(no subject)

[deicider]

Who: avante and whoever else
When: Day 19
What: team meeting!

[hello avante your leader is group texting you.]

Can everyone be here in half an hour?

Comments

Cardigan makes a speech

[deicider]

[Cardigan glances at the gathered avantes from the head of their ridiculous table.]

Everyone got the notification about the new Live type? [a pause to make sure they're getting nods.] The timing on this is interesting, but convenient in light of the recent game. Those of you who were there played well, [a respectful nod] but the result ended up out of our control anyway. This time we mitigated things we can't always count on that.

With this new Live, we have a platform to communicate to the other teams were we stand on these games once and for all—an oath to all teams—so there's no second-guessing our intentions. [Letting that sink in for a moment before adding:] But that's something we'd all have to agree to. If we do this, we'll have to stand by it no matter what.

[another rhetorical pause. When they continue, they notched their tone down from Speech to regular dialog.]

I think the oath should say that we will never using games as a means of revenge or lashing out. But I want to hear everyone's thoughts, if we should do it, and what we should say.

[fistdere]

[ raises an eyebrow, having an internal conversation which ends up in a thin smirk that rolls into a bit of a more neutral expression. ]

What's your strategy for choosing who to bag on then? Creating a maiming table and just rotating through them?

[knightceties]

Maybe some rankings? I know there's some teams we wouldn't want to hit even if they came up randomly.

[fistdere]

So, bias. If you’re gonna go chivalry you gotta stick it. I’m gonna say right now, ’s not really in my blood.

[deicider]

Good question.

The two bad games we've had so far had totally different target pools. I don't think coming up with a strict selection criteria will do us any good regardless of what we decide about the oath. There's no point in denying the fact that we have preferences as far as protecting other teams go; If keeping those preferences ends up with us targeting one team harder than others, we can make an arrangement with them personally. It's pretty likely'd they need a guilt-free punching bag, too.

[fistdere]

[ shrugs ]

I don’t care either way. I’d rather settle anything myself outside of whatever those stupid contests are.

[calmthefoxdown]

As we get more people, it'll probably become a pain to keep track of which units people in Avante wouldn't want hit. We might even reach a spot where everyone has someone important to them on one of the units.

Rotating might be the only way to keep things straight. But before that, we'd probably want to try focusing on minimizing overall damage as much as possible.

[fistdere]

Well, whatever. THese contests suck anyway.

[knightceties]

What happens if we get more new juniors?

[deicider]

[Hmm.]

I like to think anything we decide on is going to be good enough to want to uphold.

[knightceties]

I guess it's pretty hard to predict how someone new would react.

Re: Cardigan makes a speech

[haktualdragon]

Won't that just paint a target more on our backs for the units that aren't so noble? Who want to test us?

[don't tell him there aren't any like that. he won't believe it.]

[deicider]

That target will be there anyway. This way, there won't be any ambiguity if we need to settle a score face to face.

[haktualdragon]

So, just to be clear--that's no using previous games to justify plays and no taking grievances outside of games, right?

[knightceties]

Well, if they don't like us, they won't like us no matter what. And anyway, this promise is just about games.

[haktualdragon]

It might be because I'm new but I'm not seeing how this kind of promise is to our advantage...

[calmthefoxdown]

[ Mmm, as someone who has spent the last 24-48 hours thinking a lot about their unit's reputation, he's interested in hearing the rest of what his unit has to say. But also he does want to get some ideas floating in his head out... ]

From talking with HSS, it seems like the impression they had on the way we played was we were willing to be more aggressively defensive. I'm guessing implied in there is an unwillingness to play cooperatively if it meant lesser damage to our unit.

[ And something he's been kind of. Brewing on. ]

... I feel like some people took the phrases 'trust' and 'betray' a little too seriously. It was more like making a choice between 'light permanent' and 'tough temporary'. We were trusting other units to make the same choice as us, that choice just happened to be labeled 'betray'.

[haktualdragon]

Seems likely. Oversimplification is one way to sow discord.

[calmthefoxdown]

I haven't really asked about the details from all ends of the group with AlcheME in it, but from the reactions I caught a glimpse of after the game, it seemed really bad.

However, I talked with Nine who's on Bad End. He said their unit was essentially trying to achieve the same thing as ours; they wanted the hard but temporary condition and used their rounds trying to convey that. Whether they didn't understand the flowers that Bad End gave them, or they purposefully ignored them, or they wanted to play lightly and couldn't convey that back to Bad End, I don't know.

[deicider]

[nod]

I figured that's why they came by.

From everything I heard, you all did the best you could. I want to play every game like that.

[calmthefoxdown]

Do you think we need to make a declaration about it? It might backfire.

[unbr8kable]

[sits back and listens to what everyone has to say before piping up]

I don't see why we have to go on the defensive here. What we did was our business.

[haktualdragon]

And it's not like you guys did a bad play for a game that sucked regardless.

[calmthefoxdown]

I don't know if we need defensive so much as a check on our public image, so we can prepare for the future.

[deicider]

No-one's apologizing for the game. [Just to be clear. Cardigan nods toward Gold, who said it right.] This is about positioning us for the future, so that if we do have to protect ourselves outside of a game, we don't wind up looking like the aggressor.

And there's nothing saying that we have to be only one swearing the oath. We can ask the other Units to swear by it; it'll be a good way to gauge where everyone stands.