The Rejected Times

by **Makdon** » Tue Jan 19, 2021 5:47 pm

Unibot III wrote:I think this is the most concerning thing about this discussion. On the one hand, players are saying the "law is being followed" and on the other hand, players like yourself are saying "Listen gramps, the law doesn't matter anymore - we've "evolved past" that into a community "where people are allowed to simply hang out and spend time with people" ..." Which is it?

you couldn't have misinterpreted this more hilariously lol. One must wonder if you are purposefully failing to comprehend because you want to attack a group of people who don't want to associate with you. I guess we'll never know

by **Unibot III** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 11:28 am

Makdon wrote:
Unibot III wrote:I think this is the most concerning thing about this discussion. On the one hand, players are saying the "law is being followed" and on the other hand, players like yourself are saying "Listen gramps, the law doesn't matter anymore - we've "evolved past" that into a community "where people are allowed to simply hang out and spend time with people" ..." Which is it?

you couldn't have misinterpreted this more hilariously lol. One must wonder if you are purposefully failing to comprehend because you want to attack a group of people who don't want to associate with you. I guess we'll never know

I wasn’t being disingenuous if that’s what you’re asking and the rhetorical question wasn’t related to my ban, but a pattern of maladministration.

Falconias wrote:
Unibot III wrote:I have better things to do with my time.

Unibot, I don’t agree with your analysis.

Hi Falc. The Ghost of Christmas Past!

I just didn’t want to launch into a long legal analysis after pouring my heart out in the above paragraphs. It seemed an inappropriate mish-mash. I think the debate is pretty clear: Guy thinks a consultative election doesn’t need to be sanctioned in law, I do. We could get into it further, but what would really be accomplished at this point...

by **Agalaesia** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 6:06 pm

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Brief News IV | January 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Agalaesia

Index

Delegate Elections in the Rejected Realms - Crowheim
Speaker Elections Conclude, Dyl Victorious - Crowheim
New Editor in Chief Elections - The Church of Satan
Pacifica - End of an Era - Toerana

A New Delegate for the Rejected Realms

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Agalaesia

Rejected Realms delegate A Leaf on the Wind, otherwise known as Sarah, has resigned her post as the leader of the region. By regional law an election for a new delegate will commence immediately.

Sarah’s announcement was not exactly a surprising one, she had made her intentions to resign at the end of her normal term clear when she was challenged for the post in November, but the timing certainly was a surprise.

Currently, Officer of Foreign Affairs Nequedum; Officer for World Assembly Affairs Jamie; former speaker Gorundu, High Commander of the RRA Crazy Girl and former Outreach officer BowShot are running in the elections.

Voting started on the 21st of January, and will end on the 25th of January.

Speaker Elections Conclude, Dyl Victorious

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Agalaesia

The Rejected Realms held an election for the Speakerhip of the Assembly this past month, organized by Gorundu.

The only candidate to stand was incumbent Dyl, while Chipmunker, Jamie and Gorundu all recieved nominations and seconds but did not stand. Dyl ran on a platform of increasing organization and improving formatting in the legislative body, also promising to appoint a new deputy speaker.

Given the nature of the election with only one candidate, Dyl instead faced an approval vote which he passed with 20 votes.

Shortly following the election, Dyl followed up on one of his promises and appointed a new deputy, Purple Hyacinth, who serves as chair in the South Pacific and is a new citizen.

New Editor in Chief Elections

NEWS | WRITTEN BY The Church of Satan

For the first time since The Rejected Times was lawfully recognized by the government of The Rejected Realms, as a private entity, our Editor-in-Chief, Aga, was challenged for his position. He made his intention to step down known and thus he was challenged by other staff members so that the position would be elected instead of appointed by the delegate. The candidates, of which there are three, are as follows:

Chipmunker: Although a newcomer to both The Rejected Realms and The Rejected Times, he has got a lot of work done in the brief time he's spent working in The Rejected Realms. His campaign focused on better engaging staff members and better promoting The Rejected Times across NationStates.

Bowshot: A longtime staff member of The Rejected Times, Bowshot's campaign has focused on standardization, distribution and recruitment. He has a relaxed, yet expansionist vision for The Rejected Times.

Kraljevstvo Rata: A relatively new citizen of The Rejected Realms, yet still veteran writer of The Rejected Times, Kral's campaign focuses on maintaining the current publishing dates, new additions to the content of The Rejected Times, as well as distribution, promotion and recruitment.

All things considered, The Rejected Times stands to improve no matter which of them are elected.

Pacifica - End of an Era

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Toerana

Pacifica is both an infamous region in the NationStates community, and a shorthand name used by the New Pacific Order, the governing body of the Pacific for over 15 years.
Topid, the region’s founder, who originally founded the region following his exile from St. Abbaddon when he lost the Delegacy in 2016, has announced on Pacifica’s RMB that he is handing over “day-to-day” control of the region to the Pacific, marking the end of his self proclaimed war against the region.

While Topid has said that he’ll maintain the founder nation of the region, he has also stated that should he ever leave the game, they have his “consent to refound the region,” potentially giving the New Pacific Order direct control over the region in the future.

The RMB post can be found here:
https://www.nationstates.net/page=rmb/postid=42080231

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

Discuss this Issue over on the NationStates forum here.

Find The Rejected Times Index here.

by **The Moonstar** » Fri Jan 22, 2021 3:46 am

New Rogernomics wrote:TRR has the right to suppress nonsense on the RMB, just like any other region in the game. It is also a game mechanic that I'd never abuse myself, and I don't really see any evidence of TRR abusing it.

I totally did. I wonder if it was Fratt that fixed it?

by **Toerana** » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:07 pm

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Issue LXV | January 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Toerana
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Crowheim

Index

If Music Be the Food of Culture, Play On - Dead I Jack
The OWL Voting Incident and TSP’s Proscribing of TBH - Makdon
A Conversation with the New Delegate, Chimes - Crowheim
The Gameplay Awards - Guest Writer Zukchiva
New Delegate of the South Pacific Elected - Purple Hyacinth

Before we start, A Leaf on the Wind is returning to TRT with a second edition of The Bread Box! Please submit questions for her to answer in the next edition of TRT here.

If Music Be the Food of Culture, Play On

OPINION | WRITTEN BY Junior Writer Dead I Jack | EDITED BY Crowheim

My first region in NationStates was a founderless roleplay region called European Union. While the roleplay politics were heavily contested with relentless jockeying to win government positions, pass legislation, and more, perhaps the biggest prize in all of the region was winning Eurovoice. Eurovoice was a competition set to mirror the real world Eurovision Song Contest, a contest where the nations of the European Union would come together through music. During my time there, it was held every month or two without fail. Each player taking part in Eurovoice would submit a link to a song they liked, the participants would give points to their favorites, and a winner would be declared (and host the next one). In our humble RP UCR, this would get anywhere from 15-25 participants every time. European Union tried to capture the magic in other ways through a similar format like Europe’s Got Talent but it never took the same. Why was Eurovoice so popular and not EGT? I believe, and it’s probably cliché at this point, it’s because there is a universality in the appeal of music.

The power of music in NationStates, is the power to share something with each other. Even though members of a community might have varying tastes in music, the act of suggesting a song to listen to is at once both a window into who you are and an opportunity for discovery for those with you. Curating playlists on forums or chatrooms is easy and decentralized and a good way to pass time for those otherwise looking to be occupied. This is something that the Founderless Regions Alliance understood when they brought FRAvision to NSGP and these are lessons I learned from European Union and have carried with me to every region I have been involved in since.

When I got involved in the Rejected Realms, I decided that music would play an important role in my cultural vision. Indeed the first ever event I ran there was Rejectvision, a rebrand of Eurovoice. I made it accessible to participate in via telegram, discord, or forum, and it was a big success. It drew in players from all walks: onsite and offsite; Reject and Non-Reject. Encouraged by the participation, as I brainstormed more activity ideas as Culture Officer, we dipped back into the music well, striking gold with a music trivia idea called Popmaster. Wopruthien and I ironed out a simple format: the host plays a song via the bot and the first one to guess the artist and the title gets points. It was something we were excited about, but could never imagine the popularity the contest would grow to achieve. After the first time we held it there were demands for more and it turned into a weekly phenomenon. What was unique about Popmaster, though, was how many people wanted to host one themselves. It’s a Culture Officer’s dream to have others taking an active interest in planning and hosting activities and people were lining up to host their own rounds of Popmaster. With over a dozen different hosts, scores of participants, and probably anywhere from 30-50 different editions over the last 2 years, it would be hard to find a game as culturally impactful for a regional community except for Werewolf. As a cherry on top of all this, our musical events were drawing in players to sign up for citizenship of TRR. Music wasn’t just something fun we could entertain ourselves with, it played an important part in strengthening our community.

Using music to aid in community building can come in many different forms. At one time The South Pacific had classical music sessions, TSP and TRR have had Eurovision watch parties, some regions have done some impromptu karaoke in their discord voice chats, while more just hang out and play music for a bit as they talk or as they partake in military gameplay. No matter the form, music is a powerful cultural tool in building camaraderie. It can help start a conversation, it can help bring you together, it can help you form new bonds, and it can help you attract new people. And so I leave those would be cultural ministers/officers and region builders with this advice: If your region is hungry for something to do, something to share, feed it music.

The OWL Voting Incident and TSP’s Proscribing of TBH

OPINION | WRITTEN BY Apprentice Makdon | EDITED BY Crowheim

Order of events:

November 18th, 2020: 3 nations of the names Rebbid, GlowGolden, and Seltin all vote for Commend Twobagger through TSP’s OWL voting system. This system allows any WA nation in TSP to vote on WA proposals by posting in the RMB of The South Pacific WA Voting Center. This vote determines TSP’s delegate’s vote. These nations are all puppets of TBH members.
Sometime between the previous and following events: XKI notifies TSP of the unusual voting activity by the 3 TBH puppets.
November 20th, 2020, 7:46 PM EST: TSP releases a statement reporting that they had been notified by 10000 Islands that three low ranking members of The Black Hawks has attempted to sway TSP’s democratically determined vote in favor of Commend Twobagger. This statement goes on to vituperate both the actions of the TBH members and the SC resolution, and encourages others to vote against Commend Twobagger.
November 20th, 2020, 7:53 PM EST: TBH Major and Council Member Lord Dominator states that TBH had been made aware of the situation and had berated the perpetrators. TBH had not informed TSP.
November 20th, 2020, 9:47 PM EST: A TBH apology is later released. It apologizes for not TBH not informing TSP when they were notified of what had happened, and condemned the actions of the TBH members who tried to sway TSP’s vote.
November 23rd 2020: Commend Twobagger fails, with the delegate’s of Lazarus, TNP, TEP, Wintreath, FNR voting against, all in some part due to TSP’s statement.
January 5th, 2021, 9:48 PM EST: TSP publicizes a statement proscribing all TBH members from TSP, which is justified by TBH’s alleged attempt at influencing the Commend Twobagger vote, and an incident involving TBH council member Ever-Wandering Souls which took place some two years ago

So there’s a fair few heavy questions these events raise. What is regional sovereignty? What makes a region defender? Why is a GCR different from a UCR for raiders? Can TSP consider itself democratic while excluding many largely innocent players from membership? Why does anyone waste their time debating these things? If I were a more philosophical person I might care about answering these, but I’m not. Instead, I’d like to analyze these events for what they are, political plays, and see what they reflect about the state of GP.

Firstly, let’s consider the actions of the TBH members who attempted to sway TSP’s vote. What they did was plainly easy, obvious, and smart. As others have pointed out, they broke no explicit rules, and theoretically could’ve had a massive influence on the outcome of the SC vote. This is the price of doing democracy on-site. You either have to deal with this or go full oligarchy like Thalassia. However, one shouldn’t be too quick to denounce TSP’s voting system. It’s a reflection of their commitment to democracy, and respect is deserved for the fact TSP does it despite the risks. It was only a matter of time before those risks came to fruition though, so let's move onto the next event.

Why did TSP issue a statement? Now, it’s entirely possible that this was done in large part because of TSP’s deep commitment to giving their natives a voice and the perceived violation of regional sovereignty, you and I will likely never know. What we can now is that it was plainly a useful political play. TSP is opposed to Commend Twobagger, it looks like it’s going to pass, and then something drops into their lap that can swing the vote the way they want. It was a perfectly timed controversy. For all we know, TSP’s voting system has been abused before and they were completely aware of it, but waited till it was most politically expedient to use. Regardless, it got exactly what TSP wanted, whether it was intentional or not.

Why did TBH apologize? This is where things get interesting. TBH’s apology seemed like an inevitability at the time, but if we step back a bit, it becomes more confusing. TBH is a raiding organization. They exist to violate regional sovereignty. So why are they apologizing? There are two reasons. First, Commend Twobagger. TBH wants it to pass, and TSP’s statement is messing with that. An apology, one might reason, has a chance of mitigating this. The second is the state of GP, the utter niceness of it these days. I’ll get back to that later.

So, to sum up, so far we have three events, all of which were intelligent political plays, so much so that one could’ve probably predicted it would happen eventually. I’ll step back and draw my first assertion about GP now. It’s predictable, even stale. It’s almost all petty and superficial, becoming a game of optics and nothing more. Minor incidents occur, a bit is lost, a bit is won, and things go on, unchanged. I wasn’t around more than a year back, so I can’t say if things were more dynamic in the past, but it seems this conclusion isn’t one that’s contested. Some like the stability, proclaiming the growth of regional activity and community, others call it the death of NationStates. Either way, it’s there.

Moving on, what can be learned from TSP’s proscription of TBH? The first thing I’d like to point out is the critiques that were levied against this move. The biggest seem to be that the red phone incident is two years old, TSP’s own court found that it wasn’t enough to proscribe Souls, and that the Commend TB incident was being completely overstated. A question arises from this. Why did TSP justify the proscription with what it did, since these criticisms were fairly predictable? The red phone incident was big enough for justification, but it was two years old, so they needed something new, and thus reused the Commend TB incident. Simply put, it was important to TSP that they properly justified their proscription, even though they by their own laws didn’t need to. It was for the optics.

Finally, what do the trends in these events and the proscription of TBH mean for GP moving forwards? Well, earlier I mentioned how nice GP is. By that, I meant not that people on both sides of issues are often friends or that everyone hangs out on discord. What I meant is probably a product of that, but not a necessary one. What I meant is, for example, that raiders respect some regions. TBH felt like they should issue an apology for their members interfering with TSP. TSP felt like they needed to justify proscribing TBH with specific events. Why? Because everyone needs to seem nice, everyone needs to respect each other. Now, I’m all for being nice to people, but that’s what discord is for, not the GP forum. The GP forum should be for politics, and politics doesn’t play nice. It isn’t hard to see that this attitude towards politics in GP is largely responsible for GP’s staleness. No one can do anything without making someone angry, so they go through the motions of raiding or defending, without seriously ever trying to win anything big. However, TSP’s proscription of TBH indicates something. It appears to be a breakdown of the relationships that contribute to stability, and is, good or bad, a harbinger of things to come. Gameplay may be calcified, but something stirs beneath the surface.

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A Conversation with the New Delegate, Chimes

INTERVIEW | WRITTEN BY Deputy Editor-In-Chief Crowheim | EDITED BY the Editor-in-Chief

The Rejected Realms recently held delegate elections and chose Jamie, WA Officer, former Speaker, and former TNP delegate, to be its new Delegate. Jamie beat out four other candidates for the role. Here, I sit down with them and talk about what the future of TRR looks like.

Chipmunker: So thank you so much for agreeing to have this interview, Jamie, and may I congratulate you again on your comfortable victory in the TRR delegate elections! How did it feel when you found out you won, or did you know as much beforehand?

Jamie: I didn’t know beforehand at all really, our voting system is very unique in that preferences make all the different. I’m still shocked and humbled to win the election, all the other candidates were great and honestly it feels like a dream to be elected.

C: I’m sure. You beat out 4 others for the role, what do you say to them?

J: I would like to say it was a fun election and it was a really well spirited event full of lots of fun questions and I wish them all the best of luck for any future elections.

C: Awww, how nice! So, right off the bat of your term in office, you switched around some of the officer posts, and one is currently vacant, that being your own slot. What was the reasoning behind moving Robespierre in charge of WA affairs while continuing to leave Outreach empty, at least temporarily?

J: It was a combination of what I feel the region needs and what suited my cabinet, Robes is a talented WA author and our focus on domestic WA authorship and growth will complement them nicely. Outreach needs a person able to drive the car so to speak, be it updating guides or welcomes new players, which is why I left the office empty pending the officer election.

C: Interesting. You made this change pretty immediately, what other sorts of things might we rejects see in the very near future?

J: I want a strong cabinet, I have a number of announcements/plans which I’m hoping to announce soon, the next of which will be my revised RMB policy after the relevant rules have been updated.

C: You’re following up Sarah as delegate, who had a widely popular tenure. How do you plan to continue with the work she did and try and hold up to the excellent standard she set?

J: Sarah set a high bar. My term will focus on building upon the foundations that Sarah has built, I’ve already begun making sweeping changes - for example our new sparkly WFE!

C: The WFE is indeed looking very pretty and stylish! Speaking of style, Sarah also had a “gimmick” with her bread. Your opponent Neq planned on doing the same but with a dog had he been elected. Will you have a similar kind of thing, and if so, could you give any hints? :P

J: I believe ‘characters’ suit some people but not others, I see myself as just being me really :P I suppose you could say I’m a bit of a Mean Girl if you got the references from my delegate campaign xD

C: Well that’s a very fetch response. Such a grool delegate. Anyways, you’re leaving your WA Officer role to enter into this office. Are you proud of the term you’ve served?

J: On a whole, I’m happy. There was a few things I didn’t get round to finishing; such as my WA guide dispatch - but I’m intending to finish that regardless. I think WA activity has definitely improved, which was my goal. Was I perfect? Definitely not - I wish I could have done even more. But I feel I left the WA office in a good position.

C: Well I’m glad! Now I have a few questions about your plans for each arena under the jurisdiction of the delegate? What sort of ideas are you bringing to the table for Foreign Affairs?

J: My focus on FA affairs will be building bridges with more regions and strengthening relations we already have. As mentioned earlier, some of the events planned will encompass FA elements as well as culture, which I shall elaborate on as required.

C: Do you think Neq has been doing a good job managing FA thus far?

J: Absolutely. Neq hit the ground running with the diplo corps and I really respect their work ethic.

C: How about Nakari with Culture, and speaking of which, what are your plans for that department?

J: The big plan will be the cards event we have planned with a number of our friends and allies. It will be a big party of fun and i’m so glad to be able to have TRR involved in it. What can I say about Nakari, she’s a culture queen - she is full of amazing ideas and I can’t wait to work with her.

C: Yay, cards! That was a big part of your platform! How do you plan to get those not previously involved in that part of the game interested?

J: The thing is with cards - even if it’s not something that interests you, i’d always recommend trying it - to me its not about being the best its about making collections and collecting cards that you enjoy and like - and that should be the main appeal.

C:Very fair! So, finishing up, anything you’d like to say to the people of TRR who elected you into our highest office?

J: Yes. I am thankful and privileged to be your delegate, you gave me a big chance and big shoes to fill and will do my very best to make the region proud.

C: Thank you again for being here, and have a great day, Jamie! ❤️

J: Thank you ❤️

The Gameplay Awards

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Guest Writer Zukchiva | EDITED BY the Editor-In-Chief

Every year, the NationStates Gameplay community convenes in order to celebrate and award individuals, entities, and events that made an impact throughout the previous year. 2020, with all that had occurred this year both in terms of in-game politics and other issues, was a perfect and active year for awards. On December 25th, 2020,, Lord Dominator opened up the latest rendition of the Gameplay Awards. The rules and awards were similar to 2019’s Gameplay Awards, such as no-self nominations and a similar timetable for the ceremony.

Nominations opened immediately after Lord Dominator’s post, and a flurry of nominations were posted. Many popular gameplayers such as Tim, Phoenix, Xoriet, Altino, Roavin, and others were nominated for a various slew of individual awards. In terms of military organizations, nominations included Lily, the Black Hawks, the South Pacific Special Forces, the Grey Wardens, and the Autumnal Court of Caer Sidi. And for news organizations, entities like NSToday, Europeian Broadcasting Corparation, and the Rejected Times were nominated for their journalistic work. With over 30 people submitting nominations and seconds, the options for voting were diverse, with only one Award not having any valid nominations with a second.

On January 6th (the same day nominations were closed), voting for the Awards was opened. Over the next two weeks, over 70 votes were cast for the various Awards, utilizing a form Lord Dominator had provided. In an amazing display of activity, nearly half of all votes were cast within two days of the vote being opened! On January 21st, Lord Dominator formally closed the votes and formally announced Award results.

While many nominees were presented, only a few could win the Awards. Out of the individual awards, we see famous players like Dakota, Koth, Aquila, and Phoenix win various awards based on popularity, raiding/defending, and politics. On the military side, The Black Hawks won the “Raider Military of the Year'', with Lily winning the “Independent/Unaligned/Other Military of the Year”, and the Grey Wardens winning the “Defender Military of the Year Award”. The Rejected Times, as well as the Europeian Broadcasting Corporation, tied for best News Operation of the Year. Based on the subsequent comments in the thread, it is clear that many people were happy with the results.

Overall, the 2020 Gameplay Awards proved to be the final highlight for 2020. With over 30 nominations and 70 votes cast, the Awards go to show how involved and active of a community NationStates Gameplay is. Hopefully, the 2021 Awards prove to have just as many fun, interesting, and well-deserving nominations as last year’s Awards had!

New Delegate of the South Pacific Elected

NEWS | WRITTEN BY Journalist Purple Hyacinth | EDITED BY Crowheim

On the first of every January and July, the election for Delegate takes place in the South Pacific. The election runs in two rounds. In round one, legislators vote on all of the candidates using approval voting on the TSP forums. The top two candidates with the most approvals then move on to round two, which is a week-long gameside poll restricted to Native, WA resident nations, though members of the South Pacific Special Forces that are on deployment are allowed to vote via an alternate method.

TSP’s Delegate is largely a figurehead with little power. As a result, people often place emphasis on people’s trustworthiness rather than their ideas. Amerion, the incumbent, chose not to run. The three candidates who ran, Beepee, Rebeltopia, and Jay Coop, are all generally considered trustworthy figures. The candidates showed that they knew this too, with all three campaigns mentioning that they would be a safe choice. A third of voters cast their vote in approval of all candidates, and only one ballot was cast for Re-Open Nominations. The race ended up incredibly close, showing that legislators as a whole didn’t really have a strong preference for one candidate over another. Beepee received 27 votes, Rebeltopia received 26 votes, and Jay Coop received 25 votes.

Beepee and Rebeltopia moved on to round two. Since a lot of the nations that vote are nations who primarily are active gameside, round two is generally determined by who has the most influence on the RMB. Rebeltopia has not been very active on the RMB, so they were less well known. However, Beepee is not only active on the RMB, but during the election, was serving their second term as an elected Local Councillor, a role elected on gameside that primarily involves moderating the RMB. It was no surprise that Beepee held a strong lead over Rebeltopia, eventually getting twice as many votes as Rebeltopia.

After the election is over, TSP law states that the Delegate is not legally Delegate until they get the ingame seat. Beepee’s transition might be a long one--at the end of the election, they had 436 endorsements compared to Amerion’s 711--that’s 40% fewer endorsements. By comparison, when Amerion was elected, they had 809 endorsements and Aumeltopia had 916--only about 10% fewer endorsements--and Amerion’s transition into the Delegacy took 23 days. Based endorsement count trends from January 19th (the end of the election) to January 28th, I would guess that Beepee will surpass Amerion in endorsements in about a month. This likely long transition is probably due to the fact that Amerion is on the Council of Regional Security and Beepee is not. Beepee not being on the CRS means that they started off with a lower endorsement count, and Amerion being on the CRS means that nations are still asked to endorse them.

Beepee did not make many promises in their campaign, so we will have to wait and see what they will accomplish during their term. They may just sort of sit there--which is all that's really required of a Delegate anyway. But previous Delegates have done things beyond that. For example, Aumeltopia and Amerion held Endorsement Days to encourage cross-endorsing. Or perhaps they'll think of something new to do.

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

Discuss this Issue over on the NationStates forum here.

Find The Rejected Times Index here.

by **Galiantus III** » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:42 pm

I'm a big fan of approval voting. It's awesome TSP is using it and helping people learn about it.

by **Topid** » Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:17 pm

Old irrelevant person question: Is Rebeltopia a new name for Lady Rebels?

by **Agalaesia** » Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:29 pm

Topid wrote:Old irrelevant person question: Is Rebeltopia a new name for Lady Rebels?

Nope!

Rebeltopia is a different human, although they both come from TSP.

by **Lord Dominator** » Tue Feb 02, 2021 8:29 pm

And NSToday says I'm not influential - two mentions in two different articles.

by **Toerana** » Tue Mar 02, 2021 5:38 am

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Issue LXVI | February 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Toerana
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Crowheim

Index

An Interview with the Outgoing Delegate, A Leaf on the Wind - Agalaesia
The Embassy Raid - The Python
The South Pacific Cabinet Elections - Purple Hyacinth
Kyosson Coup of Warzone Airspace - Crowheim
The Partnership for Sovereignty - Toerana

Editor’s Note
Hello Readers of The Rejected Times! This Issue we’re trialling a new way to reward our writers, and allow our readers to give feedback on our issues, as well as answer a few quick questions to give us an idea of the sort of people who read our issues, to help us write bigger and better issues in the future.

Linked below is a google form that allows you to give us feedback and vote on your favourite article from this issue. It requires you to sign into a google account, but we do not collect your google account and/or email address.

Give us feedback here!

If you have an issues, let me know.

Enjoy this issue,

~ Toerana | BowShot

An Interview With the Outgoing Delegate, Sarah

Interview | WRITTEN BY Agalaesia

A former Delegate Officer of Culture and Officer of Outreach, as well as a current Officer in the Rejected Realms army, one could say that Sarah is amongst the most successful players in NationStates.

Six months ago, she ran for the delegacy and won by a large margin, making it to the top very quickly. Now having resigned from the delegacy, she enjoys the pink “Former Delegate” masking in the Rejected Realms’ Discord chat.

Almost immediately her love for the Rejected Realms and her selflessness can be sensed. “I really love TRR, it's my home,” she says. “I ran for Delegate because I thought I could do good for TRR.” Sarah does indeed have a long history of contributions made to the Realms: as Culture officer she introduced theme days and ran regular contests - both events remain a part of the region today.

“I think Borm had a strong platform, honestly,” she continues. “I think he would have done well. We just have vastly different approaches to things. It could have been interesting working with him. I feel like our strengths are opposites so we could have been a well balanced team.”

During her delegacy, Sarah faced many challenges - not only was there a lot of heated debate over the Regional Message Board rules, but she was also challenged by Tinhampton over a late governmental report. When asked whether she expected this, she said: “I don't know how to articulate exactly what I expected. You try to prepare for odd FA things and you have an obvious plan for officers that you set out ahead of time. And you just kinda try to prepare as best you can for the wrench in the plans.”

One of her least favourite memories as a delegate?

“Being challenged.”

Sarah was indeed by two-time unsuccessful challenger Tinhampton, who also challenged Sarah’s predecessor Dead-Eye Jack.

“I knew it was unlikely to go anywhere, but really it was draining. The whole situation was frustrating because it felt like it was seconded by people that had no idea what it really meant or how our system works. I don't believe it was a challenge worthy situation, since it was resolved fairly shortly after it was pointed out that I was late.”

Interestingly, Sarah doesn’t have a moment that she felt proud of, despite spearheading the Partnership for Regional Sovereignty and being the Foreign Affairs face of the region for almost half a year.

“I have a hard time seeing my Delegacy in a positive light. Perhaps I am just too hard on myself. I don't feel that I achieved anything, let alone something to be proud of. I came in with a strong energy and I had a lot of goals, however I got burned out pretty quick. Officer appointments were a struggle for both elections. It was a difficult situation. A lot of the times it felt like things just piled on.

I am proud of achieving my term. Like just making it to the finish line of a normal term. I wanted to quit so many times way before it was time. But I didn't, and I am proud of how far I made it and that I didn't just ghost my team or my responsibilities. I don't think I have a favorite memory, tbqh. I enjoyed a lot of things, and I'm so thankful I had a continuous killer culture staff. That really helped a whole lot with their planning on festivals and activities. I appreciate their work and their efforts.”

The Embassy Raid

News | WRITTEN BY The Python | EDITED BY Editor-In-Chief

The Embassy was one of the oldest embassy collecting regions in history, originally founded on the 26th of April 2015, and in February 18'th 2021, the day that will go down in NS history, the embassies were closed by a coalition of raiders from Lily, the Black Hawks, Lone Wolves United, Europeia, Karma and the Augustin Alliance. What happened?

It all started with the embassy-collecting region Traveling Wilburys being founded, on the 3rd of August last year. Traveling Wilburys quickly started collecting embassies and as of writing, still has over 1000 embassies. They also got close with the Embassy, and eventually the Embassy shared its password with Traveling Wilburys (the Embassy is founderless but has been kept safe until now by password protection).

However, Traveling Wilburys, on the 14th of February 2021, revealed itself to be run by none other than Frenchy himself, a senior member of Lily. Armed with the password, Frenchy organised a successful raid on the region, seeing a wide range of aforementioned organisations. Some failed liberation attempts happened involving organisations such as the Free Nations Defense Alliance, Union of Democratic States Armed Forces and Wintercrest, however, these all failed partly because of raider competency and partly because defenders did not have the numbers, as the largest defender organisations refused to do liberate the region, because they found embassy collecting regions "annoying"; This had a domino effect making other organisations more pessimistic the chance of a successful liberation being pulled off.

The minor update of 18th of February 2021 will be the day forever remembered as the day when one of the largest and oldest embassy collecting regions, lost every single one of it's embassies. In fact, there were so many embassies that update took around 2 hours to complete, and after that some of the embassies hadn't even closed yet (there was a technical error around 24 hours after this, initially thought to be due to the raid but admin later declared it was an error where the "game server couldn't talk to the database server"). Eventually admins worked on closing the embassies and successfully did so, although producing the unfortunate side-effect of resulting in an embassy-less history page. After the embassies closed, on the major update of 20th, defenders from TITO reclaimed the delegacy, along with help from the original liberation group, and are currently in the long process of rebuilding the Embassy...

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The South Pacific Cabinet Elections

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Purple Hyacinth | EDITED BY Crowheim

The South Pacific’s Cabinet elections ran from February 1 to February 14. Six positions were up for grabs: Prime Minister, Minister of Culture, Minister of Defence, Minister of Engagement, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of Media. While there was some heated debate, things largely went smoothly and there were no surprise upsets.

The previous term saw the first elections for three new ministries: the Ministries of Culture, Engagement, and Media. The portfolios for those three ministries had originally fallen under the control of the Ministry of Regional Affairs, but the Assembly had voted to split it after deeming the Ministry too big, in addition to other various reasons. While hopes were high, the outgoing Cabinet had been criticized for a lack of accountability and transparency, including little activity from several ministries. Perhaps most notably, the Ministry of Culture had failed to produce many activities, with the Minister, Swifty, even facing a recall, though the recall ultimately failed. The elected Minister of Media, Farengeto, had also not stirred up much activity within the Ministry of Media. He ultimately resigned, and after Islas took over, there was some activity. That is not to say that all Ministries were struggling--the Ministry of Engagement and the Ministry of Defence (also known as the South Pacific Special Forces) both saw lots of activity and were looked upon favorably.

With the shortcomings of the previous Cabinet fresh on people’s minds, it was no surprise that many were concerned about how ministers would strive for transparency and accountability. For example, in the Cabinet election debates and interviews hosted by the South Pacific Independent News Network (SPINN), five out of the six interviews and debates had a question mentioning transparency.

Three positions had one person running against no opposition: the Ministers of Defence, Engagement, and Foreign Affairs. In the position of MoD, the only candidate was Witchcraft and Sorcery. W&S is a longtime defender who recently rejoined the SPSF and currently holds the rank of Officer. Since his return, he has been quite active, also serving as the Director of Foreign Affairs of Founderless. His campaign touched on his stance on regional sovereignty, expansion of the non-updater Tidal Force, better recordkeeping, and foreign affairs. The campaign had very little pushback and W&S won the race handily, only losing one vote to Re-Open Nominations (RON).

USoVietnam, the incumbent Minister of Engagement, chose to run for reelection. He has several projects going on within the Ministry that he plans to continue, such as a project to create official informational dispatches infrastructure and a project to create an independent cards organization. The Ministry of Engagement was highly successful in the past term, with not only a lot of work getting done, but also several updates to the public throughout the term to promote transparency. He was popular in the previous term with high approval ratings, helping him win every single vote.

The final uncontested race was the race for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with only Roavin running. An extremely established figure in both TSP and in the wider gameplay world, Roavin’s ability to be a competent MoFA was not questioned. However, his campaign was not primarily about foreign policy--rather, it revolved around his vision of a new role for ambassadors, who he envisioned would have a more active role, including learning about gameplay to potentially be prepared to be future MoFAs. He did receive some questions about the viability of the program and the details of his foreign policy objectives, as he had only given a vague statement about largely maintaining the status quo in his campaign, including promoting the Partnership for Sovereignty. Ultimately, he was still very popular, losing only two first-place votes out of 40 to RON.

The Minister of Culture race was between North Prarie and Royaltica. Prarie ran on a platform of increasing engagement among staff, creating a TRR-style Culture Calendar, encouraging roleplay, and activities with other members of the Partnership for Sovereignty. Royaltica’s campaign mentioned a variety of things, including their goals for ministry organization, TSP Campus, advertising, and a points system. Royaltica did get some questions regarding their lack of activity in the past term. In contrast, Prarie was more active in TSP in recent months, and with his more fleshed out ideas, he won 33 first place votes to Royalitca’s 5.

Belschaft, Rabbitz, and incumbent Islas were running for Minister of Media. Belschaft ran a unique campaign to abolish the Ministry, saying that it was unnecessary and unhelpful to journalists. Rabbitz’s campaign talked about his plans for pushing defenderism and making more content. Islas’s campaign was mostly about continuing to produce the content that was already being produced, plus more work on some other projects. Curiously, the campaign threads had few questions or comments from voters. However, the debate between the candidates that was hosted by SPINN had some of the most back-and-forth debate between the candidates of all the debates. Belschaft’s idea of abolishing the ministry had some support, but was largely rejected by voters. While Rabbitz and Islas both advocated for a pro-defender bias in MoM publications, Rabbitz seemed to get more opposition for it, potentially due to the fact that he mentioned it in his campaign while Islas didn’t. Likely due to a combination of Rabbitz’s and Belschaft’s unpopular ideas, Islas already producing publications as Minister, and other factors, Islas ultimately won the race. They won 23 first-place votes, Belschaft got 10, Rabbitz got 8, and RON got 3.

For the office of Prime Minister, Glen-Rhodes/Sandaoguo and Jay Coop/Qvait ran. Glen’s campaign focused on setting realistic goals and highlighted his past experience to prove his competence. He stated that the failures of the previous term had to do with big, unachievable goals, so setting realistic goals was especially important. Jay’s campaign mentioned a number of specific things he wanted to do if elected across the ministries. He also emphasized defenderism, including promoting the Partnership for Sovereignty. Both candidates had support, but Glen ultimately won 32 first-place votes to Jay’s 11.

The newly elected Cabinet did not officially enter office until a week after the election concluded to provide time to transition. Right as the term started, the newly elected Prime Minister released an Inaugural Address. In the address, he briefly described the general agenda for each minister. Additionally, Glen also announced the creation of two councils within the Cabinet, the Domestic Affairs Council (composed of the PM, MoC, MoM, and MoE, plus any deputies and advisors), and the Foreign Affairs Council (composed of the PM, MoFA, and MoD, plus any deputies and advisors). The two councils would work on most cross-ministry tasks among themselves, making things more efficient as ministers with unrelated portfolios would have no need to get involved. He also appointed Anjo as the Director of the Office of WA Legislation, a newly-created position after OWL was formalized into law. This was expected, as Anjo was the incumbent Secretary of OWL, which was the name of the position before it was changed when OWL was formalized.

While the term has just begun, there are already some good signs. For one, the Inaugural Address was released, in contrast to the Inaugural Address not being released in the previous term. However, with much of the term yet to happen, we will have to wait and see whether each minister’s promise is fulfilled.

Kyosson Coup of Warzone Airspace

Satire | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Editor-In-Chief

BREAKING: The Rejected Times is shocked to report that a Kyosson family reunion taking place in the Warzone Airspace appears to have ended in a hostile takeover of the region and the installation of a puppet regime, called the Kingdom of the Clouds, to rule over the family-owned territory.

Planning for the reunion had been underway for some time, but the location had been decided spur of the moment as Kyossons trickled into what appeared to be a deserted slice of land. Over the course of 12 hours, many prominent members of the family showed up to celebrate, included former Rejected Realms delegate (as well as family patriarch) Kyorgia, as well as various figures from across the world like Agalaesia, BowShot, and Phoenix.

Sometime past midnight partying began over Matriarch's recent ascension to the Rejected Delegacy, and soon the horde of rowdy family members descended upon the region's center of government, which had been abandoned months earlier, and staked their claim to the dilapidated ruins. A new government was established and the region was inducted into the Kyosson Empire, whose other holdings include Kyorgia Puppet Storage and The Rejected Realms (although this second claim is disputed).

The new government was to be named the Kingdom of the Clouds, with Agalaesia serving as the Chancellor of the new region, Kyorgia as the delegate and marquess, and BowShot as the Captain of the Royal Guard. The government stayed in power for around a week until the former owners of the land, the diabolical corporate lawyers of LazCorp descended back upon their territory to reclaim it. Leaders from Osiris and the LWU also arrived with LazCorp to aid in the negotiations.

The Kyosson family sent their Chancellor to negotiate but he unfortunately got stuck in a bathtub and was unable to attend, so the Marquess was sent instead. Neither side reached an agreement but LazCorp's lawyers ended up succeeding in one goal - their legal jargon and legalese bored the Kyosson family to death, and so they departed the region after a short reign as it's rulers.

Partnership for Sovereignty

News | WRITTEN BY Toerana | EDITED BY Crowheim

The Partnership for Sovereignty, the new World Assembly Bloc on the scene is made up of some of NationStates’ largest and most influential Defender oriented regions. Originally founded by three, prominent defender regions, the Rejected Realms, the South Pacific and 10,000 Islands approximately a month ago, and it has grown to include 6 members, seeing The Union of Democratic States, the Free Nations Region and Spiritus. Its principles are based around core defender beliefs to a region’s right to Self Determination, the growth and encouragement of positive communities and a “respect for the World Assembly and its processes.” This is most notable, as the WA Bloc’s charter explicitly states their opposition to the practice of “approval raiding,” and requires member states act against it. [1] Alongside this, its charter automatically expels any member region that “declares a formal raiding alignment,” [2] solidifying the Bloc as a defender organisation.

Its 6 member regions add up to a total of 17,200 nations, with the combined voting power of the region’s delegates being over 1,580 votes. This places the bloc below WALL in voting power, seeing WALL have approximately 430 votes more than the Partnership.

So far, the Partnership has published 3 recommendations for the Security Council, with two of them relating to the Embassy and its liberation, and the third being a recommendation against Commend HEM, on the grounds of King HEM’s involvement in raider regions and organisations.

Sources & Citations
Partnership for Sovereignty Charter
Recommendations published by the Partnership
[1]
1.c. The Partnership for Sovereignty opposes the practice of approval raiding. Signatories will act against it, including through diplomatic and defensive military action, as each region considers appropriate in the circumstances.
[2]
3. An existing member of the Partnership shall be automatically expelled if they declare a formal raiding alignment.

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

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by **Unibot III** » Wed Mar 03, 2021 9:39 am

Well done! Great edition.

by **Alfonzo** » Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:54 am

Nice article!

by **Toerana** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 8:27 am

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Issue LXVII | March, 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Toerana
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Crowheim

Index

Game-Created Regions See Delegate Shakeups - Crowheim
The 2021 Card Awards - Minskiev
The 2020 Reject Awards - Toerana
Inflation - The Death of the Cards Game - Toerana
April Elections in the Rejected Realms - Toerana & Dyllypoly

Game-Created Regions See Delegate Shakeups

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

Over the past few months, the Game-Created Regions of NationStates (also known as GCRs) have seen a slew of newer delegates taking the reins. Since these regions don’t have founders, selecting a delegate is very important as it means the election of someone who will have near-total control of the region’s onsite functions. Four new delegates in particular have seen a somewhat recent rise to power: McMasterdonia in The North Pacific, Beepee in The South Pacific, Chimes in The Rejected Realms, and Zukchiva in The East Pacific.

About 70 days ago, McMasterdonia assumed the delegacy of The North Pacific for a staggering fifth time. As TNP’s previous longest-serving delegate - setting a record of 251 days during his second tenure - McM is a well-established figure in the region and is well-known across NationStates, having been commended by the Security Council several years ago and having served as the de facto face of TNP for many years. His predecessor, Kranostav, who had been elected after Prydania stepped out of the role due to real-life reasons, ran against McM in the election but was handily defeated in what many perceived to be a more lopsided victory than expected. This was a return to form and precedent for TNP, and McM started his term off immediately with a bang, as the quorum raiding debacle between them and defenderdom began very shortly after his election. One could consider his term beyond that to likely be a typical one, though - a “safe” choice to lead The North Pacific.

Meanwhile, in The Rejected Realms, Jamie (Chimes) was elected after challenging for the role following Sarah’s (A Leaf on the Wind) resignation. They ran against Nequedem (Glacikaldr), Gorundu, BowShot118, and perennial candidate (as well as game moderator) CrazyGirl, sweeping the competition and quite easily securing election for what is likely to be a six-month term. Jamie continues the trend of defenders holding the TRR delegacy, succeeding Sarah and Dead I Jack (both are members of the Grey Wardens and Sarah is a member of the RRA), Kyorgia, who had a more mixed past, and Frattastan, Commander of the RRA and the owner of Libcord. Jamie had previously served as Speaker and World Assembly Officer in the region (as well as Delegate of TNP, being the predecessor to McM’s second term). This can be considered another “safe” play by TRR in electing an established regional name, noted defender, and all-around good guy on NS to represent the region.

The South Pacific’s new delegate, Beepee, has only just assumed the in-game role despite being elected in January, a much longer transition than the other three regions in the article. Nonetheless, Amerion continued to serve as TSP’s in-game delegate while Beepee closed the 300-endorsement gap. In a previous TRT article, Purple Hyacinth, Chair of the South Pacific Assembly, surmised that Beepee would assume the role in around a month but that time came and passed. Beepee ran in a very close election against Rebeltopia and Jay Coop (Qvait) for the role, winning 27 votes to Rebel’s 26 and Jay’s 25. The race was then moved into a gameside poll between Beepee and Rebeltopia, in which the former dominated the competition despite the tight earlier race and secured the delegacy for himself. It’s unclear what he will do in the role, as his campaign was somewhat lacking in the way of promises, but we will hopefully soon find out.

Lastly, The East Pacific, as expected, elected their first Dele-goose, Zukchiva, to serve as the region’s leader. He succeeded Serge (Libertanny) in the role, who moved to his newly founded UCR, Kaer Solas, soon after leaving the delegacy. Zuk ran in a rather uncompetitive election, securing a vast amount of the vote against several competitors. This has been cited as something of a problem in The East Pacific, as elections are non-competitive even quite far ahead of time: Sammy (New Leganes) is already favored to become Delegate after Zukchiva leaves the role. It will be interesting to see what Zuk does in the role, given the broad support he had from TEP’s surprisingly small voting population.

The 2021 Card Awards

News | WRITTEN BY Minskiev | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

Over the past year, the cards community has grown tremendously, with new organizations popping up, new traders influencing the market, and new collectors building dream decks. In recognition of this, the North Pacific Cards Guild created the 2021 Card Awards to celebrate the past year’s highlights. The event included individual awards intended to celebrate various aspects of the cards scene and recognize the efforts of some of the most notable members of the cards community.

First was the Best Overall Trader award, won by none other than Koem Kab. As first in the world in Deck Value, it's easy to see why they won this one. Next was the Best Rising Star Trader award, which went to Witchcraft and Sorcery. In just three months, he surged from nothing to a Deck Value within the top 20 - definitely deserving of this award! After that, r3n (also known as 1 very fast endotarter or the Northern Light) was named the winner of the Hero of the Year award. r3n is well known for their generosity and involvement in the North Pacific Cards Guild, so this was no surprise. The Villain of the Year was Koem Kab, as they were the first condemned cards player and someone to always look out for on the market. In recognition of their excellent technical work and creation of widely-used scripts to speed up card farming, Racoda was awarded the Most Innovative award. Finally, the winner of the Most Popular award was 9003, a very well-known cards player and organizer. They're also known for trying to collect every common card - a feat they're well on their way towards!

Following these individual awards, there were several awards for events, collections, the best card, card news services, tools, and more - not to mention fun titles given to infamous players and things in the cards community. Overall, the Card Awards were nothing short of good fun and a way to celebrate cards players’ work this past year.

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The 2020 Reject Awards

News | WRITTEN BY Toerana | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

The Reject Awards - a yearly celebration of the events, the people, and the achievements of the past year - began on the 8th of March and were run by Culture Officer Nakari. They ended with an Awards Ceremony for the winners on the 23rd of March.

Through the course of the event, over 200 votes were cast across 13 categories:
Most Outstanding RMBer, Pen & Paper, Quote of the Year, Best Staff Member, Best Legislator, Greymarshes Achievement Award, Veteran Reject Award, Best Government Member, TRR Event of the Year, Most Outstanding Officer, Best Newcomer, RRA Newcomer Soldier and, of course, Reject of the Year.

The Pen & Paper Award was a new addition for this year, while all other categories returned from the 2019 Reject Awards. However, unlike previous years, 19 awards were handed out for the 13 categories, as many votes saw close races and multiple ended in draws.

As to not spoil the results of the awards, they won’t be listed in this article. However, the winners and a full breakdown of the results can be found in the Awards Ceremony thread on TRR’s forums.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Inflation - The Death of the Cards Game

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Toerana | EDITED BY Dyllypoly & Minskiev

Since its reintroduction in December 2019, the Cards “minigame” has grown into a vibrant community of players trading cards, completing collections, and amassing thousands of bank worth of cards - often independent of any region in particular. With the Top 10 Players being valued at 3.86 Million Bank combined, it shows an incredible ability to collect valuable cards - or does it?

Card inflation is the method by which wealthy players artificially boost their deck’s value to extraordinary heights without collecting more conventionally valuable cards. Inflation is created by collecting a fairly large quantity of a rare card (typically CTE’d commons), effectively creating a monopoly on it, and then proceeding to buy and sell it to yourself for a large quantity of bank, thus increasing the value by orders of magnitude. The practice has been used to immense success by prominent members of the card community: 91 inflated cards are now more valuable than the most valuable legendary card in the game, Season 1’s Testlandia, with 75 of these inflated cards being valued at 1,000 bank or more apiece.

However, card inflation was not always so heavily used or as relied on by big card farmers to boost their deck’s value. Before its explosion in popularity, card inflation was used sparingly as a way to give artificial value to a select few rare Ultra Rares, Epics, and Legendaries, with the Season 1 card Soops holding the top spot in value for an extended period of time. This rare use of inflation made users like Farrakhan, TRR’s long-standing informal Vice Delegate, a novelty within the community with their deck of primarily inflated copies of themselves. In more recent times, players have continued to boost their cards, with 9003 recently holding the most valuable epic spot with their Season 1 card. Unlike more recent examples of card inflation, however, these cards were more easily obtainable through card farming due to their lack of ceased-to-exist (CTE’d) status and the lack of a preexisting monopoly on the card. With new cards being pulled by farmers and casual players alike, it also forced the inflators of these cards to consistently spend large amounts of bank to maintain their card’s value, ensuring there was a high cost to maintain the equally high value.

This lack of sustained cost and the monopolization of inflated common cards are only harmful to the cards community. While there are many different ways to play the game, the total value of a player’s deck is the obvious, go-to achievement advertised by the game. It has built-in rankings for the most valuable cards and decks, as well as a stats badge for deck value, which may just serve as further motivation for cards players given the believed impact gold badges have on a card's rarity. The sheer value of some cards players’ decks - such as Koem Kab, the first player to surpass a deck value of one million - is incredibly daunting to players new to both cards and NationStates in general, which may only serve to demotivate those without the dedication to farm hundreds (if not thousands) of puppets to gather wealth more “organically” and could put users off cards for good. Unfortunately, this is a problem that has no solutions that will please both sides. There are, however, possible solutions for this problem.

Firstly, one of the problems helping to exacerbate the issue is the fact it is harder to pull CTE’d cards than non-CTE’d cards. This is a problem that all sorts of cards players face - in particular those in the region collecting community, who often see collections slow to a crawl as they wait for excruciatingly rare cards to be pulled even a year into the season. The fact these cards are hard to find means they can’t easily be deflated by those who want to sell the card to a “market value shark” for a quick buck or by those who intentionally deflate cards. Furthermore, it prevents these cards from seeping into the general population, keeping the artificial value with those who spent effectively nothing to collect it. Making CTE’d cards as easy to find as regular cards would help to reduce the drastic growth in the number of these cards, as it would be easier to deflate them through natural means.

Pushing the idea of player-caused deflation further, increasing the pull chance of a card based on its market value may help to do the trick. Doing so would ensure that people who rely on inflation for their value are constantly working to maintain that value, making these cards more common and thus significantly easier to deflate.

Finally - and likely the most unpopular idea of the three - placing a cap (soft or hard) on the value of cards based on their rarity will ensure that cards do not inflate too far. However, if placed too low, it could see lower-rarity cards of prominent players (such as GCR delegates) be undervalued because of gameplay mechanics. It’s a tricky balance to strike and, if introduced, would be unpopular at implementation.

With the most valuable legendary card nearing being pushed out of the top 100, we could see a continued shift away from traditional methods of gathering deck value and an increased focus on self-centered monopolies on otherwise-worthless cards, being inflated to be valued at thousands of bank, possibly seeing a gradual decline in interest in the cards game for all but a few highly-dedicated inflators and card farmers, unless changes are made to "restore" a more traditional style of play.

April Elections in the Rejected Realms

News | WRITTEN BY Toerana & Dyllypoly | EDITED BY TRT Staff

Regularly scheduled elections for all 4 Officer seats and the position of Speaker occurred in The Rejected Realms at the beginning of April. Seven candidates ran for Officer and two candidates (along with a disputed third) ran for the position of Speaker.

Officer Candidates

The Officer elections saw only one incumbent - Agalaesia, who was also previously Editor-in-Chief of The Rejected Times - run for reelection. They ran on an Outreach-centric campaign, which focused on continuing the work that they had been doing alongside the rest of the Outreach Staff. Their previous term saw the reintroduction of the RMB awards and the beginning of the revamping and rewriting of guides designed to help new Rejects further their understanding of the game and the region.

Alongside the continuation of existing work done by the department, Agalaesia mentioned that they wanted Outreach to work closely with other departments to ensure internal activity - a role typically associated with Culture. They wished to see Outreach staff running events and activities for both citizen and non-citizen Rejects, as to encourage new players to become citizens.

Chipmunker, a two-time General Assembly author and relative newcomer to the region, ran on a World Assembly-focused platform, though sizable sections of their campaign were dedicated to Outreach and Culture.

Their World Assembly campaign touched upon many areas. Most notable were the reintroduction of voting recommendations from the World Assembly Office and an emphasis on record keeping, documenting both past and present delegate votes to provide a record of how the region has voted on resolutions.

Their Outreach campaign focused on a renewed effort on the welcoming program, which encourages Outreach Staff to reach out to new members of the discord personally, and a vision which saw Outreach in a "supporting role" to serve as a source of promotion and recruitment for the region's other programs and departments.

In their Culture platform, Chipmunker (Crowheim) most notably proposed the idea of "coup days" - a popular event in The South Pacific where "every week the WFE and possibly a little bit more of the region is rethemed for a day."

Dyl (Dyllypoly), the incumbent two-term Speaker, ran on a platform that emphasised Foreign Affairs as their preferred portfolio.

Their Campaign opened by touching on their past work in Foreign Affairs, then went on to applaud the steps made by Nequedem (Glacikaldr) (the incumbent Foreign Affairs Officer) and Robespierre, including joining the Partnership for Sovereignty. Their campaign then proposed expanding the Diplomatic Corps and introducing junior Ambassadors to allow for greater participation in Foreign Affairs, which is currently limited due to a lack of open Ambassador positions.

Alongside expanding the Diplomatic Corps, they displayed a desire to run more large-scale culture events in cooperation with the Culture Officer and produce a TNP-Style Foreign Affairs Report in order to "keep Rejects up to date with foreign happenings and events."

Grea Kriopia, another relative newcomer to TRR, ran a Culture-focused campaign which called for the continuation of the Culture Calendar first implemented by Deadeye Jack with the inclusion of a greater variety of activities for Rejects to partake in. Alongside this, interregional cultural events and the Discarded Cards League were viewed as both "key FA assets" and "great ways to introduce more [Rejects] into the cards world."

Their platform then moved on to discuss cooperation between Outreach and Culture, hoping to see greater promotion of events on the region's RMB to entice and encourage new players to participate in the region offsite.

Visionary Union, a former Deputy Outreach Officer, ran for Officer on a Culture-focused platform. They advocated for furthering TRR's "legacy of cultural events" through the use of the popular Culture Calendar as well as bringing greater activity to a regional discord favorite - Werewolf. Vis also noted their intent to work with the Foreign Affairs Officer and Outreach Officer to organize interregional events and bring RMB-based Rejects into the discord fold, respectively.

Vis's platform also touched on some ideas for the Outreach portfolio. They wished to continue many of the projects started under Agalaesia but noted that their primary focus would be on increasing regional activity. Vis suggested both drawing the RMB crowd to the regional discord and establishing an endorsement program aimed at promoting both activity and TRR's standing in the Partnership for Sovereignty.

Merlin (Kingdom of Circle of Magi), largely known for their work as a defender in The Grey Wardens, focused on both Culture and World Assembly in his campaign. They supported keeping the Culture Calendar and bringing back more long-term cultural contests. They also called for dedicating Fridays to the worship of both themself and Kyorgia. The World Assembly side of Merlin's campaign, meanwhile, advocated for increased native resolution authorship and the passage of the long-awaited Commend Kyorgia draft.

Kral ran in the election, but didn't publish a portfolio.

Speaker Candidates

The Speaker election saw 3 candidates run, although only 2 were placed on the ballot.

Both Minskiev and Gorundu ran campaigns on maintaining the work done by Dyl, with Gorundu expressing a wish to expand on the newly-created Bill Writing Guild.

Former delegate Kyorgia, in sharp contrast to his opponents, ran a smear campaign, emphasising the fact that Minskiev, as a walrus, is "fat," and made accusations of an apparent attempt by Gorundu to take over TRR as a North Pacific plant. These claims have yet to have been verified. However, Kyorgia never ended up on the ballot.

Results

The Officer election saw Dyl elected first, followed by Chipmunker, then Agalaesia, and finally Grea Kriopia. The Delegate, Chimes, then assigned each Officer their first choice portfolio, assigning Aga as Outreach Officer, Chip as World Assembly Officer, Dyl as Foreign Affairs Officer, and Grea as Culture Officer.

In the Speaker election, Minskiev beat Gorundu 14 to 11 and was thus elected as Speaker.

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

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by **Tinhampton** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:58 am

Firstly, could the Rejected Realms Media Corporation please put their future recruitment classfieds somewhere more prominent than after the second out of five(-ish) articles in future? And secondly, when are we getting the cosmopolitan rebuttal to "Regionalism: A Goal and Progress Oriented Player Experience?"

by **Toerana** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:11 am

Tinhampton wrote:Firstly, could the Rejected Realms Media Corporation please put their future recruitment classfieds somewhere more prominent than after the second out of five(-ish) articles in future? And secondly, when are we getting the cosmopolitan rebuttal to "Regionalism: A Goal and Progress Oriented Player Experience?"

To the first point, I dislike the idea of putting it somewhere too prominent, I don't want to detract from the article. That, and, staff wise, we can only recruit from the citizenry (realistically atm), which makes it largely pointless to put a prominent recruitment ad in the middle of an issue.
To the second question, whenever someone wants to write it :P

by **Qvait** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:22 pm

Congrats to the newly elected officers!

by **Kingdom of Circle of Magi** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:17 pm

Merlin (Kingdom of Circle of Magi), largely known for their work as a defender in The Grey Wardens, focused on both Culture and World Assembly in his campaign. They supported keeping the Culture Calendar and bringing back more long-term cultural contests. They also called for dedicating Fridays to the worship of both themself and Kyorgia. The World Assembly side of Merlin's campaign, meanwhile, advocated for increased native resolution authorship and the passage of the long-awaited Commend Kyorgia draft.

I should've won smh
my idea of dedicating Fridays to the worship of me and Kyorgia was fantastic and ahead of its time, and the lack of knowledge in the voters lead to my platforms failure.

/s so everyone gets that I am joking

by **Varanius** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:55 pm

Seriously? The death of the card game? Other than being absurdly overdramatic, that characterization is just inaccurate. I mean, as card practices go, the inflation of CTEd commons is rather self-contained. An argument could be made that such inflation increases the difficulty of completing regional card collections, but even then it’s a mild annoyance at best. And the number of commons above Testlandia doesn’t actually harm anything. It’s not some sort of scourge, at worst it’s a slight annoyance. I’ve also been annoyed by things, but I’ve yet to write an entire opinion piece pouting about them

by **Toerana** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:08 pm

Varanius wrote:Seriously? The death of the card game? Other than being absurdly overdramatic, that characterization is just inaccurate. I mean, as card practices go, the inflation of CTEd commons is rather self-contained. An argument could be made that such inflation increases the difficulty of completing regional card collections, but even then it’s a mild annoyance at best. And the number of commons above Testlandia doesn’t actually harm anything. It’s not some sort of scourge, at worst it’s a slight annoyance. I’ve also been annoyed by things, but I’ve yet to write an entire opinion piece pouting about them :P

The meer existence of the article proves that it's more than simply an annoyance.
In fact, there's an entire article dedicated to why it may just be more than a slight annoyance. It looks like the Hyperbole worked a treat :P

by **Toerana** » Sun May 02, 2021 1:25 am

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Issue LXVIII | April, 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Toerana
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Crowheim & Minskiev

Index

The Lackluster State of R/D - Crowheim
Why Hasn't the Assembly Taken Out the Rubbish Yet? - Tinhampton
The Auctor Founder Coup - The Python
The League Rebrand - Grea Kriopia
A Sit Down with Thaempirial Leaders - Toerana

The Lackluster State of R/D

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Crowheim | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

Every so often, NationStates R/D falls into a rut where one side always comes out on top, there's a lack of variety in the organizations active, and things are generally in need of a shakeup. It is my opinion that we're in one of those tough spots right now - however, as it always does, the cycle will continue and things will become competitive and interesting once more.

The last few months have been marked by dominant performances by defender forces - most notably The Grey Wardens and their Libcord allies. Meanwhile, the various raider and independent organizations have struggled for wins when they find themselves on the opposing side of these forces, often requiring large coalitions of many regions and organizations to be even semi-successful in tags, occupations, and most other raiding activities. For proof of this, one simply needs to look at the titles of TGW's reports thread on the NSGP forums, featuring flashy taunts directed at the raider side.

But how did things become so lopsided? Ultimately it can be attributed to strong leadership from TGW and other defender factions, along with declining investment in R/D from the raider side. First Warden Tim, theorizing on why The Black Hawks in particular have struggled so greatly in the past few months, stated in Libcord, "...[it] extends to what a closed off social club Council tends to be, as has been evidenced by a lot of active Hawks who have left TBH in frustration at the regressive policies of Council (Felt, Luca, etc)."

There's another factor at play on both sides, though, and that's the increasing consolidation of both factions, raider and defender, into centralized groups. As mentioned earlier, raiders often require large coalitions to pull off wins, while defenders are centered in Libcord and oftentimes carried to victory by the Grey Wardens - and recently, by very high turnout from The League and their defense forces, who have only rather recently re-entered Libcord.

Ultimately, it's an interesting place to be - but not if you're an active R/Der, as one might find themselves bored of the current state of the game. However, the past indicates that things will never stay stagnant for too long, so we'll see where R/D finds itself next.

Why Hasn't the Assembly Taken Out the Rubbish Yet?

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Tinhampton | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

The Regional Holidays Act provides for one holiday in April: Regional Foundation Day, intended "to mark the creation of the region and honour the first inhabitants of The Rejected Realms." With that in mind, consider: what was the centerpiece of the Rejected Realms' cultural calendar this April?

Not the event you were thinking of, more than likely. In the same month she was elected to the role, Officer of Culture Grea Rejectopia laid out her first monthly Culture Calendar, placing Earth Day at its heart. What Earth Day sets out to commemorate is both too obvious to be listed here and sufficiently popular that - after some Rejected nudging - Verdant Haven, Foreign Minister of Forest, urged residents of Forest to take part in our observation of the day. This is the kind of buy-in you just will not get from an event seeking to congratulate Max Barry for updating his website.

Among other activities, those posting on our RMB were urged to share their favourite facts about the environment; the Delegate, Speaker, and all four Officers hoisted environment-themed flags; a special "Theme Thursday" was organised on Discord where users were invited to upload an environment-themed avatar*; Thepeopl, TRR's long-time pollster, organised the fourth and last in a series of polls about environmental issues; and the WFE turned green, for obvious reasons. That Budgie Snugglers - known to all and sundry as Nakari - was forced to postpone her special edition of Popmaster to its usual Saturday slot did not matter.

Regional Foundation Day, billed merely as "TRR's Birthday Bash," took a back seat as usual in the meanwhile. The only regional holiday to have been legally designated as such with less than 60% support from voting citizens, its inaugural celebrations in 2019 were marked by a special TRR-themed Werewolf game run by Marilyn Manson Freaks as well as a forum thread entitled Sixteen Years: Memories of TRR that attracted nine commenters. Two had nothing more substantive to say than "You're fired.", however, and one made little more than a crude remark (at best) about what it meant for the region. Celebrations in 2020 were virtually nonexistent.

This year's offering of playlists, historical quizzes and pull events of Crazy Girl's card may be better, but it is not much bigger; it is certainly much more nondescript than Earth Day was. Most importantly, it is not quite - and was almost never by Grea Rejectopia described as - Regional Foundation Day. Even if Regional Foundation Day ceases to be an officially recognised regional holiday, the Rejected Realms' government is more than capable of promoting any regional birthday parties. But the fact that these have received substantially less government attention over the past three years than a holiday which the Rejected Realms had never observed until 2021 (and which few had expected it to commemorate even this year) suggests that our regional holiday priorities may be somewhat out of sync - at least legally.

During the debate on whether to establish Regional Foundation Day, former Delegate Catalyse prophetically warned that there was no "point in adding another [regional holiday] just for it to be ignored or forgotten about." Earth Day 2021 alone has had a great impact upon The Rejected Realms and those who live there; it should be clear that citizens who want us to observe a late April holiday that will provoke thought, engagement, and interregional cooperation ought to push for Earth Day to replace Regional Foundation Day in law.

*Disclosure: The author of this article won the Theme Thursday event in question after changing her avatar to Theresa May, she of "hostile environment" infamy.

Vote on your favourite article from this issue here!

The Auctor Founder Coup

News | WRITTEN BY The Python | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

At major update on April 3, 2021, Auctor, a 40-nation region run by Tinhampton, ceased to exist. Why? What happened?

Auctor was a region founded by Verate in June 2020. Tinhampton was delegate of the region and, as she stylised herself, Madame President. Verate was inactive for a long period and thus for a while Auctor was founderless until Verate revived their nation earlier this year. However, on April 3 of this year, Verate banjected every resident of Auctor and then left, meaning that the region would cease to exist that update. Tinhampton was quick to respond, founding the region Sophia as a new home for ex-Auctor residents.

When the region ceased to exist, a few concerned players attempted to refound the region. Grea Kriopia was the fastest among these and successfully refounded it under the alias of Atrone. Tinhampton then joined and was made a regional officer, after which the region was passworded. The community now lives on in the region of Sophia.

Other regions, such as The League, quickly responded and published statements condemning Verate's actions and recognising Sophia as Auctor's successor. Verate later sent a statement regarding their motives to Tinhampton, which was posted in Auctor/Sophia's Discord server. In it, Verate recognized their impact of their actions but defended them nonetheless, explaining that they needed to detach themselves from NationStates and that any drawn-out process would simply keep them there longer. You can read Verate's full statement below.

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The League Rebrand

Opinion | WRITTEN BY Grea Kriopia | EDITED BY Dyllypoly & Tinhampton
Originally founded back in 2016, The League of Conservative Nations - now rebranded as The League - has been making waves throughout Gameplay in their efforts to shake off past controversies and start fresh.

The primary controversy centered around allegations last July of problematic content and poor moderation practices in The League’s Discord server, with evidence of specific instances dating all the way back to 2018. These allegations came from The Union of Democratic States, who then closed their embassy with the then-League of Conservative Nations after the region failed to address their concerns both privately and publicly. The League would go on to lose embassies with The East Pacific and The Free Nations Region as well in what quickly became a public condemnation of their behavior.

In November, following several months of relative silence in Gameplay, major moderation reform would come for The League - progress which was welcomed by observers of the original controversy. By January, The League’s Chief Consul, Quebecshire, was openly considering the region’s re-entry into the gameplay sphere. Finally, in February, the region announced their internal improvements were complete and began aggressively pursuing diplomatic connections, opening 16 new embassies in a month’s time with regions such as Spiritus and Conch Kingdom. It was also at this point that The League announced it would be revitalizing their defender military within Libcord after maintaining a defender-leaning stance ever since joining FORGE in 2017.

Such a rapid turnaround is by no means an easy task for any region to accomplish, but initial concerns of sustainability have been swept away by the enthusiasm with which The League has risen to the task. The League Defense Force (LDF) has become a regular fixture at Libcord updates and, despite only recently reviving, consistently brings 6 or more active updaters. This already places the LDF on the higher end of turnouts for active military organizations, and their presence has been a welcome addition to a period of high defender activity. While R/D militaries are certainly not the only measure of a region in the world of gameplay, the LDF shows promise for The League's future in military activity and influence, in addition to their overall high aspirations as a region.

Aside from their rapid foreign affairs expansion and equally-speedy return to R/D, The League has made conscious efforts to rebrand - trading their previous region name, The League of Conservative Nations, for simply ‘The League’ in order to better represent their region as a whole. Many members of The League's government stated that the move would be an investment in the region’s growth and future, consciously stepping away from issues of the past and aiming for a positive impact on the future. Physical region transitions can be extremely difficult and The League sustained mild population loss but has bounced back overall with the same energy they bring to other areas of the game. At any rate, their move has brought a more positive light to The League and helped solidify faith that their region has truly changed for the better.

In a fitting conclusion, The League announced earlier in April that they had reconciled relations with The Union of Democratic States after almost a year. The two regions plan to work together on a three-month period of initial consulates before considering moving towards further relations. All in all, The League has certainly had its share of ups and downs in gameplay but now seeks to move forward in a new direction, hopeful with a different name and a revitalized alignment.

A Sit Down with Thaempirial Leaders

Interviews | WRITTEN BY Toerana | EDITED BY Dyllypoly

Thaecia has recently entered the R/D scene with an impressive participation in both raiding and defending activities, seeing them lead a 157 hit tag raid, deploy 21 pilers in the occupation of Equestria, and participate in a number of liberations and sieges. We decided to sit down with the individuals behind Thaempirial Army and talk to them both about their roles and the importance of the regional military to Thaecia.

Firstly, we sat down with Andusre, Secretary of Defense in ICH's administration and one of the region's 2 founders.

Interviewer: Who/What got you interested in R/D?

Andy: I'd say what got me interested in R/D was primarily a sense of wanting to have something else to do on NS. The first time I ever tried R/D gameplay was in October 2020. I was serving as one of our Senators at the time but I was getting jaded & the work of the role was beginning to grind me down. This was long, long before Thaecia had its own military - at the time the idea of our own organisation was absolutely inconceivable. I joined the EPSA through my citizenship of The East Pacific and went on my first tag run with Atlae, Virgolia, Phil, Catiania and some others. I participated in that operation on mobile which, in retrospect, was a mistake but I still had a huge amount of fun, and Atlae & the other EPSA people were incredibly kind, encouraging and readily explained what I didn't understand. I went on a few other operations with the EPSA and, despite not fully understanding what was going on, I was having fun and wanted to try R/D out more, and that's really how I got interested & involved in it.

Interviewer: Speaking of ESPA, Thaecia is often compared to TEP as a region, and with both orgs taking an independent alignment, do you see the similarities continuing between the two regions into the military?

Well I don't think it's any secret that Thaecia & TEP are very close diplomatic partners who co-operate in a huge range of areas, and as you pointed out our alignment is one such area. I do see the capacity for even further co-operation between the two regions especially in R/D because the regions' interests significantly overlap: both regions have connections to defenders, to other independents and to raiders alike and thus I think there's a balance that both regions need to strike in their R/D activity to remain viewed as unaligned/independent; our regions can help each other out in R/D, for example providing extra updaters in an occupation/liberation; Thaecia & TEP have both helped each other out with respective delegacy transitions; et cetera. There's a huge number of areas where we collaborate with TEP, and our entrance into R/D I believe has strengthened and consolidated what was already an incredibly strong alliance.

Interview: What does your job as Secretary of Defense Entail?

Andy: My job involves quite a number of things. Broadly speaking, my job is a leadership role: I lead discussions amongst our leadership, I am held accountable if/when things go wrong, I keep track of our bureaucracy and documents, I screen people entering the military to prevent security threats (particularly with respect to opsec information), and more.

More specifically, it's my responsibility to organise operations when we're acting on our own. This is particularly the case for tag raids & detag runs, where more often than not I am the one who gets a spyglass sheet, picks out target regions, sets triggers (if applicable), and ping people asking if they're interested in coming along, and more. Damn, I'm really loving my lists in this interview amn't I xD Anyway, that's likely the most common task I do.

In cases where we are taking part in joint operations, I am responsible for making sure communication between the militaries is smooth & effective. Where Thaecia's FA goals are on the line with R/D ops, effectively communicating with the other military leaders becomes critically important.

Where we have a special interest in an operation, it's my job to essentially get as many Thaecian updaters/pilers present as we possibly can, for example our participation in Operation Boom Beach and the liberation of North Africa.

It is also my responsibility to ensure that the military is fully compliant with Thaecian law, which means abiding by the oversight and security procedures laid out in our military legislation, and if the military fails to comply with these laws then I am the one held responsible for it.
The last role I can think of - off the top of my head - is to collaborate with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The purpose of the Thaecian military is to pursue Thaecian interests abroad however we see fit, which invariably and inevitably overlaps with our Foreign Affairs goals. As I mentioned earlier for example, the military has been a good way of consolidating diplomatic relationships with regions like The East Pacific, 10000 Islands, The Rejected Realms, Europeia and more. As such, regularly keeping the military in line and on the same page as our MoFA is critically important to the continued functioning of the military.

Interviewer: How do you believe the military fits into Thaecia's overall Foreign Policy?

Andy: Sure! I think the way the military fits into our Foreign Policy is in two ways: expanding the ways in which we collaborate with others, and proving to other regions that they have a vested interest in essentially being our friend.

To address the first, our participation in R/D has opened so many new FA doors for Thaecia it's difficult to put into words. We've deepened our alliance with friends like The East Pacific, the Free Nations Region and The League, furthered friendships with others like Europeia and with the military's help paved friendships with relatively new partners like TRR, XKI and far more rarely regions like The Black Hawks & Lone Wolves United.

With respect to the second, our participation in operations (particularly the major occupations & liberations) have, in my opinion, helped make the case that Thaecia brings something more to the table in diplomatic relationships. Thaecia builds friendships & diplomatic connections with regions it previously thought inconceivable, and others get supported in their R/D activities and goals. The capacity for mutual benefitting is pretty much endless, and that wouldn't be possible without the military.

Interviewer: Thaecia has a unique system, which currently sees the Legislature oversee the military, with the ability to veto Ops, what is your opinion on military oversight and this Veto power?

Andy: I don't really mind the veto power that much exactly, but the legislature's oversight of the military is a source of absolutely endless frustration for me and many others. We have amendments to the law which governs Thaecian military gameplay in the process of implementation now which moves to a more practical, secure and easier system which upholds appropriate accountability of the military whilst not needlessly interfering in military affairs and frustrating the functioning of our organisation.

Interviewer: The Thaecian military is fairly new, do you believe that the government will be able to sustain interest in the regional military?

Andy: I do believe so! Quite a few of our "veteran" members who have been with us since the very start of the region have taken keen interests in the military. Many of these people have retired their positions in regional government and, tired of the politicking of regional government, are just wanting something kind of laid-back and a bit more relaxed. It fulfils that niche really well, along with providing other people who are still in the thick of regional government with something extra to do if so they choose. I think our military has also proven a really great way to integrate new people too: Requelizza is an example of someone who was an RMB lurker before they joined the military, where they found that they were really passionate and enthusiastic about R/D and is now one of the region's most active contributors. I really do see a long-term future for our military and that's something I'm really excited about.

Interviewer: Do you believe that a military is important in this day and age for a region, particularly one interested in wider “Gameplay”?

Andy: Put shortly: I think a military can be a useful tool but I don't think it is necessary by any means.

On the one hand, I've found through my experience in Thaecia as we covered above that having a military can be incredibly useful if you want other people to pay attention to your region. It's not impossible that one organisation's participation could make or break an occupation/liberation, and your region being represented and contributing to the success of your faction at large can be incredibly beneficial from a Foreign Affairs point of view.

On the other hand, many regions first and foremost don't care about wider "Gameplay" as you put it. R/D and gameplay as a whole are very closely interwined so if your region has no interest in gameplay, I find it hard to come up with a reason to care about R/D either. As for regions which do care about gameplay, there are certainly other avenues to pursue your regional interests through, like the World Assembly (particularly the Security Council) to name one example. I think Europe is a good example of such a region: Europe remains one of the largest, most well-connected and relevant UCRs in the NS world but has no regional military, undoubtedly in large part due to the significant contributions of Europeans like Imperium Anglorum and many others in areas like the WA and issue-writing. So whilst it's definitely not necessary, militaries can be a really powerful tool to advance a regional agenda and one which I'd thoroughly recommend. Am I biased in that recommendation because I really enjoy R/D? Maybe :P

Interviewer: Where do you see Thaecia’s military going in the future?

Andy: As a fairly new org on the block, I think we have some work to do but I am still incredibly optimistic and excited for the direction we're going in right now. In terms of things we've still to do, I think training some of our folks (many of whom have never done R/D before!) to be proficient & effective R/D players is a key priority of mine - I think if we're going to build a successful and thriving new org, cultivating that new talent especially in leadership roles is hugely important and can only come through more training, experience and practice. We also need to work out a few quirks in our laws and procedures but those are minor considerations in the grand scheme of things. And of course, we must continue to use the military to further Thaecian interests both internally and with respect to our FA goals. I really think that so long as everyone keeps pushing a little bit at a time as we have been over the past few weeks & months, we'll be well-positioned to have a strong, well-connected military force with substantial resources to bring to the table of R/D, with the goal of ultimately building a better Thaecia & making our voice heard across gameplay.

Next, we interviewed Brototh, Thaecia's President and the Commander-in-Chief.

Interviewer: Who/What Got you interested in R/D?

Brototh: there was this region that pretended to be the successor to Thaecian democracy. Me and snow raided it. After a couple raids we Refounded it now it's a big Thaecian meme (AC). since then ive done r/d

Interviewer: What does your job as President Entail as part of the military? You are its Commander-in-Chief, but are also WA locked.

Brototh: pretty much just helping Andusre set up ops, providing some advice here and there, but mainly just day to day stuff like the promotions and whatever. It's pretty much his military which I respect so as long as he isn't off raiding with fascists I pretty much let him do what he wants. I am a benevolent dictator smh my head

Interviewer: Thaecia has a unique system, which currently sees the Legislature oversee the military, with the ability to veto Ops, what is your opinion on military oversight and this Veto power?

Brototh: coming from the girl who wrote the law it's very dumb lmao
It totally impaires on the military and executive's ability to work independently as a whole

Unless we're off raiding with fascists the legislature won't even veto us anyway, people have pretty much said words to that extent in the past

It's undoubtedly the worst law I've ever authored and I cannot wait for this section to one day finally be amended out

Interviewer: Do you believe that a military is important in this day and age for a region, particularly one interested in wider “Gameplay”?

Brototh: i mean bro take a look around
We on the forums now getting praised for the good work
People approach us for R/D and we've built up better relationships with our friends now we can cooperate with them like this
A year and a half ago nobody would want to talk to Thaecia because we were the one weird lame "ugh" region, now we're actually much more well respected, which is a great thing

Interviewer: The Thaecian military is fairly new and has seen widespread interest so far, with it being common to see large number of Thaecian updaters during big liberations and occupations, how do you plan to sustain interest in the regional military?

Brototh: I mean it's pretty much what we do with everything, make it loud and public, as we have been doing on the forums, mention it a lot, people wonder what the fuss is, they join. Also what we did for one of the recent ops was go around and ask people if they'd be interested in trying it out, they were, they enjoyed it. Similar tactics can be employed but I am more than confident to say the military is a major success and we now have a stable base of consistently active soldiers. It won't be going anywhere cause we are very cool If worse comes to worst I'm sure we'll figure something out as the time comes but it isn't something we've had to think about once thus far

Interviewer: Where do you see Thaecia’s military going in the future?

Brototh: planet Mars bro, we're going with musk and refounding the solar system
nah but it is doing very good
I totally see it expanding more internationally and helping us get more friends

Only way from here on out is up, we'll certainly have some bumps along the way, but we'll get through em, Thaecia always does

Closing Remarks
Brototh: yea military bad pls disband raid Thaecia!!!! *mic drop*

Finally, we interviewed ICH (The Islamic Country of Honour), Thaecia's Prime Minister.

Interviewer: Who/What Got you interested in R/D?

ICH: Mainly the inception of Thaecia's Military. I wanted to try it out and was invited by Andusre for some practice ops among ourselves and that was a really amazing experience for me, after which, my interest in R/D started increasing and it still is as I learn more and more about it and participate in various ops.
Before the military was founded, I did take part in one or two ops after being asked to volunteer by Brototh
But I would say, my interest in it started growing mainly after TEA was founded.

Interviewer: What does your job as Prime Minister entail as part of the military?

ICH: The day-to-day operations of the Military are handled by the Tagus(Secretary of Defence) Andusre who is appointed by the Prime Minister and the President. My job as Prime Minister has been mainly to ensure, along with the Foreign Affairs Minister and the President, that the military’s agenda is in sync with Thaecia’s Foreign Affairs Agenda, since they both are connected.

Interviewer: Thaecia has a unique system, which currently sees the Legislature oversee the military, with the ability to veto Ops, what is your opinion on military oversight and this Veto power?

ICH: I have been pretty clear about this that there needs to be some reforms to the bill that governs the military, particularly when it comes to opsec. Both the Chambers of the Congress don't need to be informed about the ops, when having it authorised by one of the chambers is more than enough, I believe. And worth noting that, not all operations are planned well in advance, and some are planned with an hour or even a few minutes in hand, which means the idea of Congress being informed about the ops are not always practical. For example, how are we supposed to inform the Legislature before the update about the regions we'll be chasing? And even within the Executive, the President, the Prime Minister and at times, the Foreign Affairs Minister, get to be a part of the discussion when we decide on an operation. Adding another layer to this, is in my personal opinion, not needed but as long as it's the law, we'll have to abide by it.

Interviewer: The Thaecian military is fairly new and has seen widespread interest so far, with it being common to see large number of Thaecian updaters during big liberations and occupations, how do you plan to sustain interest in the regional military?

ICH: By focusing on training the newer members of the army and taking them on various ops, because as they understand the R/D mechanism more and more and take part in more ops, their interest in the military and the military game play will remain and increase with time, there's a lot to learn when it comes to R/D and once you are into R/D, it's very hard to get yourself out of it XD. And also, we will be encouraging more of our citizens to try out R/D through advertisements because this also serves as a way to engage the citizens more with the region, and people always love to try out new activities, R/D is definitely something they would want to try out.

Interviewer: Do you believe that a military is important in this day and age for a region, particularly one interested in wider “Gameplay”?

ICH: Yes, definitely.

Interviewer: Where do you see Thaecia’s military going in the future?

ICH: I see it playing a bigger role in our region than being just another Thaecian institution. It's safe to say its recent progress and successes have stunned many of us in the region, and from this point, the military can only look forward, and with proper training being accorded to the members of the military as well as advertisements being carried out to attract citizens to participate in the military, I don't see the progress of the military being stopped anytime soon.

Interviewer: How does the military fit into your overall Foreign Affairs plan, given its independent alignment?

ICH: It does play a key role in our FA plan, and through the military ops, we can maintain and strengthen ties with our allies and friends abroad, and at the same time, gives us the opportunity to interact with regions with whom we traditionally haven't had the chance to interact more, and given our government's objective of expanding ties with our allies and regions abroad, the military serves as a vital tool in helping the region fulfill that objective.

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

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by **The Church of Satan** » Sun May 02, 2021 1:37 am

Tinhampton makes a fair point. I've been saying for years now that our region's culture just doesn't get the attention that it used to. I really miss that too. When did neglecting our culture become so commonplace? When did we lose our zeal for being rejects?

by **Unibot III** » Sun May 02, 2021 5:53 pm

This was a good release! Well done.

by **Toerana** » Sat May 22, 2021 7:42 am

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The Rejected Times 10 Year Special | 22nd May 2011 - 22nd May 2021

Editor-in-Chief: Toerana
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Crowheim, Minskiev

While the Organization in its modern form was founded in January 2013, "the Rejected Times" was first coined two years prior by Dalimber, with the publication of this article.
To celebrate 10 years since the publication of this first article, we've collected a set of our favourite articles, interviews with former Editor-in-Chiefs and to announce our yearly award winners.

Our Favourite Articles

What Keeps Sinkerism Floating? - Glacikaldr
Offensive Liberations and the Security Council - Kozmix
The History of NationStates April Fool's Day - Xanderstralia
Franco and its Users - Frattastan IV
The Lost World: Rejected Park - The Church of Satan

What Keeps Sinkerism Floating?
EDITORIAL | WRITTEN BY Senior Journalist Glacikaldr | EDITED BY TRT STAFF
Originally Published in Issue XLIII

The look on the Rejected Realms' face when other Sinkerite communities did
not come to their aid against The New Inquisition's invasion six years ago.

For better or worse - and many still argue for worse - region tags have existed since the 10th of May, 2011. Among many different categories of tags are system tags, which are explained as tags that are, "added or removed automatically according to the region's role or situation", according to the unofficial NationStates encyclopaedia, NSindex. We will now be taking an in-depth look at one tag in particular, and how it has translated over into the political maneuvering necessary in the current stakes of raider and defender gameplay. We will be exploring how and why the Sinker tag has been crafted into a term that implies far more than just what NSindex claims is for, "default [game-created] regions [existing] for ejected or restored nations". Together, we will follow a story of failure on the part of the Rejected Realms, be intrigued by the promise that comes with trying to exploit the tag's implied commonality, examine the narrative brewed to push an agenda under the guise of an attemptedly new ideology coined Sinkerism, and follow an exploration of our role to play in recognising a Sinkerite community beyond the simple implications that come with the tag. This is a eulogy for a simpler time prior to the outbreak of a conflict with The New Inquisition, a recognition of the present, and a hope - or vision if you will dear reader - for the future.

Currently, only four regions, all of which are game-created regions (GCRs), have the Sinker tag. These regions are: Lazarus, Osiris, Balder and the Rejected Realms, listed from highest to lowest in terms of nations as of time of writing. To begin, let us to explore one very early attempt of incorporating the Sinker terminology into interregional politics. At first, the Pan-Sinker Security Pact of late 2012 appears just like any other ordinary non-aggression and military alliance treaty. Yet, upon further investigation, the Rejected Realms attempt at using the Sinker tag as an interregional commonality can be seen at play. The preamble says it all; "We, the Sinker regions of NationStates, hereby do enact this treaty in solidarity with each other, while recognising the inalienable right of each Sinker region to sovereignty and self-determination".

It was at this point that a Violetist, shrouded in anonymity by a violet cap, managed to make their way past an editorial assistant serving as the secretary of the Editor-in-Chief's office. The Violetist was visibly upset, having been delayed by the assistant who was practicing an old Dramoonist tradition that has recently been revitalised - specifically that of blocking one's own ears when a Violetist tries to speak. It was clear that this Violetist was well connected in the interregional political underworld and had heard of our intention to produce this article. The Violetist clarified that, "TRR helped push the Sinker term because it suited our politics in 2011… We didn't anticipate a day where we were so different [politically] from the other three." As the Violetist quickly made their way out of the offices to avoid the consequences of our shrieks for the Rejected Realms Army to come save us, they left behind one final word of warning, "It's actually Osiris that is arguing the three sinkers thing the most".

After having composed ourselves and deciding to file an official complaint, which was redirected to an empty phone line meant for the non-existent Border Security Department, we sent out our bravest reporters to the other Sinkerite communities across NationStates. With a tap of their hard-hat labelled, "journalist please do not eat", and a skip in their walk, TRT Staff settled into an anxious state of unrest while we pondered on whether they would ever return. The first mission back was to Osiris, currently run as a monarchy by the Fraternal Order with an Ancient Egyptian theme across the entire region. It was here that we learnt their welcoming dispatch remained the most neutral and factual out of all the others, informing players and citizens alike that, "Osiris is one of the four Sinker regions of NationStates, which means that nations refounded by players returning to the game respawn here." While the definition given is inconsistent with the Rejected Realms and the definition given from NSindex, all four Sinker regions are still recognised as legitimate by the current government of Osiris.

Lazarus, using their World Factbook Entry (WFE), follows a similar approach to the Rejected Realms in their welcoming dispatch by not mentioning the other regions with the Sinker tag. Instead, Lazarus, under their illegitimate monarchy led by the Undead Dominion with a theme of death, claims they are, "the largest sinker region in the world!" As of writing this article, Lazarus with 5,973 nations, leads the second highest Sinker, Osiris with 5,710 nations, by 263 nations, which, to be fair, is not a particularly large lead when compared to the number of nations in other GCRs, but is still a lead nevertheless. In contrast, the Rejected Realms, the last democratic Sinker region of which also maintains a Violetist theme with some Dramoonist now seeping in, chooses to define how it is, "a place where ejected and banned players go after being ejected and banned", rather than defining the Sinker tag, and in turn is not contesting or in conflict with the definition given on NSindex.

Yet with Balder, which claims to just be one realm as opposed to the Rejected Realms being multiple, a politically motivated stance is exerted in their welcoming dispatch. Balder portrays the Sinker tag in a way that excludes the Rejected Realms by defining Sinker as meaning, "nations that are refounded automatically join this region, or one of the other sinkers. (The others are Osiris and Lazarus.)" Not only does this definition exclude the Rejected Realms, but Balder also intentionally excludes the Rejected Realms in their list of the supposed "others". This can easily be determined as offensive to the intelligence of NationStates players, who can rather easily just click on the Sinker tag and observe the Rejected Realms being present on the list. While this could simply be a powerplay in an attempt to manipulate players who do not yet understand the mechanisms behind NationStates, it would also be unfair to assume this motivation to mislead does not stem from another source as well. To understand what TRT Staff mean by this, we must first expose those readers who are as of yet still unaware of this contentious issue in the NationStates community; we must delve into how different factions and allegiances have and are attempting to define the Sinkerism ideology.

A transparent attempt at establishing a Sinkerism ideology was with the Pan-Sinker Security Pact discussed earlier, however this treaty was built upon the idea of a Sinkerite commonality, which proved to be bound to fail with its collapse in 2015. To understand why this was inevitable, we must look further back to when the idea of Sinkerite commonality started to expose its cracks. It was prior to the establishment of the treaty in 2012 when the Rejected Realms was invaded by The New Inquisition and the other Sinker regions did not come to help liberate their fellow Sinker region. The invasion lasted roughly one day exactly six years and fourteen days as of time of writing, and can be observed on the Rejected Realms' historical record for major events. One of the most notable attempts in recent memory was in a gameplay thread published anonymously by someone who identified themselves as a Francoist, titled, "The State of the Sinkers". The definition for the ideology of Sinkerism is very clear in this thread, defining Sinkerism as the following:

An ideology for the governance of sinker regions that proposes...
1) A strong sovereign monarch to guard the stability of the region.
2) An intimate, sycophantic alliance with those most likely to invade them otherwise.

"The natural allies of sinkerism are the burgeoning raider aristocracy in the feeder regions - the Rahls - in addition to the Independent Manifesto's sphere of influence, independents and imperialists - a wide, bountiful association" claimed the anonymous Francoist. "The natural enemies of sinkerism will be a far more 'ragtag' gang, consisting of the exiled Lazarenes, the cowboylike Rejects, their friends to the South, and a New Pacific Order". Needless to say, the reception to this thread was not great, as the NationStates gameplay subforum is generally dominated by conscious and subconscious cosmopolitan Violetists. The battlelines make it clear that Francoists only want the term to apply to GCRs that restore nations over the current definition on NSindex that also applies to the Rejected Realms. This is important to note as the Rejected Realms is the only region that remains democratic among the other Sinkerite communities. Another noteworthy mention is that natives of a Sinker region, as opposed to a Feeder region, come about through players making, "a conscious decision to become so, whether by importation or [by] remaining after a refound. It is not their natural state, and not their initial state."

The terminology thrown around regarding natural allies and enemies identifies a schism between democratic and monarchist regions that even makes its way down to democratic and monarchist Sinker regions. While further treaties will not be named, it is not difficult to find a whole category of treaties built around these two opposing ideas of governance much like attempts to use Sinkerism in a similar format. This also, assumably, leaves constitutional monarchists with strong democratic practices and traditions in an awkward middle ground.

So is the Rejected Realms to blame for trying to initially push a Sinker identity through the Pan-Sinker Security Pact? That is a very simplistic view of the issue at hand, and there are far more than the standard three to five options to addressing it this time around. The very notion of there being natural enemies shows the relationship between NationStates and real life politics, as well as the us versus them mindset present in NationStates that has been brought about by the incremental adoption of stricter and far more strategic raider and defender gameplay in the wider community, as indicated by the slow adoption of extensions, plugins and calculators to aid in the process.

Defining the issue in this manner feeds into the visions all interested parties. Those who align with cosmopolitanism, regionalism and isolationism should be content in knowing that this evaluation takes into account the influence of hard power, as well as acknowledging the role soft power has had to play. Even isolationist raiders will no longer be able to deny soft power's influence following their newly founded willingness to sign military alliances as put into action during the raider cooperation apparent in the invasion of Westphalia. This neo-neo-neo approach to NationStates, labelled as the cosmopolitanism of Violetists, the regionalism of Dramoonists and the isolationism of Francoists, can be contrasted with the increasingly convoluted approach to global politics through international relations that shows how wide spreading ideology is no longer appropriate in explaining the real world and hence also our community. Indeed, this presents a great debate to end all great debates, of course until the next great debate arises discussing an issue that has already been discussed in the past. And standing along the sidelines of it all is always going to be someone like us looking back and realising that we exist in a hamster wheel of insanity that we often misprescribe as progress.

Offensive Liberations and the Security Council
OPINION | WRITTEN BY GUEST Editorial Assistant [nation=noflag]Kozmix[/nation] | EDITED BY Journalist [nation=noflag]Guy[/nation] AND Senior Reporter [nation=noflag]Glacikaldr[/nation]
Originally published in Issue LXV

With the passage of Security Council (SC) resolution #245, Liberate KAISERREICH (KR), proposed by Lenlyvit, the face of the concept behind liberations has come under scrutiny. We at the Times, albeit a bit late, chose it would be worthwhile delving into what the so-called new concept of the offensive Liberation, means for the Security Council, means for the NationStates (NS) community, and, most importantly, entails for the regions in question.

What is a Liberation, and how is it different from a Commendation or Condemnation?

For the part of our audience that is SC-illiterate, a Liberation is a proposal that breaks down Delegate imposed barriers on the region it is nominated and passed against. Unlike Commendations or Condemnations, a Liberation is the only SC resolution that has any noticeable gameside effects - that is - beyond simply a statement of appreciation or disgust. A Liberated region cannot be password locked by a Delegate or a Delegate-appointed Regional Officer. Liberations are usually passed following a raid, to prevent the raiders from imposing a password on the region, thereby strangulating the region in a bid to increase the likelihood defenders can perform a liberation operation by jumping into the region when the region's endorsements are recalculated, more commonly referred to as being updated.

To be clear, and this is important, a Liberation has traditionally been used to weaken the methods available for raiders to keep a region invaded over a longer period of time. As a matter of fact, Iran, Japan and Philippines were all liberated regions, however this seemingly did not hinder raiders, and arguably achieved the opposite to the desired result. Indeed, a Liberation could expose a region to further invasions as, first off, they may attract more attention to the region from other raider organisations, or, more pressingly, natives that acquire the World Assembly (WA) delegacy, usually exchanged to them by defender leads once the commotion has hypothetically died down, may be unable to repeal a Liberation and install a new password in time before another invasion. The publicity of the situation with Iran is a perfect example of the first dilemma, whereas The Monarchic Entente's Liberation and Liberation Repeal serve as examples for the second in regards to the bureaucracy present in the current SC's operations.

What does SC #245 mean for the NS Community?

SC Resolution #245, Liberate KAISERREICH, is an offensive Liberation in the sense that the region it liberates has an active founder, has not been raided, and hence does not fit the classical definition or need of a liberation in any way according to the terminology of defenders. Then: why was it proposed?

The Liberation's main intention appears to be to target the region based on not its status, but its ideology. KR is a region that has presented itself as open to those with National Socialist (Nazi) views. The Liberation of this region hence serves two main purposes, as mentioned in the following shortened version of the resolution:
'Liberating KR makes sure the region does not lie within the boundary of the Security Council's protection any longer. The idea is that due to this Liberation, the SC is not responsible for the security of the region. To put it simply, should the founder of KR Cease To Exist (CTE), the region will be open to invasions as its Delegate will no longer be able to password it. So, this serves as a warning to Nazi and fascist regions that the SC will not protect the region from invasions.' This is summed up by the line:
"Acknowledging that liberating Kaiserreich, which has built its reputation on lies and falsehoods as well as attempting to eliminate ideologies different than theirs, will leave the region open to invasion after its founder leaves;"

The First Offensive Liberation

SC #109, Liberate Nazi Europe, stood to Liberate an already condemned region for following its ideology, as well as spreading its ideology through raiding and tagging other regions. SC #109 presented that the Liberation's purpose was to, "[r]equest the international community to recognize the symbolism in this proposal, and to stand united against ideologies that just serve to hinder interregional peace, goodwill, and prosperity." So, some might say SC #245 and SC #109 aren't too different. However, that is not entirely true. SC #109 aimed at making sure that the decaying Nazi Europe government could not form again the same way it had formed the first time and, alternatively, SC #245 seeked to give closure the debate on whether KR comprised of residents that followed Nazi ideology, asserting that the Security Council is not responsible for the protection of a Nazi region. While both resolutions were symbolic, the latter appeals more strongly to the ideals of a Liberation: the removal of Delegate imposed barriers, being the first example of a new application for the noticeable gameside effects of a Liberation.

SC #109, which was repealed by SC #132, condemned Nazism just the same, but came about at a time whereby overriding Delegate imposed barriers served a current practical purpose. Since protecting Nazi Europe was not interpreted as protecting Nazism in SC #109, the repeal could use that breathing room to prove that protecting a region can be considered more fundamental to the role of the Security Council. However, SC #245 paints a more gruesome picture: that the ideology is the embodiment of a region, and so the Security Council can not, and should not, be involved in the protection of an ideology so detrimental to the NS community.

The effects of SC #245

The Liberation of KR has changed the interpretation of what it means to be Liberated by a SC resolution. A liberated region prior was indicative of a response to a plea for help; an intention to stop the destruction of a region, or to at least slow down said destruction to make more time for attempts to save the region, and to make sure that the displaced native populations could come back and preserve their region through allowing the nations to enter the region once more, or otherwise force invaders to waste more of their influence on banjects as opposed to only ejecting natives. Now, however, a liberated region can either signal that there has been a call for help, or be seen as a way to target a region for future invasions. Liberations can just as easily be used for, or possibly even misconstrued for, marking a region as following an ideology that is not agreeable to the NS community. While Nazism is obviously universally condemned, which at first glance makes proposals like this seem crucial, it just as obviously appears that the reinterpretation of the word "liberation" by the SC makes for a very dangerous precedent if left to its own devices. As it currently stands, the argument of: if a region supports or even has a majority that follows a particular belief system, then it is an embodiment of that belief, is what prevails. This should at least be recognised if intentional.

So far, this precedent of aggressive Liberations has led to the following:
1. SC #246 (Liberate Nazi Europa), which followed almost the exact same reasons as SC #245;
2. SC #247 (Liberate The East Pacific), which was a joke, but had degrees of structural and functional similarity to SC #245. While some may disagree, it does show, to some extent, the possible types of proposals #245 may entail; and
3. SC #248 (the now repealed Liberate the Femdom Empire), which suggested Nazi influence was at the core of the reasoning for the Liberation, and was later repealed a mere two resolutions later on the grounds that the region does not follow a national socialist ideology any longer.
While SC #250 (Repeal "Liberate the Femdom Empire") was the stopping point of this trend for now, it is unclear whether the trend is just paused and can be found brewing, or simply over.

The "Joke" of SC #247

"Obviously" the SC Resolution #247 is meant as a joke. No action so volatile should be taken against an active region, especially given the justifications provided by the resolution itself. The author intends to argue that while SC #247 was the punchline, SC #245, quite unintentionally, acted as the setup to this farce, and here is how: every action can be seen as a combination of the intent, the content and the precedent; the "Holy Trinity" of all events, in some sense.The Liberation of KR was a well intentioned resolution, which aimed at warning and preventing the growth of a toxic ideology. The content of the Liberation is not in question either, as it a concise justification of what constitutes the "right" action.

The precedent of this event, however, is a dangerous one as discussed above. SC #245 suggests two crucial things: that a region in its wholesome is nothing but a representation of its ideology, and that if 7% of the WA Delegates and more than half of the Security Council can say that an ideology is detrimental, the region following said ideology should not be protected by the Security Council and, by extension, passwords. To put this into perspective, not everyone who voted "for" SC #247 knew that it was a joke, which is what is somewhat disconcerting, as this means that there can exist the possibility of people believing that “unpopular” might equal “condemnable”. This was the punchline of this farce of a proposal, and it is essentially what calls for introspection. Can the blur between utilitarian democracy, or mob rule depending on your views, and libertarian idealism, see: absolute freedom, be resolved with a healthy balance within the Security Council?

This trend also contains a more subtle undertone: that a region is nothing more than what it believes. This can easily be construed as saying that a nation is nothing more than what its region believes, or misconstrued as saying that a nation within a region should be held to account to the beliefs of other regions they have embassies or other associations with. Should the actions of a body of individuals carry consequences for all associated parties? If so, what benefit of the doubt should be given or appealed to?

The History of NationStates April Fool's Day
NEWS | WRITTEN BY Intern Xanderstralia | EDITED BY Senior Reporter Glacikaldr
Originally Published in Issue XLIV

The most recent April Fool's Day introduced Decks to NationStates (NS). It was much like trading cards; each nation had their own trading card, and nations collected trading cards and could trade them or junk them. There was no true end goal, however, so people made their own goals. Some goals included: owning as many Legendary cards as possible, owning as many cards as possible, having the highest valued deck, having the highest Bank, collecting sets of players, collecting game moderators, or having the highest face value deck. One card sold for 1472.21 units (Helaw, a Legendary card). Trading was paused a week into launch, but with the promise of eventually returning. Max Barry has confirmed that the minigame will return like many others, but with some additional restrictions, such as the Loot Box regeneration rate slowing down from 10 minutes to 1 day. Read more about it here, and leave feedback in the discussion thread over on the NS forum if you

Yet previous April Fool's Days were different. See "pranks". The first was the Population Reset in 2004. The reasoning behind this was a supposed "population bug" that turned out to be fake. The main effect was that it reset all forum titles and populations for a day. In 2005 it was the "Shutdown by the Department of Homeworld Security". 2006 was NationDates, which basically turned NS into a dating service. 2007 was to do with Regional Moderators where people randomly became Regional Moderators, effectively turning everyone into moderators within their own region.

2008 was the biggest April Fool's day of NS. On April 1, 2008, the NationStates United Nations (UN) "spectacularly imploded in a colossal fireball of extra-dimensional inanity", and the World Assembly we all know was created in its place. And the news on April 2, 2008? Well, it said "you've been no-pranked". The story behind this is that the real-life UN sent a message to Barry sometime in March 2008 to shut down the NationStates UN on the grounds of impersonation. Barry waited until April 1 to actually do so, hence making it initially seem like the year's April Fool's prank.

But I digress: 2009 was NationStates DS, and, as the name suggests, it made NS look like it was on a DS. 2010 was Conservative and Liberal NationStates, where the default theme and World Assembly categories divided into conservative and liberal. 2011 was Haxx0rs, the last actual April Fool's prank. NS was changed to make it look as if it was hacked. April 2, 2012, Barry apologized. After that, every single April Fools has been a minigame of some sort.

So, onto the minigames! 2012 was an Initial Public Offering shares minigame where NS got a stock market. 2013 was the first NationStates Z, which is now known to be when a zombie apocalypse occurs. NationStates Z now occurs every Halloween. 2014 was ByteCoin. And you guessed it, it had stuff to do with bitcoin. It's practically the same. 2015 was Cards Against NationStates, which is basically Cards Against Humanity but with all the terms replaced to things of note about NationStates (I removed a joke here while editing the article, but just know that the author wants to get us into trouble with user-created founderless regions). 2016 was the World Assembly Secretary-General election. The previous World Assembly Secretary-General retired the previous March, so of course Barry had to make it an April Fool's joke. 2017 was Nuclear Apocalypse, which now recurs every International Day against Nuclear Tests. And, as we have already covered, 2018 was dedicated to the Decks minigame. Happy minigaming fuddy-duddies!

Franco and the Users
COMMENTARY | WRITTEN BY Senior Journalist Frattastan IV
Originally Published in Issue XLIX

A leader of the war to free Europe from fascism (left) and Francisco Franco (right) share a warm embrace.

During the recent crisis between the Pacific on one side and most gameplay organisations on the other, many players have alleged that the NPO is constitutionally predisposed to hate user-created regions, or even that its core identity is founded on a form of 'GCR supremacism'.
This sentiment was common in Europeia: when the IJCC was founded then-President HEM stated that Francoism claims "that only Game-Created Regions are worthy of greatness" and advocates "the relegation of all UCR citizens to a second class", while in the days after the declaration of war his successor Sopo said that he believed Francoism "questions [Europeia's] very right to exist, let alone co-exist". Both the Augustin Alliance and The North Pacific labeled the NPO's attitude as "GCR supremacist", and in his topic promoting a military attempt against the Pacific Galiantus accused the NPO of having "openly declared the citizens of user created regions traitors and enemies of the game-created regions". Many more have depicted them as a threat to UCRs, even if the Pacific's involvement in invasions or subversion plots against those has been minimal.

While these statements might be useful as a rhetorical device to drum up support for war, they seem amnesiac at best.
The truth is that the NPO, far from shunning them or treating them as inferior, has a rich and fruitful history of relationships with major user-created regions, as even a cursory knowledge would show.
At the peak of the war with the ADN The Pacific enjoyed profitable alliances with important UCRs of the time, like USSR and Gatesville. The former was among the first regions to recognise Franco's government and one of the few supporters of Great Bight's aggression against The North Pacific, while the latter was a strong partner of The Pacific for nearly a decade, despite their numerous plots to subjugate other feeders.
Ivan Moldavi himself (that Great Userite) was founder of New Sparrow, a decent-sized ADN member region that went on to form the Union of Sovereigns, an interregional organisation involving the Pacific with several UCRs that were at odds with defenders.
Notably the Union of Sovereigns took part in raids, including the battle of Palestine alongside DEN, and in later years was hailed by some imperialist commentators as a prototypical "Independent" group. Its formula was repeated at least once, when the Sovereign Confederation (SovCon) saw Krulltopia band together with Gatesville and Equilism in the pursuit of an ill-defined 'sovereigntism'.
Another prototypical independent region, Great Britain and Ireland, built on their links with UoS to sign a treaty with the Pacific at the dawn of the influence era. Years later Krulltopia too looked for UCR alliances, concluding one with Europeia in addition to the aforementioned SovCon.
Later in his rule, when the NPO tried to pursue closer relations with defenders, it made sure to negotiate a treaty with Mordor - a UCR founded by Wopruthien, leading member of an organisation that the Pacific itself had previously labeled as 'userite'. And even Pergamon, supposedly a deranged ideologue, tried to maintain a good working relationship with The Grey Wardens with varying success.
These formal and informal contacts with the UCR world, spanning various Emperors, are more developed than can be said for some other feeders (in two ways: there are GCRs who have had a lot less links with UCRs than the NPO, and the NPO has been on better terms with UCRs than with certain GCRs).

Despite some people taking it at face value Francoism is more clearly a 'veil', a mask to hide actual social relations, than other gameplay ideologies. It wasn't the spring that brought the "August Revolution", nor the driver behind the Pacific's early attempts to coup other GCRs.
It was concocted two years after Franco's rise to power, and one year after his retirement from the game. It's not a "theory": its function was akin to a founding myth, which existed mainly to justify the Order's existence and continued autocracy on the basis of a siege mentality, and sought to represent feeder tyranny as its opposite, feeder emancipation, to ensure that the Pacific had the ideological means to defend itself against its opponents. "Userite" exists only as a convenient representation of the foreign intruder or of anyone who opposes the régime's goals, and can be selectively applied at whim, as seen from the number of 'Userites' that rose in the NPO's ranks, or the treaties signed with 'Userite' regions, or the attacks against other GCRs.

The class struggle imagery, that has drawn unwarranted comparisons between Francoism and Marxism, perhaps owes more to Unlimited (main author of Proper Francoist Thought) than to Franco himself. Curiously Unlimited, who liked comparing the NPO's situation in the first years to Soviet Russia's isolation after the 1917 Revolution, should have known that the USSR signed treaties with capitalist or pre-capitalist countries - including those that violently suppressed their own communist movements, like Germany or Turkey - very soon after its establishment.
In the same vein as those agreements, the Pacific's attitude towards user-created regions and the various changes in foreign policy hasn't been driven by a supremacist ideology but by mere realpolitik: needing to defend itself it seeks allies wherever it can, it paints its enemies as hopeless subversives like every dictatorship does, and isn't afraid to take forceful action to pursue its goals. In practice, this means that it truly clashed only with UCRs that tried to build an opposing sphere of influence in the GCR world, out of fear that this might eventually erode the Pacific's autonomy and independence too. Even then, the harm done to these UCRs has been minimal. Looking away from the official propaganda, the near exclusive victims of the Pacific's foreign policy have always been the GCRs.

Furthermore, only a part of the NPO's upper echelons is Francoist in the strictest sense of the term.
From empirical observations of the results of his "Gameplay Alignment Test" Unibot proposed that NPO members could be grouped into three ideological clusters: "Francoists", who are strongly regionalist and ambivalent towards R/D, "Moldavists", who are raider-leaning, and "PRP" (named after the 'People's Republic of the Pacific', a 2004 makeover of the NPO that tried to defuse hostilities with the other GCRs via diplomacy), who are cosmopolitan-leaning. We won't delve into how accurate this classification is, but it's an approximation that can be useful to describe different approaches to the NPO's security that have prevailed at different times: Francoists' isolationism, Moldavists' militant opposition to defenders and support for 'independents', and the PRP (a much weakened group nowadays)'s promotion of political and military neutralism in other GCRs.
None of them will refrain from associating with UCRs due to a misguided belief of supremacy, because this belief would be out of step with the NPO's fundamentally realist approach to international relations. And neither will the UCRs refrain from associating with them. However, power shifts between various groups do make a difference when it comes to which UCRs they will associate with, and the ability to perform these shifts is a testament to the Pacific's ability to realign its foreign policy without undergoing régime change.
Before the 2018 crisis Francoists were a political majority, but the purge or voluntary departure from the Order of many of them will no doubt cause another shift.

While declarations made in the last few months make the war appear as something inevitable, an irreconciliable battle of ideologies that can only end with the unconditional surrender of one of the parties (not dissimilar those gameplay battles that will never end with a peace treaty, like the 'war' between defenders and raiders, or between fascists and anti-fascists), in truth the rivalries we have seen are only strategical and contingent.
Greater crimes have been committed by the NPO against other regions before and new ones will be made in the future. But in practice very few will keep distrusting the Pacific no matter how many leadership, policy, and image changes they go through. For example, the TNP-NPO distrust persists because of historical and cultural reasons, including the 2004 and 2005 coups and TNP's self-image as a promoter of democracy, peace, and self-determination, which carry symbolic value and help anchoring them to a specific attitude (an interesting side note is that this means that TNP's foreign policy too retains an idealistic component that cannot be reduced to context-specific regional interests).
That's the exception: even if the NPO might remain a threat to this or that GCR, many of their enemies will be willing to reconcile and even forge new alliances as soon as a favourable realignment happens, and the Pacific will be happy to call them friends (after all, what else would be the purpose of Pierconium and Elegarth's return to Francograd?). So much for class war.

The Lost World: Rejected Park
NEWS | WRITTEN BY Senior Correspondent The Church of Satan

[center]

Bursting with...history?[/center]

For the last sixteen months The Rejected Realms Historical Society, founded by Marilyn Manson Freaks, has searched high and low to recover and uncover the history of The Rejected Realms and the rest of NationStates. Inspired by The Library of Spurned Knowledge, first established in October of 2014, The Rejected Realms Historical Society has done anything from compiling a list of Vice-Delegates to documenting the region’s highest and lowest number of nations. Progress has been slow going but that has changed over the last four months. With the assistance of volunteers in the NS History thread begun gathering information on and researching The Rejected Realms’ first known delegate, Sagar. There isn’t much known about Sagar so at present there is a lot of speculation and conjecture. Available information suggests that Sagar was a raider and his becoming delegate in The Rejected Realms was the result of a raid. His calling card appears to be adding “E2” to the WFE of regions he raided. E2 is also believed to be the name of his raiding group. Research, however, has determined that “E2” is more likely a reference to the postcode of a region in the UK. This suggests that Sagar himself probably lived in that area. E2 had also invaded Axis of Evil where Sagar had held the delegacy for a month. Unfortunately, that is the extent of available information on Sagar.

a high res remastered version of the ACC flag

It’s most successful endeavor so far is its research into early TRR history regarding the rivalry between the Rejected Realms Army and Atlantic Central Command. While their proboards forum is stable it only offers a small amount of information. It does have some interactions between high ranking ACC members and high ranking RRA members such as Gres and Kandarin. There were, of course, several gaps to fill in. Not all of the gaps have been filled but significant progress has been made. Various ACC forums were located but only as archives from the Wayback Machine. One such forum confirmed the exact date of the ACC’s formation, March 16, 2003. CentComm, the proboards forum of the ACC also showed the defection of Gres from the ACC to devote his efforts to the RRA which he himself had created. Additionally, the resignation and exile from the ACC of Louldamin (aka the one in disgrace), who’d held the delegacy of TRR twice for brief periods of time was displayed as well. Attempts to contact MrNonchalant, the founder and (for a time) leader of the ACC were unsuccessful. However former ACC member Raptor was located and happily spoke with TRRHS about the RRA/ACC rivalry. With a little encouragement from TRRHS historians, Marilyn Manson Freaks and The Church of Satan, Raptor even made a remastered, high res version of the ACC flag. He even supplied copies of the ACCs military rank flags. Kandarin himself (with encouragement from TRRHS) also entered the conversation to reminisce about their past battles. With their highly appreciated assistance the early history of TRR, the RRA and even the part the ACC played in the region is better preserved and documented not just for future rejects but for the NationStates community as well.

Most recently TRRHS has been in contact with Westwind, also known as the notorious Lewis and Clark who’d established The Crimson Order in The North Pacific during 2008. The collaborative efforts of Westwind (as delegate of TNP), Equilism, Gatesville and The Last Kingdom (among others) made up the organization we know as The Crimson Order. While the goal of The Crimson Order was to restore activity to The North Pacific and eventually the rest of NationStates they only managed to hold onto the delegacy in The North Pacific for three months. They were definitely thought of as influential enough to sit at the table in feeder politics. So much that Moo-Cows, then Emperor of the NPO had sought The Crimson Order’s aid to stave off an attempted coup by JAL (John Ashcroft Land aka Durk), Nevadar and Darkesia. There’s still more information to sift through but TRRHS has ample information to document The Crimson Order’s activities for now. Naturally, they will dig for more information. The search is far from over.

Interviews with Past Editor-in-Chiefs

Within this segment, we sit down with past Editor-in-Chiefs of the Rejected Times to ask them a few questions, and speak to them about their time in the organisation

Interview with Glacikaldr
^{Interviewed by Toerana}

Interviewer: What attracted you to TRT, and TRR in general?
Glacikaldr: I arrived in the Rejected Realms the proper way: I was banjected back in late 2017. I was caught infiltrating my partner's unofficial and yet passlocked classroom region that was being run by a couple of her fellow classmates. My plan was to pretend that I was one of the students in the class, with the purpose of taking over their delegacy and trolling along the way, but it all fell through when they asked who 'Glacikaldr' was in class one day and no one took credit for my nation.

Once in the Rejected Realms, I decided to join our Discord Server, and from there I established a few bonds over a few games of Werewolf. This positive experience encouraged me to become a citizen and sign myself up as a writer for The Rejected Times.

Interviewer: What motivated you to run for Media Officer?
Glacikaldr: After starting off as a writer, I quickly helped out as John Laurens' Deputy Officer. During that time, I started taking on more and more of the responsibility of a Media Officer (what we now call our Editor-in-Chief).

So it only felt natural for me to run as Media Officer during the next election. I had a lot more I wanted to do after going back through The Rejected Times' history and finding a number of things I wanted to revive and a number of things I believed I could have done better.

I wanted to set up foundations so The Rejected Times could move forward without looking back at its past as if they were our one-hit wonder glory days.

Interviewer: What would you say was the highlight of your terms?
Glacikaldr: I believe my terms delivered long-term outcomes for both The Rejected Times and myself professionally outside of the Rejected Realms.

For The Rejected Times, reviving ranks and awards helped us start to reimagine how we should engage new writers and introducing our subscription service has helped us build a formal relationship with our regular readership.

I also helped start the process of re-engaging outside talent, which has culminated in the Outlander Program delivered by former Editor-in-Chief Agalaesia.

As for myself, my terms allowed me to build experience in copyediting, writing and managing a project. Following my terms, I applied for and landed a voluntary position alongside my university studies at a not-for-profit think tank that worked within the homelessness sector. A lot of the work I did for their e-news during my 15 months with the organisation was very similar to my work as Media Officer (and it looks more professional on my resumé than TRT, sorry).

Interviewer: What was, or is, your favourite aspect of TRT?
Glacikaldr: The Rejected Times tells our story. Our writers give our region a long-form voice outside of government announcements and forums.

The narrative told by The Rejected Times creates a narrative that tells and becomes our history as NationStates grows with us and is filled by new, invigorated nations. As a Game-Created Region, our region is here to stay far longer than us.

And, without the media, so much is lost.

Interviewer: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, in the Rejected Realms or abroad?
Glacikaldr: NationStates has developed into, and encouraged the growth of, so many different games and activities over the years, and that list is always growing. Find your niche, or introduce your own, and write about it. I would love to read about it, and then partake in it, and so would many others. That has been what has kept The Rejected Times alive and that passion is what will keep NationStates alive.

Interview with The Church of Satan
^{Interviewed by Toerana}

Interviewer: What attracted you to TRT, and TRR in general?
CoS: Well to be honest I was sent here against my will, but I stayed because the idea that they couldn't get rid of me was appealing. xD
When I started, I didn't come to TRT until I was talked down from challenging for the delegacy. I liked writing already so journalism sounded like a good way to start my career in TRR.

Interviewer: What motivated you to run for Officer?
CoS: My first article for Epilepsy Awareness Month, back in 2017. I think it had the biggest impact of all my articles. Perhaps even the biggest impact that TRT has had in years.
It had a big impact on me as well.

Interviewer: What was, or is, your favourite aspect of TRT?
CoS: The freedom to express literally whatever is on my mind. Whatever the topic, I've had an opinion on everything I wrote about for TRT, and putting it out there in a professional manner feels good. Certainly better than just ranting about it like a madman.

Interviewer: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, in the Rejected Realms or abroad?
CoS: Practice restraint. I said this at the last NSGE and I'll say it again; how you say something is just as important, if not more important than what you say.

In my early years, I was ruthless towards my critics. I shouldn't have been. I should have known when to phrase my opinions more carefully. So don't make the same mistake that I did.

Interview with The Aligned People
^{Interviewed by Toerana}

Interviewer: What attracted you to TRT, and TRR in general?
TAP: I first joined NationStates in early 2017 and my first region was the infamous home of the NPO. At that time, I didn't really care about getting involved in the community of the site and really just focused on answering issues and lurking on the forums every once in a while. Eventually I left the Pacific and hopped around between UCR's for some time before I attempted to found my own region. I wouldn't say it was a grand success, but it did have some solid activity for a few months before it eventually tapered off. After that I started looking at the GCR's and settled on TRR. I liked the community and the people, and while it wasn't the largest, it's was active and close knit. I also liked that while it did have politicking, nothing ever devolved into tit-for-tat arguments and everyone was just all around genuine. I had always liked writing and when I found out that TRR had a newspaper, The Rejected Times, I started looking at the archives of past issues and thought it would be something I would enjoy doing. It would give me a way to stay up to date on what was happening in game while also being able to write and do something with that knowledge. That eventually lead to me applying to be on staff under Manson and write my first article "Democracy in the NPO? That's Cute!"

Interviewer: What motivated you to run for Officer?
TAP: I hope this doesn't come off as too self righteous, but I like being in-charge, planning things out, and seeing them through. I'm a logistics person and I like figuring out how to make things work. Manson was also pushing me to run and was a large motivating factor in that decision. After writing my first article, I was hooked on TRT and the community as a whole and wanted to play a part in helping to run it. I wanted to help come up with ideas on how to get more writers, keep the writers that we did have, and figure out ways to boost activity as a whole. Funnily enough, I won by just one vote against another candidate who didn't even post a campaign.

Interviewer: What would you say was the highlight of your term?
TAP: For my first term, I would say it was the steady activity from all the staff. We were able to get full publications out on a monthly basis and keep things running smoothly. Secondary to that I would say was being able to bring back Rejected Radio with the extraordinary help from CoS, Manson, Morover, and Neq. That was a hard one to keep going and required a lot of planning and good time management. CoS also worked extensively on editing the interviews which was not an easy task. The structure overhaul is something that I would also say was a part of that. It was a priority to keep our Points and Awards system updated, and along with that I created an activity monitor to also help keep things moving forward. I also brought back the public updates after issue publications which had been started by Neq. The Official Policies are something that I also created after the molehill debacle.

Interviewer: What was, or is, your favourite aspect of TRT?
TAP: The staff of TRT. TRT has had periods of strong growth and activity as well as dips in growth and activity. Those periods of growth are attributed to the new writers that apply and devote their own time to TRT as well as the work from our members of record. TRT remains alive and well even during those periods of decreased activity when senior staff have taken up the helm and have sometimes written entire publications on their own. The founders, past Media Officers, past Editors-in-Chief, and current leadership have all ensured that TRT remained active and does remain active. TRT has always had a strong leadership structure. So no matter what way you look at it, the people of TRT have always been at the top, they have devoted their own time, and have worked diligently to keep TRT running. In short, it's the community -- it goes back to why I settled on TRR and applied to join TRT.

nterviewer:Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, in the Rejected Realms or abroad?[/b]
TAP: Apply. Join. Give it a trial run. It's not for everyone and that's okay, but if you're on the fence about it, go for it. If you don't know whether you should apply to become a full member and just aren't sure about it, take advantage of the Outlander Program. Make sure to stay up to date on all of the goings-on. The GP forum is always a good start to this. You can also join foreign embassies and forums to stay up to date. Getting a good picture of recent events will help you figure out what would be best to write about so you don't get stuck on a bunch of small aspects. It will also help you to stay on top of any breaking news that may develop. If you decide to go for it, please take breaks! Don't get burnt out. It's okay to take a step back every once in a while to recharge. You aren't expected to know everything that's happening and be a NS historian. Don't let it turn into something that feels like a job to you -- it's a game and don't forget that.

Interview with Bormiar
^{Interviewed by Toerana}

Interviewer: What attracted you to TRT, and TRR in general?
Bormiar: I got into cards pretty early, and from there I was essentially recruited by Manson into TRR. I joined TRT as a way of getting involved.

Interviewer: What motivated you to run for Officer?
Bormiar: I don't remember, but being an officer and being able to implement your own ideas is very fun, and I recommend it to all rejects.

Interviewer: What would you say was the highlight of your term(s)?
Bormiar:I really didn't do anything groundbreaking as Media Officer. Frankly, I don't like that TRT releases in issues, and wanted to abolish that in favor of releasing each article individual. Issue-based newspapers pressure Media Officers into releases issues with a certain size and frequency, and so they pressure themselves and their writers to write lots of crummy articles no one wants to do. The articles that the authors wanted to write— really the best ones— get submitted to the drafting room on time but get bogged down by all the filler articles the Media Officer/EiC has to begrudgingly push out. So content is released infrequently and is often woefully out of date. But the delegate overruled me for some reason I don't remember.

Interviewer: What was, or is, your favourite aspect of TRT?
Bormiar: I really like it when people write because they have hot take on a particular issue or an idea they're truly excited about. Some NSGPers complain about how polemical and unconventional TRT's opinion pieces can be— but what's wrong with that? It's certainly better than the bland reporting some newspapers push out (including our own occasionally).

Interviewer: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, in the Rejected Realms or abroad?
Bormiar: Yeah. Don't write for the sake of writing. The most interesting stuff I've read on NS was always from people who were primarily involved in some other aspect of NS— the WA, roleplay, issues, regional government, R/D, etc— and had some idea that piqued their interests. I've seen some people primarily concern themselves with NS Media and write incredibly prolifically, but they only ever push out pedestrian, unmemorable articles. I always say the same thing about SC resolutions. When you don't really care about your draft, it shows. I could very easily list names, but there's no use in embarrassing them.

by **Toerana** » Sat May 22, 2021 7:42 am

Awards

Every Year the Rejected Times Issues Awards to some of its most deserving Staff Members. This Year, 3 members of the Rejected Times have been awarded the The Kogvuron Award, The Pulitzer Prize and The Golden Quill Prize.

The Kogvuron Award
Awarded for Veteran Contribution in The Rejected Times
For Continued Outstanding Contribution to the Rejected Times over the past year we have chosen to award the Kogvuron Award to:
Glacikaldr

The Pulitzer Prize
Awarded for Excellence in Journalism
Despite being relatively new to the Rejected Times, they have produced high quality, outstanding articles in every issue published so far. Therefore, we have chosen to award the Pulitzer Prize to:
Crowheim

The Golden Quill Prize
Awarded to the writer who has contributed most to the Rejected Times throughout the past year
Since the Introduction of the Independent Editor-in-Chief, they have continued to revolutionise, write and further the Rejected Times as our first Independent Editor-in-Chief. Therefore, we have chosen to award the Golden Quill Prize to:
Agalaesia

Thanks for reading this 10 Year Special Edition from the Rejected Times, we hope to see you in the future!

NOTE: The Rejected Times does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rejected Realms.

Discuss this Issue over on the NationStates forum here.

Find The Rejected Times Index here.

by **Cormactopia Prime** » Sat May 22, 2021 2:00 pm

Toerana wrote:To understand why this was inevitable, we must look further back to when the idea of Sinkerite commonality started to expose its cracks. It was prior to the establishment of the treaty in 2012 when the Rejected Realms was invaded by The New Inquisition and the other Sinker regions did not come to help liberate their fellow Sinker region.

Is there a source for this? I'm fairly sure I remember seeing a deployment order in the archives on the old KRO era Osiris forum, and Osiris had many more defenders in both its citizenry and government at that time. From a quick look at things, it looks like the TNI invasion happened when Oliver was acting Pharaoh, and both he and Earth (his successor) were, by then, defenders and citizens of the Rejected Realms, at a time when Osiris overall tilted informally but pretty solidly defender. I'd also be surprised if Lazarus didn't deploy anyone given the bilateral treaty that long predated the PSSP, unless it was during one of Lazarus' sleepy time periods. Balder probably didn't deploy anyone, given it was an invasion by The New Inquisition, but even that I'm not sure about because the citizenry and government of Balder was more diverse during that time period. So, basically, I'm really unsure this is accurate and wonder if there's some source for it.

Oh, uh, your case isn't helped here by the fact you're referring to "the Pan-Sinker Security Pact of late 2012" and stating that the TNI invasion occurred before the PSSP was in effect, but you can see from your own link that Earth posted the treaty as law in TRR in January 2012. In Osiris, it was negotiated by Pharaoh Dalimbar, before Oliver replaced him in office -- which is to say, well before the TNI invasion of TRR. So you need to check facts and issue some corrections and retractions.

Might also want to check sources on the PSSP being TRR's idea. Fairly sure I remember hearing that it was Dalimbar's, but I could be wrong on that.

EDIT: Absolutely didn't notice at first glance that these were past articles being reposted, but uh, nonetheless?

The Rejected Times

The Rejected Times: Issue LXV

Issue LXVI - Satire with a Sprinkle of Speculation

Issue LXVII - Shuffling a Deck of Awards

The Rejected Times: Issue LXVIII - A Spotlight on UCRs

Rejected Times 10 Years | Part 1

Rejected Times 10 Years | Part 2

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