Player Complaint - Carpe Venenum

[niennab]

BYOND Key: Niennab

Game ID: Not applicable (Lore Discord + DMs)

Staff involved: Not applicable (Lore Discord + DMs)

Reason for complaint: Multiple instances of breaking the ‘Dont be a Dick’ rule.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? No, these instances were in the Lore Discord as well as my Discord DMs.

Approximate Date/Time: Multiple instances from February 16th to March 1st.

Starting from February 16th, I have witnessed 3 separate instances where Carpe Venenum has been blatantly abusive to people in the Lore Discord and 1 instance where they came into my Discord DMs to call me a liar. I will however break down each instance below.

 

February 16th

The first instance was where on February 16th they came to the synth-general channel to inquire as to why the baseline chassis doesn’t have the Silversun accent. It’s a good question and but in my effort to explain why as well as get more information out of Carpe Venenum (as they were proposing a character concept), I was met with hostility, and a refusal to offer any discourse. This isn’t the worst instance but I believe the start of what was more of this behavior to follow.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

February 21st

In human-general, during a conversation about different human planet lore, Danse’s lore canonization application is posted by another player and Carpe Venenum immediately begins to insult the application. Danse, needing to leave and feeling frustrated, privated the document to which caused even more cruelty from Carpe Venenum. I find this behavior genuinely disgusting. No one should be treating anyone like this in the community.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

February 22nd

During a conversation about how human lore relates back to present date ethnicities, Carpe Venenum got unreasonably snappy with Omi before being called out.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

March 1st

After a discussion in both synth-general and synth-thinktank pertaining to both Bio-synthetic shells as well as the IPC Rework, Carpe Venenum opted to enter my DMs in order to tell me how they disagree with the reason for making IPCs modular. I explained how it’d clean up the subspecies, allow for hodge-podge IPCs and allow us to add the Unbranded frame into the mix. Admittedly I have no confirmation on the Unbranded frame being added, but I more than understand that the developers have 0 obligation to stick to any of the proposed documents. Something that I bring up in the conversation.

However, Carpe Venenum decided to say that I am ‘pulling a sneaky’ on the developers because I want to reduce the number of subspecies as well as get the unbranded frame in. Something that I still don’t follow, but it bothers me all the same. When I asked for confirmation, I offered that this conversation should be moved to a public space. I was uncomfortable, and I did not like the idea of a conversation like this being private. I do not appreciate being told I am being malicious when I am not, especially when they later claim I am trying to ‘weasel in’ the Unbranded frame.

At this point, after getting confirmation that I could do this, I blocked Carpe Venenum from engaging with me in my DMs.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

I believe these instances demonstrate an issue and one that will continue to repeat.

[Omicega]

Hi,

The player complaint rules tell me not to post if not involved, but since I'm directly referenced in evidence here I'm assuming that's enough "involvement" to warrant a post. If that's not the case, sorry!

I had no idea who Carpe was before the conversation I had with them in #human-general on the lore Discord. All I do know is that I saw a discussion about Aurora human lore drawing heavily off "X culture/ethnicity from present-day Earth but in space!!" and decided to get involved, because I think that kind of worldbuilding has some definite merit to it even if it's kind of unrealistic and hand-wavey from a real world point of view.

What I got out of it was (to me) an unreasonably aggressive back-and-forth with someone who doesn't know me at all, and while I was unfortunately stuck on mobile to boot. I've dealt with more than enough people using the same kind of dismissive, snippy, rapid-fire "umm" and "no?" argument templates both here on Aurora and in other places, and I felt entitled to call them out on it. What really annoyed me was the insincere apology afterwards -- or at least, an apology that I'm going to just flat out label as insincere. There's no actual proof of this beyond their continued behaviour, but similar faux-apologies are things I've had to climb past before, and personally I think I was about as gracious as I could be in turning it down. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now.

Anyone who knows me even vaguely here knows I have a temper that's probably even shorter than short. I've flown off the handle with people a few times; but when I'm actually pushing the boat out and apologising in good faith, I like to think I mean it.

 

I'm going to be really generous here and say that maybe it's just an issue with how Carpe words things, but given the continued pattern of behaviour here -- some of which I experienced personally as a first impression! -- I don't know if I'm really buying any of the repeated apologies for their tone, behaviour, or anything else as overly genuine. It feels like part one of the strategy is to piss off the other party debating you, and then when they call you out on it or, God forbid, lash back out, you retreat behind the time-tested apology/excuse hybrid shield and become immune from retaliation. I don't buy it, personally.

[Carpe Venenum]

4 minutes ago, Omicega said:

Anyone who knows me even vaguely here knows I have a temper that's probably even shorter than short. I've flown off the handle with people a few times; but when I'm actually pushing the boat out and apologising in good faith, I like to think I mean it.

We have the same issue here and that is also how I view things. Try to view it from my perspective. People are rarely as cold and calculating as you describe. That is not to say that you must accept my apology. You are entitled to your opinion on my actions and that's fine. I do not have any intentions to interact with you in this regard further.

[Garnascus]

Alrighty, i will number each of your seperate sources and give my opinion on each of them. Then we can go from there, please feel free to dispute anything i write here either of you. It seems to me you have a total of FOUR total sources

Source 1, February 16th. 

As far as actionable conduct is concerned i do not really see anything wrong with this source. I mean i have had my fair share of semi-heated arguments on the player discord. Its a little difficult for me to grasp the nuances of this particular lore argument but as i understand it nienna is the actual authority on the subject.

Source 2. February 21st. 

This one definitely has some issues. I would say carpe venenum definitely started off very rude and it seemed to immediately put danse on the defensive. So much so that he privated the original document that was brought up. Definitely not very cash money of carpe though i will say he does seem to aknowledge the behavior he exhibited there was not cool and apologized. Lets see if a pattern develops. 

Source 3. February 22nd. 

If i am understanding this correctly it seems omi brought up a particular lore topic that carpe venenum has written lore about. Carpe believed omi to be mistaken on a particular point and got very snappy with them. I have to say i do agree with this assesment. It does kind of feel like a "gotcha". Here at the end we see another apology for the behavior. I am not necessarily saying whether that is good or bad just that a pattern is certainly evident now. 

Source 4. March 1st. 

I think your assesment of carpe implying your proposed changes are malicious is fair. Carpe, i mean maybe there are nuances to this discussion that i am missing but i cannot see how reducing the number of sub-species by making IPCs modular instead is trying to be sneaky? What would be the underhanded goal there? It does seem like a bit of an attack.

So, @Carpe Venenum i do not want to insult you or talk down to you or anything. I do not really think the integrity of your apologies need to be questioned here. It does seem like you have this habit of going really hard at someone, apologizing and then doing it all over again later. I think it is fair for me to say and evident this behavior rubs people the wrong way. As the lore discord is an official part of our community we do have a vested interest in curbing this type of stuff. I do see your record is pretty clean. Can we take steps in the future to be kinder to the people in our community?

[niennab]

7 hours ago, Garnascus said:

If i am understanding this correctly it seems omi brought up a particular lore topic that carpe venenum has written lore about.

I don't know if this applies, and may be something that will require the human team to confirm over myself but, Carpe did not write Silversun. I have been told they offered ideas and suggestions however they have been claiming otherwise.

Edited March 3, 2021 by niennab
few words

[Carpe Venenum]

22 hours ago, Garnascus said:

So, @Carpe Venenum i do not want to insult you or talk down to you or anything. I do not really think the integrity of your apologies need to be questioned here. It does seem like you have this habit of going really hard at someone, apologizing and then doing it all over again later. I think it is fair for me to say and evident this behavior rubs people the wrong way. As the lore discord is an official part of our community we do have a vested interest in curbing this type of stuff. I do see your record is pretty clean. Can we take steps in the future to be kinder to the people in our community?

Absolutely, I have especially noted the comment from Omicega here regarding what exactly in my messages is indicative of tone, as well as a similar comment from DeadLantern on my Skrell deputy application and I will take care to prevent these speech patterns or at the very least notice them right away. Hopefully it is evident that I have used "lol" in such discussions a lot less since DeadLantern pointed the tonal implications to me because I genuinely did not think of it that way at the time. 

22 hours ago, Garnascus said:

I think your assesment of carpe implying your proposed changes are malicious is fair. Carpe, i mean maybe there are nuances to this discussion that i am missing but i cannot see how reducing the number of sub-species by making IPCs modular instead is trying to be sneaky? What would be the underhanded goal there? It does seem like a bit of an attack.

Whatever I say in response here would be picked apart over and over again and it is a topic I have no new thoughts about nor really a will to discuss, especially in public like this. I agree with your assessment of it seeming like an attack. It was due a combination of factors primarily including my very soured relations with Nienna. I can no longer really interact with Nienna in an informal environment, which I think is for the better, so that will not repeat further.
Just as an additional note, my pronouns are she/her. Thank you.

15 hours ago, niennab said:

I don't know if this applies, and may be something that will require the human team to confirm over myself but, Carpe did not write Silversun. I have been told they offered ideas and suggestions however they have been claiming otherwise.

Regarding the text itself, what you say is correct. However, all the themes that Silversun currently has are essentially authored by me. @BoryaTheSlayer has the original proposal and can confirm this - I unfortunately cannot post the original DMs themselves describing the ideas I had because they were in the Russian language.

[Carpe Venenum]

22 hours ago, Garnascus said:

I do see your record is pretty clean. 

I have to separately disagree about this. My former ckey and forum name is VTCobaltblood and you may see that I had previous forum warnings about civility, as well as I think one temporary restriction from posting, as well as other history that you certainly know about. Your words read as if you're unaware of this so I do not want to lie by omission by leaving that fact out, since it may impact judgement.

[Garnascus]

On 03/03/2021 at 20:19, Carpe Venenum said:

I have to separately disagree about this. My former ckey and forum name is VTCobaltblood and you may see that I had previous forum warnings about civility, as well as I think one temporary restriction from posting, as well as other history that you certainly know about. Your words read as if you're unaware of this so I do not want to lie by omission by leaving that fact out, since it may impact judgement.

Yeah I do don't worry, I should clarify when I say "clean" I mean "relatively so". Your forum warnings are roughly 2 and 3 years old and you have exactly two notes between both ckeys as far as server stuff is concerned. So, with all of this in mind while I do think the behavior exhibited here is not very cash money I think a warning here will suffice on your Carpe Venenum ckey. I am not very eloquent when it comes to these kinds of things but I trust you understand what I mean when I say "Man, chill please". Just try to be a bit more cordial in your interactions with the community. 

[Garnascus]

Locking and archiving.