2001-06-21 - 11:37 p.m.

Planetarion: My Resignation Speech

This morning I resigned as Minister of Communication of my Planetarion Galaxy. Here is the letter, uncut, that I posted in the galaxy forum. The footnotes are at the bottom of the entry.

This is not going to be a surprise to several of you: I am resigning as Minister of Communication, effective immediately.

To say that I no longer enjoy the trust and support of my GC would be a gross understatement. From recent conversations and correspondence Sharon has made it plain that she has a host of complaints as to how I have done my job, and she suspects me of conspiring against her. Not that she bothered to tell me any of this until recently.

At first, I thought I was going to stick it out until the end of this round but last night it occurred to me: I wouldn't take this kind of abuse at a job where I was being paid REAL MONEY. Why should I put up with it in a GAME where I am being paid in pretend spaceships?

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: If this is how Sharon treats all her ministers, she doesn't deserve to have any.

I also feel that I am just hurrying the inevitable - it's obvious that after Lily was fired as MoW my days as MoC were numbered.

Yes, this is partly about Lily being fired as MoW. I feel that her dismissal was completely unjust. I think she did an exemplary job organizing attacks - a much better job than I did last round when I was essentially doing the same thing.

Why, exactly, did Lily get fired? I've asked Sharon, and every time I get a different explanation. One of the most absurd: because Lily was not very active last round. What on earth does THAT have to do with the price of rice? Last round was last round, but this round is this round. Round One I didn't even play. So what?

Another fine distinction Sharon has made - Lily was a scan planet(1) and spent a lot of time and resources to that end. The argument is that the job of MoW is not connected with being a scan planet. Again, so what? It certainly made the job easier to do, and having to depend on someone else for the scans would have made attacks much harder to run.

Nearly all of the reasons Sharon gave were either nonsensical, distortions or outright fantasy. It's obvious that she is just fishing for excuses to explain a bad command decision she can't justify.

I think Sharon fired Lily for two reasons. First, she just doesn't like her and wanted to punish her. Second: she fired her just to prove she could do it. Yeah, she can, nobody can doubt that, but actions have consequences and this is one of them.

I think that Sharon's choice of Cocky(2) to replace Lily is a curious one. Nobody doubts that Cocky is a highly skilled player and very good at finding targets - mainly for himself.(3) However, he certainly has little interest or patience in organizing attacks for other people. Lily was criticized for being harsh with galaxy members, but in the scant 36 hours Cocky has been MoW he has already threatened to exile someone who voiced an opinion that he disagreed with, and labeled her concerns "bullshit." Why isn't Sharon shrieking at him?

This whole situation is very, very sad. I remember when Sharon was like a den mother to all of us, but this round she has become increasingly erratic, dictatorial and power-crazed. Practically all the interactions I've had with her recently have consisted of shouting matches where she alternately threatens and accuses me. Is it any wonder I'm hesitant to talk with her about anything?

And already I can hear her response to this statement - that I have refused to communicate with her. Recently I've sent her a couple of emails, explaining my complaints and concerns, but gotten very little response from her. The replies I got back from her indicated that she really hadn't read my emails and took any sort of statement from me as a personal attack.

I think that this galaxy has some problems, and I have a couple of ideas of how things could be improved, but I'm not going to talk about them. You are going to have to work them out for yourselves. I am not interested in a leadership position here. But one thing is plain: the problems are being made worse by the absolutist and clumsy way Sharon is handling them.

Which brings me to my next point. I am changing my vote for GC on the affairs page. Like Lily I am voting for Adamantium(4), and that's only because he's the guy with the most roids and the extra 10% would help the galaxy's score the most. Adamantium is not party to any of this. I have absolutely no intention, or practical expectation, that Sharon could be replaced as GC. I am doing this solely as a protest.

Sharon needs to be reminded that Galactic Commander is an ELECTED position, and it was not granted to her by God or something. None of the things I have said to her previously have made any impression on her - maybe this will. I encourage any of you that think she is on the wrong path to change your votes, too.(5)

Galactic Commander is a leadership position, but it is also one of service. It is plain that Sharon needs to spend more time talking to members of this galaxy and listening to their concerns, but instead she would rather go off on hysterical tangents, abuse and threaten and coerce people into doing things her way.

In spite what some of you think, I do not relish this wrangling. It has made me very unhappy. It has sucked all the joy out of this game for me. I used to view this galaxy as some sort of surrogate family, but it turns out to be even more dysfunctional than my REAL family. Who would have thought? I am heartbroken over this, and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that.

Therefore, I will be greatly reducing my commitment to this galaxy. I will probably only be attacking with FUN and Fury.(6)

There is only one thing that can make me reverse this decision. Lily needs to be reinstated as MoW, and Sharon needs to make a public apology to the two of us. I am stating this only for the record: I know that I may as well ask for the moon too for all the good it will do me.

As I go, I'd like to thank the couple members of the galaxy who have been kind and supportive to us. You know who you are.(7)

(1) A "scan planet" is one that devotes its resources to being able to scan other planets. To do that you need to spend a lot of resources on wave amplifiers and scans. The fact that Lily was a scan planet made it a lot easier for her to be MoW, but she didn't HAVE to be a scan planet in order to be MoW. For some reason Sharon thinks this is a significant fact.

(2) Cocky is the person that Sharon tagged as the new Minister of War. In typical fashion Sharon didn't talk this over with him, she just assigned him the job. Of course "Cocky" is not his real name; it's a pseudonym I assigned to him because he is such a cocky bastard.

(3) Not only is he a cocky bastard, but a selfish one too. When she was setting up attacks Lily always let others get the best targets, while Cocky always calls the plum targets first. But for all that he's essentially a likable rogue.

(4)Adamantium (another nifty pseudonym) is our galaxy's biggest player. A nice guy, but not very sociable mainly because he's out attacking all the time.

(5)Asking people to change their votes was a gambit on my part. I knew that there was no way I could get enough votes to be Galactic Commander myself, but I was hoping that I could get enough people to NOT vote for Sharon to make her more willing to parlay with me. But there was also a chance that this would backfire, and Sharon would become so enraged that she'd do something really reckless. At this point, I didn’t care.

(6)Fury is my alliance, and the alliance of a good chunk of my galaxy mates. FUN is the local alliance of galaxies in our parallel.

(7) I'm referring to the Australian lady I spoke of earlier (who was the person that Cocky threatened to exile), as well as Terror and Kru who actually seemed to be sort-of on my side of this. Will wonders never cease.