Cooper_

Yeah, Kayser was your bad after his shenanigans in TKR. Can't say there wasn't warning there : P Also, the length of that post was glorious.

I will say that I am a major fan of walls of text. We need more of these. Well done sir. Just one point I'd like to add though is that I think there's more culpability than just T$ itself. We as a community have enabled the kind of behavior that they've done for roughly 2 years now. That includes myself when I've hid in backchannels lamenting some poor folks getting some nasty responses and the "RON treatment," but allowing it to happen because it was more politically beneficial to keep a straight face. That isn't also to say I haven't received my fair share of nastiness directly to me, and I've called folks out on it when I was FA. But there's a lot more to be done. To me, the call to action is more than just T$ improving on its FA style but also reengaging as a community in a healthier way. One way that starts is bringing most of politics back to the forums where people (like you just did) can have time to type out reasonable and logical arguments instead of the who-can-type-faster battles you've got on discord with little substance. I think the OWF serves as a much better grand stage, and we should utilize it more effectively. RON and radio shows are great additions to our community, but everything has its limits. Personally, I would love to see a return to elaborative and constructive debates on political issues and the state of the game. tl;dr: Bring Back the OWF Walls of Text!

@Agent W in September: "Being mean is a valid CB" @Agent W in January: "Your CB for taking serious our sustained campaign against the existence of alliances in our sphere is petty" As a crusty retired FA who had no involvement in this war or its planning, I have to say that this set of events seemed pretty obvious when you acted as you did in the last global. It's coming up a bit shallow when you claim to be able to dish it out but not take it back in return. Good luck folks, and let's see what the next generation of folks have got.

Funniest Event:Biggest Controversy:Best Declaration of War (please link): Best Wall of Text (please link):Best Leak (please link): Best Meme (please link): I worked very hard to post Camelot's DoW for them (before they posted their own). Best Discord Server:Best Ad (please link):Best Community Contributor: @BigMorfBest New Addition to the Community: @BigMorfSexiest Voice:

Upvote for the ELO music choice!

You act like this is a bad thing. As @KillzBob rightfully pointed out, we keep our heads in our asses too. We're right there with you. And I'd just like to say... my butt smells wonderful!

As a perpetually scorned, grumpy, and old-time idealist for minispheres and dynamism, I'd just like to say I was rather impressed with the response (I can't say if it was for the right reasoning or not due to not knowing the full story). The stability of a system is judged by the equilibrium that is achieved after it is perturbed. As I see it, Oasis and Minc made a move that disturbed the balance of minispheres. The reaction was swift and fierce, and I don't see them or others repeating that mistake as far as precedent goes for a decent bit of time. To me, that's the sytstem working, minispheres doing what we always wanted it to do. So before I learn more to make me question motives of each side, I'll be returning to FA slumber. Hopefully, I can be impressed again the next go around. Good luck folks, and let's see those walls!

Ma'am this is a Wendy's.

Jokes on y'all. I only upvoted bc firwof downvoted. Also if this boomer bloc thing means I can now unironically not pay attention to micro affairs, @Kevanovia you sir must be a genius. I love it.

I don't think you're responding to my point against Rose. Frankly, I agree that the meta is fluid and changing, but when people change the meta they have to raise arguments and defend their positions. This is especially true when they're being inconsistent with their own previous stances. The KF point is specifically raised bc of Rose's presence as a key player in pushing it. Rose continually tries to distort the meta and push the boundaries on the informal agreements we all share to their benefit, and then tries everything possible to avoid accountability or even taking a legitimate stance to defend their actions. When someone else calls them out on their inconsistency, shady actions, and attempts to hide from any public discourse on their actions, they get mad and defensive (often via a stream of DMs that never sees the light of day because again no accountability). This is one of the crucial differences for why our relationship with HM and Rose turned out so differently post-DH. At least y'all took a stance, and at least we could have a discussion and make attempts to justify our actions to each other and adjust accordingly. Rose didn't heed a word nor budge an inch.

The thing is that the politics of this game only works because we have certain agreements. Without those constraints, we don't have a cohesive Orbis. The fact that you lied isn't in itself extremely problematic, but it speaks to a larger trend of Rose that continually pushes the border of what is acceptable in the meta to its own interests. Rose was part of the coalition that established the precedent on secret treaties after all during KF. Rose later decided it could do what it wanted. Rose was a main pusher of the mini sphere narrative under Mhearl. Rose has yet to enter a global war by itself. We also have established norms of communication as people are generally expected to interact publicly and make arguments. Rose is often nowhere to be seen on IC wavelengths. Wars without a CB and actual grudge wars are often looked down upon. Rose casts a legitimate war and CB as a grudge and then later comes in without a CB and on a grudge. You then get bent out of shape when people have a reason to point out that you're not sticking to even the principles you set up beforehand. You could probably even pull off the realpolitik if you had the gumption to attempt to defend your stances and accept the consequences. But you don't do either, and you can't have your cake and eat it too.

I already touched upon this above. You knew about our intentions regarding both Rose and GG, and had already made the cut informally. We made sure that you weren't the target out of respect for that position, but putting this impossible burden on us of figuring things out while waiting for you is ridiculous. If you didn't want us to spend the last week or two of TLR figuring out our future, then you shouldn't have sprung a timeline on us with only your half leaving with a sphere. We liked you guys as allies, but the world doesn't revolve around you. That isn't fair to us, our allies, nor our membership. This isn't fully true. TKR didn't want a long NAP as much as we wanted a non-blanket NAP. That way, other conflicts axes besides the Quack dogpile 2.0 would pop up and change things. We were only sitting behind the longer NAP claims because that is what T$ and its side of Quack was wanting. You guys were our allies, so naturally we would support you. Ben asked you about working together to demilitarize. You indicated interest in the conversation. You hit us later that day. Just because it isn't surprising that you guys hit off a grudge that you claimed we've been having all of this time, doesn't mean we should be happy that you flippantly deceived us. Ben actually had some trust in you, and we had a 2-hours-long conversation about how TKR didn't have any problem with Rose as long as you guys made an effort to be transparent. Now the first opportunity you had to show the slightest bit, you went back to the same old ways despite new FA head and all. You could've even said nothing. Instead, you lied to our faces. Again.

I've already responded to this point. We all have IRL. Responding in a few hours is more than enough. I assume that's the same reason you didn't respond instantaneously. You seriously need to reconsider your priorities if you're going to hit a sphere because their leader has a job among a few very serious IRL issues he's dealing with, and was doing everything he could to be reasonably responsive. But that isn't the reason. You had a blitz planned already. We know these things take days, and you were most certainly around sometime in the hours leading up to the blitz that you could have managed to respond. You failed to respond in the end not Ben. You're the one who blitzed not us. He could 4 days. Idc as long we had a discussion about deescalation. He blitzed us instead with fantastical claims that we weren't communicative and we took too long to respond. Note the context, and you're refuting Wana and not us. I displayed for you 3 different communications, 2 of them were done via DMs. Even if you want to make a bad argument like the place where the majority of TKR-T$ communication outside of Quack was done wasn't good enough for your standards, there was ample opportunity. You never reached out to us a single time. You never offered us a single concern. It went beyond what you told us, and we were rightfully on edge. Please read my thread with Shiho. I think both T$ and TKR took logical actions all things considered, but then you went and took offensive action. All of our actions were defensive in entirety and fully explained to you, especially when Ben leveled with you and told you exactly what was happening. He was willing to admit that you militarized for KT and we militarized for you. He then offered to deescalate. You then hit us later that day. Only you chose to escalate offensively.

Our actions were defensive in nature. We explained this, and Ben openly acknowledged this to you. I quoted Ben's statement beforehand. We were very willing to believe you still, but just had to be safe (I feel quite bad for the alternate timeline HW that doesn't mil). I was in fact among the strongest supporters of your case internally–@Vanek26 will eternally torment me now. The issue is that you guys singlehandedly escalated from there into an overwhelming blitz with another sphere while we were openly asking you and Rose to deescalate. Shortly after responding to us, you blitzed us. We didn't make any offensive moves, and we even took steps to scale back the defensive moves once we were in a position to do so.

Given the context, anything more than what was said was enough to give us a reason to militarize. Max slots also position you to get more buys in quickly and move to 2-3 days ahead of us with a double buy. Rose in GnR and the stances T$ had taken on our allies had put all of HW on edge. I'm not sure how right that is, but it doesn't matter. The point I was making was that prominent T$ members have in the past gotten away with ghosting with impunity. To make the claim that it is unique to Grumpy or OB is ridiculous. That's true whether or not you want to call TJest T$-centric. By late April, you had already sprung on us a timeline that we weren't prepared for. While we had agreed to break, you put a deadline on us that left us with a singular option. You had a sphere while we had an indefensible position. We were working with the hand we had. Regarding actual discussions of a hit on Rose, those were only started as an idea about a week before we broke (13-15th from what I see) and becoming serious as TLR was ending. And because of the understanding of the line we had to straddle ntm our perception of good relations, we dismissed a hit on BW immediately. You knew exactly what our intentions were. We had literally spent the past few months getting yelled at by you, Partisan, and Nexus because we wanted to hit Rose and HM with a particular emphasis on Rose for their use of secret treaties. You also were aware about our conversations with SRD, and I think even Shiho said that this was your expectation. You may not agree with our actions or wouldn't do them yourselves, but you can't claim they were not in line with the thought process we had been using for months in Quack beforehand. T$ doesn't have exclusive rights on ideology. We're allowed to pursue our own path and have our own stances. You folks talk about all the costs involved in fighting GG and ROI and what not, and then you're surprised when someone else is willing to sacrifice to take a stand of their own? I'd also add that Oasis entered before we even clarified our CB publicly, so I doubt that being the reason. You're right in the last point though. We should've not had the upper-hand. It was a lot of luck, but I'm not looking back. We spent months yapping in Quack internals about secret treaties. We spent months after Quack yapping about the same thing. We harped on multipolarity in Quack. We harped on it after Quack. Your stances on the upper tier have been your own. Yes, we've had trouble fighting G/G, but we don't think it is overwhelming just as this war is showing. Just because we didn't share your stances doesn't make us inconsistent.

You're right it was 30 (although it makes my point stronger), sorry. I was noting militarization where it wasn't expected. E$ doesn't have a lot of C30s and their military builds went beyond what was implied. Similar story with CTO, who didn't have a direct treaty tie and was someone we were watching. That's when the spidey-senses went off given how antagonistic T$ had been to HW at that point and with Rose a prime example of what happens if you're not careful.

That isn't unique to Grumpy. I'd remind you that TJest is usually a T$-centric venture. Oblivion was also quite active in the counter even against their own members. I'm not here to justify it just to say that this point deserves no mention in any discussions even close to your CB. Yes, that's tantamount to making a similar level threat as what SRD said in the radio show. We didn't hit you. You were briefly considered as a target. You weren't the target. In both cases, I can see a reason for some antagonism but not even close to a case or even support for a CB. As an addendum, I'm perfectly happy to dig in to the meta conversation about GG, but we need to be clear that we're past the other excuses about ghosting and SRD's comments. Both of which are a bit hypocritical coming from T$ and not relevant to your actual reasoning. We can't have a cogent conversation on the validity of your actual CB "the threat of GG/upper tier" until we move past this. Otherwise, we talk about GG and tiering and the back-and-forth just becomes circular until you bring back up these shallower reasons. For all intents and purposes, we had an informal notice weeks back. While we were agreed on a mutual breakup, you sprung up a timeline that we weren't prepared for. HW was our only option at the time. We didn't really have much of a choice given that TKR/TO/BK would not stand on its own as a sphere being from 1/3 to 1/2 the size of other spheres plus the lack of trust for Rose that public ties were all that were present. One of the key reasons why T$ was rejected as a target so quickly out of hand is because of the understanding of our position (informally going to break but not yet official), and what we saw as a relatively ok breakup. That said, we did not get the war we were pushing for, which was against Rose (and HM). You guys talk about being consistent on being against GG. Well, our consistent stance since KF (and for the entirety of my tenure in FA) has been for transparency and against secret ties. I get why you guys didn't want to hit them due to differing priorities and a vacillating Nexus, but we saw TLR as a war to respond to your concerns with &/Alexio. Our numbers versus Rose were in the range of 1.3:1 meaning we had about a 30% force advantage. At the time, we had a lot of respect for Rose's milcom, and we expected this wouldn't be an easy fight. I think the odds were in our favor, but among the closest of any war since Surf's Up. And we had a reason that we didn't make secret internally or externally. We disagreed with their FA style of sneaking around and failing to publicly acknowledge their ties for the PR cover. The goal was ~2 weeks and a recognition that folks should value transparency. We didn't expect Rose not to be militarized nor for the shenanigans with Oasis and half of MI (nor their failure to fully militarize either). And I can only hope y'all will be as gracious as we were in peace talks. Friend, I feel like that's what you did to me. You took my statements out-of-context, and then tried to show them as some gotchas of not being consistent despite a little bit of nuance perfectly explaining my positions. Read where I mentioned TJest above and where Oblivion was among the most active in countering KT. I read back in the embassy, and see myself also reacting favorably to the post. That's Adrienne and Cooper. There were other further clarifications in both public and private spaces. This was abundantly clear and made a public position for TKR that we wouldn't have endorsed a hit on T$. For DMs, it was you who chose to reach out to Adrienne. If you were concerned about Adrienne's opinion to being enough, you could've reached out to someone else to get confirmation. Communication is a two-way street, and we've been responsive and consistently engaging you in our embassy, in public, and when otherwise contacted. Our original militarization was prompted by two factors. First, we saw build changes in of E$ and CTO. Second, Rose's recent experience in GnR taught us a lesson. We told you that immediately when asked on 8/15. Ben messaged you both around noon. He got confirmation from Harry that they were interested, and was waiting on you after you sent a message at 2 and he got back to you at 5. People have lives and work. This is a very poor excuse of evidence that we didn't communicate. And given that you guys had a full blitz done, you guys were already locked and loaded. I have very hard time believing that this was just knocked up in the span of a couple of hours because Ben can't respond the second you sent a message. When we saw evidence of militarization beyond what you suggested and a rationale that wasn't fully fitting of the need. We were also upfront about this in our response to Eclipse and when Ben messaged you. If you need it to be explicit, we stated: "Ok. Inquiry time. And truth/telling time. If you guys really built up fro KT, and we built up because of you, and rose built up because of both of us, what are the chances that you me, SRD, and Valk can get in a room and figure out how to structure a decoy rather than shedding pixels without a reason?" It was all out on the table. You blitzed later that day. You also never reached out to us once. Only Eclipse did.

@Agent W In some ways, this post is an improvement upon the original stated CB because I think we all recognize that they were not substantiated nor justifiable. The first few lines do justice that these weren't your reasons, but the latter paragraphs then just try to justify them again. Our biggest response to all of T$' points has been a request to just be unequivocal about your intent. You don't like what you perceive as "upper tier consolidation" in GG. Some of us thinks that's overblown, but we can have that argument without the muddling that is the other claims being made. I'll just briefly touch on those. First, the ghosts from OB and Grumpy. Let me be clear. We in no way would ever conspire against our own allies. I'll even add that OB was then the major party who responded to KT despite their members ghosting in KT. This isn't a reason nor is it an indication of anything. Second, the statement made by SRD. I just did a brief search in our own embassy, RON, and some other public places. Some of the refrains associated with T$ gov (not just eumir) and Grumpy is bad, threat, needs to take damage (you get the point). SRD admitted that T$ was a potential target, but that TKR and its other allies in HW rejected that. Even if we forget SRD's IC character, you can't really claim a highground here. I'd also like to clarify the timeline since you seem to make out that we didn't communicate. This isn't true: On 8/14: I inquire in the T$ embassy about your militarization and mention that we're concerned about it. Gray responds that it is for the C20+ to prevent raids. Later on 8/14: HW internals recognize that there was a change in the MMR builds of E$ and CTO outside the parameters given, and HW was already on edge after all of the shit flinging T$ did last war. The decision was made to militarize since not militarizing could result in us getting hit like Rose during GnR. Rose follows us. On 8/15: Eclipse asks TKR about our militarization. We respond that we're concerned and milled up in response given how Rose got hit during GnR. On 8/17: HW decided that once it reached full militarization and was in a position to negotiate to reach out to both. We asked directly to Rose and T$ to work together to deescalate acknowledging the possibility that T$ may have actually been just militarizing for KT and that Rose and our militarization was reactionary. You hit us later that day. Every step of the way we were openly communicating our intent, and it takes some serious 4-D upon 4-D chess to conceive a way where we were not being transparent about our intent. The likely scenario is that you saw the sunk cost of militarization, you wanted to get your hit in to take out a perceived threat, and you had Rose who could be mobilized off of their grudge. It's a brazen and political move, but we can't really begin to break it down until we get on the same page. Friend, moving and hangovers take precedence over WoTs. Unfortunate, but as life goes.

He's talking about when they weren't following the peace terms and moving their training AA off the color and tanking our bonus during peace. @Vice If you think we were mad, go try that with Syndi and green lmao.

I didn't realize I could get so much appreciation in a single post. My ego is going through the roof today. Also, obligatory: orange is a shit color.

Jw weren't you in Grumpy/HW at the time? I'm sure at least someone mentioned the reasons we chose to hit Rose. They weren't just for the lolz. Rose crossed a line in DH that we deemed wasn't fair play, they have had a pretty consistent lack of transparency (that used to be a main T$ rallying call too), and had basically avoided a seriously damaging war since NPOLT. And this was a similar CB that the Rose had agreed was legitimate during KF (due to the TKR-T$ and TKR-Grumpy paperless ties). That said, I think GnR had a decent outcome. It addressed the issues with Rose and ended in a relatively smooth manner with WP with everyone walking away with something. Rose decided to spin it into a grudge for some reason to only then declare this war, hypocritically, because of a grudge. The TKR side also put a ton of resources into raising relations with Rose, and responding to every single time Rose got spooked when Partisan sneezed. Was pretty much a clusterf**k by the time since we did put a lot of effort into using diplomacy that was ultimately rebuffed when DH came around.

IC: Standard PnW FA & Shooting the Sh** OOC: Rose FA

Orange Man Corporation News Release: Recognition of Hostile takeovers Orange Man Corporation, commonly called TKR, hereby recognizes the attempted hostile takeover by hedge funds T$ and Rose. Both companies have been implicated in predatory actions that have diminished investor confidence. T$ executives have been caught in a series of contradictory statements that has rattled their resolve. One man in a businessman-looking suit wearing a snake costume was quoted "What even is our CB?". Rose company heads have engaged in consolidation that some fear is already too much. Entire industries are now under the behemoth's control after many, many previous mergers. A stout man from somewhere in the midwest with a mustache commented how "Rose took our jobs." Share prices have tumbled for both companies with these revelations. Investigations last night uncovered an operation from the two companies to take down the mom and pop business, Orange Man Corp. with the codename "GG G/G." Execution of this plan was hindered by unforeseen technical difficulties resulting from extra high trading volume on the Sheepy exchange. Upon learning of this, Benfro, queen of TKR, declared that he would begin immediately to take action to protect against the bevy of shorts and puts facing his shareholders. Ben was not the only one to take notice. Soon, an army, with the moniker "Hollywood," were supporting Ben under the ancient principle of "YOLO". T$ and Rose sustained billions in losses of hedge money as investors flocked to TKR. While driving by in rural Iowa, one stereotypical swing voter recounted "TKR made him a millionaire." Internal polling has indicated that TKR has now replaced snek on moon. Now emboldened, Ben sought to acquire assets from both T$ and Rose, setting his sights particularly on the subsidiary, Terminal Jest. Thus, in a surprising maneuver, TKR began its own hostile takeovers of both T$ and Rose began under codename "Orange Man Bad". Rumors circulated that as Benfro announced this, a chant could be heard from the knights of the company. Continuing even to now, the echoes can be heard: "I pledge allegiance, to the flag. Against the $yndicate and Rose. One orange alliance. To prevent ROI and growth for all. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that pixels must be destroyed." - Signed: Orange Man Corp, TKR (soon to be found on the moon). Tl;dr - TKR is ready to dance. May only the worst ROI lead to the moon.

Babe, I'm just jealous we have to share your commentary with Grumpy. Give the people what they want. More Eumir for TKR!

Ftr, we have had this discussion many times before (on all of the subjects you covered and not worthy of further WoTs), and I think it is an agree to disagree, but Wana was pretty flagrantly misquoting me. My intent was to correct that. I think you're overemphasizing the cowardice rhetoric since it isn't the thrust of our argumentation. I used the word because alliances being too zealous with security instead of taking risks contributes to imbalanced wars. I assume this disagreement results from my political priorities being different than yours, which is to see more competitive and interesting wars instead of minimizing my own risk/damage.