I feel kind of bad coming in here with my first post in a while being mean to someone who feels passionate about things. It makes it feel like it's a bit hard to say what I want to say. So I'm apologizing again for that.
I should also throw out that, for me and a few others, we've kind of become reliant on the real-time nature of the Discord server to get summaries of what's going on in PMAS because for something like 11 pages it can just be unreadable block text essays of overly edited voting wars.
If you have to get brought up to date by other people rather than reading the quest thread itself then things are already fucked.
The thread, and the nature of this Quest, results in people racing to push their agenda over others. Everyone has a laundry list of things they want to do, and if I'm honest, I encourage that.
I think you need to not. It encourages bloat and this story makes Papa Nurgle proud with its protruding, swollen stomach and lethargic pacing. But more than that it makes everything an argument.
When you can vote to do anything and stuff votes full of whatever you want it turns every vote into a spideweb of votes. The rhetorical knives come out over anything and everything, because all things are important.
It is, to my mind, the river from which most every problem flows. The way votes work creates a shopping-cart climate where it becomes about What Can You Get Done When You Can Do Anything, And Oh Fuck That Guy By The Way He Keeps Not Agreeing. It makes the people you're voting with folks that you don't trust. It lowers your opinions of your fellow players and makes you act snidely and think of them as bad people.
And let's not pretend that doesn't happen, because it does. I followed PMAS for almost two years and constantly monitored on-site and off-site discussion of it. I talk to people about it. It happens. It still happens. People have ill will toward each other and that colors the conversation. It makes things
nasty and unpleasant. Nobody wants that, you know?
While we're also talking hard truths here, it's got to be said:
this thread's 4.5k pages is full of people being assholes to each other. People being petty and uncharitable and sniping and distrusting. It
keeps cropping up as the faces change, which suggests to me, again, that the problem is in part overhead and requires structural changing. I would know.
I've posted lots of histronic, salty things in this thread that I'm not proud of and that I'd apologize for if it hasn't been so long. It's part of why I stopped voting: I had no patience for anything, and that made me act like someone I didn't want to.
Ultimately I guess I want to end it on this. Passion is important. The attachment people have to PMAS is a wonderful thing if kept in healthy bounds. It's the fuel to Firn's engine, which in turn drives this quest. But if that fuel is bad, then everything else will get stuck. Luckily for all the regulars, you can change what you want.
If you want people to be less nasty, be less nasty yourself, and try to forgive other people their shortcomings. Kindness begets kindness.
PMAS - Sabrina - begins and ends with you.
