I do not know how many on here may remember Band of Brothers or who might have been in that Corp.
I would like to extend a thank you to any of you from that Corp back in 2006. I got into Eve on my First Character due to my then abusive boyfriend and his friends needing a mining and industry mule, I didn’t have any say on what I could do in game and even asking questions never ended well. I now understand that BoB had a bad reputation as to say the least Bullies but I assume that is because you guys liked and enjoyed PvP.
Where our intersecting by chance falls is when I left him, I intended to just get my stuff out and figure out where to go from there but I couldn’t figure out how to leave a Corp and they owned the area in Null Sec. I kept getting killed and I was so upset at the time I couldn’t even think enough to Google before anyone states the obvious. When I’d lost my 5th ship and had very little left I got a random message from a name I didn’t recognize and I thought “oh great here is another of his friends ready to just bother me” but I hit accept anyway because how could this get any worse anyway and at least I wasn’t in the apartment with him anymore.
I got the question of “Are you ok?” and remembering this still brings me to tears now over 10 years later. I talked to him and explained how I couldn’t figure stuff out and I just wanted to leave, I wanted to be safe if I played. He told me to stay Docked and he took care of my abusive ex and his friends outside with some of his Corp mates. He walked me through leaving the Corp as they escorted me from Null to High Sec safely with what little I had left in my Mining Barge for Blue Prints and Materials. He wished me well and told me he’d keep people in that system until they learned a lesson.
I left the game a few weeks after as Mining was all I knew and I just couldn’t handle at the time the memories of the bad attachment I had to the game because of my ex. I recently returned and can’t bring myself to either login or delete that Character but instead started a New Character. I’ve enjoyed High Sec Scanning/Sites and Low Sec Scanning/Ratting which was something I wouldn’t have the chance to even try if some random guy and his friends from what I will always see as an amazing Corp hadn’t come back into my head when I saw an advert for the game. But found out that BoB at some point disbanded and I hope that if any of the guys that helped me are still around they might see this and if you were there THANK YOU SO MUCH from the bottom of my heart for helping me and I am so sorry I don’t remember your Characters Names.
I’ve heard stories about dudes getting their non-gamer girlfriends to play MMOs with them so that they could have a “pocket healer” available on demand, but I’ve never heard of anyone keeping a pocket carebear around. I’m glad you’re better now, but I hope you don’t mind me finding just a tiny bit of humor in this.
Now whenever I think about shooting someone’s salvaging alt, I’ll have this nagging feeling that I’m blowing up someone’s abused wife or entrapped mother. Thanks a lot, Rachel.
I can understand how it could be funny from an outside perspective. Truth is looking back on it while upsetting a bit I do see some humor in some of it. While abuse isn’t something to be laughed at I think he means more about the fact that people don’t understand that sometime the very people they see everyday in a game might not be there by choice…it isn’t funny as in “haha” way it’s funny but in a “omg I can’t believe I laughed at that” way.
I laugh the same way to many things usually titled “why woman live longer than men” or “hold my beer” things…not to say the guys I’ve known/do currently know try to not shorten their life spans on a daily basis.
It’s more about the irony than actually being funny.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that while not all abusers will be gamers when they can be they do stuff like force their other halves into thing like what happened to me. Mining can really suck in this game and is very time consuming so they took the easy way to not have to pay for things (much like a pocket healer), he was in a Corp of people like minded which honestly is scary as hell and I’m happy to say there is no character activity from him or any of the main people and officers in that Corp still playing unless it’s under new characters…I do plan to eventually learn PvP so I can pay it forward some day but I hope I never have too.
My main goal of the post was to let anyone that might have helped that day know it was appreciated but also let people know that just because some players seem to be “jerks” that under the right circumstances they can still be decent human beings.
I didn’t know about BoB’s reputation until I’d asked about them after making this Character in the “newb” Corp chat (honestly wanted to join them) and someone spoke so horribly about them it actually upset me. I had never encountered them outside the one run in I had and someone else seemed to lump them into a category that would be on par with the same ex they helped me escape from.
A small chuckle about the irony won’t hurt anyone the same as the irony that it seems I caught them on a good day. People can be good at heart the same way they can also seem like they came right out of hell.