An Irish Girl in Canada (and a Canadian Girl in Ireland)

Day 1,241, 20:04 • Published in Canada Ireland • by einberliner


The eIrish-Canadian Perspective

It's been a long time since I wrote an article so, doubtless, this one will end up long (for your convienience copy and paste this below: tl;dr). I started writing it mostly because I've been doing a lot of explaining myself and/or what I've been up to lately and it occured to me that, gamewise, a lot has changed in a very short space of time.

I joined eRep in July '09 and, until very late December last year, spent my time in Ireland, my real and eHome country. I'd made brief trips abroad as a soldier or ambassador but never really thought about living anywhere else, for all I gathered buds from all over. Just prior to moving here RL had been busy enough to keep me at two clicks or less and when I came back I was no longer motivated to participate, particularly as a lot of my closest friends around here had left or moved, and as I'd happened to come back right as there was a political brawl going on back home. Just as I was debating leaving for real the region I was staying in, through an arranged land swap, wound up American. I decided to ignore eIreland, just for a few days, and mix it up a little bit by meeting new people (which it's easy to forget to do in a small country when you're heavily involved in congress and cabinets etc.) and catching up on foreign news (something I'd only done sporadically before). Once I'd decided this I grabbed an MT and headed for Canada, one of the only countries other than Ireland I'd ever really felt a connection to and a place I felt I could get along with.

When I first arrived I was quiet (a surprise to most of you that know me, I'm sure) and I'd arrived with the half intention of enlisting in TCO. I'll be honest, when I got here I barely knew about the CAF, for all I'm battle hungry, and while I know I fought along side them more than once it was TCO that I'd noticed ripping walls down or slamming them up when Ireland's situation was at it's worst (in fact I remember TemujinBC p much giving us a region back on his own, down to funding the RW and getting the BH. And yes I know he brought his bros along with lol). I decided to see if I wanted to stick around first, though, so kept an eye on the media and started to add friends I hadn't seen around the place before. At some point someone pointed me at Acacia Mason's radio show, Northern Exposure, (His paper's here: Northern Telegraph and he'll announce the schedule for each Friday's show on it. He's CAF but don't let that put you off 😛) which I was surprised to find helpful, particularly the phone ins in the later part of the show that discuss current and past events, both in Canada and globally. I was just starting to feel settled here when an old friend from Ireland, Christian Russo, who's now Canadian himself, brought the subject of TCO back up and I enlisted half intending to only stick around a few weeks because I was p sure I'd be back in Ireland soon enough.

Obviously that hasn't happened. TCO has pretty much bought my soul and I've been proud to serve in the third and fourth legions before, yesterday, being promoted to Captain of the newly formed 9th (which I'll get back to). And meanwhile I was helping a good friend of mine, Marcus Suridius, with his CP campaign over in Ireland and discussing policies and battles and alliances and all the usual fun stuff when he asked me, Canadian citz and all, to serve as his VP. I accepted mostly because I'm not an idiot.

This makes me, I feel, pretty much the current personification of an in-game Irish-Canadian and it's this e-Identify I've been contemplating lately. I've fought for Canada long before coming here. I was around when this country was wiped, and I was as mad about that as I was about Croatia more recently, if less able to do much about it (not that it stopped me melting gold). I've generally speaking always fought on orders here but there is, naturally, the small issue of eUK being on 'our' side now. The best I can do for you there honestly is not to fight against them and I've even managed that a couple of times, those times when I haven't kept my fight finger to myself I at least mostly self-supplied and put my food and TCO supplies to other causes.

It's tricky because I feel a strong loyalty to eCanada and in particular to my bros at TCO who, honestly, have provided the most fun I've had in my entire eCareer but on the other hand if you check the current goals for eUK you'll see two Irish regions listed as being on their wishlist, up from one region on their wishlist last term. I'm all for giving benefit of the doubt that they won't backstab eCan (though going for Shannon in the TW was pushing it and pushing it hard) but I'm not gonna willingly make those who are apparently after my home country stronger or bail them out. In fact, in a lot of ways, the purpose of this article is to say if you see me ploughing down on the 'wrong' side of a UK war I'm doing so as an individual, not as an officer of the TCO, and I'm doing so acting from my own conscience. I won't be ordering my legion (who are also Irish, see below) to follow me into it or to do anything else that isn't a direct TCO order. If the UK does go for Ireland you'll see my avatar all over that war, you can count on it. But don't worry, the bit of my supply that's government funded will probably have already been plastered on a more neutral or different cause or been given to Lavis Knight (who, to me, is already an eLegend. Excellent project and if you can afford to support him in it I really think you should. Every country should have a Lavis 😃). I'm sorry that on this one issue I can't throw my full weight behind eCan but I'm Irish, and while I have no RL world beef with the brits in-game I have plenty with a lot of them. Thatcher's exempt, obviously. The in-game Thatcher. This rl world/game world thing gets confusing.




Break for a slight change in topic.

Another reason I felt to have this thinking-out-loud session is because of the nature of the ninth legion. One thing about me is that when I'm passionate about something, as I quickly came to be about TCO, I will drag everyone I can in with me so they can share the awesome thing lol. This led to a fair number of Irish diaspora in the Canucks, on top of those there or connected to the TCO already, and it was decided to form a Crimson Irish legion here in Canada, currently known as the Crimson Clovers though that will be changing shortly. We're smaller than the other legions right now but some other Irish e😜ats have shown interest (and if you're Irish and you're reading this and you'd like to know more please PM me) so we should be filling up nicely real soon. I look forward to serving Canada, and in particular the TCO, in future. Looks like my promotion was nicely timed to co-incide with a ePol/eCan death match. Not a problem 😉

To enlist in TCO (whether the Irish legion, regular Canucks or the Australian Division) please go here: The Crimson Order honestly best fun you'll ever have on the battlefield.

Yours o7,
Donut
(Irish woman, not German guy. That gets confused a lot 😒)