Character Complaint: Willow Harper

[MattAtlas]

Popping in yet again to say that this complaint will be resolved by tomorrow.

[Bauser]

In Jackboot's world, getting smashed over the head with a bottle is an unrealistic consequence of making insulting gestures at someone bigger than you in a bar. The defense rests, eh?

But really. Truth is, JB, you don't know what that player intended to do - because, as you say, they didn't continue to brutally maul you. And the same discrepancies of interpretation apply for Willow; there is always the blameless possibility that two players will interpret the same situation and tensions in very different ways. If you're truly only concerned about fine-tuning Harper's character so that hostilities stay under control, then this topic is not an appropriate outlet for you. You should talk to Rosetango in private messages or on Discord - as should many of the complainants here. The function of a character complaint is to allege wrongdoing and enact discipline. And it is not appropriate to resort to OOC conflict on the simple basis that you have been unsuccessful in resolving your IC frustrations.

[Faris]

The administration is aware that not the whole character is irredeemable. Yes, there are certain tendencies which do brush against the rules and in some instances outright violate them, that doesn't disqualify Willow Harper as a character that can exist.

An example of one I've recently resolved and their part of it was being investigated by another moderator. I'm not personally handling this complaint but I feel it's beneficial to add certain insight to what we know and what we're looking at here. This example

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=11979#p107069

Has Willow Harper threaten physical violence to a person that was asking questions unrelated to Willow herself, with no prior interaction. The other character retorts and Willow Harper resorts to breaking into their workplace with a maglight. That's two reinforced glass panels and a grill, showing strong intent for major physical harm to a person over a very minor verbal confrontation that Willow initiated. With this example, I'm trying to emphasize that we aren't going to interfere with a player in this context based on people throwing around personal gripes, but rather actual proof.

Is the administration considering some action? Yes, this action could range from feedback to other more extreme things, player history in mind.

Are we assuming everything posted or said as complete truths? No. Every post is reviewed and evidence extracted, personal gripes irrelevant unless they directly correlate with our rules and server culture.

Do we plan to be fair here? Yes, the ones handling this complaint have no intention to rush this.

Are we planning to use this complaint as a platform for the player in question to improve primarily? Yes, all punishments even certain bans are used in an attempt to improve or curb certain behavior.

Now to the people that have posted here or those that plan to post.

Stay on topic, this means that the posts should be constructive and focus on the complaint itself only. Any off-topic post made will be removed and met with a reminder to remain on topic.

Do not use ad hominem. This means do not attack a person's character (character in this case meaning the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual). You are expected to argue the presented ideas, not the person. If someone were to attack you, don’t take matters into your own hands, report it to us.

No flame wars. No trolling. Self-explanatory.

IC issues that are not in violation of OOC rules should be taken to the Incident Report section of the forums, to be sorted out by the Duty Officers.

 

Keep your posts constructive. Saying action needs to be taken without further adding any proof of anything that the staff needs to correct only saturates the thread, a thread which staff have to filter through every post and extract anything of merit to the investigation.

Arguments for the sake of arguments only serves to derail this, while certain positions here are commendable in that we have people coming forward for or against the character here, keep it factual and backed with evidence. Your testimonies do count as evidence but it's also important to add things we can verify. "X happened." may have very well happened, but we can't take it as a fact because at the same time it might not have happened without something to prove it.

Additionally, for a lack of better words, white knighting doesn't serve much here.

[Bauser]

Using my name might have been better words, I can take it. But your response is reassuring, thank you. We share the goal of seeing that purely rhetorical claims and personal dispositions remain excluded from the review process.

[Doxxmedearly]

Rose is a good person OOCly, and so I owe it to her to post here and be honest. Some of my characters are friends with Willow, some are just on good terms, others are neutral, and some outright hate her. But there is merit to the posts being presented here, regardless of IC or OOC feelings, and after asking staff if I should post my own experiences, I have decided to.

There are two notable experiences that come to mind. The first is one that Abo has pointed out; I was ghosting and witnessing that event, and it seemed very extreme. This is not reasonable or believable escalation. This is breaking through walls to attack someone who called you a dick in response to your aggressive threat.

The second is seeing Willow place individuals into a cryotube. A janitor does not know how to use this, no matter what you say about first aid. While the in-game mechanics are simplified to "Shove them in and flip the switch," realistically, it needs a professional to operate. When I brought this up in LOOC/OOC (Abrasively, I admit on my end. I apologize for the passive-aggressive nature), she said something to the tune of "Fuck me for making sure people have a good round, right?"

It is not your job to break immersion and do things beyond your knowledge to make sure others get in the round. Additionally, since this was after transfer on the Odin, it's a very weak argument. I have seen this behavior as consistent; while I'm not against her using first aid, the tendency to rush to give others medical treatment is quite frustrating. This rushing in to emergencies (especially regarding medical) has already been brought up. I think more effort needs to be made to curb this, considering I witnessed this after the prior complaint was resolved. When questioned about why she does this, she has stated, both ICly and OOCly, that it is because medical responds too slow. IMO this is still not a good reason to be the first one rushing to help cries over comms when medical is active. This removes RP from EMTs/Paramedics. It's more understandable if it's a friend, of course, but the point remains.

As well, there is still the issue of arguing constantly over comms (especially with antags), but I've seen her improve this behavior, even if it is not gone. I think this is something that needs to be addressed ICly, though.

That's all the testimony I have to add to this. Rosetango, might I suggest making a feedback thread in addition to your asking people to communicate with you privately? You may get more critique that way.

[Rosetango]

Alright! I'm going to take this basically person by person, considering how many people have replied to this situation, going in order from the first page to this one. They'll be under spoilers because I don't want this post to clog up the entire page.

Neinbox:

I'm going to go point by point.

Yes, her initial creation was timid and shy, and in a majority of cases, she still can be. Willow has very few people she actually considers her friends. But as time went on, yes, she became more volatile for two main reasons. The first one being that she was constantly disrespected by a lot of people and that stress will take a toll on people. It's like a rubber band, the further they are pulled apart, the more stress is applied. When the rubber band can no longer handle that stress, they snap. This is exactly what happened and is happening to Willow, and I personally believe it peaked in late June, early July where, unbeknownst to a lot of the crew, Willow had a breakdown. The second reason is an integral part of her that has been always present, even from the beginning. Willow knows she has a high tolerance for pain, and Willow knows what she can and can't endure. Therefore she has assigned herself a sort of "guardian" role. What this means is that if she believes somebody does not have a voice, cannot or won't stand up for themselves, etcetera, Willow will move in to call the aggressor out and instead take the hits, functioning as a kind of shield. Whether crew realizes this or not, Willow will stand up for you, even if she doesn't like you, if she believes something unjust was happening. She will throw aside her dislikes in order to ensure that you receive proper medical care and stay alive in emergency situations. Except her playing this role has caused her to take on an unhealthy kind of mindset. "I am a strong defender figure to a lot of people. I cannot show emotion or weakness, lest people see a way to exploit me, and I lose that figure."

As a side note, Willow does not only protect her friends, and I'm certain that the people whose characters are certain Harper hated them can verify that if Willow can help you, even if she doesn't like you, she will and has done so in the past. When Willow gets mad at Shane and attacks him, it's because she clearly and explicitly told him to stop doing something that actively aggravates her and he continues to do it. For the last two or three weeks, Willow has had a chat with a psyche and come to certain understandings about Shane, so when he does things to aggravate Harper, she instead refuses to give him any kind of reaction at all. As in, she ignores him.

Onto the actual thing that caused this complaint!

Willow had come in to check on medbay and see if she could offer any help and Julian had her come to the sleeper to keep pressing the Dexalin button. As Willow spoke with Avery, Willow formed a conclusion. Sid had, from what knowledge she had, taken a leader-like role in Engineering. In the chaos that ensued, intentional or not, Sid had rushed the other engineering members to fix X, Y and Z areas. When Willow found out that Avery had forgotten his internals because of this rushing, Willow came to a conclusion that Sid, once again intentional or not, had pushed Ave past his limits and worked him beyond his normal pace and because of the stress placed on him, he had forgotten his internals. To Willow, one of the integral parts of being a leader is knowing what the limits of your men are. Combined with her previous knowledge of Sid constantly harassing Avery for his engine set up (from what she understood), she knew that the presence of Sid was something that Avery did not need. She didn't care about what Sid had said to her earlier, she blamed Sid for pushing Avery beyond his limits. Stating very clearly that Willow did not want Sid in the room was her first warning. When he disregarded her and came closer, she was not looking for a fight, but rather a way to increase the distance between them and make it clear, once again, that his presence was not appreciated. I'm not clear on what exactly provoked Sid to start clawing Harper in the face, as she openly stated to him before that, that she was not looking for a fight. Only reasons I can really think of are the stress placed on him and the spark that caused him to claw her was her throwing him. Yes, OOCly, I did not mean to throw him that far, that was my fault and I understand that.

 

TBear:

I don't recall Willow actually threatening to destroy you, but I could be misremembering. I was a little OOCly peeved because I was kind of getting tired of the gimmick, and that was my fault, and I apologize. The thing is, she knows the borg is violent, or at least capable of it, but she doesn't know for a fact how far that'll go. She really only had the intent to tell the borg off, or otherwise intimidate them into leaving Anya alone, not starting a fight.

As for the second incident, I don't recall enough about it, so I can't really respond.

 

Resi:

Answered by Bauser, essentially.

 

Brutishcrab:

Willow was agitated that the HoS refused to take her seriously both times. She broke in because that was literally the only way she had in and I don't recall if you were present or not. I had no idea that you had issues with Harper as you never came to me in DMs about it, like I've asked people to do so, and I know for a fact that you can message me on Discord.

 

Butter:

Answered by Coalf, never brought up in DMs on Discord which I know he has, and I've begged relentlessly in OOC for people to come to me.

 

Jackboot:

I need more information on what two incidents you're referring to, so I can make an accurate analyzation and fix my mistake. You never tried to contact me on Discord about this, either.

 

Doxx:

Yeah, I admitted in the AHelp I think that I knew I had gone a little too far, and if I didn't, I certainly meant to and let it be known now that I do realize that I went too far. I can't recall a time in the past few weeks where I've had to tend to a person when medical is present. As for the cryotube stuff, as I've said repeatedly, it is literally in her employment records that Willow has EMT knowledge. Sorry if this comes off as aggressive, I'm just getting tired of repeating it. I can't really think of a time recently where Willow rushed to an emergency to actually give first aid, usually she rushes to the scene if possible to stay in the know and help distribute info to the crew, as she believes that Security is absolute shit at communication.

 

Also, I agree with basically most if not all of what Bauser is saying. He's saying it better than I ever could. Beyond that, I see two major complaints: a lack of fear RP (which I need more clarification on?) and escalation. I can understand in some cases where escalation can be an issue. As I've tried to explain before, Willow is working hard on fixing herself. It's not going to be instant, but I think she has shown significant improvement compared to how she was towards the end of June. Sure, she slips up, but that's because Willow is far from perfect. She's literally designed to be neither definitively good or evil, she can be both.

[Zundy]

I've seen Willow in the background both actually in character and observing and understand where folks are coming from. In the nicest possible way the character comes across as high key manic and ICly is pushing into getting canonically fired for gross misconduct, canonically fired for failing a psych exam or on the extreme end, getting canonically whacked by in character gangsters. The character concept on its own is fine as far as I can see, it's just the escalation that's a bit off i.e. going straight violence and face to face confrontation. If you want the end game for the character to be either of those three former things then that's fine, let us know in here and folks will be ahppy to arrange that end game and I'm being serious, some players have genuinely crafted their characters with those end games in mind and that's fine. If you don't want that then it's a case of either dialing it down right away (reduce to shit flinging verbally at the extreme case unless the other party goes to fists then fair play) or have a personal arc where the character meets with a psychiatrist on the regular to resolve her issues.

As it stands if you keep her as is it's getting into the realms of staff interference and I don't thing anyone wants that. That's my opinion anyway.

[Rosetango]

Thank you, Zundy! I don't think it's really time to end Willow's whole arc yet, so I'll probably do a combination of what you offered, plus what Jackboot said. I'll probably make a feedback thread sooner or later like Doxx suggested, probably after this complaint is closed. The only problem is finding a consistent psychiatrist to treat her (who will actually understand what Harper needs and what I'm going for).

[MoondancerPony]

I had this typed up two or so days ago and never hit submit, so sorry if some of this is redundant, but:

First, I believe what appears to be the basic premise first addressed in the complaint (a character was intended to be this way, but is now a different way) is perfectly fine and not an issue. I'm not entirely sure why it was included, but it doesn't hamper or help the complaint.

Second, I will say that while I've had some very good RP experiences with Harper, I've noticed some issues with interfering with Security matters. Specifically during a canon event, she said she was EMT-trained and barged in to confront the antagonist of the event, who was supposedly her friend. Now, this antagonist had previously gaslit characters, so this was understandable, but despite her being covered in blood she continued to insist on treating her-- despite Medical being on-site, and despite the CMO having been shot by her-- and then sprayed her with space cleaner, erasing all evidence that was on her. I then informed her that there are no Good Samaritan laws in Tau Ceti, an attempt to give her an excuse to... you know, not blatantly interfere and have an easy out of the situation. She continued shouting and interfering with a security situation as I kept explaining that treating her as a civilian could get her into legal trouble.

I enjoy Willow Harper as a character, but I have some issues with how she's played during conflicts. That said, the specific incident in the OP isn't much of an issue to me.

 

Atop of her past minor assaults upon Shane and possible other employees and lack of general fear RP, this character has become very wearing to experience in rounds and ruins the immersion of a believable character. There's no way a company would tolerate such childlike, impulsive, or aggressive behavior of this scale from an employee and realistically would have fired her.

I don't think this behavior is nearly as common as you're making it out to be, except with Castralo. I would appreciate if that were toned down a little, but I've even seen Heads of Staff threaten him, and then encourage Harper to threaten and assault him, so I don't believe it's a problem with Harper on her own. I've seen Harper played as a decent, believable character, even reasonably bright at times. At other times, to put it bluntly, she seems to lose all higher-level brain activity in order to 'protect her friends'. While some degree of protectiveness is expected, in blatantly dangerous and antagonistic situations, I think it would be better to try exploring how Willow reacts when she can't help her friends. Does she react with horror? Rage? Does she shut down and hide until it's over? How our characters react when they're powerless says a lot about them.

All in all, I acknowledge that Harper has some issues, but I think they could be resolved through discussion and without administrative action. Simply a toning-down of escalation would do wonders, along with everything else I stated.

[ToasterStrudel]

Alright, it goes without saying that Willows characteristics need to change to match our servers escalation rules. This complaint comes in after myself and some other staff members were looking into an incident which resulted in the characters death, and we had almost concluded then that something needs to change. It was around that time where this complaint popped up and reassured my feeling on the issue.

I like Willow as a character, but I feel that the character goes a bit overboard sometimes. They instigate the start of fights that usually tend to be 0-100 situation, with hardly any buildup. We encourage conflicts within the player-base between character fighting, but when its a two sentence conversation that instigates a brawl, its unacceptable. I can completely understand a fight that happened because of bickering between each other for multiple rounds, but this isn't the case with Willow.

From how I see it, Willow is a character that wants to be the center or attention, and demands that they are just that, and should anyone else say otherwise, or insult them, they are going to start a conflict with them. This character design is not acceptable.

With this being said we go to the conclusion of the staff complaint. You've been warned for something very similar to this in the past, about three months ago.

 

Willow needs a to change as a character. This whole flying-off-the-handle attitude on a lot of situations needs to come to a stop. Staff will be more than happy to work with you on making the character acceptable in terms of personality, but otherwise, they can no longer be what they are now.

[Rosetango]

Willow isn't a character who wants to be the center of attention, but I can see why she comes across that way. Either way, I think I know what I need to do and it would help if people actually gave me feedback and told me what was wrong. I swear, I'm really not that scary of a person in DMs, and it usually helps me if you contact me right after the incident.

Either way, it seems that escalation is a major issue here which is something I can probably end without admin intervention. Then it would be handling the fear RP aspect, something I still don't quite have an understanding of, which I probably could discuss with admins once I think I have a good enough grip on escalation. The only thing I'm really upset about is the absolute lack of people even telling me what was wrong. I really do want to be a better roleplayer, and I will admit, yes, sometimes I have trouble taking criticism, but I'm only human, I'm not perfect and I'm improving every day.

I hope that in the end, people will take this as an invitation to reach out to me and talk to me about what they think I could do better with Harper. After posting this, I'm going to go ahead and open a feedback thread. Thank you all for coming forward with these issues, and I can't make any promises, but I can say that I will try my best to improve Harper.

[ToasterStrudel]

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