Player Complaint -- Ishwari Gajuti

[FlamingLily]

BYOND Key: FlamingLily
Game ID: cBj-asE9
Player Byond Key/Character name: Player of Ishwari Gajuti (I don't have a Ckey)
Staff involved: Melaria, Evandorf (See below)
Reason for complaint:

During the round mentioned, I got really uncomfortable vibes from this player.

Firstly, they were playing a Gadpathurian, and felt like to me that they were really playing up a stereotype as they did, especially the constant use of phrases like, "Oh my good sir," "my friend" and similar.

Secondly, the character openly and intentionally misgendered at least one trans character, though I believe it was two. In any case, the one I know for certain was against @Stripes' Vien Xuan Pham. It was not a one-off use of the phrase, it was a repeated and insistent use of "Sir" even when explicitly told not to. This did lead to an IC confrontation that I was involved in as well, but combined with later incidents, I do feel like it was more than just RP. The second instance I haven't spoken to about mentioning them in this complaint, but they can chime in if they want to.

Thirdly, as I was leaving the round, they said "See ya guwan!" and then proceeded to follow it up with "I really should ask what that means." To be clear, at the time I was playing Mira Tilton, who is a human. "Guwan" is a pretty significant insult, but also one that completely does not apply in the circumstances. It felt like a very targeted, character breaking insult made just to be a cheap shot as I was leaving.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? I ahelped and spoke with Melaria, and below is the ticket.

 

Additionally, when I learned that it had already been ahelped, I spoke with Stripes and confirmed that she was the one to ahelp and had spoken with Evandorf, 
Approximate Date/Time: Server time: 05:30 2025-08-28

[Melariara]

Did you talk to the character ICly about this and explain your reasoning? Did you perhaps explain what Guwan meant to them via a PDA message or the like?

[FlamingLily]

7 minutes ago, Melariara said:

Did you talk to the character ICly about this and explain your reasoning? Did you perhaps explain what Guwan meant to them via a PDA message or the like?

It was an insult thrown in at the very end as I was actively typing 'ghost' in the command bar while in the resdeck lift, so I didn't have the chance to.

[Melariara]

But what about pronouns? Did you discuss that with them over PDA or talk ICly?

[FlamingLily]

There was absolutely discussion from me at least during the confrontation but also when he continued to directly and insistently keep misgendering a character after it was said explicitly not to do so. Here's an example of him continuing to insist upon it when both directly confronted about it and presented an alternative

[evandorf]

I took the initial ahelp from Vien earlier in the round. Nothing about a stereotype was brought up at the time but Ishwari was also a vampire and it seemed like he was putting on an affect as part of the role. I don’t think just using phrases like ‘good sir’ and ‘my friend’ are stereotypically derogatory but it’s very possible I’m just ignorant of it.

The main angle of the first ahelp was Vien being misgendered. I spoke with Vien and I spoke with Ishwari. He had been told ICly to stop with the sir’s and after observing him for a time I attributed it again to the affect he was doing and ruled it as an IC issue. Since then I’ve spoken with others on the moderation team and, in hindsight, I think I dropped the ball and this should have been addressed OOCly at the time as we generally don’t allow transphobic characters out of OOC consideration. When speaking with Ishwari’s player, he did not indicate a desire to play a transphobic character but he had been told ICly that his language was unwelcome.

[CampinKiller]

Myself and @Fyni will be handling this complaint.

[Arbiter_Ambrose]

Hello, I am aware that this contribution is somewhat minor but I felt it is important as someone who was there for the event as the solarian bodyguard witnessing some of the misgendering and the character Vien pulling a knife and locking them into the commissary (though considering this is not a IR it is somewhat irrelevant) and having interactions with the player, they did not seem to give off weird vibes to me personally and were nice enough in looc when they stunned me with a offer to play a game and biting my neck so I can only assume it was good-natured in intent personally regarding the 'sterotypical indian behaviour' though I personally don't see that I do have impairments in recognising things like that.

there is a few possible reasons their character could be saying sir such as a ingrained reaction they want to put emphasises on due to the military aspects of Gadputhur, though other reasons is kind of beyond me I do not think they came here just to play a transphobic character as this seems a relatively minor interaction and quite a jump to considerations of transphobia and such.

I think that they seem like a good head on their shoulders and this is just incidentally getting bad vibes off their actions and perhaps a few mishaps on their end, sometimes things can be lost in the flurry and it can seem like someone is bleeding their OOC into IC or trying to do something they aren't and this might have worked out a bit better if you had LOOCly discussed with them, they seem like a reasonable person from my end and I think that it might be a bit too quick on the panic button here.

[Stripes]

On 28/08/2025 at 11:09, Arbiter_Ambrose said:

they did not seem to give off weird vibes to me personally and were nice enough in looc when they stunned me with a offer to play a game and biting my neck so I can only assume it was good-natured in intent personally regarding the 'sterotypical indian behaviour' though I personally don't see that I do have impairments in recognising things like that.

Hi, I'm Vien's player. This was whole altercation involving the security call when Vien locked them in was after she corrected him multiple times, and that character responding by seemingly accepting what he did wasn't acceptable, and then not correcting their behavior anyway. That made it go from being an honest, correctable mistake to very blatant disregard and disrespect of what was a character that is transgender woman telling someone to stop misgendering her by calling her "sir", which doesn't matter whether or not it's used without an intent to gender because it's inherently a masculine term. It doesn't really matter for "vibes" or how they acted LOOC, because what happened was separate with your character who wasn't the person involved. 

Whether or not LOOC could have been used, this kind of behavior that did sound very much like a case of a character being transphobic isn't allowed, and precedent was set before regarding transphobia with that kind of behavior not being allowed, per Evandorf's own statement above:

On 28/08/2025 at 07:23, evandorf said:

we generally don’t allow transphobic characters out of OOC consideration

 

[MattAtlas]

I'm locking this thread because this does not need to become any more of a peanut gallery or a public trial. None of you would like to have your bad laundry exposed in public, neither would you like to be publicly trialed for something you've done that may have been a misunderstanding in the first place, so stop trying to implicitly or explicitly ascribe potentially permanent labels to people you don't know.

If you have anything to add, bring it to the handling admins and provide proof of what happened AND proof of your involvement.

[CampinKiller]

We have come to a decision regarding the complaint and have decided to take no action against the player of Ishwari Gajuti. The accusations that his character is a stereotype are baseless, though we can see why some might perceive a racist stereotype. While we don't think it was outright offensive, we will ask for it to be toned down a little. The use of "yes sir" would make sense in context of Gadpathurs highly militaristic culture, but it would be nice to have "yes ma'am" added without incident.

It is clear to us after reviewing the logs and hearing from them in DMs that he clearly had no idea that he was misgendering anyone, was extremely apologetic for the entire situation, and that nothing was clearly communicated to him to indicate that, other than instant hostility. The player talked the way he talked the entire round. There was no possible way for the player or character to have any idea that Vien was transgender without somehow having viewed their medical records (which he had no access to) before being told that. We found that there were no reasonable attempts to explain the situation, other than making threats towards Gajuti and eventually pulling a knife on them and locking them in a room, which is against rules against both self-antagging and reasonable behavior.

I want to be abundantly clear here, these sorts of accusations should not be flung around lightly, nor should they be turned into a public trial or witch hunt. These sorts of accusations can leave a stigma attached to a player even when they are cleared of any wrongdoing, as is this case here. It is also quite disingenuous to make vague references to previous behavior without any evidence to back it up. That said, we take accusations of transphobia seriously, and it is something we do not want to see explored IC, similar to "real" racism (that is, not levelled against a fictional group IC).

It is even more bad faith to engage in this sort of behavior towards players, especially new ones, by becoming incredibly hostile about things which are not obvious.

In summary, the player of Ishwari Gajuti did not violate any rules. Action will be taken against Stripes for pulling a knife and locking the player in the room over his initial comment. In the future, let's all act with a little grace towards other players instead of unnecessary hostility and baseless accusations.