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- Nov 27, 2005
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- #1
I've seen and heard a fair amount of concern over the last few days from a number of people about the policy that I had OOC and Banik had IC in regards to the Republic. I'm not the faction leader anymore so it doesn't particularly matter anymore, but from what I understand Ols may continue that policy so it's at least important to understand where it came from.
Where most of this concern seems to stem from is the thread Freedom of the Press, where Banik gave his final public appearance as Emperor of the Bogan just before his vessel exploded. In that thread, Banik said some things to a reporter about the Republic. Understand that most of them were completely in character and had nothing to do with IC or OOC plans; he said he liked the Republic, he liked what they represented, etc.
Whether you knew about it or not, Banik tried to save the Republic from being sucked further into the Alsakan Crisis in the third timeline, and nothing has happened to him that would make me lightswitch him into suddenly having a cliche dark side RAR RAR I HATE YOU attitude towards the Republic. Doing that would have been cheap and unrealistic for the character, something I made no attempt to hide throughout my duration as faction leader.
But that was just fluff to get the Republic thinking happy thoughts. If you read closely at what Banik said, he was basically proposing the exact same deal the Bogan had with the Hutts: you stay out of my way, we stay out of yours. The Bogan and the Hutts, save for the now formerly dual-faction Darksaber membership (which favored the Hutts anyway, as it was meant to), really didn't have any sort of partnership anyway. It was also done to have an interesting twist on the typical good vs. evil Star Wars story. The Bogan were never evil personified anyway.
So I want to clear up a few things, some of which are concerns I've heard have been said by a few people now:
1. Banik's interview did not prompt the Hutts to make the decision to declare war on the Bogan. Anyone who tells you that is 100% wrong and is actually believing IC propaganda. OOCly, this new war against the Bogan has been being planned for about a month, so just a short while after the beginning of the time skip. The interview was a convenient add-on to the IC reasoning, which basically stems from Tusa being paranoid (which is keeping in-character for him, so there's nothing wrong with that).
2. I knew about how the Hutts wanted to get rid of the Bogan for the longest time, well before the time skip. This was something that was going to be done no matter what, from everything I've been told. It was just something that the Hutts have wanted to do. More power to them.
3. Banik's policy towards the Republic had absolutely nothing to do with my own personal storyline with Banik. Well, it did once I made the decision to resign about a week ago (which is why I said Banik planned to screw over the Bogan anyway after the Hutts declared war, because that was something I decided for Banik after I decided to resign), at which point it took me a few days to rework Banik's goals and endgame to fit with what he's already done, but before I made the decision to resign it was a 100% strategic decision that I can't remember hearing a complaint about. If the Republic became our enemy, then if they were going to move forward into the Outer Rim to try and get to the Esstran sector, and they succeeded in doing so, then we could've potentially been completely screwed. If the Republic wasn't going to commit to a war against the Bogan, then the Jedi became a much weaker enemy since their personnel and fleet forces are incredibly smaller than that of the Bogan Empire. They would, however, have still been formidable, giving us a much better war against the Jedi that could've focused a lot on Jedi vs. Dark Jedi with soldiers being supporting players.
So that's that. The Republic policy wasn't about my own personal storyline, and the only reason it became an IC reasoning for the Hutts was because it was convenient. Whether you agree or disagree with it or not still is up to you, but I don't like misinformation being circled around. It's the bane of my existence on SWRP, and a lot of people will tell you that it annoys me to no end when I hear about misinformation (AND it generally has absolutely nothing to do with misinformation about me).
Additional retrospective
I wasn't going to get into anything else, but, now that I've already said a lot, I'll say a little bit more. There were a few weeks there where I wasn't as active on the site as much, but that happened to pretty much everyone who's in college too (Sreeya and Santoro included). So things did slip a bit, and I take full responsibility for it, but, contrary to some people's misinformed beliefs, I was working to fix that up again. Radzkie was sending me a number of ideas, and I was working to implement a number of them. Same goes for Horizon, he was beginning to send me some ideas as well and I was the one who guaranteed him a Governorship, which is why Ols made him Governor (he didn't have to, of course, but he did). Weiss had the religion proposal and, while it was a much lower priority, it was something we would've gotten into as well. I'm not as "in your face," so to speak, about up to the minute updates like Adena or Santoro may be, but that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything either.
One thing we had coming up was going to be the capture of Ossus. Santoro had agreed to let the Bogan do that, which he had been planning to do, with the agreement that there could be free Hutt movement through the area (which I agreed to), but we never got to that. Would it have fit Banik's story? Yes. Would it have been something important for the faction? Yes. It also would've been a lot of fun and would've been a huge win against the Jedi.
Whether people like it or not, what I did with the faction in terms of connecting it to the third timeline with the Ospion Guardians was actually re-focusing the Bogan back to its roots. Throughout a good deal of this current timeline (pre-time skip), the only reason the Bogan were going after the Jedi was because the Bogan were dark siders and that's what dark siders do. The connection to the Ospion and reminding everyone that the Jedi betrayed Banik and a number of other people during the Conclave on Ossus did suit whatever storylines I wanted to do for Banik, but also the Bogan Empire as well. It gave the Bogan an actual purpose. It gave them a reason for doing what they do rather than just mindless rampages against the Jedi because that's what evil factions are supposed to do.
This isn't meant to be an insult to Sheo, because he did a great job as Bogan faction leader, but the Bogan were seriously a purposeless faction for the longest time. They had no reason to move forward beyond Ando Prime or to wage a real war against the Jedi because they lacked a clear motive other than the fact they were evil. This wasn't much of an issue because, at that same time, the Jedi were also purposeless and lacked any sort of will power to launch an offensive war. They instead just reacted to whatever the Bogan did whenever the Bogan did it.
When I took over as Bogan I planned to create an empire out of them, which is something Sheo had started to do (and where I got the idea from) but had only done the baby steps with. Once Sreeya became Jedi faction leader, though, and started picking off high ranking Bogan, it became crystal clear to me that the Bogan needed a better purpose and motivator than "cuz we're evil" and would need to be much smaller and in much bigger of a location than just one world where we could be picked off for target practice. So, with Banik as the Bogan leader, the logical purpose to give them was the connections to the Ospion and rekindling the sense that the Jedi deserved to be punished for what they had done on Ossus.
You may not have agreed with that. You may not have liked the idea, and you may have thought I was just trying to use the Bogan for my own purposes. I wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to give the Bogan a reason for doing what they do and to give them motivation. The formation of an empire itself was an effort to rekindle lost interest in the Bogan.
One more thing I'll say is that I did not run away from the faction leader position because of the Hutt war against the Bogan. Did I know about it? Yes. However, I was under the impression that it was just starting to be planned for, not something that was actively under way, so it's not like I felt I had to run away. I had been more or less set on resigning for a little while before that anyway. Had I known that the Hutt declaration of war would've come less than 24 hours after I stepped down, I would've asked Santoro to hold off for a small bit so it didn't look like I was making a convenient exit. Everything I said about my heart not being in it anymore was true.
So to close, I'll say these last few things:
1) I don't like hearing from people that tons of people had comments and concerns about what I was doing with the Bogan when those tons of people did not come to me with those concerns. If any of those silent people with concerns were those who said "Sorry to see you go" in my resignation thread, please don't be two-faced to future faction leaders or to me in future interactions. I can only tell you so many times "Feel free to send me a PM whenever you want" until the lack of communication about concerns says more about you than it does about me. Everyone makes mistakes in anything they do, myself included, so I'm not trying to pass off the buck for mistakes, but there's absolutely no excuse for not talking to me about your concerns. If two people, like Horizon and Radzkie, come to me and bring me concerns and ideas, I'll work to fix things. If a lot of people come to me, I'll light a fire under my ass and get it done much faster because then it's actually obvious that it's a concern that people have. You, as faction members, will ALWAYS know better about problems in the faction than faction leaders. It's just a fact of life.
2) Again, my interview had nothing to do with the planning for the the Hutt war against the Bogan, it just offered convenient IC reasoning.
3) My Republic policy was strategic, not for my personal plot, and was done to protect the faction from being blown to kingdom come.
and 4) You'll see me do things in the RP that'll make it look like I was planning to screw the Bogan over to begin with. You'll see me do things that'll make it look like everything I had done was planned. I wasn't, and it wasn't. I had to re-tool everything I planned on doing once I resigned as faction leader, which both Johnny and Ols will attest to. I don't want to hear about how I was just using this faction for my own means, because it's flat out wrong and, after this thread, a flat out lie.
Sorry for ranting. If you got this far, then the order is 1) Tie the rope around your neck, 2) get up on the chair, 3) tie the rope to the ceiling fan, and 4) drop.
:CHappy
Where most of this concern seems to stem from is the thread Freedom of the Press, where Banik gave his final public appearance as Emperor of the Bogan just before his vessel exploded. In that thread, Banik said some things to a reporter about the Republic. Understand that most of them were completely in character and had nothing to do with IC or OOC plans; he said he liked the Republic, he liked what they represented, etc.
Whether you knew about it or not, Banik tried to save the Republic from being sucked further into the Alsakan Crisis in the third timeline, and nothing has happened to him that would make me lightswitch him into suddenly having a cliche dark side RAR RAR I HATE YOU attitude towards the Republic. Doing that would have been cheap and unrealistic for the character, something I made no attempt to hide throughout my duration as faction leader.
But that was just fluff to get the Republic thinking happy thoughts. If you read closely at what Banik said, he was basically proposing the exact same deal the Bogan had with the Hutts: you stay out of my way, we stay out of yours. The Bogan and the Hutts, save for the now formerly dual-faction Darksaber membership (which favored the Hutts anyway, as it was meant to), really didn't have any sort of partnership anyway. It was also done to have an interesting twist on the typical good vs. evil Star Wars story. The Bogan were never evil personified anyway.
So I want to clear up a few things, some of which are concerns I've heard have been said by a few people now:
1. Banik's interview did not prompt the Hutts to make the decision to declare war on the Bogan. Anyone who tells you that is 100% wrong and is actually believing IC propaganda. OOCly, this new war against the Bogan has been being planned for about a month, so just a short while after the beginning of the time skip. The interview was a convenient add-on to the IC reasoning, which basically stems from Tusa being paranoid (which is keeping in-character for him, so there's nothing wrong with that).
2. I knew about how the Hutts wanted to get rid of the Bogan for the longest time, well before the time skip. This was something that was going to be done no matter what, from everything I've been told. It was just something that the Hutts have wanted to do. More power to them.
3. Banik's policy towards the Republic had absolutely nothing to do with my own personal storyline with Banik. Well, it did once I made the decision to resign about a week ago (which is why I said Banik planned to screw over the Bogan anyway after the Hutts declared war, because that was something I decided for Banik after I decided to resign), at which point it took me a few days to rework Banik's goals and endgame to fit with what he's already done, but before I made the decision to resign it was a 100% strategic decision that I can't remember hearing a complaint about. If the Republic became our enemy, then if they were going to move forward into the Outer Rim to try and get to the Esstran sector, and they succeeded in doing so, then we could've potentially been completely screwed. If the Republic wasn't going to commit to a war against the Bogan, then the Jedi became a much weaker enemy since their personnel and fleet forces are incredibly smaller than that of the Bogan Empire. They would, however, have still been formidable, giving us a much better war against the Jedi that could've focused a lot on Jedi vs. Dark Jedi with soldiers being supporting players.
So that's that. The Republic policy wasn't about my own personal storyline, and the only reason it became an IC reasoning for the Hutts was because it was convenient. Whether you agree or disagree with it or not still is up to you, but I don't like misinformation being circled around. It's the bane of my existence on SWRP, and a lot of people will tell you that it annoys me to no end when I hear about misinformation (AND it generally has absolutely nothing to do with misinformation about me).
Additional retrospective
I wasn't going to get into anything else, but, now that I've already said a lot, I'll say a little bit more. There were a few weeks there where I wasn't as active on the site as much, but that happened to pretty much everyone who's in college too (Sreeya and Santoro included). So things did slip a bit, and I take full responsibility for it, but, contrary to some people's misinformed beliefs, I was working to fix that up again. Radzkie was sending me a number of ideas, and I was working to implement a number of them. Same goes for Horizon, he was beginning to send me some ideas as well and I was the one who guaranteed him a Governorship, which is why Ols made him Governor (he didn't have to, of course, but he did). Weiss had the religion proposal and, while it was a much lower priority, it was something we would've gotten into as well. I'm not as "in your face," so to speak, about up to the minute updates like Adena or Santoro may be, but that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything either.
One thing we had coming up was going to be the capture of Ossus. Santoro had agreed to let the Bogan do that, which he had been planning to do, with the agreement that there could be free Hutt movement through the area (which I agreed to), but we never got to that. Would it have fit Banik's story? Yes. Would it have been something important for the faction? Yes. It also would've been a lot of fun and would've been a huge win against the Jedi.
Whether people like it or not, what I did with the faction in terms of connecting it to the third timeline with the Ospion Guardians was actually re-focusing the Bogan back to its roots. Throughout a good deal of this current timeline (pre-time skip), the only reason the Bogan were going after the Jedi was because the Bogan were dark siders and that's what dark siders do. The connection to the Ospion and reminding everyone that the Jedi betrayed Banik and a number of other people during the Conclave on Ossus did suit whatever storylines I wanted to do for Banik, but also the Bogan Empire as well. It gave the Bogan an actual purpose. It gave them a reason for doing what they do rather than just mindless rampages against the Jedi because that's what evil factions are supposed to do.
This isn't meant to be an insult to Sheo, because he did a great job as Bogan faction leader, but the Bogan were seriously a purposeless faction for the longest time. They had no reason to move forward beyond Ando Prime or to wage a real war against the Jedi because they lacked a clear motive other than the fact they were evil. This wasn't much of an issue because, at that same time, the Jedi were also purposeless and lacked any sort of will power to launch an offensive war. They instead just reacted to whatever the Bogan did whenever the Bogan did it.
When I took over as Bogan I planned to create an empire out of them, which is something Sheo had started to do (and where I got the idea from) but had only done the baby steps with. Once Sreeya became Jedi faction leader, though, and started picking off high ranking Bogan, it became crystal clear to me that the Bogan needed a better purpose and motivator than "cuz we're evil" and would need to be much smaller and in much bigger of a location than just one world where we could be picked off for target practice. So, with Banik as the Bogan leader, the logical purpose to give them was the connections to the Ospion and rekindling the sense that the Jedi deserved to be punished for what they had done on Ossus.
You may not have agreed with that. You may not have liked the idea, and you may have thought I was just trying to use the Bogan for my own purposes. I wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to give the Bogan a reason for doing what they do and to give them motivation. The formation of an empire itself was an effort to rekindle lost interest in the Bogan.
One more thing I'll say is that I did not run away from the faction leader position because of the Hutt war against the Bogan. Did I know about it? Yes. However, I was under the impression that it was just starting to be planned for, not something that was actively under way, so it's not like I felt I had to run away. I had been more or less set on resigning for a little while before that anyway. Had I known that the Hutt declaration of war would've come less than 24 hours after I stepped down, I would've asked Santoro to hold off for a small bit so it didn't look like I was making a convenient exit. Everything I said about my heart not being in it anymore was true.
So to close, I'll say these last few things:
1) I don't like hearing from people that tons of people had comments and concerns about what I was doing with the Bogan when those tons of people did not come to me with those concerns. If any of those silent people with concerns were those who said "Sorry to see you go" in my resignation thread, please don't be two-faced to future faction leaders or to me in future interactions. I can only tell you so many times "Feel free to send me a PM whenever you want" until the lack of communication about concerns says more about you than it does about me. Everyone makes mistakes in anything they do, myself included, so I'm not trying to pass off the buck for mistakes, but there's absolutely no excuse for not talking to me about your concerns. If two people, like Horizon and Radzkie, come to me and bring me concerns and ideas, I'll work to fix things. If a lot of people come to me, I'll light a fire under my ass and get it done much faster because then it's actually obvious that it's a concern that people have. You, as faction members, will ALWAYS know better about problems in the faction than faction leaders. It's just a fact of life.
2) Again, my interview had nothing to do with the planning for the the Hutt war against the Bogan, it just offered convenient IC reasoning.
3) My Republic policy was strategic, not for my personal plot, and was done to protect the faction from being blown to kingdom come.
and 4) You'll see me do things in the RP that'll make it look like I was planning to screw the Bogan over to begin with. You'll see me do things that'll make it look like everything I had done was planned. I wasn't, and it wasn't. I had to re-tool everything I planned on doing once I resigned as faction leader, which both Johnny and Ols will attest to. I don't want to hear about how I was just using this faction for my own means, because it's flat out wrong and, after this thread, a flat out lie.
Sorry for ranting. If you got this far, then the order is 1) Tie the rope around your neck, 2) get up on the chair, 3) tie the rope to the ceiling fan, and 4) drop.
:CHappy