Valiant Thor: Portrait of a National Pariah

Day 3,713, 13:24 • Published in USA USA • by J.A. Lake
Valiant Thor. ASecretSource. Phil Harmony.

A key figure in the eUnited States, Valiant Thor got his start in 2013-- half a decade ago. This player has been, to paraphrase documentarian Michael Moore, a Molotov cocktail thrown into the machine. This is an agent of anarchy and self-aggrandizement, a player whose goal seems to be attaining office and destroying all opposition to himself no matter the cost. Through each iteration this character has entered the game, started fires and broken windows, then shed his profile and started the cycle anew.

The Valiant Thor Era

He established himself in We The People in 2013, rising as high as being the Secretary of Media in October of that year. In March 2014, Valiant Thor ran for the Party Presidency of We The People and won with 68% of the vote. Somehow, though, he received what he interpreted to be screenshots of candidate Gnilraps colluding with Serbians in the AFA party-- so began the descent. When no one believed in the grand conspiracy he'd uncovered, Valiant Thor began replacing WTP members with Serbians in the Party Leadership panel, afterwards replacing WTP members in their Congressional slate.

An article from the time described Valiant Thor as growing paranoid when confronted with the influx of Serbians, hurling accusations at Gnilraps and stating that "outside forces" controlled We The People. WTP members left the party en masse to save the eUnited States from a potential infiltration of dozens of Serbians. One can see threads in declassified PDBs where people are shocked, slow to respond, and awaiting confirmation-- Valiant Thor's turn had been swift and utterly unexpected by most.

In an article by Aramec, the portrait of a paranoid conspiracy theorist is again painted. In the comments you find dozens by Valiant Thor, following a soon-to-be-familiar pattern of staccato little insults trailed by THE BIG IDEA IN ALL CAPS.

As the WTP scheme collapsed and Valiant Thor became a pariah, he fled. He deleted every article he'd written, boarded his spaceship, and departed from eRepublik.

The ASecretSource Era

Or had he?

In September of 2014 the call went out: Valiant Thor was back, this time known as ASecretSource. There isn't quite so much material on ASecretSource, as he performed no grand betrayals like in his previous incarnation. Of note, however, is this: another peculiar tic this character has, posting HUEHUE in segmented text at the bottom of a message. Well, that and the sexist insults hurled at female players.

ASecretSource accomplished little of note, gathering only a few Super Soldier and Mercenary achievements before the profile died some time after Day 2,617-- 19 January, 2015.

The Phil Harmony Era

There the trail goes cold until 5 April 2016. This is the day that Phil Harmony arrived. Phil Harmony benefited from one thing that Valiant Thor could not benefit from: the game had shrunk considerably in the preceding two years, and suddenly conquest was easier. Another star had aligned, too: the Socialist Freedom Party. Long a party priding itself on misanthropy directed at the metagame and being a sixth party in the top five, SFP was uniquely positioned as the perfect host for Valiant Thor. Predictably, he infiltrated the party and ascended in meteoric fashion, becoming Party President in March 2017, May 2017, and June 2017; and running but losing in September 2017 and October 2017. In May 2017 he ran for the Country Presidency and lost handily, as well.

On 6 July, 2017, things began to unravel for the thus far sun-kissed Phil Harmony. He bucked IES procedures and approved the citizenship of Serbian Car StefanDusan Silni. This, per the law, initiated blacklisting proceedings. As Congress lumbered through its procedures, moving the discussion to a proposal two days later and finally to a vote on 11 July, Phil took steps to spin this catastrophic defeat into a victory. Moving quickly, he organized SFP and BSP to jointly depart from the eUS Forums, officially declaring the departure on 9 July 2017.

Now began the ceaseless parade of accusations against long-time members of the eUSA. Now began the formation of the grand conspiracy against Phil Harmony-- every electoral defeat could be laid at the feet of the meta-overlords, people outside the SFP inserting agents into it in an effort to upset his agenda. The paranoiac conspiracy theorist emerged again, and the bigoted sexist would soon follow. One could sit in the SFP's discord and witness toxic barrages of sexist insults hurled at female players joining the discord to talk with SFP members. The unraveling of Phil Harmony was complete this past fall, when after twin electoral defeats and growing opposition within SFP itself Phil Harmony began posting articles demanding the deletion of his account. In their own time, the admins responded. In the winter of 2017, Phil Harmony was deleted... although there were whispers that he had purchased another account to continue on in.

This player has had an undeniable impact on the political landscape of the eUnited States. From severely damaging We The People in 2014 to causing 2/5 of the eUSA's major political parties to abandon the forum, from launching into media-heavy tirades against elites in 2017 to insulting women in 2015, Valiant Thor has been around for a long time and has a very recognizable playbook. Known at one point as the eUSA's premier troll and a highlight of the Presidential Daily Briefings, Valiant Thor has fallen far.

As Aramec wrote in 2014, it is an interesting case study of a player who had contributed meaningfully to some extent but, at one critical point, went postal. We'll likely never know exactly what it was that sent Valiant Thor over the edge in the spring of 2014, but it started a spiral that has yet to truly conclude. The story is both sad and a cautionary tale, and it bears retelling in these times.