An excellent article. With the notes added by Kryigerof, it serves to highlight the flaws of The Mission's enemies even more than those of The Mission itself. Specifically, "because The Mission is big and influential, it must be bad. Because it is bad, everything about it must be seen in the worst possible light." And whilst quick to point out anything The Mission does wrong, even in the cases where it hadn't, they failed to have any better ideas of viable alternatives. It seemed to me at times that all KDS and Evolution ever did was work to undermine TM day and night. Oluf in particular seemed to have no political agenda beyond opposing TM whenever he could. Perhaps these people had good reasons for doing so, but the end result was the same- precious time and resources wasted in squabbles for power.

Tantavalist joined TM simply because it was clear that the Tower was failing, that something needed doing, and TM seemed to be the only ones doing it. In a crisis situation, it's better to do something now than the perfect thing later. He didn't agree with everything TM, and especially Arash, said, but respected that he was the only one working towards the Tower's repair with something other than obstructive arguments. Those people who say TM was wrong shouldn't criticise Arash, but rather the opposition leaders for failing to provide a viable alternative to TM.

And yes, I personally (and by extension my character) don't have any problems with genetic technology. In fact, on beliefs, Tantavalist was more suited to Evolution than TM, and if EVO had looked like it was going anywhere, that's who he'd have joined.

Yes, this does mean that a character who was becoming an increasingly bigger player in TM and slowly taking over its repair section was a staunch believer in clinical immortality and transhumanism, and yes, there would have been a major clash with Arash down the line. But Tantavalist had enough sense to save it for the time when the argument was more than just an intellectual debate and knuckle down to fix the Tower until then. He'd look at the people arguing against TM apparently for the sake of it and feel like shaking them by the neck and screaming, "Do you not understand that right now we are all going to DIE if the Tower isn't fixed, but you just stand around making trouble for the sake of it?!?"

Arash had a lot of ideas that were nothing more than hazy dreams for some unspecified time in the future, with no real idea of how he would achieve them, only that he wanted to. But the Rings that opposed TM often, to me, seemed exactly the same- the leaders had a hazy idea of forming a Ring to oppose TM and replace it as the major influence, but had no idea how to do it, so just turned up to meetings, yelled loudly, and spread malicious gossip. TM was working to do something- its enemies just worked to undermine TM.

Of course, it will be interesting to read the flood of counter-arguments that are going to follow this.

My suspicions are confirmed then.

They may have had the goal of opposing TM, but really, they were laughably bad at it because you just thought "I'll opposed TM" and did that. I think that a much more effective method of opposition would have been to simply join TM instead. I believe that Oluf himself once said that the difficult part about rallying support against TM was that very few Seeds opposed their core goals. When people said they didn't like how powerful TM was becoming, what they seemed to be saying was that they didn't like how powerful Arash was becoming.

A small Ring that just plotted against TM was never going to amount to much. Joining TM and working for The Mission but against Arash would have been far more likely to work, especially as most of the criticism in the interview notes above seems based on his beliefs rather than the in-game actions of TM.

And on a purely OOC note, any attempt to oppose TM directly was doomed to failure by simple virtue of the fact that, between them, Arash and Mehken seemed to spend more time in-game than all the other Ring leaders put together. Seriously, do their players even need to sleep?

Last edited by Tantavalist (2007-01-11 14:05:44)

Another suspicion confirmed... That Oluf's biggest problem with Arash and TM was that they had influence and he didn't. And I never said that the other Rings didn't have goals, just that TM was the only one doing anything concrete to work towards said goals.

Tantavalist had very little to do with the political side of things, just hearing from other Ring members and going to the bigger meetings, so my view of things is probably a little skewed. But the conflict between TM and KDS always seemed to be more about Egos than Idealology to me.

There's probably some subtle points I'm missing, since Tantavalist spent most of his time outside the floatbed wandering around doing repairs- I'm sure that there's a few TM members who wouldn't have known him as anything but a voice on the Ring channel, and as for other Rings, well... So all I saw of Oluf (and others) was this rather angry person who turned up to meetings to basically chant "TM bad! TM bad!" over and over and trying to win arguments simply by talking more than anyone else.

So was the overly-paranoid attitude towards TM IC or OOC? That's the one thing that comes up over and over again in every anti-TM argument ever made. "TM is run by fundamentalist dictators who are plotting to rule the whole Tower, everything they do must be seen as some sort of attack on the rest of the colonists." Yes, there were valid criticisms to be made concerning TM and its leadership, but they were blown well out of proportion by the anti-TM hysteria that half the Tower seemed to be spouting by the end. Even in the last post above, Kryigerof states that people were paranoid about TM stealing credit for their work. I'm genuinely curious about whether this was just RPing, or if players were truly convinced that TM was as bad as some would have had people believe.

Tantavalist it was *all* IC.... i even told arash to let me know if the in-game anti TM and arash bashing became too much

And yeah...if TM was working on the sign project they would have it done within a day

The interresting thing(imo) is that Oluf bashed and blamed TM for a lot of the things he was doing himself. Not listening to others, not really careing for other peoples dreams etc

Heh. Well, it's an interesting read here. Of course I agree totally with Tantavalist in the IC way of things. Very unconstructive, vicious bashing and even attempts to manipulate and infiltrate TM all over. Way too much time spent throwing mud than being constructive. However, that was also rather perfect for TM, because it made the more neutral people see what was going on. Everytime Thosam, Oluf and Neshor appeared to speak to Arash, their sole purpose was to have an audience and try to make Arash and TM look bad in that audience's eyes (Neshor was much, much more subtle about it than the other two). That was the strategy adopted to bring down TM, or try to.

And really.. You could have done better than that That just rallied the neutrals to us, because it was clear for everyone to see what you were doing. If you (ok, obviously Oluf would never get in ) had joined TM with the intent of destabilizing us, you could have wrested a few members from us. You'd have to be very good, and know exactly what was happening and what to do, to affect the core of TM in this way though. Still, would have worked better.

Or you could of course stop arguing against TM and just lead by example. That would have worked well, because you'd have gotten tons of NPC support to make you appear better than TM then, and in the long run, that could have changed some things.

However yes, it would have taken time and dedication to go against TM, and yeah, we played a lot, and were really efficient. Most sensible would have been to just forget going against TM, letting things happen, going with it, and then see what would have been. We'd have been the leaders of the time directly or indirectly, but leaders fall in time, mostly by their own doing. Or if not, still plenty of RP and intrigues to play out. Anyway, that wasn't to be.

I also thought it funny how everyone stopped the NPC's who angled for a more direct leadership to be established. Because you knew what that would mean And you tried to have only one vote per ring, implying that it wasn't fair otherwise. Hehe, and the thing with accusing Mehken of assaulting a TSR member, and suggesting putting blockers on us. Good fun all around Though it took a lot of our resources and time just countering all of this and keeping a (not-so-paranoid) eye on everything. 

However, when it comes down to it, there never was that much TM or Arash bashing in the sense of it being wide-spread. There were 4 players who were anti-TM and shouted at meetings, etc. And then there were all of Zorg's NPC's of course, heh. It was the NPC's who kept that going, not the players as such. Oluf, Thosam, Neshor and Moire only. The rest weren't like that at all. Still.. With the right knowledge at the right time, you could have pushed Arash over the edge of a nervous breakdown perhaps. It grew pretty stressful at times, and we had the IC feeling everyone was out to get us. Combined with personal happenings, a push at the right time might have destroyed or severely weakened at least Arash. Luckily none of you were around to do that at the right times, or you didn't see you had your chance.

And OOC yep, it's true Kryigerof and I discussed setting up an opponent for TM, after Kryigerof complained that we were the only ring RP'ing and spreading RP. That was pretty early on of course, when those pesky OOC'ers were still around. He thought it might stimulate RP and variety to have other rings like that. How he pulled it off was of course up to himself. He kept playing Theodore, his TM char from time to time, but focused mostly on Neshor. And yeah, Oluf said we could just say if the harassment became too much. But when it's IC (and also ineffective outwards anyway, though it did stress our chars a lot ), there's no need for that. We were all mature RP'ers, with friendly OOC feelings towards each other. It never entered that really bad point where you OOC begin to dislike the other players.

There was however one ring where the TM and Arash bashing was 'real', sadly real. They called me 'Mussolini' on their internal forums ;D I thought that pretty funny. They also went around telling new and old players how evil and mean we were, especially I, because one of them had seen Arash buy.. almost all the materials at one sharepoint once!! Wooooh.. And so on from there. THey were totally OOC'ers, not roleplayers, and they thought we were all to behave nicely. They couldn't understand that it was about RP and resource scarcity, that you played a role. They held me personally responsible for my chars actions, and grew angry (and tearful too), when I didn't seem to understand that I should stop acting in line with my char. A classic example of two worlds meeting, where at least one couldn't understand the other. And it wasn't all that much fun, as they were the largest ring at the time, and got to be rather vicious. Luckily the RP'ers ignored them, and they and most other OOC'ers lost interest in the game after 3 weeks or so. Still. And that was, ironically, before anyone could point any kind of finger at TM accusing them of bad stuff (well, actually TM never got around to do any 'bad' stuff, there simply was no need for that, though we would have, under the right circumstances).

Anyway, OOC I understand why TM was picked as the target. Such RP can be fun and doesn't take much play time or preparation (though that would have helped.. *snickers* ), and it was a big part of what Seed was about. Intigue, politicking, squabbling, wasting time and resources. We certainly felt we were wasting time dealing with this, yet IC we also felt we couldn't afford not to. OOC we really didn't need to worry, but our chars had trouble seeing this, overestimating our opponents constantly. It was first after one particular stressful situation that Arash began to argue that really, we might be over-estimating the need to constantly keep a watch on our opponents, constantly devising back-up plans and setting up triggers for any kind of eventuality. Still, OOC I absolutely loved this, the intrigue and maneuvering to PWN your opponents without actual combat. It felt like very pleasing strategy. To Arash it felt like a constant irritant, something keeping things from getting done, keeping them from actually making things better and it depressed him a lot actually.

When Tantavalist joined, Arash felt there was something he held back, but it wasn't serious enough to warrant him not joining, and although yes, that would have been a major surprise and clash down the line, I think it'd been taken without bitter feelings. Because Arash could really respect people he saw as sensible, working people. And he would have nothing against good arguments. But he absolutely had no patience for people coming to 'argue' with him to try and smear him and TM views to those who listened, having no interest in the argument itself. And that happened a lot with certain PC's and NPC's in the garden, when there were many listeners around. So as TM grew in power, and he didn't have a need to constantly defend his views to an audience, he preferred to talk one-on-one,  and just be dismissive when someone tried to pick a verbal fight with him. Of course they would then cease upon that and accuse him of not wanting to argue, of being arrogant, hehe. But at that time, it rang hollow in people's ears, so he could get away with it. I remember one particular time where Oluf wanted to hear about Moby's death in the garden (with audience of course), starting off with accusing Arash of withholding information from him, hinting that Arash and TM didn't want Oluf to know. That was just starting out of course, what would have come afterwards would have been Oluf dropping hints that TM probably had a hand in the murder I'm sure. Hehe, it was quite predictable, in a fun, good way Anyway, Arash basically told Oluf to sod off. Then Oluf tried blackmailing Arash with something in a private message, can't even remember with what, and Arash replied in public by laughing and saying so all could hear that blackmailing wouldn't work. I guess Oluf didn't know how to go from there, denying it or trying to say it wasn't blackmail. He chose the latter, but at that time the audience was onto his tricks. So it felt incredibly nice for Arash just to be able to totally ignore Oluf. As the TM members said often, Oluf appearing on a scene was actually a boon to them I think that time was also when Thosam was making 'I am the King of the World' rude gestures behind Arash' back.. Haha, that didn't help with credibility either Was fun. Ah, just reminiscing here. And there's so much to reminisce about..

Oh, and that mapping project. As it happens, when KDS couldn't finish it, we did it in one day yes, at least our part of helping Dustman. It's hard to argue against visible efficiency, especially in such a tower. Or it should be.

And hey Frakel, Evolution? Wanna slip the name of your char here? Mh? I'm curious.

Yeah, that wasn't coincidence by the way.. You bumping into us Our eyes and ears had informed us there was a new old Seed around, so we came to investigate and ascertain who and what you were, and how you could or did fit into the big scale planning. I remember us thinking you might have spent a little too much time down in the pit..

That other Seed was Nuala I believe. Because she told me at the same time. Hehe, yeah, it was a nice network all around