Player Complaint - Acetrea

[Nol4]

BYOND Key: nol4
Game ID: czi-dCQw
Player Byond Key/Character name: Acetrea | Mae Lin
Staff involved: N/A, related to an IR
Reason for complaint: Excessive elitism
Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No, an IR triggered this
Approximate Date/Time: April 26 2025

Short version: during an canon event round, Mae Lin as a character engaged in excessive elitism: she attempted to enforce a specific playstyle on the paramedic and stated that it should defer to physicians and herself on all things. There are two parts to this: a needless, security-enforced micromanaging of my paramedic's equipment, and an IR aggressively pursuing an OOC mistake on an obscure mechanic. Mae Lin went to the head of security, and when the head of security refused, the Captain himself over the bag micromanaging. The IR is over this and an obscure mechanical mistake despite both resolution in game (the character affected agreeing not to pursue charges + the Captain agreeing with that) and OOC resolution (the affected player and I agreeing to retcon it- though staff informed us this is no longer an option). She is pursuing the obscure mistake so intensely that the character is IRing the Captain himself.

All the while, she enforced other aspects of elitist play: she cites her friend as 'the best paramedic' (despite the character in question not being that job!), claims to be an authority over other jobs, and chased all of this at the expense of actually engaging with a canon event round.

This is the behavior that drives away new players. It ruthlessly punishes mistakes and any deviations from the in-group meta. This is a game, not real life: characters shouldn't be bullied into following a specific meta, and mechanical errors will happen and deserve some grace, especially when the actual players involved agree to gloss over them.

I think other medical characters leaned into this behavior that round, but I am focusing on Acetrea, as she escalated to the IR.

Long version:
 

Spoiler

During an event round, medical, including Mae Lin, requested that Adzi retrieve a blood bag left by the other paramedic in the paramedic area. As I was involved in event things, Adzi responded that it was busy and asked them to use one of the bags in the OR storage. They promptly informed it that it had 30 seconds to return it before they called the HoS.

Adzi immediately (within 30 seconds) returned the bag to the OR storage. Medical, including Mae Lin, then began to interrogate Adzi about why it normally carried two bags, demanding it return them, that it 'upgrade' to Saline Plus, and saying it left the GTR understocked. Adzi refused, the HoS refused to investigate, so they asked the Captain to come to medical in person. This causes a prolonged meeting with the Captain themself as several medical characters, and Lin, argue that Adzi should not be allowed to decide how much blood it carries. Someone in medical also said it should be charged with *theft* for carrying blood at all- I don't know who this was, only that the Captain refused the charge.

All of this occurred during an event round: I had very little room to interact with the event once this kicked off.

The Captain pointed out that Adzi is allowed to make judgement calls about paramedic work, and does not automatically defer to other medical professionals. Mae Lin emphatically argued that it is not a medical professional, and that the physicians would know better than it on everything. The Captain reprimands all of medical for wasting his time. All of this occurs well before the OOC mistake:

After this conversation, a whole bunch of gremorians happen. Adzi treats a Tajaran with SBS, an obscure, rare part of medical that I honestly forgot is something Tajara can take. As the Tajara has lost an enormous amount of blood, it attaches blood bags- which are incompatible, and the blood kills its kidneys. Whoops.

Adzi admits the mistake (I improvise something about Solarian datapacks about Tajaran health being incomplete due to institutionalized racism). The Tajara is saved by medical. The character doesn't pursue charges: the player OOCly agrees to retcon the kidney loss to gremorian poison, stating that they know it was an understandable mistake OOCly and don't want to hammer it. Mae Lin wants to hammer it and files an IR.

Quotes/Screenshots (I can provide screenshot or log form as necessary: I trimmed out anyone else talking for readability)

Spoiler

Mae Lin says, "Two bags is still one more bag than it should have."

Ricky Oberst says, "There is no establisheed best practise that any one physician, pharmacist, surgeon, or even like, chief medical officer can set."

Mae Lin says, "But when there are problems with things pertaining to medical, you should listen to the medical professionals."

Ricky Oberst asks, "Is the paramedic not a medical professional?"

Mae Lin says, "Not as much as the physicians, surgeons, and a pharmacist."

Ricky Oberst says, "A degree doesn't matter. The paramedic is more knowledgable than surgeons in pre-hospital medicine."

Mae Lin says, "I disagree."

[Time passes: she says later:]

Mae Lin says, "The knowledge that those with a medical degree, as in a PhD and MD, surpass that of a Paramedic.

Mae Lin stating that paramedic characters should completely defer to even the pharmacist. Aside from micromanaging a role which is not her subordinate, this feels like powergaming.

Spoiler

Mae Lin says, "Adzi."
Mae Lin says, "Show us your bag."

Mae Lin says, "Cough it up, dude."
Mae Lin says, "We need those blood bags." (more on this later)
[later]
[Medical] Mae Lin says, "So you can either give them back and take the saline bag on the desk, or we can get security involved."

Demanding to inspect my character's equipment (again, as the pharmacist) + commanding their loadout at threat of security involvement.

Spoiler

In the IR, she says:

"Liam Knight specifically having a reputation before getting his Doctorate as being the most knowledgeable and best Paramedic on the Horizon."

During round she says:

Mae Lin says, "Plus, Liam Knight was previously a Paramedic."

Mae Lin says, "So he should know."

This gain feels like plain elitism: claiming yourself or friends/members of an in-group to be the best at something and enforcing that method of play on all other players via that self-assigned status. This is especially egregious when the characters in question aren't even playing that job, and leans into powergaming.
 

Spoiler

The other player stating they intended to let it go by gently due to being an OOC error.
 

Regarding the "Blood Shortage"

Spoiler

From the IR: "Physician Knight noticed the ICU O-negative blood locker did not have enough blood to go on the IVs in the GTR.`

Throughout this entire interaction, there were no less than: 4 IV stands with O- blood bags in the ETC, 2 IV stands with O- blood in the OR, and 4 more bags of O- blood in the OR closets, on top of the crate of typed blood, and at least one bag of saline. I know this for fact because Adzi showed it all to the Captain in person during the prolonged investigation. It is simply not true that they were "unable to supply the GTR". They also refused over medical net to use any of the stockpile in the ORs. Claiming there was any issue with supply is purely a vaneer for micromanaging of a how another player filled their bag, and escalating into charge-worthy accusations by claiming it was causing critical supply issues.

Edited 7 hours ago by Nol4
added a screenshot, adjusted a bit of wording

[Bear]

I will be taking this player complaint along with the trial Maxspells, give me a day or so. We will be asking multiple questions soon.

[Acetrea]

Hey Nol4, I'm really sorry that you got to the point that you felt you needed to player complaint me. I didn't realize you were so upset with how the canon odyssey round went. I want to try to clear some things up with you.

I do want to preface this with the fact that as of this past week, I've been playing Mae as very stressed and frazzled. I'm really really sorry if it seemed like I was coming for you OOCly or trying to be an overbearing powergamer. As you know since you play a character close to Leonides, Helena was aboard the vessel this week. I know this won't make sense to other readers, but I know it makes sense to you. Helena sent Mae the photos that Levi and Yekta were shown by Helena before, which was a main cause for Mae's strained actions, especially during this round.

In the beginning of the round during setup, Mae wasn't really involved in the blood discussion. Initially, it was Amelia Dresden who noticed that there wasn't enough blood to fit on all four IVs in the GTR. Mae mentioned she could make half-bags of saline, which wasn't really responded to by the paramedics, but she didn't jump on the bandwagon until later in the round when this problem started to ramp up. 

When PHM left the round and I'd learned that the O-negative bag they had was in the Paramedics Quarters (which only paramedics can access), I'd sent an ahelp to ask a mod/admin to ask that player to put things like that away properly, since non-Paramedics can't get in there without an Engineer. I didn't want there to be a round where the bag got stuck in there because no one could open the door. Even then, I didn't want PHM's player to get into trouble. I even said it wasn't a big deal to Fyni. https://imgur.com/a/gbCfyC7

When Adzi was being asked to move said blood bag (which was already when Liam Knight and Amelia Dresden were upset with Adzi about the blood bags), Mae also didn't say anything to Adzi over medical comms.

The next time I noticed it brought up was in the medical lobby right before and during the time when Mi-Young Seo arrived to medical. Mania Haller had been called over, not by Mae, but I think it was over PDA because I don't see anyone asking her to come over on common in my chat logs. The only thing Mae said during this was a relay of what Liam had said, which was "Checked all three lockers, still missing." Mae then said, "We did a count and it's still missing" to Mania.

After this encounter, Jay said, "Searched the third deck of Medical. No sign of the missing blood." Mae responded on comms, "Adzi, I'll give you saline in exchange for the blood bags you have on you." "And you will just use that instead." And then after Adzi stated, "This unit's protocols favor carrying blood.", Mae said, "Well your protocols are outdated and wrong." This was first time she really interacted with the blood bag problem.

This is when the ordering began. I did not mean for the way Mae treated Adzi E6 to be conceived as me trying to powergame and be elitist. Adzi E6 acts very much like a Viax or a cyborg. If you give Adzi an order to follow someone around or to do something, I've noticed that they tend to do it exactly like how those previous roles mentioned would. So that's the way Mae treated Adzi, like they were a cyborg you could give commands to. Again, I'm really sorry if this upset you. Saline Plus being better than a bag of blood is something that I was taught by Ren Hartfort (Comrade Batman) and I've also seen it spoken about on discord, specifically by medical players like Shimmer (I think), about how Paramedics should carry around Saline plus instead of blood because it restores blood faster than carrying around a blood bag would and because you use less of it overall. When Adzi refused to use the saline plus bag Mae had set out, she resorted to trying to order Adzi to do it instead because of the way she and I perceived them.

When Mania Haller got involved for the second time, Mae was not the one to call her to the GTR again. Mania Haller was PDA messaged by someone other than Mae to come speak about Adzi. When the Captain joined the round and asked medical over comms how they were doing, Mae said, "Actually, since Haller isn't answering us, we could super use your help." Liam Knight then conferred, "Yeah- we need t'talk to you skip." Mania Haller did end up coming over before the Captain did. It was not only Mae talking to Mania Haller. It was also Liam and Amelia and even Jay put some words in after Mania said it didn't matter, "I did not know it was permitted to steal things and then refuse to return them. I will note this for later." I really want to preface that it was not just Mae trying to hark down on Adzi about the blood bags. Mae also has a prior issue with Mania Haller that she hasn't let go, which was when Mania Haller nearly charged Mae Lin with gross negligence for asking a Viax assistant if they were able to get the dead carp from the hull. That is a whole different issue entirely, but I can go into it if it's needed. I can definitely say that Mae's upsetness with Mania Haller was one of the driving factors for making the IR in the first place. She saw it as unjust for trying to charge her with something so severe like gross negligence, but when brought issues, she doesn't do anything about it and literally tells everyone to "Stop whining" and "Stop bothering everyone about it".

When the Captain was brought in (which wasn't at the behest of Mae besides the prior comment mentioned(I think he PDA messaged too)), Mae did not say she wanted Adzi charged with anything. Never in the round did Mae say she would like Adzi charged with something. After the Captain had said that over medical comms after everything was dying down at the end was what had me write it in the IR, I think. It didn't really cross my mind to have Mae try and charge Adzi beforehand.

1 hour ago, Nol4 said:

All the while, she enforced other aspects of elitist play: she cites her friend as 'the best paramedic' (despite the character in question not being that job!),

I feel like there may be some confusion over this. Liam Knight was a Paramedic for many years on the Horizon. He only recently, like within the past month or two, made the switch to Physician after being gone for a while. His time as a Paramedic wasn't retconned, Mae knew him as a Paramedic, and so she believed him when he said that Adzi shouldn't need two blood bags.

Regarding the IR, I had posted it before I heard that you and Vadim's player were wanting to retcon Adzi's mistake. Only afterwards, thirty minutes after it was posted, was I pinged in general chat about it. You said it was an OOC mechanics mistake, which I thought might've been something regarding a bug, and so I'd asked you to elaborate. When you'd said that it was your own OOC mistake, I was hesitant to edit the IR right away before I got information from an admin/mod. I was under the impression that the event was canon, so things like that needed admin approval. Initially, I'd messaged Mel about it. But moreover, it feels a bit icky to be retconning something like that, when it was your character's mistake. When I played surgeon, there was an incident where a grey unathi and a grey tajaran had both had their left legs chopped off by a ling. I had both legs, but it was impossible for me to tell whose leg was whose. They were both grey, and when examining the leg, it did not give a description of fur, scales, or species. Long story short, I chose wrong and I gave them the wrong legs. A situation like that is what I feel should be retconned. There was no way for me to know whose leg was whose. For Adzi's situation, you can read blood type with a simple scan. I assume Adzi did that because how else might they have known Vadim was so short on blood? So therefore, because you missed it, Adzi did too.

I never wanted the IR to escalate to an OOC action like this. As previously mentioned, I was in the process of asking Mel if the mistake is canon or not. Mel is busy today, so I wasn't able to get that answer right away, and I actually still don't have an answer for it. I'm really really sorry it didn't come across this way in the IR, but in my head, the IR was more targeted at the Captain and the HoS. The whole idea was that if either of them had told Adzi to switch to the saline plus bag, then Vadim never would've gone into organ failure. I'm super aware OOCly as the player that that is a huge stretch! The HoS and the Captain wouldn't have known Adzi would make a mistake like that! That was kinda supposed to be the point of the IR.

I will admit that I'm hurt this turned into a player complaint because I posted the IR, but I can definitely see how it looks like Mae/I was the sole aggressor through your eyes. I really want to establish that that's not true. Mae gave Adzi a few commands, but she wasn't the one to call Mania. She wasn't the one PDAing her and the Captain. I decided to have Mae double down and follow the blame train after the second conversation with Mania with the rest of the medical team, and I'm really sorry that this hurt you OOCly, but it really wasn't just Mae. I'm fine with trashing the IR if the situation gets retconned. It really was supposed to be an IC thing, or else I would've made it into a character complaint against Mania Haller, Ricky, or Adzi. 

If you have any more questions or you want to DM me and talk about it, I'm happy to do so. I've saved the log of the round.

Edited 6 hours ago by Acetrea