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"And I call thee..."

The Almost Ganked Target > they won't fight me straight up, and I guarantee one of them will call me a cowrad for being too smart to go to low sec after them
The Almost Ganked Target > going into low sec after them is nothing but a trap... patience is my main weapon against them.. they WILL get stupid & blink first
I think cowardice is thrown around with the same gross disregard as honor. What is a coward? For some, it is a rational decision of self preservation. For others, it is the fact that a rational decision for self preservation was even made. In some way, disregarding oneself for loss is amazing and being sensible is not. I firmly ally myself with a coward.

Earlier tonight, I was spinning around an idea wrapped around "when is it time to dock up?" I didn't get far with that initial thought. I don't really know. I dock when I want to dock. The idea came from the fact that a particular group has taken to avoiding the boys after several steamroller attempts. The boys would like for them to continue to undock and engage after a few (one sided) good fights. This particular want is one often seen echoed. Undock. Undock. Undock into me. The boys know that no one wants to be stomped over and over again but the hope is always there. To me, them undocking after a certain point is just silly. Docking makes sense. While the term was not used in the above discussion, I know many, many other people that would immediately spit out coward.

So, what is a coward?

Coward

  • someone who is too afraid to do what is right or expected
  • someone who is not at all brave or courageous
To define it one has to look at what courage is.


  • the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous
How amusing. If we move in the line of the exact definitions then to be cowardly is to be courageous at times. For the amount of ridicule and analysis, scorn and disparagement one makes for decisions that are not full of aggression and explosions, walking that other path is courageous.

Is it not wanting to lose your stuff because someone else wants you to? Is it not taking a fight you do not want to take and are not prepared to take against an enemy that is in a better state then you are for said fight? Is it just a term used to insult people who are irritating because they play a different way? Is anyone really a coward in a game? Some would say, "they are just pixels!" Sure. I do not think that is in dispute. What is is how one wishes to use those pixels.

In the opening conversational snippets that particular person avoided his gank. Two things happened. 1: We did not have enough people. 2: He was shield repping his freighter with the Orca. Combine and shake and we all died when he was in 3% structure. Oh well. It was something to do and we got a bit out of it playing with the new warp mechanics in a mixed sized ganking fleet. We are often willing to take a chance and eat the potential loss for the possible success.

I found his comment amusing because of the 'going into low sec after them' comment. It is smart not to follow us into our den. While in the charming forum of smack talk such things are suggested the barrier of low sec to high sec is like a wall. I do not know what mistake he is waiting for us to make. We make plenty of them. Such is why there are days when the killboard banner needs to be a bucket with a red paint brush. I doubt I could convey that to him. The barrier of insults has been created and grows higher with each step.

There are cowardly acts in the game. I, personally, tend to see them as the ones who speak the loudest and run the fastest. They have placed themselves into the same game with the rules of bravery and caution. I don't expect a miner who is being ganked to be 'brave'. I do not expect someone out doing PvP and avoiding PvP to risk the thing that keeps their in game bills paid. After all, I play to play. Not to be courageous. Not to be a coward. I do what I want to do because I want to do it. A sin in the eyes of many.

Of course, one is not supposed to talk about those things in public. I'm not supposed to say that it is silly to call caution into question when the person is trying to avoid conflict. No more then I should question the smack talk and the insults. Yet, I ponder them when I hear them and find myself wanting to dissect the words for what they are actually saying even though I know they are not what the speaker means.

The moral of the story is that I shouldn't look at smack talk in local when tired in the evening.

Comments

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  2. Reminds me of the time [BLOM] had a big camp on a station undock in Aurohunen. They kept calling me a coward and asking why I wouldn't undock. I'm like "I'm a trade alt flying an unarmed blockade runner, what do you think?".

    So I asked them what it was like being Bitter Lonely Old Men and camping a stations for hours waiting for a target that can't shoot back to undock.

    3 guys in particular took exception to that and went off on it.

    No big deal to me, I just tabbed between accounts, doing stuff on other accounts and checking the one they were camping occasionally. It was amusing tabbing in every now and then, reading the 3 guys' rants and saying something to wind them up a little more.

    I didn't bother to mention that I was doing regional pickups, had about a billion in cargo that I really wanted to fly out of there soon and more to pickup elsewhere. Instead I implied that Aurohunen was my trading station, I'd just flown a load of trade goods in and wouldn't need to undock again for days.

    Eventually the Bitter Lonely Old Men gave up, the 3 loudmouths logged off and I flew off safely with a o/ for the rest of them on the way out.

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  3. I remember seeing this a lot in sov null. CFC/TEST had a superior force, orders came down to dock up and they'd start with the "coward" smack. We had a superior force, CFC/TEST would dock up and we'd smack. Round and round the bullshit goes.

    I think docking vs a superior force and reaping blueball tears has probably been a "thing" since TQ went live.
    It does kinda surprise me the lengths people will go to try to get someone to undock though. I mean, they dock up, so what, fuck it, move on. There's other people out there to kill. Why does it have to be that certain specific person/group?

    That's what _I_ don't get. If anything, I'd consider undock-camping and goading more cowardly than continuing your roam. After all, you're camping a known inferior force in the hopes of easy killmails, rather than stepping back out on the road and perhaps encountering a superior force that makes you dock up or welp.

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