[Submitted] Natural Selection

[West Barack and East Obama]

[title] Natural Selection

[desc] Football fans watching yesterday's international friendly between @@NAME@@ and Althaniq were disappointed to see that the @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ line-up contained not a single player born in the nation, with all of the first team being naturalised citizens.

[validity] has sports, allows immigration

[option] "It's been three years since I was last called up. THREE YEARS!" angrily yells former national team player @@RANDOMMALENAME@@ as he kicks a ball directly into your face but misses by a wide margin. "I'm at the top of my game, my peak, yet I can't get a single game because a bunch of Bigtopians who have been living here for a few years are considered more worthy to play for the nation. How is anyone born and raised here going to be motivated to improve themselves if a foreigner is going to be picked over them anyways? You're robbing us of our childhood dreams! @@LEADER@@, you have to only allow people born and raised in @@NAME@@ to represent the country in international sports."

[effect] native-born citizens proudly honour their national traditions by getting thrashed seven to one

[option] "Pfft. Get that sensationalist put of here! If you saw his highlight reel too, you would understand why he's not playing." scoffs Minister of Sports Pep Bladders whilst closely examining a couple of cheques you don't remember signing. "Let’s just face the facts: our homegrown players are just dreadful at sports. Naturalised citizens playing in our teams encourages some healthy competition and keeps up our sporting standards. What you need to do is provide our ministry with a lot more funding so that we can bolster our scouting network and be able to poach the best foreign talent around with lucrative incentives. Just sign here, here and here..."

[effect] an increase to the sportswear budget has finally gotten some players their first "Golden Boot"

[option] "Oi! Are you the fella in charge?" shouts a random hooligan wearing an oversized Willmall FC jersey from outside your window. "It's not just our national team that's being overrun with these bleedin' foreigners. I was almost in tears at the game last night listening to some of them big nosed Bigtopians speaking their gobbledygook, and smelling the foul food they were eating, ruining the whole match for me! You've got to protect our 'eritage, eh? Kick all of them foreigners back to where they came from, and stop any others from entering our glorious nation. Make the beautiful game beautiful again!"

[effect] residents who don't end their sentences with 'innit' are viewed with extreme suspicion

[title] Naturally Superior

[desc] Football fans in today watching an international friendly between @@NAME@@ and Ausblic were shocked to see that the @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ line-up contained not a single player born in the nation, with all of the first team being naturalised citizens.

[validity] has sports, allows immigration

[option] "It's been three years since I was last called up. THREE YEARS!" angrily yells former national team player @@RANDOMMALENAME@@, kicking a ball directly into your face but missing by a wide margin. "I'm at the top of my game, my peak, yet I can't get a single game because a bunch of Bigtopians who have been living here for a few years are considered more worthy to play for the nation. How is anyone born and raised here going to be motivated to improve themselves if a foreigner is going to be picked over them anyways? You're robbing them of their childhood dreams! It's not just football either. The table tennis team is just Dàguórén, our lacrosse players are all from Brancaland, and even our enemies Blackacre have their former citizens in our rowing team! @@LEADER@@, you have to only allow people born and raised in @@NAME@@ to represent the country in international sports."

[effect] full-blooded citizens proudly honour their national traditions by getting thrashed nine nil

[option] "Pfft. Get that sensationalist put of here! If you saw his highlight reel too, you would understand why he's not playing." scoffs Football Association President Pep Bladders whilst closely examining a couple of cheques you don't remember signing. "It's not just that guy. All of our homegrown players are just dreadful at sports. Naturalised citizens playing in our teams encourages some healthy competition and keeps up our sporting standards. If you really want to stop this "problem", you need to give us more funding so we can train our citizens to be better and be able to challenge for first team spots, and maybe us administrators can get some well-earned pay rises for all the hard work we're doing. It's the least we deserve."

[effect] an increase to the sportswear budget has finally gotten some players their first "Golden Boot"

[option] "Oi! Are you the fella in charge?" shouts a random hooligan wearing an oversized Willmall FC jersey from outside your window. "It's not just our national team that's being overrun with these bleedin' foreigners. I was almost in tears the other day watching some of them big nosed Bigtopians playing for my beloved Willmall! You've got to protect our 'eritage, eh? Ban foreigners from immigrating here and deport the ones here now back to where they came from. Make the beautiful game beautiful again!"

[effect] residents who don't end their sentences with 'innit' are viewed with extreme suspicion

What's this? Another issue by me? You're right! It's rather rough, so tear this one apart

[Verdant Haven]

- If I understand correctly, lineups for football matches are usually announced in advance, so I don't know if I would describe fans as "shocked" to see it when the game began. Disappointed, upset, annoyed, etc might capture it more. At least from what I've read, most fans are less "shocked" by this (they know who is good) than they are angry.

- I like the first speaker, and am highly amused by the part about missing Leader with the ball. I would probably tweak the line to "You're robbing us" instead of "them" since the player is being self-inclusive.

- For effect line 1, I would suggest the score be seven to one, instead of nine nil, because… you know… reasons ;-) I might also go for "native-born" rather than "full-blooded" to be clearer about what is meant.

- Both speaker 1 and 2 kind of follow the "it's not just A, it's everyone" formula, which isn't invalid, but means you could potentially introduce some other info if you wanted, or just trim words.

- Speaker 2 is presented as the FA president, but I'm guessing this is supposed to impact all sports – not just football. See if there's a way to introduce the fact that when he says "give us more money" he doesn't mean just the FA. Perhaps he could provide a specific suggestion of setting up or improving development leagues across all sports first, or he could be introduced as representing a broader group of national team commissioners, or whatever.

- I recognize the name reference for Sepp Blatter, but not Willmall. Is that a specific team reference that fans will recognize as related to this particular issue, or is it a more generic one to ensure a name is used? If it isn't specifically related, I would suggest using a more nation-specific name calling on the @@ANIMAL@@ or @@CAPITAL@@ macros to customize it.

- Obviously the hooligan speaker is meant to represent that particular brand of racist dirtbag, but I personally don't entirely buy the jump from keeping foreigners off local FCs to banning immigration across the whole nation. Since the entire argument made, both before and after, is about football teams, I would either have this jerk arguing to keep immigrants off all teams (school teams, hobby clubs, math competitions, whatever), or else have them expand their complaint to be about situations beyond just team membership – maybe they didn't recognize a language in the stands, and those vendors were selling "weird food" at the game because so many people are from elsewhere… that kind of thing. Basically, match the stakes (ban foreigners from X) to the speaker's claims (I see foreigners doing X).

[West Barack and East Obama]

I’ll respond to to the rest of your post later, but a quick note is that Willmall is a reference to Millwall FC - a club notorious for violent, racist hooligans. Hence, the reference.

Edit: Draft Two up!

[Outer Sparta]

I remember I was working with my own draft on naturalization of national team players with a puppet nation of mine, but this is a good draft overall.

Joe Splatter in Option 2 would work better since that's NS's equivalent of Sepp Blatter (already published in a prior issue).

Option 1 and 3 are somewhat similar to me despite the speakers having radically different approaches. Option 1 is sort of a xenophobic approach to sport representation (basically saying someone born in Maxtopia but their parents are from @@NAME@@ cannot represent) while option 3 basically advocates for full-on hooliganism and chaos with a lot more xenophobia.

The friendly with Althaniq instead of Ausblic would make more sense given they also field a team full of naturalized players.

[West Barack and East Obama]

Option 1 is a lot milder than Option 3. While a bit xenophobic, it's not too unreasonable, and only affects national sports. However, Option 3 asks you to ban immigrants and deport all of them, which will certainly have a big knock on effects on the economy, culture etc

Re: Pep Bladders - I quite like the name and his position is different from Joe Splatter from the other issue, so I think I can get away with another Blatter variant if that's okay.

I'll change the nation to Althaniq - thanks!

[Candensia]

Football fans in today watching an international friendly

This part sounds a bit clunky to me. Maybe try

Football fans watching yesterday's international friendly

…really want to stop this "problem", you need to…

The dialogue is already bounded by "double" quotation marks. To avoid confusion, when adding quotes to a word within dialogue, use 'single' marks instead.

[West Barack and East Obama]

Thanks Candensia - I've made the relevant edits.

[Australian rePublic]

With regards to option 3, there are already enough issues about deporting foreigners

[West Barack and East Obama]

With regards to option 3, there are already enough issues about deporting foreigners

Is that a problem?

[Australian rePublic]

With regards to option 3, there are already enough issues about deporting foreigners

Is that a problem?

Yea. You don't wanna cover the same ground over and over and over again

[West Barack and East Obama]

Is that a problem?

Yea. You don't wanna cover the same ground over and over and over again

It's a harmless option, not the whole premise, so I'd like to keep it in.

[Electrum]

This is looking really good. Two comments:

In general all three options provide for a way to increase @@nation@@ born citizens in the team. I'd like to see an option choice to go down the path of continuing this policy. This is just a suggestion -- your call if you want to go down this route. Imo, none of the options don't give me an option to stay the course and have only the best players, whether or not they were @@nation@@ born. Of course there is the second option but the suggestion that Bladders gives does not marry up with his reasoning. Bladders says that the homegrown players are just bad at sport and then proposes to up the funding for home grown players. Upping the funding would be a long-term solution. Would it not be better (and easier) to just poach players with promising talent from other countries? Perhaps you could frame that option around funding lavish trips for sporting executives to pick out the best talents from around the world.

For the third option, the tone is nearly perfect but I think you can make this a lot more informal, especially the last few sentences.

[West Barack and East Obama]

That's a good point Electrum - I've amended Option Two, and since it's changed a bit further feedback from any of you on its execution would be brilliant. I've also slightly edited Option Three.

[West Barack and East Obama]

Bump.

[West Barack and East Obama]

Anymore feedback on this?

[West Barack and East Obama]

Final bump.

[Australian rePublic]

Good Luck!