On Civil Protection Leadership & The Ideology of Edgelordism

[M3ntal]

I know you feel I'm being condescending to you because I'm trying to both not invest myself into this community in body, mind, and soul but I am being genuine when I say you're acting upon chemicals sending signals to your brain that tells you as you read these words that I am looking down upon you from a perceived throne of smug trolling.

I assure you this is just how I talk on a day to day basis to other individuals that I also genuinely care about; a number which dwindled by the day as my years as a Navy Seal turned SWAT dries up my will to live.
Please don't feel offended and look past what you perceive, I do care but this is how I compartmentalize and decompress the bullshit that any role-playing community that cries out 'Serious RP' inevitably spawns. I genuinely will debate and talk about this with you regardless of what outcome may or may not happen.

Before you say anything else, if I had understood this correctly, you believe that Willard being made by the players absolves someone from very poor quality roleplay?

If we're looking at this from a roleplay point of view, this was horribly handled. It doesn't matter that someone wants to be the character they want to be, they do what they want and completely forget what position they take. They aren't civil protection. Who are they to act like the big bad in the most stereotypically cartoonish way possible?

People not understanding their roles is the crux of this discussion. People not understanding that RP is between two people and not one person upon another is also the crux of this discussion.

 

[Leudoberct]

I agree that moustache twirling shallow villains is a bad thing for the server. However, I don't believe that's what has happened here, and I believe you're mixing IC into OOC. The entire issue that got you into this situation was the way your character behaved- both with an MCP Investigator, and a Rank Leader. Yes, you have been appointed as a loyalist investigator by Mulligan. That does not mean that the MCP investigators have any obligation to immediately be amenable to your character- they showed immediate scepticism and criticism of your assignment.

However, your character chose to take a confrontational tone and attitude with these people- who, at the end of the day, are in a position of power greater to yours. Yes, they may be operating on their inflated ego- but that's purely in-character. You chose to be sarcastic and snarky with them, on two occasions. The second time, you then tried to walk away mid discussion after a snarky comment, and ignored the Rank Leader when told to halt, hence why you were beaten and stripped of your status.

I wasn't there for the happenings with the Overseer, but I believe the intent was to try to scare the attitude out of your character. In short? Your character was in a disadvantaged position handling people who are, essentially, thugs with authority. That is what Civil Protection is, at its core. You had the option to play it smart, and avoid damaging their egos- which is what your coworker did, who hasn't had any of this trouble. Instead, you chose to sass them. You played your cards wrong. That's in-character. That just is what it is. I feel like there's been a severe mix of IC and OOC here which has lead to you just spewing insults.

 

[Stonetb]

Any minute now and this thread will be gaslighted & downplayed by someone up top

What did I say? There's no winning with these people @Appetite Ruining Kebab

 

[Leudoberct]

I honestly can't help you out here, Stone. You accuse anything I say as being gaslighting. There's nothing more I can do for you, buddy.

 

[Banana]

Before you say anything else, if I had understood this correctly, you believe that Willard being made by the players absolves someone from very poor quality roleplay?

If we're looking at this from a roleplay point of view, this was horribly handled. It doesn't matter that someone wants to be the character they want to be, they do what they want and completely forget what position they take. They aren't civil protection. Who are they to act like the big bad in the most stereotypically cartoonish way possible?

People not understanding their roles is the crux of this discussion. People not understanding that RP is between two people and not one person upon another is also the crux of this discussion.

Finally a good discussion. Like grown adults without the water guns and clown noses. I'm sorry I couldn't reply until later in the day but I completely disagree with how you viewed my point. The individual above me has pretty much nailed it straight on the head as to what I meant by player-run. In this case it was player-ran, player-ruined because the player chose their reply in accordance to how their character would have conducted themselves.

I would be remiss and foolish to think that not a little bit was fueled by OOC ego though.

 

[vilhjalmrf]

Just gonna say this right now, if you're all just gonna insult each other and be total assholes then staff might as well lock the thread. I'll put my two cents in later but relax. It's a Garry's Mod server. This thread is spiraling down quick.

 

[Banana]

Just gonna say this right now, if you're all just gonna insult each other and be total assholes then staff might as well lock the thread. I'll put my two cents in later but relax. It's a Garry's Mod server. This thread is spiraling down quick.

Now hold on just a minute. A discussion is nothing without a few quick-witted remarks and insults to personal honor. We are still well within our rights to holding this proper forum post without.

But do feel free to step in and lock it down if someone suddenly pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot up the place.

 

[Stonetb]

I honestly can't help you out here, Stone. You accuse anything I say as being gaslighting. There's nothing more I can do for you, buddy.

You tormented me enough, and so have you to other people. Just please don't target me when you see the opportunity to do so PLEASE

 

[Leudoberct]

Stone, you were banned for toxicity because you constantly leapt into LOOC to insult people. I haven't even spoken to you at all since your ban and (seemingly false) apology. You immediately accuse me of gaslighting people when I post a response that isn't even directed to you, and then tell me "don't target me".

There really is nothing I can do to help you here, man.

 

[HOKI]

IC is IC!

Except it was specifically sorted OOC because the Vice Administrator (who these authed characters answer to) agreed OOC it was a dumb situation - because they weren't meant to get involved with other authorities to begin with to avoid drama

Can you elaborate on this? Did the Vice Administrator forbid these characters from interacting with other authorities OOCly or do you mean something else?

If you can give me a reason that was neccesary beyond wanting to write out torture, then by all means, because I'm not seeing it and I'm not the only one.

There was an in-character reason for it, Leudoberct explained it.

there's plenty of actual criticism if you want to look past the

hyperboles

but its easier to pretend your feelings are hurt so you can dismiss it innit

The only bit critisicm I got from this post is that evil organizations/characters can be done better which is true.
The rest of the post was you saying how you're great at roleplaying and insults hinting at BDSM or something and at that point I stopped reading.
You can never nail down a good evil organization because there will always be someone who will complain about it because they got the short end of the stick (you in this case).
This is the first complaint about Wittrow because no one in the past took the RP so seriously that it offended them OOCly (at least from what I know)
In hindsight I should have replied with a more respectful post or something to prevent this from being a big drama, but it is what it is.

 

[M3ntal]

Finally a good discussion. Like grown adults without the water guns and clown noses. I'm sorry I couldn't reply until later in the day but I completely disagree with how you viewed my point. The individual above me has pretty much nailed it straight on the head as to what I meant by player-run. In this case it was player-ran, player-ruined because the player chose their reply in accordance to how their character would have conducted themselves.

I would be remiss and foolish to think that not a little bit was fueled by OOC ego though.

I see. Even if this was the consequence of certain behavior, if what occurred really did occur, why not leave the 'torturing' to the professionals?

 

[Stonetb]

Stone, you were banned for toxicity because you constantly leapt into LOOC to insult people. I haven't even spoken to you at all since your ban and (seemingly false) apology. You immediately accuse me of gaslighting people when I post a response that isn't even directed to you, and then tell me "don't target me".

There really is nothing I can do to help you here, man.

LMAO

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

I agree that moustache twirling shallow villains is a bad thing for the server. However, I don't believe that's what has happened here, and I believe you're mixing IC into OOC. The entire issue that got you into this situation was the way your character behaved- both with an MCP Investigator, and a Rank Leader. Yes, you have been appointed as a loyalist investigator by Mulligan. That does not mean that the MCP investigators have any obligation to immediately be amenable to your character- they showed immediate scepticism and criticism of your assignment.

However, your character chose to take a confrontational tone and attitude with these people- who, at the end of the day, are in a position of power greater to yours. Yes, they may be operating on their inflated ego- but that's purely in-character. You chose to be sarcastic and snarky with them, on two occasions. The second time, you then tried to walk away mid discussion after a snarky comment, and ignored the Rank Leader when told to halt, hence why you were beaten and stripped of your status.

I wasn't there for the happenings with the Overseer, but I believe the intent was to try to scare the attitude out of your character. In short? Your character was in a disadvantaged position handling people who are, essentially, thugs with authority. That is what Civil Protection is, at its core. You had the option to play it smart, and avoid damaging their egos- which is what your coworker did, who hasn't had any of this trouble. Instead, you chose to sass them. You played your cards wrong. That's in-character. That just is what it is. I feel like there's been a severe mix of IC and OOC here which has lead to you just spewing insults.

hi leudoberct, i appreciate this reply, its nice for someone with IC power to pitch in and argue in good faith. no, i dont think you're trying to gaslight/downplay this thread or whatever, you're actually engaging with it which is what it's here for

the issue with this situation is that yes, MCP doesnt have to treat mulligan's initiatives with much 'respect', yes they dont have to cooperate with them either, but this wasnt a case of "oh you didn't know where you boundaries began and ended", it was quite literally an MCP agent doggedly positioning himself to fillibuster anything we tried to do for the past few days by flagging on whenever they saw us get on to do shit, there was a concerted effort going on by gomez ICly to bully us out of influence which, yes, IC is IC, but it's not exactly a fun thing to deal with when we have 0 recourse and everything we try to placate and undo it continues to be of no effect or blows up in our faces

that whole disrespect stuff came as a result of my character being cornered and harrassed constantly with 0 provocation and also the rank leader was never insulted they just bigged that part up to make the charge more 'serious'. it was something quite mild that ended up getting my character beat to near to death twice

and this here is the most confusing part to me;

I wasn't there for the happenings with the Overseer, but I believe the intent was to try to scare the attitude out of your character. In short? Your character was in a disadvantaged position handling people who are, essentially, thugs with authority. That is what Civil Protection is, at its core. You had the option to play it smart, and avoid damaging their egos- which is what your coworker did, who hasn't had any of this trouble. Instead, you chose to sass them. You played your cards wrong. That's in-character. That just is what it is. I feel like there's been a severe mix of IC and OOC here which has lead to you just spewing insults.

the character, going into this, was already 'scared' to an extent to begin with. they asked her to apologize (she did), 'bow' (she did), 'kneel' (she did), then endure a curbstomp-threatening monologue and beat her up further and only THEN gave her back the shit she needed to do her job as practically an afterthought (and her jacket got deliberately stained because she involuntarily threw up on gomez' suit). im trying to think of what more needs to be 'instilled' in a character after they go along with so many gestures of "we are above you!!!!" - does it not feel a bit problematic to you that all these questionable gestures werent enough to satisfy these players' in-character craving to box my character into some cowering crying pants-pissing wreck? over the most lukewarm comeback ever?

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

I believe in tastefulness and I believe in player empathy; I believe people who play powerful characters have a huge responsibility to make sure that the players they interact with actually enjoy being imposed on by them to some extent, that the 'way' this power is exercised implies some basic respect for the player on the other end and their time & enjoyment.

> The Psychologist has entered the chat. <​

In many aspects to which I have participated in both in villainous and paragon roles of playing powerful characters (sometimes both when it arises to character deviance without trying to self-insert my own thoughts from behind a screen), people in general tend to miss the mark in their appropriations for how "good & evil" is portrayed across a spectrum scale on the serious roleplaying environment. It is easy to mistake how 'powerful' characters in high positions are to be portrayed without becoming the simple replacement tyrant in the Combine or the nonsensical idiot who thinks he's "doing good by committing the bad".

Every character should have some form of agenda behind them, a tick to their timebomb so to speak. When I first played Hex Sanchez (not my original character to play, though the player who DID play him left a long time ago for reasons unknown), everyone remembered him to be the meanest bastard anyone would have met in City Eight, though over time his experiences and punishments and the loss of his brother in-character caused a greater ethical and moral shift in the character's personification. In the end, he died believing himself a changed man with faults, rather than one man being upmost concerned with flaunting power where-ever he could.

Arcs tend to be misguided by the stillness of in-the-moment activities of the roleplay they're involved in and it's tendful to forget how a character should really act and behave in levy to his original layer of portrayal.

An effective appliance of appropriating power across one or multiple characters is by not jumping the gun if you were to hold the cards, but simply classically conditioning the other players into your realm of personifying expertise. It's operant conditioning that is to be avoided in these cases, because it's deliberately adjusting the balance to /your/ set of words typed on the keyboard through the given scenario you're in.

*COUGH* I'M TALKING TO YOU, POWERGAMERS. *COUGH*​

In my eyes, the 'almost perfect" Civil Protection officer is the guy that doesn't talk much to you, boldly doing his job enough to recognise that the person they're about to beat could have it better in an interrogation chamber in a dark room. Power is displayed by alleviating the one-railed system of the left mouse button and is instead directed by a co-opted carrot being dangled by the unit enacting the punishment, luring the other players into either a false sense of belief, or uncertainty of the future.

It's a social contract enacted by the sacrifice of time you're willing to put into making your RP flexibly make the scenario as fun as possible.

Imagine if Hex just came up to you and decided to just inject you with some stupid serum that comes out of nowhere and suddenly your character is forced to some cringe death scene. Or if the unit just sees you do something that's taken you a while to participate in-character to achieve and it's a 9mm shot to the head-dead-end. It would be BORING and unwarranted, but scenarios differ so really it's not easily judged that way either.

The most questionable activity I've probably ever done was last year in November when my CP tried to talk a guy out of fighting him after a bar brawl with another unit and two other citizens with him. It lasted ten full minutes. We eventually won but we were all battered and bruised, though he decided to spit on my boots in the end... I threw him in a washing machine and turned it on. That may not have been the best warranted act despite the amount of medical RP it produced for everyone involved, but torture RP is boring regardless of what it is (never did it again because I look back at it and it seriously didn't align with how HERO-111 acted back in the day) and it left a sour taste that the player decided to just have his character PK'd rather than have him live the sensation of surviving being funnelled for a spinning bath of premature doom.

So yes, power requires basic respect and it applies to everyone. Otherwise, might as well just call it Half Life 2: Serious Moral Bankruptcy RP. His statement is correct.

 

[Banana]

I see. Even if this was the consequence of certain behavior, if what occurred really did occur, why not leave the 'torturing' to the professionals?

These are uncertain times, in an uncertain future and this un-professional impromptu individual of sufficient ranking and power just had basically what amounts to a lackey, a temp, talk back to a Union-sanctioned and commissioned officer of the current regime's law.
In retrospect that RL had sufficient experience and professionalism due to time in service, time in grade, and he's a Rank Leader which means he didn't make it there by just being good at his job - but by also being damn good at sniffing out dissidents and dishing out the proper punishments.

Regardless I think we have managed to steer this topic back onto discussion and less about hurt feelings.

 

[Leudoberct]

hi leudoberct, i appreciate this reply, its nice for someone with IC power to pitch in and argue in good faith. no, i dont think you're trying to gaslight/downplay this thread or whatever, you're actually engaging with it which is what it's here for

the issue with this situation is that yes, MCP doesnt have to treat mulligan's initiatives with much 'respect', yes they dont have to cooperate with them either, but this wasnt a case of "oh you didn't know where you boundaries began and ended", it was quite literally an MCP agent doggedly positioning himself to fillibuster anything we tried to do for the past few days by flagging on whenever they saw us get on to do shit, there was a concerted effort going on by gomez ICly to bully us out of influence which, yes, IC is IC, but it's not exactly a fun thing to deal with when we have 0 recourse and everything we try to placate and undo it continues to be of no effect or blows up in our faces

that whole disrespect stuff came as a result of my character being cornered and harrassed constantly with 0 provocation and also the rank leader was never insulted they just bigged that part up to make the charge more 'serious'. it was something quite mild that ended up getting my character beat to near to death twice

and this here is the most confusing part to me;



the character, going into this, was already 'scared' to an extent to begin with. they asked her to apologize (she did), 'bow' (she did), 'kneel' (she did), then endure a curbstomp-threatening monologue and beat her up further and only THEN gave her back the shit she needed to do her job as practically an afterthought (and her jacket got deliberately stained because she involuntarily threw up on gomez' suit). im trying to think of what more needs to be 'instilled' in a character after they go along with so many gestures of "we are above you!!!!" - does it not feel a bit problematic to you that all these questionable gestures werent enough to satisfy these players' in-character craving to box my character into some cowering crying pants-pissing wreck? over the most lukewarm comeback ever?

The Overseer who handled the situation (Wittrow) is generally the worst Overseer to have handle this. He is a complete and utter sadist and a bully. That's how his character always has been- he abuses his power. I believe the general reason that the Overseer was brought in was due to Mulligan indicating for your status to be returned- though even when beaten the first time, you had still upheld your attitude afterwards. I believe this raised the concern that your character was essentially getting away scot free with it, excluding the beating, with no adjustment to her behaviour. Hence, why the Overseer was involved.

I was the Rank Leader who ordered your beating. You were beaten due to you walking away from us, and then ignoring my command to stop. Your charge was a 507 - public non-compliance. Failure to follow an order from Overwatch forces. Had you not done that, I like wouldn't have ended up dishing out any beating at all.

 

[Banana]

Which brings us all the way back to player consequences. Willard lives up to it's merit of being a player-ran community.

The Overseer who handled the situation (Wittrow) is generally the worst Overseer to have handle this. He is a complete and utter sadist and a bully. That's how his character always has been- he abuses his power. I believe the general reason that the Overseer was brought in was due to Mulligan indicating for your status to be returned- though even when beaten the first time, you had still upheld your attitude afterwards. I believe this raised the concern that your character was essentially getting away scot free with it, excluding the beating, with no adjustment to her behaviour. Hence, why the Overseer was involved.

I was the Rank Leader who ordered your beating. You were beaten due to you walking away from us, and then ignoring my command to stop. Your charge was a 507 - public non-compliance. Failure to follow an order from Overwatch forces. Had you not done that, I like wouldn't have ended up dishing out any beating at all.

Suffice to say we aren't looking upon this issue as an isolated case. Imperator has already given examples of his own "evil" doings and personal take upon it.

 

[TheMouths]

Which brings us all the way back to player consequences. Willard lives up to it's merit of being a player-ran community.

It is player-ran except when although you think it is, sometimes it seems like one ending was already choosen from the beginning.

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

The Overseer who handled the situation (Wittrow) is generally the worst Overseer to have handle this. He is a complete and utter sadist and a bully. That's how his character always has been- he abuses his power. I believe the general reason that the Overseer was brought in was due to Mulligan indicating for your status to be returned- though even when beaten the first time, you had still upheld your attitude afterwards. I believe this raised the concern that your character was essentially getting away scot free with it, excluding the beating, with no adjustment to her behaviour. Hence, why the Overseer was involved.

I was the Rank Leader who ordered your beating. You were beaten due to you walking away from us, and then ignoring my command to stop. Your charge was a 507 - public non-compliance. Failure to follow an order from Overwatch forces. Had you not done that, I like wouldn't have ended up dishing out any beating at all.

bro i dont know how you can say she 'got away scot free' when she was stripped of her status, her armband, her jacket, her card that let her get into the nexus and her PDA with CCA level clearance. even in the worst case scenario (worst for you that is) that she learns nothing (which was not the case) and gets everything back a day or two after, that's still a day or two spent being deprived of the tools she needs to do her job

i honestly, genuinely dont remember being given a long enough period to actually process the command to stop. i might not have even been in chat range for that tbh


i sympathise with the person-in-power dilemma of disliking someone (be it IC or OOC) for their 'attitude' and trying to pin down what it is that's wrong exactly and fix it, but considering i feel like i've put so much effort into being diplomatic in this situation it is astounding to me that this situation escalated so much in the first place, it feels like every second word i've typed out IC was interpreted in a sassy way against my own will to the point where i started actually indulging in it just because it was so tiring to deal with only for it to fuel the confirmation bias of the opposing side in this situation

 

[Rabid]

I believe this raised the concern that your character was essentially getting away scot free with it, excluding the beating, with no adjustment to her behaviour. Hence, why the Overseer was involved.

But the frustrating thing, as I'm sure you'll agree, is that ultimately the situation this stemmed from was pointless. Like - isn't it a net gain for the Overseers to have people who can sniff out false loyalists and toss them to Cops? Isn't that good?

Having an MCP member flag up and walk into a conversation about making bridges for better communication and going "WOW. YOU SUCK. YOUR JOB SUCKS. IDIOT. JUST GET A REQUEST DEVICE? LOL?" to a functional stranger then using them clapping back as the excuse to beat them (I'm sure you wouldn't have levied the charge but Gomez strikes me as the sort who would have anyway) just feels entirely unnecesary?

I'm not blaming you at all as the RL, I just feel like the entire thing was poorly-thought-out forced conflict that escalated into an hour of torturerp and boot-licking.