The Dove and the Olive Branch

[Anski]

The Dove and the Olive Branch

Please take a moment to read this selection of text before proceeding to the following compendium.

"I look at that dot and I think that's here, that's home, that's us.
On that dot everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human-being who ever lived, lived out their lives here.
The aggregate of all our joy and suffering thousands of confident religions,
ideologies and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization.
Every king and peasant,
every young couple in love every mother and father,
every hopeful child,
every inventor and explorer,
every revered teacher of morals,
every corrupt politician,
every superstar,
every supreme leader,
every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there,
on a mote of dust suspended
in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner.
How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self- importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in a great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness their is
no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from
ourselves.

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and even character building experience.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
For me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and
cherish the only home we have ever known.

The pale blue dot."
- Carl Sagan, American Astronomer, selections from a speech delivered to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 1995.

Now I take this moment to begin and say that those on the GM Staff who have been here long enough know what is coming and what is to yield from this.

I was raised a girl who was snapped at not to be mean to someone, and that everyone could use a little bit of kindness in their lives. I'm not an outgoing type, and I don't really bubble through a room with a cheery attitude, but I do treat every single person I ever have contact with in a sense of venial respect out of general anonymity to them. I do not know if they are an axe murderer or the nicest person i've ever met, but I treat everyone as a big shiny word that many people here have seem to forgot in the past few weeks: Equals. This isn't to say I haven't spoken maliciously about someone in my life, or behind their back, or seeded encroaching dissidence to others against someone. I've done it in real life, and i've done it here. What I came here to say wasn't to gloat about my own level judgment but rather the enigmatic concept in which the congenial playerbase has seemed to let dissolve in disharmony and entropic deterioration.

It's the concept of people being, to simply put it, nice to each other. I can't even fathom being this continually mean to someone, it's an abomination to human kindness for me. We're people, we make mistakes, but when it's the point where you can't face someone and swallow your pride, something is wrong. I can't say I can change you all, make you hold your barking and malice of your tongues, nor make you stop hating someone. However, I am here to say that this is abhorrent, the level of peace between us. It hurts me to see people's feelings get hurt, and if I've ever said something malicious to you that was over the top, you've received the plethora of apology because I felt horrible. I scolded RubyKuby for being mean to someone, many, many moons ago, and had to edit it afterwords so I didn't feel so bad about doing it.

I know, atleast on a acquaintance level, mostly everyone involved in this chaos and dramatics, and to honestly say, I know you're all good people. You may not think that of each other but in the heat of war it is easy to forget what the other side is. You aren't awful, hate-minded people on any level, you're all just simply good people to me. However, something, anything, tends to cause people to have someone else who grinds their gears. It makes them grit their teeth, snap, and take everything they say without a grain of salt. I've seen both sides of this 'war' of players versus staff because to simply put it, nobody really ever considers me to be on staff. I'm one of the least known active GM's, nobody ever really says much of anything to me. I don't RP with a fortune of people, if anyone, because everyone I roleplayed with before I was on staff has left the server, some in more graceful ways than others. I can honestly say, that EVERYONE is gone. I could list names, multiples of them, and players who have been here a few months would recognize a few of them, and those they did, they would know the person was gone. I was the very last person to ever give out a vouch for another player in the system, only minutes before the change was initiated.

I have watched people come, and I have watched people go.

Thinking, 'Oh god veterans are leaving the server everything is wrong!' is no way to think. People who were veterans leaving when I was a new kid had the same effect on me. People who were veterans leaving when I was getting out of learning the ropes was having the same effect to me. People who were veterans leaving when I was becoming a veteran had a lesser shocking, however mostly sad effect on me. This generation I speak of were the players who were equals with me when I was a new kid on the block, asking what Shatterspear was. However, during my veterancy, I was promoted to the staff and I still felt like a player, who just did more work. I watched, at this point, players who were joining before me and viewed as veterans leaving. I wasn't caring as much anymore, not because I wasn't apart of the general commune but because I saw the groundbreaking effects as general nonsense. I had to come to the reasoning that players get older and players leave. I know there are people here who are atleast a year older on the server than I am, and I can't fathom how they even feel. I would imagine, in a slight sense, it is the same way. You, you are the generation of players. You are growing older and soon, you will be veterans of the server, and as all, maybe oneday you will all pass as well. I have seen as many as around 10 players in a single day make bangs while exiting the server, for good. Nothing is wrong.

I miss many of the people who have left, many more who I still consider my friend and haven't spoken to since their departure, such as TimmyD, Shademourne, Kaelvan and others who were older than I. I just can't get a hold of them now. Shame, however there isn't much I, or anyone else can do about it. Calling for revolution and overthrow of everything isn't the answer. If something major on the server didn't work, the server wouldn't be here. It would have been gone a long time ago and Kretol would be off doing other things with his spare time, like working more. The players can fight and contest with each other as they see fit, it doesn't mean things are broken.

TOO LONG; DIDN'T READ:
This returns me to my original and my most prominent point; People need to treat each other with more respect. I have NEVER in my entire career of RPing here on the server seen so much trash talk against ANYONE. It's savagely disgusting to me. If you can't swallow your pride when talking with one another and at least attempt to show some maturity, you should probably be thinking about what you're doing and hopefully either change your offensive or back away. I am thoroughly disgusted with the way everyone is treating each other. This isn't just the playerbase, it isn't just the staff, it's EVERYONE.

My second point is that the server isn't broken. It's been going the way it went for a long time now, and no problems with it have arisen until someone else starts a problem. Half of you don't even know the full story behind all of this drama because half of it happened between the staff and hardly any of the playerbase was none the wiser. This isn't because [x] is broken, it's because [z] had been a problem between people, not system. Does [x] = [z]? The answer, in base Algebra, could be yes, but in logic and in application here, no. Things are not broken.

I don't mean for this to be condescending at all, but I know you all can keep your heads out of these cans of worms and hide your dislike, and this is a call to put down your knives at each others throats, swallow your pride and please, be nice.

As an end note; I have to declare that I did not at any point write this to single any one of the players or staff out and be malicious to them. Please, read this with an aura of peace avocation. In retrospect, this is just a, for lack of any better word in the English language, a plea, for people to stop fighting. I care about all of you far too much to see the server fall apart without saying something, anything at all. A call for peace seemed best.

This thread is being locked and will be continually bumped by myself in lieu of posting people. If you want to argue something with me over this, please, do it in silence behind closed doors with a PM. If you feel at any point this is singling you out, message me and we can talk it over, probably with the part you feel is targeting you to be removed, but keep in mind I am not actively trying to put anyone here in the spotlight.
ANY AND ALL FLAMING AND HATE MAIL WILL BE DEALT WITH ACCORDINGLY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
IF YOU ARE NOT BEING CIVIL I MAY SIMPLY REFUSE TO RESPOND AT ALL.

Thank you, Conquest of the Horde, for reading this.
All is fair in love and war,
Anski.

[Anski]

Bumping in lieu of people posting.

[Anski]

Will be bumping one more time after this and I will let the thread fall into oblivion unless need arises.