Sunshine Policy

There is always a certain degree of continued hostilities after which any sort of atonement can become extremely difficult, if not at all possible. This can be followed by two things; either the two parties flat-out ignoring each other and hoping the mutual hostility will simply dry up, even if it'll take a long time, albeit there will always be one or more individuals who seem insistent on continuing the hostilities, whether it be for personal gain or for no other reason than they find it funny...


...and then there is the Sunshine Policy.

Sunshine Policy most commonly refers to the diplomatic stance taken by the previous South Korean president towards the North Korean government in attempt to improve the relations between the two countries; this was, of course, not without it's critics, who felt that by taking this stance, the president was essentially approving of the highly repressive culture of their northern neighbor.

This is the way I see the situation, looking at New London from DWE's side. As much as I want the hostilities to end, I simply don't think it is a likely thing to happen. As long as Kat Kassner is in charge of New London, committing various acts of hypocrisy and outright lies while also interpreting to everything someone even remotely associated with Doctor Who Expo in one way or the other as some kind of a personal attack, like some kind of a paranoid schizophrenic, I really don't see the situation improving. The sooner someone stands up to her and starts questioning her judgement, the better.

Then there is the unfortunate side effect of all this affecting those who fall in between; the people who just joined the community out of the mutual interest of Doctor Who. You know, the clueless newbies who desperately try to fit in - and in this vulnerable state, they are likely to try and "fit in with the gang" by acting just like them - and when they fall under the influence of these hostilities, they become unwitting and unwanted tools of whichever side they pick, assuring the continuation of the animosity within the community at grassroots level, instead of the sim staff & owner level where it should stay.

In fact, it would be a good idea in general to not to radiate the hate to everyone around us, lest someone easily impressionable comes along and manages to ruin the whole show with pointless and completely unproductive douchebaggery. Yes, I'm looking at you, PrivateWiddle, if that really even is your name...

There was a time...

...when I was a regular at New London. I spoke with Kat frequently and I even DJ'd at quite a few weekend parties.

This, however, is a bygone era. There is an increasing atmosphere of hostility between New London and Doctor Who Exposition, at which I am now a staff member. So the question is, what the hell happened? How did things get so bad?

Only about two years ago, New London was just as much of a member of the big happy family of Doctor Who community on SL, but now they're more akin to the proverbial black sheep; like some third world dictatorship who look for anything and everything to get offended by that people say and use it to fuel their own fire against the rest of the community. Yes, I do say rest; although NL has never attacked other sims like Who Island, there is the fact to consider that every other sim gets along with DWE fine except them.


Did Kellman start it? When DWE hosted the first Podshock party, Victor1st Mornington's promotional youtube video failed to mention the fact that SL was, at least at the time, for users 18 years and older only; as a result, out of the good 70 or so attendees at the party, about half were underage. With the help of the Podshock forums, he and the Podshock staff collected a list of all the avatars present who were underage, and submitted the list to Linden Labs. However, since this information was collected outside Second Life, LL would do jack all about it so they moved on to the next best thing; submit the list to all the major sim owners so they could at least ban those avatars themselves.

Everyone cooperated. Except Timelord Kellman, who at least at the time was a co-owner of New London.

Now, I am only reciting Victor's recollection of the events, so all this is only as reliable as he is, but Kellman basically told him to fuck off - and then proceeded to try and convince all the other Doctor Who sim owners that Victor was trying to destroy the community. Of course, everyone laughed him off, and it's been downward spiral for New London ever since.

There are just so many particular events that have stuck to me regarding the manu misadventures of New London. Should I mention the story of how Hands of Omega was "banned" from New London?

New London hosts an annual "Tardis Expo", where people can showcase their exteriors. I myself submitted an exterior or two back when I used to go there. However, one year, Sen Pixie, the "leader" of the Hands of Omega team, fell ill at the time of the expo, leaving HoO absent from it. How did Kat Kassner interpret this? Well, she thought it was some kind of a personal attack, from someone who so far had stayed happily neutral on the increasing animosity between New London and Doctor Who Expo, and proceeded to "ban" the company from the sim, meaning the removal of their affiliate vendors.

The latest course of events had New London, attending the International Federation of Trekkers and putting up signs saying that 15% of all proceeds will go to the Relay For Life foundation, a cancer charity basically. A nice gesture, but the RFL guidelines dictate that 100% of the proceeds will have to go to RFL's coffers, otherwise the merchant is not allowed to advertise them with RFL's name.

Victor responded to this by contacting both the IFT and RFL representatives on SL. To any outsider, the question is probably "Why didn't he just take it up with the New London staff directly?", and the answer to that is simply the fact that they haven't exactly been welcoming of him in the past.

So naturally New London's reaction to all this is to interpret it as yet another personal attack; cue Victor's blog being spammed by New London yes-men (Yes, I said yes-men; not one of the replies is from an actual staff member there).

So in the end, as far as I'm concerned, both parties reacted poorly, but considering their common past, I can't say I'm surprised in the slightest.

It is said that the first victim of war is innocence. I believe it is also said that the first victim of war is the truth, and I stand here, asking you all; what IS the truth?

I know Kat is out there. She has a blog on blogspot, meaning she can reply to this blog if she so desires. I'm personally asking you to tell me, in your own words, the course of events as YOU saw them. For once, I want to hear BOTH sides of the story, and hopefully put the pieces together. For example, this whole sorry mess with Archangel Mortenwold. When the rest of the Katrina staff were positive about him being a copybotter, my questions about whether the sculpty texture is the same or even has the same UUID went unanswered.

Please, could someone just fill in the gaps for me? Above all else, I want to find out what the truth is, the REAL truth - and hope that some day, we can just pretend the past two years never happened and we could all be one great big happy community once more.

Blogging didn't actually start with the computer age

Way back during the medieval ages, bloggers went by a different moniker: Monks.

Much like their modern counterparts, they had crappy haircuts and never got laid.