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Player / character complaint - ToasterRoboto / Finn Ronne


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BYOND Key: Bauser

Game ID: The round BEFORE game ID "bTv-cRkk"

Player Byond Key: ToasterRoboto (character "Finn Ronne" at time of complaint)

Staff involved: N/A

Reason for complaint: ToasterRoboto displayed an attitude that it's acceptable to metagrudge and antagonize other crew members when not playing an antagonist as long as he manufactures an in-character rationalization. The crux of this argument is that his antagonistic behavior was social instead of physical (AKA he was brutally taunting someone rather than causing them harm), but I contend that it was sufficiently damaging because it had the entire engineering department arguing in-game for nearly half an hour and security mobilized to stop him and critically, his justification for doing it was artificial - made by himself (like antagonists do) rather than simply as a reaction to others (like is acceptable for general RP). In a hard-roleplay environment, the distinction between physical antagonism and other types should be irrelevant anyway, since both are reflections of the character.


Specifically, this complaint regards a feud that happened between Finn Ronne, an engineer, and the rest of the engineering department near the end of that game. As I understand, it began with Finn making fun of another co-worker (Taliya, another engineer) for the stutter she used when speaking. By the time it began annoying me and became obvious the issue wasn't going to resolve itself, Finn had escalated to claiming that the character of Taliya actually didn't have a stutter at all by critiquing the way she spelled out her stutter. I heard that this had already led to a physical altercation (which I believe involved NOIR), but I do not know this firsthand. What I do know firsthand is that, ultimately, security officers were convinced enough to stop him on the grounds of misusing comms.


Time continued to tick by and the pointless, merciless taunting continued aimlessly. The topics veered away from the stutter and into completely unrelated tangents, with Finn finding every reason and taking every opportunity to just irritate Taliya and inflame tensions. The round ended with minimal fanfare and some exchanges of mutual animosity, but nothing spectacular. However, after the round concluded, I took to OOC to voice my displeasure with his seemingly indefensible hostility. This blossomed into a discussion of theories as to how it is acceptable to play the game, and I have attached a log of this (pruned for relevant comments) below. It effectively explains both sides of our disagreement.

 

Bauser: Also dunno what was up with Finn but geez, fix your life

ToasterRoboto: what?

ToasterRoboto: oh man, playing a character with conflict

ToasterRoboto: boo

ToasterRoboto: a character doesn't arse kiss everyone and is actually kinda a rude shitbag to create conflict

ToasterRoboto: boo that character

ToasterRoboto: perfect utopia

ToasterRoboto: no conflicts or hatred

ToasterRoboto: everyone loves eachother

ToasterRoboto: @bauser are you saying that all characters should be happy and nice to eachother?

Menown: There's a difference between not being happy and nice to being an asshole and outright antagonistic toward people lmao

Menown: Especially those you work with.

ToasterRoboto: that's the point

ToasterRoboto: I'm trying to create some goddamned conflict

ToasterRoboto: social conflict

Itanimulli: You aint supposed to do that without escalation.

ToasterRoboto: there was so much escalation it's not even funny

Bauser: Toaster I'm not saying everyone should be nice to each other, OR even that it's not OK to have an asshole character

Bauser: But your character was such an asshole that their entire department actively hated him and he was breaking laws with his pointless cruelty

L0rd_English: "I was making social drama for the sake of drama"

Diggiez: Basically a reverse-mary sue?

Munks: seriously in this situation find your supervisor or superior and tell them that a coworker is being a dick. Heads of staff players are there to be leaders, not just superdoctors/superengineers. If they cant handle workplace issues like that then they need to not be a head

ToasterRoboto: because I have an ooc hatred of the f-fake s-stutter

L0rd_English: "i was making social drama for the sake of metagrudge"

ToasterRoboto: yes

L0rd_English: hmmmmmmm that's uh not better

ToasterRoboto: exactly

Bauser: Then get over it

ToasterRoboto: no

Menown: "I have an OOC hatred of the f-fake s-stutter"

Menown: That's called metagrudging

Menown: Lmao

Diggiez: But s-s-stutters are real

Bauser: What a stupid reason to create drama

ToasterRoboto: But s-s-stutters d-d-don't sound like that

L0rd_English: "i have an OOC hatred of the f-fake r-rudeness"

Bauser: th-the s-stutter is shorthand

Bauser: everyone knows it doesnt sound like that

Bauser: the point is that it's easy to write and gets the point across

IAmCrystalClear: a correct stutter would be a stuh-st-st-stuhtuh.

ToasterRoboto: eh, it more just looks fucking stupid

L0rd_English: Y-y-y-yyee, yeee, yee-yy-y, yeeeeee-yeeeah.

ToasterRoboto: and overdone to shit

Bauser: No, you look fucking stupid

ToasterRoboto: hey, that's rude, man

Bauser: For being such an asshole that it actually transcended into antagonism

L0rd_English: Ascended

ToasterRoboto: y'know, it did escalate

Bauser: Being a jerk IC is fine and dandy. The world is full of them. But you can't use it as an excuse to /antagonize/ because you were not an /antagonist/

ToasterRoboto: How was I being an antagonist?

Geeves: i listened to it as a sec officer

L0rd_English: Bauser, r can with propr esalation

L0rd_English: which one did lack, i guess

Geeves: it wasn't antagonist shit at all

Munks: This is a fact of reality. Stutters and accents are always going to be done poorly. German accents are for mad scientist characters. Russian accents for Tough Guys, and stutters for cute n-nervous cuteugrls, and they'll always suck

Geeves: it was fine

ToasterRoboto: there are plenty of people who have genuine hatred for disabilities

Bauser: Worst part is how closely it was to OOC in IC. Telling someone that they actually DON'T have the disability that they have?

L0rd_English: There are plenty of people who have genuine hatred for black people, toaster

Bauser: You don't get to decide what other characters are

L0rd_English: :thonk:

ToasterRoboto: and I'm not allowed to play a racist character why?

ToasterRoboto: because it makes you feel bad in real life?

L0rd_English: i didn't say anythin' about that. i just rumble

ToasterRoboto: "That's not my beliefs in real life! I hate this and no one can play it!"

Bauser: Because it's antagonizing, is why

LikwidMelon: isn't that against the rules anyways?

ToasterRoboto: how the fuck is it antagonising

Bauser: It's creating legitimate conflict

L0rd_English: You can be bad and break law and whatever if you have clear reasoning and escalate properly, likwid

ToasterRoboto: there was escalation, you can create that sort of shit if the situation calls for it

Bauser: And "clear reasoning and escalation" was not present

Bauser: If you have to CREATE it, it's not present

ToasterRoboto: are you kidding me?

Bauser: That's the difference between being a jerk and being an antagonist

ToasterRoboto: the escalation was very much there

Bauser: But only because you forced it!

ToasterRoboto: it started out from simply mentioning the stutter

ToasterRoboto: to asking why they haven't had it treated

ToasterRoboto: to the accusations and so on and so forth

Geeves: bauser, weren't you kicked from the aurora discord for arguing

ToasterRoboto: ^

Bauser: For being good at it

ToasterRoboto: thanks for the laugh, bauser

Geeves: i rest my case

 

In total, it appears to me that ToasterRoboto at the very least violated the requirements of a "believable and well-rounded character" by choosing to be so pointlessly hateful that it immediately alienated him from all his co-workers AND threatened his reputation/standing within the company. Even worse, by ToasterRoboto's own admission, the inspiration for this behavior was an out-of-character grudge with Taliya's style of speech, which I believe to be insufficient justification for a conflict that ties up the entire engineering department.


Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? No

Approximate Date/Time: 22 March 2018, approximately 2PM EST

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I'd just like to preface this by saying I'm confused that Taliya has been hired icly, considering a requirement is fluency in speaking basic, unless she can use sign language.


Anyway, onto the situation. It'd been a long shift and I was easily starting to feel it. It was extremely boring, the antags died immediately and the round finished in one hour. On top of this, I had to deal with the most incompetent Chief Engineer I had ever seen. On top of that once again, the round was extended for another half an hour or so. That's why I had decided to create some departmental conflict, as I had already established Ronne as a rather rude character.


It started off with me simply mentioning the stutter off-hand at first, but it soon devolved into Finn constantly pestering them about the fact, because a 'real' stutter simply sounds nothing like that. I contacted the AI about it, saying how it might be useful to get them in contact with a doctor and I threw out the fact that she could /possibly/ be brain damaged, due to the fact that she was refusing treatment and insisting that it was real. It went downward from there, when I was slapped by Noir, told to stop and then was arrested when I told the HoS who wanted to know what had happened, because I talked about it again. I'm pretty sure this is what caused my hostility in OOC.


I know that metagrudging is against the rules, but I don't think my own OOC hatred of a faked stutter is me placing myself into my character too much. As mentioned above, they're quite rude and I know plenty of real life people who are far, far, far more hateful, which is why it seemed to not really be out of bounds for a character.

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Just chiming in here after checking with the admins, as I'm pretty sure that I'm the Chief Engineer you're talking about. Prior to me hitting cryo out of sheer frustration, your character was exhibiting the exact same 'merciless taunting' to mine. I'll freely admit that after a few weeks of absence to playing SS13, I made a few mistakes in my job - the placement of the shield generators, as Prate likely saw in the logs. For this, both you and the AI, whom I ahelped in the same round, tore my character to shreds to the point where I bailed out of the round. I neglected to make a complaint, not feeling that it was worth it and feeling some guilt at my performance.


'Inflaming tensions' is exactly the right phrase here; you were looking for any excuse to start a fight, moving on to another player after annoying the hell out of the first one.

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Talia Sulyard here.

I was doing my job, waiting for the SMES to drain, in order to upgrade it which the previous engineers failed to do. Finn first came into the scene right about now. Brought up my stutter [My character isnt native speaker. As well as I am trying to learn to roleplay other personalities] belittling my character constantly.


The Ai went through my character's records and was notified of why my character has a stutter. The ai told Finn that if he continued they would alert security. About 5 more minutes continue about Finn insulting my characters and belittling them. Noir was called and Finn recieved a warning by Noir subsequintly slapping him across the face.


Finn then increased his belittling and then went across the department insulting them [Roughly the longest segment about 10-15 minutes here] Sec somehow managed to get a engineer headset and listened to the evidence. They were called and he was arrested on accounts of slander and misuse of comms if I am correct.

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Guest Menown

I'd just like to preface this by saying I'm confused that Taliya has been hired icly, considering a requirement is fluency in speaking basic, unless she can use sign language.

 

I'm adding to this, with some lore from the Tajara wiki page.


"Tajara are expected and required to have passed a prerequisite test to test their comprehension of Tau-Ceti basic, the operating language of NanoTrasen and most transstellar corporations, in addition to most major sovereign entities. Admittedly the passing levels of these comprehension tests are quite low, but are high enough to ensure basic conversation between what will likely be a multi-species crew. "


You're expected to be able to communicate in Tau Ceti Basic, which the woman could, regardless of a stutter or not. Requirements for ability aren't high.

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This post here.

I'd just like to preface this by saying I'm confused that Taliya has been hired icly, considering a requirement is fluency in speaking basic, unless she can use sign language.


Anyway, onto the situation. It'd been a long shift and I was easily starting to feel it. It was extremely boring, the antags died immediately and the round finished in one hour. On top of this, I had to deal with the most incompetent Chief Engineer I had ever seen. On top of that once again, the round was extended for another half an hour or so. That's why I had decided to create some departmental conflict, as I had already established Ronne as a rather rude character.


It started off with me simply mentioning the stutter off-hand at first, but it soon devolved into Finn constantly pestering them about the fact, because a 'real' stutter simply sounds nothing like that. I contacted the AI about it, saying how it might be useful to get them in contact with a doctor and I threw out the fact that she could /possibly/ be brain damaged, due to the fact that she was refusing treatment and insisting that it was real. It went downward from there, when I was slapped by Noir, told to stop and then was arrested when I told the HoS who wanted to know what had happened, because I talked about it again. I'm pretty sure this is what caused my hostility in OOC.

 

Lets take this point by point:

You question how they were hired, and as pointed out by Menown, the ceti basic requirement is pretty low, or we wouldnt have any Zhan-Khazan Tajara on station, or most skrell for that matter.


As for the Chief Engineer, you basically harrassed and bullied them until they had enough and they went to cryo, and you asked who played them twice in OOC afterwards, either to shit on them for being "Incompetent" as you pointed out several times, or to make a character/player complaint about their incompetency. That by itself is not alright.


And there is the statement of "That's why I had decided to create some departmental conflict, as I had already established Ronne as a rather rude character."

It is not your job as a non-antag to create conflict, especially not in the manner you did. Being a rude prick and rubbing everyone the wrong way is fine and dandy, if you do it properly.

You made a passing remark at the stutter, sure, but what it turned into was some OOC bullshit bleeding into your character's interaction with the engineer, and let me tell you why.


You kept escalating your rude remarks, saying that she was faking her stutter, and if she wasnt, she was obviously brain damaged. You spent so much time ragging on them, insisting they could just be fixed by medical, so you called the AI and wanted it to schedule surgery for them, because "They werent fit to work in their current state." and it was just a simple trip to medical and undergo invasive brain surgery to correct that "nasty" stutter. And as an addition to them being "Unfit" and all that shit, you seemed to have no problem understanding them whatsoever, and you made zero effort in trying to roleplay their stuttering being incomprehensible gibberish as you deemed them a hazard to the workplace due to said disability.

What you kept falling back on was that "Real stutters doesnt work like that" and "I grew up with friends/GF/whatever that had stutters and it sounded nothing like that."


There are varying degrees of stuttering, some are mild where you stumble on a consonant once in a while, and some a vowel, or both. And then you have the crippling stutterers which can spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to utter a single word, and sometimes making them give up on the word, trying to find a substitute which is easier for them.


So they're using shorthand stuttering to show their character's disability, who are you to judge that this isnt "The right way"? Just because they dont conform to your picture perfect way of typing out a stutter, does not give you the right to try your damn hardest to tear their character apart and call bullshit on everything they do.


If you want to show your annoyance/hate towards stutterers, mock them for their stutter. Be a snarky bitch about it, pronouncing words in a disrespectful, slow manner to them as you know they will struggle with it.

We're all here to have fun, and what you did to these two was the direct opposite. If you want to play an asshole character, you may do so, but do it right.



I want you to reply to this post before I make my verdict [mention]ToasterRoboto[/mention]

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