I am appalled by the unparalleled lows to which members of various Star Wars Roleplaying communities have stooped in order generate uncalled for reasons to ridicule me.

A few days ago I sent a general message over the ezboard email system. The goal of the message was simply this: to encourage the various remaining fan-run Star Wars communities to open communication channels between each other in order to discuss ideas regarding ways of fishing some semblance of unity from the pool of disparate message boards that exist today. In short, I hoped that through words we might all find some common ground, some unity, that might one day allow us to again congregate at a common, popular, location, similar to Swfans (circa 1999 - 2001). Although I took great care to specify neither a location, nor a leadership structure, for this project, a number of you did not hesitate to accuse and convict me of acts not intended.

One popular assumption was that I was simply attempting to draw members to The Gungan Council. This was simply not the case. Had it been my intention to attract your members to my own community, logically I would have regulated all unity discussion to TGC. Instead I created a discussion thread on each of the message boards that I thought might taken an interest in the project, and through links at TGC, encouraged members of all boards to venture out to the various communities and meet people. A few people, namely Ahnk of TRF, Bane Nathos of TGC, and Jay Mertall SithLore, undestood my intents and had the initiative to visit most of the communities on the list. Others, you know who you are, greeted my arrival at your communities only with insults, old grudges, and baseless acusations.Another false assumption that many people made, was that I was attempting to bring the members of all communities onto a message board under my control. This too was incorrect, and not based on anything stated in my original message.

It is interesting to see what kind of conclusions people jump to in situations like this. Such ideas must come from somewhere. In the Star Wars universe the various races have traditionally built droids in their own image. In the case of the Trade Federation of The Phantom Menace, all droids were controlled remotely from a command ship. If the ship were to be disabled all droid units would case to function. The leaders of the federation made their droids this way because it was their assumption (and fear) that the droids would the same way that they, the Federation, would in a given situation. The members of the federation were treacherous beings, prone to cheating and lying to increase their own power and to seize power over others. The Federation naturally believed that, if not controlled, their droids would eventually rise up and rebel against their creators. For those of you lack adequate reading comprehension skills I will spell out the message of the parable for you in small words. Your assumptions about my intentions in the board unity project represent the way that you might potentially have acted, had you been the one to propose board unity, instead of me.

I’m not upset by the outright rejection of what I have proposed here . I guess I never really expected anybody to take my idea seriously. Since the day I first registered at the original Swfans.net on July 20th 1999, I’ve grown used to such petty behavior from people on the internet.

What does upset me, however, is what this whole thing says about the state of humanity in general. Just in terms of my 6 years of experience with message boards, people just don’t seem to work together as well anymore. And so here we are. As I think about all of you who for some reason or another have chosen to hate my guts, I sit and wonder why exactly it is that although you all share a common hatred for me, you can’t even seem to come together over that hate. If I felt threatened or angry about something I know that I would want to surround myself with people who felt the same way.

I am withdrawing any interest I once had in this idea of unity, but I hope that the idea might live on without me. There are a few dozen small Star Wars message boards out that we all know about, many of them have common roots, or common members. It would be a shame if they did not bolster each others existence through working together.

-Ceel