Off-Topic Thread vol. 2

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
6177

So, would you rather the gates just be shut off?

As an independent capsuleer, it’s not the responsibility of the DED to ensure your safety in travel.

IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

You are the only person that can look out for yourself and your assets.

If I may make a suggestion. The Star Map is your -best- friend. Learn the different statistics and metrics available to you. Learn how to read them in context of your own specific operations.

-Pilots in system last 30min (who’s in space)
-Pilots Docked last 30min (who can be in space quick)
-Ships destroyed last 1hr (who isn’t in that space anymore)
-Pods destroyed last 1hr (who -REALLY- isn’t in that space anymore)
-Jumps last 1hr (traffic volume)
-Station Count (an absolute VITAL stat when traveling in Syndicate or other faction space)

The Star Map can provide you with more up-to-date intel than anywhere else without having to speak to anyone. Check it before you undock. Check it often. Situations change quickly, and unexpectedly. On a travel operation, it can literally make the difference between gate camp, or Arriving at your destination alive and intact.

And you had the AUDACITY to go into their territory unannounced, without invite, intentions unknown, in a TENGU. As far as they knew, you could have been waiting to light a cyno.

Never underestimate the capacity for violence of those ignorant to your intentions, and hardened to shoot first.

6178

I appreciate the spirited defence of Syndicate’s capsuleer residents on display here (even if ‘uncouth’ doesn’t seem too wide of the mark).

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6179

Former friend of mine used to style himself ‘The Lord of Syndicate’. Had a small moon empire centered around FD-MLJ that he’d defend with about a dozen or two capitals and between30 and 4001 subcaps, depending on the ambient conditions in the cluster.

Being civilized and responsible residents of Syndicate definitely doesn’t prevent them from being ‘uncouth’. Shutupandshave was always both… but he had a wonderful singing voice.

Seems he’s over in Minmil these days. Guess he decided Horde was a shitty fit for Black Omega.

1. Yeah, that’s an accurate range there. It was 10 years ago, and GSF was up in Deklein. When we were at war, he couldn’t get a lot of people to help defend his moons, so he’d usually lose them. When we weren’t at war, he’d get other FCs in Space Violence (the SIG he ran at the time) to form up multiple subcap fleets while he formed up a small carrier gang.

6180

The Federation trying to distort and manipulate what it means to be Caldari was among the primary reasons for our secession.

Stay in your lane, Culome. Adams may be of Deteis descent, but he is not Caldari, and judging by certain accounts of his conduct even prior to his treason, it’s doubtful if he ever was.

“We will not permit you to tell us how to be Caldari, and so you leave us with no choice.”

  • Excerpt from the Caldari Proclamation of Secession. CE 23154.11.22
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6181

@Arrendis

I at least half-agree with Ms. Malitia. For the Caldari, “being Caldari” has always meant more than blood.

(For some, like the Dragonaurs and their sympathizers, blood is a prerequisite. But nobody considers blood alone adequate.)

Adams forfeited his claim to the name “Caldari” when he turned traitor. His reasons don’t matter. He is lost; his ancestors weep.

I won’t say that the “Raata Caldari” living in isolation on Caldari Prime or elsewhere in the Federation are less Caldari, though. Not everyone was in a position to escape, and enduring despite circumstance is at the very heart of the Caldari … cultural creed, I guess you’d say?

I’d also note that through sheer determination to remain unchanged, the State Caldari in a number of ways did change themselves. Take the proud rejection of aesthetics as a value-- to the point where utilitarian design becomes an aesthetic itself. The Caldari have always been practical first, but that value exists in Caldari culture not only on its own merits but as a rejection of the Gallentean enthusiasm for aesthetics.

What would Caldari homes and ships look like if Caldari Prime and Gallente Prime hadn’t shared a star? If they’d come of age alone, instead of “uplifted” by a bubbly and arrogant neighbor? It’s hard to say. Probably they’d still be simple, but perhaps not so proudly cold.

Anyway, Caldari is a culture, an outlook and way of life, more than it is an ethnicity, one Mordu’s Legion exemplifies perhaps as much as Kaalakiota (to the degree that a career in service to the Legion is a gateway to State citizenship). One may by adopting it wholeheartedly join it regardless of blood-- that is exactly what its rigorous immigration and naturalization procedures are about.

One may by rejecting it depart. Regardless of ancestry.

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6182

See, Ms. Dallocort, this, here, is exactly why.

It’s why more conservative types question whether it’s possible for the State and Federation to live in peace. It’s why even dissident expat/exile/kinda-just-cousins-anyway like me roll our eyes when we hear it.

Nobody, nobody, gets to tell the Caldari what is Caldari but the Caldari.

And the fact you think you can makes us want to kill you so hard that your ancestors will die again.

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6183

Come at me then.

6184

Yeah, that’s pretty much what the whole Cal/Gal warzone is, Ms. Dallocort. There’s more to it of course, but there’s a reason Heth’s invasion of Luminaire, the retaking of Caldari Prime, was so popular in the State when it happened.

As for you, personally? You’re one of probably billions or even trillions of similarly-arrogant Gallente, and I’ve long-since lost my taste for honor duels (possibly on account of someone who was … very loud about them).

You’re in EM, anyway, so we’ll probably be on opposite sides of a fight sooner or later. I’ll just wait for FC to call you primary.

6185

And this is why the Federation must be destroyed.

This post written by my device’s predictive text facility.

6186

Exactly.

#1 way to unite the likes of me with the likes of Ms. Kim: try, as an outsider, to tell us who we are and what that means.

(Of course then Ms. Kim starts arguing for literal genocide or something very close to it. There’s “Leave us alone!” which is a near-universal Caldari sentiment and then there’s “Get out of our universe!” which is not.)

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6187

Well, first, let’s remember that Adams is a separate thing from whether there is one Caldari culture.

But while Adams may live in, and work for, the Federation, he’s not the Federation, and he isn’t trying to dictate to you what it means to be Caldari. Instead, now you are all trying to dictate that same thing to him… You’re insisting it’s so because the State Caldri say so.

Dictating right and wrong because of majority opinion… Stop being such… Feds. :wink:

He doesn’t seem to think so. And identity is like any other possession: if you want to control it, you’ve got to demonstrate the ability to stop other people from using it. Which leaves you in the unenviable position of having to enforce that claim.

Brand him a traitor. Shoot him on sight. That’s all well within your purview. But until you can stop him from doing it, he’ll keep identifying as Caldari. Good luck.

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6188

I know being confidently incorrect is your entire brand on the IGS, but seriously, stay in your lane.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

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6189

I mean, if we’re to take that post at face value, and assume:

  1. I do, in fact, have no idea what I’m talking about, and
  2. being confidently incorrect is my entire brand on the IGS

Then wouldn’t you be making that my lane? :smiley:

Regardless, Adams has made his bed, and he’ll have to lie in it, and that includes being called a traitor and a turncoat, which I think can be said to be accurate.

It also includes being told he’s forfeited any right to call himself Caldari, but that presupposes the existence of only one Caldari culture, where there are at least two. It’d be interesting to see if he’s made any efforts to hew to the ‘Raata Caldari’ culture as opposed to the State or Megacorporate Caldari culture.

Whups! Sorry!

That should be: wouldn’t you be making that my lane, Your Majesty? :smiley:

6190

What a very Gallente thing to say. Democracy in action, eh?

6191

So does that political party have a fleet of spaceships or what ? Nobody seems to want to answer my question in that thread, so I may as well try it here.

6192

:person_shrugging:

6193

I’ve been a lot of stuff, over time, not much of it very honorable in Caldari terms. I’ve been a criminal, dissident, exile, merc (that’s considered honorable, btw), murderer, even kinslayer.

But one quality my predecessor and I hold in common is this: we are, I am, no traitor. To do that, to cross that line, would be like death, like a suicide that kills body and soul together because it would sever me from my identity. It would kill me as a person in Caldari eyes; what remained would be a sort of wretched echo, like a smell that reminds you of a horrible thing someone did to you.

The voice of such a remnant is without weight or meaning.

It’s subjective. Of course it’s subjective. We know that and we don’t care. He is worse than dead to us. The Caldari honor their dead.

If he’d just gone to join the Raata and live a life in peace, I could have respected that at least. But he didn’t. He’s a fighter, a proud killer of his own once-kin. He is not only dishonored or honorless but someone to whom the concept no longer even applies: un-personed, soul-and-memory-dead, not-of-us.

He’s been baited in by the enemy, tamed and turned to kill his kin. It’s the worst, the lowest and most contemptible fate.

His opinion in this matter carries the same weight as yours:

Dust. Or the memory of dust.

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6194

The problem with claims like this, Aria, are that they’re inherently contradictory. Just making it proves it false. Responding to me to tell me my words hold no meaning or weight… just shows they do, or you wouldn’t bother.

Consider this: when’s the last time you’ve seen me respond to statements you know I disagree with, from say… DK? She can say whatever she likes. It means nothing.

The moment you can all utterly ignore Adams, treat him like just another nameless, faceless FDU pilot… that will be the moment his voice has no weight or meaning with you.

6195

The problem with claims like this, Arrendis, is that they originate in an idealized ether that has little connection to the real world. I respond to you not because I value your opinion on who the Caldari are and how they should live (and who counts as Caldari) but because I want you to stop trying to tell us who we are.

The alternative to me acknowledging it by telling you to kindly bugger off is to resort to the same tactics you claim to favor vis-a-vis the Amarr.

The Gallente have for actual, literal centuries, been trying to do that. Their first major in-person mission to Caldari Prime was by the CDS, the “Cultural Deliverance Society,” which really says it all, over seven hundred years ago. They probably did some good work; the Caldari were fractured into about a bajillion little competing post-Raata kingdoms at the time, but having been beneficiaries of an uplift doesn’t make the resulting bubbling stew of resentments even a little less poisonous.

To put it another way, consider what your people are prepared to do to tell the Amarr to let go of what you see as yours, go away, and leave you alone. This is our own equivalent, and you might have noticed that just ignoring the Gallente doesn’t make them shut up. It just makes them talk louder, and in more ways.

What works, historically, is a closed, militarized society, a prickly sensibility, lots and lots of guns, and a lack of concern for non-Caldari human life.

Even then, the Federation has persisted in trying to enlighten all us savages by literally selling us their culture (holoflicks and the like). What they managed to do was corrupt our leadership. Do you have any idea how damaging it is to get a Gallentean-style libertarian heading a Caldari megacorp? There’s no philosophy short of the Sabik that’s so utterly self-serving, or so utterly incompatible with Caldari culture.

In short, Arrendis, this is our equivalent to your problems with the Empire. If you persist in this line of argument, yes, I might ignore you, and also thank you for your contributions to ensuring that any realignment of the Caldari State to the Minmatar Republic fails.

Maybe in the end not even anti-imperialists can resist the temptation to tell each other how to live, what to think, what to value.

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6196

Maybe… but I’m not doing any of those three. All I’ve done is point out that there’s more than one culture with a valid claim to being ‘Caldari’, and that Adams is going to identify as Caldari until and unless you somehow stop him.