Player Complaint - Ublicto

[La Villa Strangiato]

BYOND Key: lavillastrangiato
Game ID: co1-aFG9
Player Byond Key/Character name: Ublicto/Ali Ibn-Omar Al-Thariun Al-Aemaq Abu-Phoron
Staff involved: N/A
Reason for complaint: Honestly, I feel like just the name "Ali Ibn-Omar Al-Thariun Al-Aemaq Abu-Phoron" is in itself ahelpable. It's kind of like naming a Mictlan character Juan Taco de Romano Jungelo. While I admit I laughed a bit at the absurdity, as the round wore on I started to get tired of a progression of uncomfortable Islam stereotypes being played up for "comedy".

Most of this was very basic, eye-roll worthy misconceptions; Abu-Phoron demands all alcohol across the ship be thrown out. Not all Muslims abstain from alcohol. Abu-Phoron demands pigs on the ship be airlocked, clearly a funny-haha reference to "Muslims don't eat pork, it's not halal". In Islam, pigs are considered unclean and therefore not eaten, but it is absolutely considered sinful to be unnecessarily cruel to animals. Halal meat is literally meat from an animal that has been killed, humanely.

Another bizarre few moments in the round was where Abu-Phoron called Elliot Keles a "mamluk". A mamluk is a term for a slave-soldier in the Arab or Ottoman dynasties around the 800s to the 1000s, and an anachronism so eyebrow-raising I can only assume it wasn't known what it meant when it was used, because no Arabic-speaker is ever going to unironically call someone that.

This becomes egregious when even a brief glance at the wiki page for Elyra will also tell you that Elyrans are not religiously conservative. Secularism is state-enforced, imams are regularly policed on if their sermons disrupt or target a certain group (such as IPCs), and while Muslim doctrines obviously influence Elyra, it certainly isn't space Saudi Arabia. Which seems to be the impression Ublicto was trying to give;

As an appendix, there was also occasional chatter in-round that could be construed as similar to the whole bit, like asking where Mecca was in space (and therefore, which direction a Muslim would pray when on a spaceship), jokingly parroting "mashallah" or "inshallah", or an Unathi claiming she was going to convert to Islam to avoid persecution (though in this context she was being forced to "convert or die", itself an uncomfortably common stereotype of Islam). I am of the opinion that these are fairly lighthearted, well-meaning riffs, both meant to be ironic ICly and OOCly when placed in the scope of how over-the-top and stereotypical the antag was acting.

Given what I have said above, I think that the way this gimmick was executed was ignorant, at best.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time?: I didn't and I should have. By the time the round was really cooking I had started to turn my brain off and merely tolerate it, and I had taken the lazy position of "this is clearly so head-assed that somebody'll fix it". Writing it out now makes me look back at everything with context that happened and go "oh, I probably should've ahelped that". Thus, here is the complaint.
Approximate Date/Time: July 26th, 2023, something like 9pm MST

Edited July 27, 2023 by La Villa Strangiato

[Star Dust]

I was apart of the round, I was the Diona that bugged off of the ship due to not wanting to risk getting gatted by the Elyran group. From what I saw from the round myself, though I don't personally have any issues with any religion of faith being poked and made fun of as long as its done in an actually funny way, this wasn't funny in the slightest to me, it felt like it was just basically "Lets see how many stereotypes I can stuff into this round and do it in a very half-assed and uninteresting way.", this could have been an interesting gimmick, this could have been cool to see how radically different cultures are made to interact and to see how well they jell or grade against one and another, instead it was just endless poorly done stereotype after another.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Star Dust

[Garnascus]

Honestly I am most shocked about the fact that not a single person ahelped this. 

This will probably just be a note. 

[Ublicto]

6 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

BYOND Key: lavillastrangiato
Game ID: co1-aFG9
Player Byond Key/Character name: Ublicto/Ali Ibn-Omar Al-Thariun Al-Aemaq Abu-Phoron
Staff involved: N/A
Reason for complaint: Honestly, I feel like just the name "Ali Ibn-Omar Al-Thariun Al-Aemaq Abu-Phoron" is in itself ahelpable. It's kind of like naming a Mictlan character Juan Taco de Romano Jungelo. While I admit I laughed a bit at the absurdity, as the round wore on I started to get tired of a progression of uncomfortable Islam stereotypes being played up for "comedy".

Most of this was very basic, eye-roll worthy misconceptions; Abu-Phoron demands all alcohol across the ship be thrown out. Not all Muslims abstain from alcohol. Abu-Phoron demands pigs on the ship be airlocked, clearly a funny-haha reference to "Muslims don't eat pork, it's not halal". In Islam, pigs are considered unclean and therefore not eaten, but it is absolutely considered sinful to be unnecessarily cruel to animals. Halal meat is literally meat from an animal that has been killed, humanely.

Another bizarre few moments in the round was where Abu-Phoron called Elliot Keles a "mamluk". A mamluk is a term for a slave-soldier in the Arab or Ottoman dynasties around the 800s to the 1000s, and an anachronism so eyebrow-raising I can only assume it wasn't known what it meant when it was used, because no Arabic-speaker is ever going to unironically call someone that.

This becomes egregious when even a brief glance at the wiki page for Elyra will also tell you that Elyrans are not religiously conservative. Secularism is state-enforced, imams are regularly policed on if their sermons disrupt or target a certain group (such as IPCs), and while Muslim doctrines obviously influence Elyra, it certainly isn't space Saudi Arabia. Which seems to be the impression Ublicto was trying to give;

As an appendix, there was also occasional chatter in-round that could be construed as similar to the whole bit, like asking where Mecca was in space (and therefore, which direction a Muslim would pray when on a spaceship), jokingly parroting "mashallah" or "inshallah", or an Unathi claiming she was going to convert to Islam to avoid persecution (though in this context she was being forced to "convert or die", itself an uncomfortably common stereotype of Islam). I am of the opinion that these are fairly lighthearted, well-meaning riffs, both meant to be ironic ICly and OOCly when placed in the scope of how over-the-top and stereotypical the antag was acting.

Given what I have said above, I think that the way this gimmick was executed was ignorant, at best.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time?: I didn't and I should have. By the time the round was really cooking I had started to turn my brain off and merely tolerate it, and I had taken the lazy position of "this is clearly so head-assed that somebody'll fix it". Writing it out now makes me look back at everything with context that happened and go "oh, I probably should've ahelped that". Thus, here is the complaint.
Approximate Date/Time: July 26th, 2023, something like 9pm MST

I was playing a slightly insane extremely rich character and I did not make fun of the religion, that was mostly other people who at one point I shouted at over the radio. I called Keles a mamluk and gave him a briefcase full of money because he started immediately working for me. This isn't related to the main thrust of the complaint against me IMO, which is that I slandered the cultures and religion of over a billion people. The Elyran Phoron magnate I played was not supposed to be a representative of anything but himself. I even demanded people download his social media app at a few points and the impression I was trying to convey was "eccentric Elyran space oil quintillionaire" rather than a religion driven gimmick. My character was not an agent of the Elyran government, he was just a guy, and I never claimed that anything he did represented Elyra.

The point of the gimmick was to act over the top. I can't control how other people interacted with my gimmick and I did not like some of the responses I got in the radio chat, but that is hardly my fault. I absolutely did not force any character to convert religions, the thing I did closest to that was tell Dominians they would be re-assigned as janitors. The unathi invented the conversion stuff on their own and I had nothing to do with it. I also was not going to persecute them for religious reasons, part of my escalation plan in my gimmick was to fire employees out of the mass driver to relieve them of their employment.

6 hours ago, Star Dust said:

I was apart of the round, I was the Diona that bugged off of the ship due to not wanting to risk getting gatted by the Elyran group. From what I saw from the round myself, though I don't personally have any issues with any religion of faith being poked and made fun of as long as its done in an actually funny way, this wasn't funny in the slightest to me, it felt like it was just basically "Lets see how many stereotypes I can stuff into this round and do it in a very half-assed and uninteresting way.", this could have been an interesting gimmick, this could have been cool to see how radically different cultures are made to interact and to see how well they jell or grade against one and another, instead it was just endless poorly done stereotype after another.

How would you suggest I have done the gimmick? If I did something wrong in your eyes, I want to know what you would have done right.

I think I tended to avoid excessive stereotypes, the only things I did that could be perceived to be religiously motivated was asking the pigs be sent somewhere else and the Alcohol be removed. That and maybe telling a number of Dominians that they would be janitors, but that was more  based on my character's arbitrary personal sentiments.

If what I did was deserving of a warning and a note, then by all means I should receive a warning and a note. But I would ask that I not receive a potential punishment for the acts of people I had no control over, especially radio chatter.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Ublicto

[Star Dust]

2 hours ago, Ublicto said:

How would you suggest I have done the gimmick? If I did something wrong in your eyes, I want to know what you would have done right.

I think I tended to avoid excessive stereotypes, the only things I did that could be perceived to be religiously motivated was asking the pigs be sent somewhere else and the Alcohol be removed. That and maybe telling a number of Dominians that they would be janitors, but that was more  based on my character's arbitrary personal sentiments.

If what I did was deserving of a warning and a note, then by all means I should receive a warning and a note. But I would ask that I not receive a potential punishment for the acts of people I had no control over, especially radio chatter.

If I was in your place, and I was the one doing this gimmick, well I wouldn't because I don't know enough deep information about Islam to play a character whose faith is based around it. But if I did give it a shot, I'd start it off small, don't come right out the bat swinging. Start off with maybe an announcement that most of the ships liquor will be dumped, drive up tension, I know that  La Villa Strangiato said that not all Muslims subscribe to this belief well clearly yours did and since you've stated they're not exactly the nicest of person I can see them enforcing this onto others. This could drive up tension still, do some other minor things, like curtail Vaurca legal protective rights for Elyrans have a serious disliking to them, and maybe even after that start curtailing all Non-Elyrans legal protections/rights as well due to they were now classed as NPC's in Elyran society. This could have really driven up the tension without it going over the top, it would cause some bubbling loathing, and maybe some fights will break out. Maybe to keep your power and to cause a rift, make all security NPC's still have all their rights, and maybe even some bonuses for staying loyal. But instead you went with "Throw all the pigs out and detain someone for eating beef bacon." which was just goofy and wasn't exactly something that had much bearing on the round due to the ship having no pigs of any kind. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Star Dust

[Vulcenus]

As someone living in a Muslim country I found the gimmick pretty funny and not at all felt uncomfortable about the stereotypes played up for comedy.

Not all Muslims have a problem with alcohol just like how not all Christians go to Church. It doesn't change the fact that the religion expects them to uphold these bans, and in Arabic communities its actually quite frowned upon to consume alcohol. Rakı is a turkish alcoholic drink, and I would consider Turkey a mildly Muslim country compared to an Arabic country, like the UAE where you wouldn't be able to consume your 50oz as freely. And Elyra is clearly inspired more by the latter, as well as the character performing the gimmick. So I didn't see any issues with this whatsoever.

Consuming pig meat is forbidden, but that doesn't change the fact that culling hog and wild boar populations is a reality in Muslim communities.

The term mamluk, while the term comes from slavery roots, is not an insult or a derogatory term just like how Janissary isn't. In fact both of these classes were held in high regards of their respective societies.

All in all, I think singling this guy out over this lighthearted gimmick is an extreme reaction, I think if anything it should be construed as poking fun of Elyran writing.

If you were to take action against this guy, who didn't overtly do anything related to religion save for a direct involvement into the culinary stocks of a ship he is currently ruling as the CEO, you might as well take action against all the common chatter most of them coming from me poking fun of the religious aspects of Elyra described here as lighthearted.

[La Villa Strangiato]

Yeah this is usually just the kind of thing I'd ahelp with "I feel like this is a little eyeroll-worthy and edging into ignorant, maybe ask them to tone it down", and I hemmed and hawed a bit over whether I should bother with a player complaint. I figured it was such an obvious "dude, don't" that it would get dealt with, but I get that admins aren't omnipotent. Ultimately I was encouraged to make the complaint by admins, so I thought I might as well just point out the stuff I found kind of stupid.

Ultimately for the offense of a Family Guy-tier joke I'm not gonna attempt to argue too much; what's there is there and administration can do what they want with it. I should also clarify that I don't think you're an Evil Fucked Up Racist @Ublicto but yeah come on, "Abu-Phoron"?

Edited July 27, 2023 by La Villa Strangiato

[Ublicto]

9 hours ago, Star Dust said:

If I was in your place, and I was the one doing this gimmick, well I wouldn't because I don't know enough deep information about Islam to play a character whose faith is based around it. But if I did give it a shot, I'd start it off small, don't come right out the bat swinging. Start off with maybe an announcement that most of the ships liquor will be dumped, drive up tension, I know that  La Villa Strangiato said that not all Muslims subscribe to this belief well clearly yours did and since you've stated they're not exactly the nicest of person I can see them enforcing this onto others. This could drive up tension still, do some other minor things, like curtail Vaurca legal protective rights for Elyrans have a serious disliking to them, and maybe even after that start curtailing all Non-Elyrans legal protections/rights as well due to they were now classed as NPC's in Elyran society. This could have really driven up the tension without it going over the top, it would cause some bubbling loathing, and maybe some fights will break out. Maybe to keep your power and to cause a rift, make all security NPC's still have all their rights, and maybe even some bonuses for staying loyal. But instead you went with "Throw all the pigs out and detain someone for eating beef bacon." which was just goofy and wasn't exactly something that had much bearing on the round due to the ship having no pigs of any kind. 

These are many good ideas. I will keep them in mind if I do a similar gimmick again. I would like to note that my character was definitely not based around Islam, most of what he did had nothing to do with religion. Thank you for all these good suggestions!

 

4 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Yeah this is usually just the kind of thing I'd ahelp with "I feel like this is a little eyeroll-worthy and edging into ignorant, maybe ask them to tone it down", and I hemmed and hawed a bit over whether I should bother with a player complaint. I figured it was such an obvious "dude, don't" that it would get dealt with, but I get that admins aren't omnipotent. Ultimately I was encouraged to make the complaint by admins, so I thought I might as well just point out the stuff I found kind of stupid.

Ultimately for the offense of a Family Guy-tier joke I'm not gonna attempt to argue too much; what's there is there and administration can do what they want with it. I should also clarify that I don't think you're an Evil Fucked Up Racist @Ublicto but yeah come on, "Abu-Phoron"?

That was part of a traditional name. "Thairun" is also what a translation website told me was the romanized form of the arabic word for wealth. My characters name was suppoed to mean "Ali, son of Omar, the wealthy, from Aemaq, father of phoron". I was doing my best to make a very traditional and old style arabic name that was funny while still being plausible and not immersion breaking. None of this comes from a place of mockery of arab culture or Islam as a religion. It was a very, as Vulcenus described, lighthearted gimmick.

Edited July 28, 2023 by Ublicto

[Star Dust]

7 hours ago, Vulcenus said:

As someone living in a Muslim country I found the gimmick pretty funny and not at all felt uncomfortable about the stereotypes played up for comedy.

Not all Muslims have a problem with alcohol just like how not all Christians go to Church. It doesn't change the fact that the religion expects them to uphold these bans, and in Arabic communities its actually quite frowned upon to consume alcohol. Rakı is a turkish alcoholic drink, and I would consider Turkey a mildly Muslim country compared to an Arabic country, like the UAE where you wouldn't be able to consume your 50oz as freely. And Elyra is clearly inspired more by the latter, as well as the character performing the gimmick. So I didn't see any issues with this whatsoever.

Consuming pig meat is forbidden, but that doesn't change the fact that culling hog and wild boar populations is a reality in Muslim communities.

The term mamluk, while the term comes from slavery roots, is not an insult or a derogatory term just like how Janissary isn't. In fact both of these classes were held in high regards of their respective societies.

All in all, I think singling this guy out over this lighthearted gimmick is an extreme reaction, I think if anything it should be construed as poking fun of Elyran writing.

If you were to take action against this guy, who didn't overtly do anything related to religion save for a direct involvement into the culinary stocks of a ship he is currently ruling as the CEO, you might as well take action against all the common chatter most of them coming from me poking fun of the religious aspects of Elyra described here as lighthearted.

I wasn't exactly offended, I was more so just annoyed at how this felt like it was a kinda lazy antag round

[Garnascus]

I think a character like this pushes the bounds of acceptable roleplay. @Ublicto I will be noting you for the conduct displayed in this round. Please do not play a character like this in the future. If you ever have any questions in regards to if a particular character concept is breaking the rules you can always ahelp and we will try out best to assist you. 

 

Locking and archiving.