In Which Thoughts and Feelings are Explained and Apologies are Given.

I'm going to be true to what I preach. I firmly believe that everyone should own up to what they've said and done, whether it's good or bad and not just shove it under the carpet. That doesn't solve anything.

A couple of days ago I became angry at Intel for posting something int the pony WWII AU. I wasn't mad that he posted, but rather his post shifted the theme from ponies vs pony nazis on somewhat equal terms to an extinction event in which foals were being sent to fight in a last ditch effort.

Now it's important to know that I won't get truly angered unless multiple things are involved, in this case it was three. The first comes from the original post introducing the child soldiers. I personally find it impossible to imagine, or for anyone else to imagine, children in a combat role, it's completely against my morals, no matter how few I seem to have. Everyone who was there saw my instant reaction. Instead of explaining that I have deep moral conflictions over the idea of foal soldiers, I raged instead. In my mind at the time, I thought if I yelled at it enough it would go away. Not actually go away, but make Intel consider deleting or revising his post. But, I thought I could sort the problem out in the RP itself as if it was an isolated incident.

Next post I discovered there was no possible way I could deal with it RP wise since the child soldier program was nation wide and a last ditch attempt to keep the war going. That implies that Equestria has run out of convicts, prisoners, elderly, and otherwise unfit adult ponies who under normal circumstances wouldn't be fit for duty. The only way you can send child soldiers into battle is if the pony species was going extinct. That post brought up two issues, one of which I won't hesitate to admit was selfish. I'd been looking forward to thinking of different operations and thinking on pony tactics while roleplaying as a commanding officer. I'd gone on the assumption that Equestria and the nazis were on relatively equal ground with Equestria outnumbering the nazis, but with the nazis having superior war technology. And suddenly my plans of directing part of the war was taken away from me. I essentially felt cheated.

And that ties into my third point: I had asked the topic creator if I could play the role of a lieutenant colonel since playing as a commanding officer is an obvious plot changer. Not asking for permission to kill off the majority of the army in some battle and to introduce foal soldiers was a major breach of forum etiquette. It was at that point I decided to quit altogether because I didn't want to be part of that, it went thundering past my grimdark tolerance level.

In the state of mind I was in, I had decided that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the thread and even Intel himself since he made his signature 'the proud holder of the most fucked up person award' or something like that, I paraphrased. Though I realize now that he most likely put it there in jest, when I'm angry I can't think of anything but seriousness. Because of all of this I wanted to punish Intel in the one way I do best, making someone feel as shitty as possible. With thread derailment in my mind, I compared Intel to Mark and left.

Comparing someone to Mark is the deepest insult we have here, even discussing him is a bit of a taboo subject. But in my state of mind I didn't care. By lashing out and making a big deal over the other night's events instead of seriously talking out what I felt was wrong I made myself look like an asshole and compromised my relationship with my Australian friend. I understand that with the way I am, it can be hard to tell whether I'm joking or being serious so simply lashing out at something is not a viable conflict resolution tool for me.

Back to my first point I fully accept responsibility for any potential hurt feelings I've caused and the resulting fallout. Also I'm posting this publicly so that if anyone catches me violating anything that I've discussed in this missive, you can point me back to here and I'll gladly eat my own foot. The only way a person can improve themselves is if they're held accountable by everyone else and that's what I'm asking you all to do so something like this never happens again.

Ah, well it would be wrong not to respond to this wouldn't it?

Child soldiers, or using any form of forced child labour, is still a major issue in the world today, and is an extremely dark and horrible subject. Any nation using their children in such a manner would be crossing some sort of moral event horizon and is only brought up in the most serious of cases.

Throwing it in here showed a complete lack of tact on my part, a result of desensitizing myself to the issue by reading far too much about it. As someone who has researched about the topic, I should have been the one to have known that this was probably unsuitable for RP. I screwed up there.

Despite the protests, I felt that something can be made from all of this. Foals, eager yet ignorant, clashing against reasonable authority figures who know they shouldn't be there. I was thinking most of the interaction would be between the actual soldiers and the sacrificial lambs, so to speak, so I was thrown for a loop when Indigo outright threatened the bus driver. In hindsight, I should have expected that, but...

So I had to piece together a reason of why a nation would use child soldiers. To try and justify such a horrible act, is quite simply, impossible to do in the calmest and most rational of circumstances, plus I had to do it from the point of view of a pony I hadn't really thought about, etc. I knew for that the a bus full of foals to used as soldiers things had to be completely and utterly dire. Hell, even Hitler didn't formally use his Youth as official soldiers until his entire operation began to go belly up.

So I posted the blathering of a fool, completely changing the game to someone who would take everything seriously. A extremely stupid decision on my part, as bringing in child soldiers meant everything would be taken seriously. Simply put, there was no way child soldiers would fit anywhere in the AU Indigo envisioned and that led to things falling apart.

What I am basically saying here is that the child soldiers were a horrible idea and that I should have not done that.

However, what got me angered was the fact that while I was dinnering, Indigo pops up in the chatbox, talks shit about me, then signs off. So when I signed back in, I got a really rude shock which ruined the evening. There are factors to be taken into consideration, though, like the fact this was a shaky topic to begin with.

So before I get too rambly and boring I say this; Indigo, I accept your apology and apologize in turn for the complete lack of tact I displayed in that thread.

If anything is to be learned from this, it's that communication is important in this forum. If any of you has a problem with anything, it needs to be talked out, before shit hits fan.

Now, back to Equestria.