Fellow South Pacificans,

Almost exactly eight years ago, on the first of February, 2013, I founded the nation Witchcraft and Sorcery. I was a freshman in high school, introduced to the game through a class experiment. Like many of my classmates, I made my own nation with the intent of forging my own path when it came to issues, but I quickly abandoned that when I found gameplay. I had no idea how much that one decision would affect the next eight years of my life. I’ve worn a lot of different hats in those eight years, gone inactive for long stretches, and nearly quit entirely on a few different occasions. But something keeps drawing me back - the sheer number of nominations reminds me how much I love the community we’ve got here and makes me want to give back. So today I’m here to ask for your help to do just that: I’d like to ask for your vote to be TSP’s next Minister of Defense.

Background

For those who might not know me, I’ll give a brief summary of my relevant experience: I was in 10000 Islands from 2013 to 2017, TITO Tactical Officer for a year between early 2016 and early 2017. I resigned in 2017, but I have maintained an excellent relationship with 10ki, even rejoining TITO briefly. Since then I’ve primarily been active in the Grey Wardens and TSP, though I left the former to focus on building the region of Founderless. I’ve held command and officer positions in TITO, TGW, SPSF, and the Founderless Rangers. I was Minister of Military Affairs here in TSP in mid-2019, though I was forced to resign midway through my term, primarily due to an unexpectedly difficult recovery from eye surgery which lasted right until the beginning of an extremely stressful semester in college. Neither of those are on the horizon this time.

What I bring to the table

My greatest strength as a defender is my ability to put “boots on the ground,” so to speak. Since my return, I’ve gained a reputation for two things: speed and detagging. I’m one of a very small handful of defenders that consistently get zero-second chases (ie. moving to a tag target in the same second as the raiders), and when update is not otherwise active I lead defenders on mountains of detags whenever possible - often between 50 and 70 in any given update. Likewise, I’m very skilled at leading liberations and triggering; I was simultaneously the point and trigger for the sieges of The Spaghetti Land, which while ultimately unsuccessful, showcased both the power of defenders at large, able to gather well north of 100 pilers and dozens of updaters for many days in a row, and my own ability to trigger and manage such large numbers. My day-to-day updating skills are among the strongest and most active in the game today and there is no sign that this will slow down.

Certain areas, such as intelligence and foreign affairs, are not really my forte, which is why I’m glad the CRS and MoFA are as robust as they are. These are often partially a military responsibility, at least in terms of coordination, and I will touch more on these later in my campaign.

Military stances

I am, as many can attest, a true-blue defender. In recent years I have found myself increasingly willing to adopt “controversial” stances and put my neck on the line for the cause. I was one of the leading voices in the campaign to officially turn TSP defender last summer, and more recently I have become a vocal opponent of quorum raiding, or approval raiding as it is also known. I was the one who ordered the defenses of the NPA’s attempts to quorum-raid “Repeal Liberate CCD” that set off pretty much all of the drama related to quorum raiding and fascism in Gameplay right now, and I have not apologized for, nor do I regret those actions. As Minister I would adopt (or continue?) a clear policy of defending against quorum raids, regardless of the proposal, unless the region/s targeted are fascist or known to harbor OOC problematic individuals, and will lobby for changes to the game mechanics to make this abhorrent practice more difficult or impossible.

I say this because my guiding principles in military gameplay are those of regional sovereignty and self-determination. To that end, I have become more and more reticent as my career has continued to sanction invasions of raider or raider-sympathizing regions. As Minister I would be crystal clear with SPSF members who participate in such operations with other militaries not to associate with the SPSF while doing so. The only exception is anti-fascist operations. Fascists don’t get rights. Nor should they get safe havens on this game.

SPSF internals

I have a couple of internal things I want to continue from Phoenix’s term and expand on from my own. The first is training. Phoenix was an amazing trainer and recruiter of new people. The Phoenix Flock Fleet idea was absolutely critical in getting new people and non-standard updaters into military operations, and the inroads she made in these areas are absolutely sources that the SPSF should continue to look for updaters, especially for large liberations. While I certainly don’t have Phoenix’s charisma or skill at hoarding dozens of updaters, we should absolutely continue to train and seek out otherwise-R/D-ambivalent updaters especially for large ops. I have already been running some off-update training ops for updaters who want to get better at some of the more technical aspects, especially chasing, and these are useful, but Phoenix’s approach of going outside the norm when looking for new soldiers is one I like a lot.

In the same vein - we need to expand and promote the Tidal Force. There is a lot of possibility here for getting soldiers who aren’t able to update but still are willing to help us out when we need pilers or simply doing regular detags a la what TGW’s Guardians do. When a large mission comes where we need extra pilers, having an off-update force that is still regularly active could prove crucial. One of the first things I intend to do as Minister is begin re-recruiting for the Tidal Force and developing a solid off-update team.

During my ill-fated MoMA term I also had some ideas for SPSF record-keeping that I want to work on implementing or developing better: in recent months I’ve been the main person copying down SPSF update reports and I absolutely value this information. At some point during my term, I envision the following happening:

• Turning SPSF update reports into digestible, public, individual statistics on number of updates and operations for each SPSFer. Long-term this may evolve into a TITO-esque war records system, but I don't know that I can commit to that level of detail quite yet.
  
• Monthly activity reports detailing this information. I don’t think weekly reports will give us enough info to actually talk about, nor can I commit to doing them, but monthly reports did become the norm and this practice will continue under me. With regular records upkeep, this will prove a lot easier.
  
• It is important to note that this work is extremely front-loaded and it will take a LOT of time before I’m able to dig through idk how many old SPSF reports and make any visible progress. I still have access to the old SPSF server and the reports in there go back to February 2019. I do not know if there are records available before them, but a long-term goal of mine is to compile this information into individual records at least that far back.
  
• I have at least somewhat of an idea for medals/mission milestones that will supplement the current ranks of Soldier/Officer/Commander/etc, but that project is very much on my back burner of ideas until the records rework actually comes to fruition.
  

External/foreign affairs

While I’m not running for MoFA, coordinating with leaders of other militaries is critical. To that end, I am extremely excited about the Partnership for Sovereignty. I’m fortunate enough to already have good relations with most of the leaders of our allied militaries. As I indicated, FA is not really my priority or my specialty, but I’m very close to the leaders of 10000 Islands and The Rejected Realms in particular, and this alliance of the three largest defender regions in the game should continue to prove useful. Especially now that the Partnership is now in effect and TITO has begun to open up many of their military channels to allies again, there is ample opportunity for cooperation. Right now I am usually active in both TITO’s update channel and Libcord during update and bounce between operations. While I can’t say “here’s a concrete plan of action” as to cooperation between us and our allies, the Partnership and developments in our allied regions do generate new opportunities for military cooperation and I expect we will continue to do so.

Conclusion

I welcome any and all questions you have about me, my background, my campaign, or anything else. I am very much aware that, should I be elected, Phoenix leaves me with huge shoes to fill. She has become a great friend and I greatly admire her skill and ascension from a new face on the block the last time I was here. I’m different in a lot of aspects from that; tons of experience coming in, lots of different regional perspectives due to being much more cosmopolitan than many of my predecessors. Despite this, I can't do it alone and I'm thankful that the SPSF is full of experienced veterans and up-and-coming talents alike. 

I really appreciate all the encouragement to run and I look forward to earning your vote and serving as your next Minister of Defence.

Viva TSP!
W&S
 
Currently I hold citizenship in the regions of Founderless (as Velvet Elvis) and the Rejected Realms (as Misery Business). I also maintain residence in 10000 Islands as Witchcraft and Puppetry, though I do not hold citizenship. I do however have access to military channels in their Discord server as an allied military commander. A full list of my nations can be provided to the CRS on request.

Additionally, and most importantly, I hold the positions of forum and Discord administrator, Foreign Affairs Director, and commander of the Rangers in Founderless. Founderless holds elections later this month and I fully intend to seek the position of Executive Director, which is equivalent to TSP’s prime minister. While none of these qualify as an “equivalent office” for the purpose of legal CoIs, I want to be as absolutely transparent as possible about this, because I know it may raise questions. Founderless is a defender region aligned with TSP’s military positions and I cannot for the life of me imagine a situation where the Rangers and SPSF would find themselves on opposite sides of an operation. Founderless’ Defense Director is Karputsk, a commander in the RRA, and many of the Rangers hold cross-membership with our allies and other defender regions. Thus, I see my connections to Founderless and its wealth of experience as a valuable military, intelligence, and diplomacy asset, rather than a potential conflict. 

The bottom line is that I would not have agreed to run if I had not believed there was a genuine possibility, however small, for a conflict of interest. Questions about any of the above are always welcome.

And now i'll leave you with another tune. <3