just someone who is very hard to work with, especially with many idealistic views of characters.

[Neinbox]

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.

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.

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.