From inside the eBubble

Day 1,583, 12:10 • Published in Belgium USA • by MaryamQ

After reading this recent article by Konrad Neumann, as well as several articles and comments by our neighbors in eNL, I decided it is time to present a different perspective, one from inside what Konrad terms the “eBE bubble” or “myth”.

For those who don’t know, I have been in eBelgium for nearly two years, having previously lived in the eUS and eUK. I came to eBelgium on orders from Strategic Air Command with the express purpose of maintaining eBelgian neutrality when others considered it strategically important, and I liked what I found, so I stayed, like a number of other RL Americans who came at about the same time. Although eBelgium has made some abortive attempts at participating in small alliances of neutral countries, most of that time, we have been on our own on the world stage. There are several reasons for this. First, we are a diverse community with friendships and allegiances in various parts of the eWorld. Choosing one alliance over another would tend to divide our community. Second, although Konrad denies this, the choice not to choose a side has proven to be a protection to us. Until recently, most of the countries we sought to make MPPs with understood our neutral stance and that we were only making these pacts in order to give our citizens places to fight and grow. In order to avoid favoring either side, we have carefully attempted have the same number of TERRA/EDEN MPPs as ONE MPPs. As evidence that this has worked for us, I would point out that every one of our neighbors, all of whom have joined alliances, has been under partial or complete occupation for extended periods in the past year. We, on the other hand, while we have been wiped out briefly on occasion, have always had friends from both sides of the world wars who would come to our aid and help us gain back our regions quickly. Unfortunately, in the more recent past, it has appeared that, for reasons beyond our understanding, TERRA and EDEN have been determined to push us into the arms of ONE. We have been attacked without provocation on numerous occasions by our TERRA and EDEN neighbors, who subsequently complained that we resorted to ONE MPPs to defend ourselves. In the last couple of months, the leaders of TEDEN have been blacklisting any country that has either ONE or neutral MPPs, thereby irrationally forcing us and other small neutral nations like us to sign only ONE and neutral MPPs if we wanted to have any fights or defend ourselves against attack. They then choose to label us as proONE when they themselves have pushed us into that seeming position.



With regard to his comments about our political structures, I also find Konrad to be mistaken. Although there are certainly flaws in our system, as in any system, and there have been periods of sharp division into opposing camps, by and large there has been a great deal of sharing of power. I personally have participated in numerous administrations – two of them my own – that made conscious attempts to be inclusive, not only across party lines, but also of new players. Often, the largest party (until recently, Belgium for Belgians) has chosen to support another party’s candidate for CP in order to give everyone a chance. Res Belgica, currently the largest party by far, is led by moderates who do not make any attempt to get the party’s Congress members to adhere to a party line, but rather welcome open debate and independent thinking.

Finally, a word about the current war. There are complaints from Konrad and others that eBelgium has been claiming the moral high ground. However, if you look at what happened and how it was done, it is apparent that there has been some real damage done by eNL’s attack, and not just to eBE. For some time, there has been discussion within eBelgium about whether we could trust eNL for a training war. There have been some among us who felt that our nations were friends, and others who feared eNL would stab us in the back, given the chance. Those of us who felt we were or should be friends have tried to show our friendship, first by fighting to help eNL in their resistance against occupation, and more recently by voting to send 391 G to their country accounts after an apparent inside job that wiped out their treasury on the same night this gold mysteriously appeared in ours. I know it irritates the eDutch to be reminded of this, but their unilateral attack against us, and the swaggering, bullying attitude that accompanied it, in the face of our previous demonstrations of friendship, has gone a long way to destroying any remaining trust between our two countries. Yes, some eDutch may have considered this fun, but it was not fun for eBelgians, who felt betrayed by this action. In addition, this required an unnecessary damage drain from EDEN battles, caused the loss of MPPs, pushed eBelgium further toward ONE, and also damaged eNL’s relationship with EDEN and standing in GEA. I’m not sure in the cost-benefit analysis, this could be considered worth it for the “fun” that was produced.



Konrad’s view, in my opinion, overlooks that not all of us playing the game in the same way or for the same reasons. If you want military power, or to be a big player on the world stage, he is probably right that a place like eBelgium is not for you. However, many of us do not seek those things. Yes, this might be considered a war game, but for a lot of us, it isn’t making country cash or gold or becoming a God of War that keeps us here. It is the metagame – the people we meet, the ideas we share with them, and the friendships that form along the way. I don’t have to be a big player in a big country to find people I like and have fun with them. All I really need is to keep showing up, to do my bit to build my community, and to keep reaching out to a larger community when the opportunity arises. No, hugs and kisses don’t factor into big policy decisions, but they make this a pleasanter place to be, and if it is not pleasant, why bother?

In the end, maybe we are on some sort of “different planet” from Konrad and his buddies, but so what? There is no one way to succeed at this game. Success is what you make it. If success for you is rising to the top by game mechanics, well and good. Just please, play it your own way and let me play it mine.