Since it seems I opened Discord too late to join yet another long convo that unfolded there, I suppose my thoughts on it ought to be brought here. Atlas timed out before I could finish writing last night.
I have not read Sexit or whatever funny name the leaks are called, I do not know what all this is ultimately in service of. However it is obvious to everyone that the original motivation for the secession effort extends beyond Mr R's prima facie "we need to protect ourselves from another Kansas." That was being done perfectly well when I was president with the regional reforms. The one thing I do know about Sexit is that plans currently in operation were already being planned before the election in February, so clearly it does not hinge on Tack being president (and he has done essentially nothing in this direction anyway, and as president in general, which is a different discussion to be had).
As far as YT's public statements last night go, I will be unfairly literal and quote him and reagente from Lokcord:
"the South will get its own subboard" —reagente
"and rightfully so" —YT
An independent South, according to YT, should not be under GM jurisdiction:
"we'd just appoint our own then lol" —YT
"I think GMs would have to govern inter Atlasia-South relations to some extent" —reagente
YT also supports fully severing ties in the event of independence: "no senators, our votes dont go into atlasian elections"
This is all that transpired before YT told reagente it's almost like we couldn't read. Forgive me for trying nevertheless, but YT's contribution appears to sum to "we want to operate an entirely independent game that none of you get to affect, not even the GMs, and none of which will affect you electorally, but it should still be part of the Fantasyland universe." Reagente has an additional concession on GM authority. The same people currently screaming FINISH THE JOB had wanted functionally very similar things as far back as mid-2021: that nothing they did in the Fantasyland universe should have consequences for us, and their actions should not be affected by any Serious Posting from our end.
YT has told many people that he does not want to be president because it is, quote, "too time consuming lol." Being President of the South isn't too time-consuming despite having very similar powers, so the difference appears to be who he would have to engage with as president of X polity, i.e. the rest of us. This would also be very similar to sentiments expressed by the Downfall gang as far back as mid-2021 to the effect that nothing we contributed made the game "fun" for them, and how nice it would be if they didn't have to engage with us at all.
I told that crew in private, several times over the next few months, effectively the same thing I said in public last April:
If people want their O’Brien simulator you could probably set up something on some Discord server and invite whoever wants to join and be General of the Armed Forces or whatever, that seems to be the best model to ensure minimal dissent
or basically, given everything you've said about your motivations, why not just simulate an alternative country somewhere like Discord and divorce it from the game completely? You get to make up your own rules, your own GMs, your own version of Atlasia to interact with if you so wish. Same question here to YT and anyone involved who's interested in answering: Why not Discord? Everyone involved with secession is conveniently already on a server that also supplies 100 percent of the SNP's registered voters, so you don't even need to pester the mods to make a subboard for you.
(A side note on that, because even if the mods agreed to make a subboard which Adam correctly observed is never happening, Truman also correctly observed a long time ago that the 2015 Mock Parliament experiment fell apart because the same people kept re-electing themselves every few months and it collapsed once things became too predictable and they lost interest. If this hypothetical subboard is modeled on the current structure of Southern government, that's bound to happen again.)
Even the Downfall people eventually went ahead and did simulated elections of their own country in a separate Discord channel! S019 can tell you all about that.
One difference is that Downfall explicitly wanted to blow up the game and replace everything with something else to be made in their image, and a lot of the holy zeal last April and earlier derives from that apocalyptic mentality. From another message last night YT seems to think the game will still exist in 2030 or 2050 no matter what he does now. I will be charitable and take him at face value here because he has cast doubt on our collective ability to read. Therefore whatever is driving these secession plans isn't tied to the game itself in the same way as Downfall was.
So again, open question, is there anything motivating this being a Fantasyland endeavor at all?
