The struggle between Kalidor and Maximal General Proudwolf had been building up for some time now. Both men had extremely different personalities, as well as a sense of conviction that what they were doing was right. Proudwolf argued that Richard Nixon's material had stepped well beyond the right to legitimately post such material, whereas Kalidor believed that the Allspark already tolerated rather edgy material and saw nothing particularly out of the ordinary (for Mayhem) in Nixon's post. Darth Nuriko, the Mayhem moderator, backed Proudwolf, whereas Kalidor was able to exploit the perception pioneered by Zac Shipley that the lone individual was good whereas the institutional Council of Elders was bad in an attempt to win support for his arguments. Proudwolf, the acting executive officer of the Allspark at the time of the situation, was determined to pigeonhole that notion and told the rest of the Council that he would handle Kalidor.
Looking back on it, it's easy to see that if this hadn't happened with Richard Nixon, it would have happened sooner or later. Proudwolf's repeated efforts to drum up support for the Council and Kalidor's repeated criticisms of it (or more specifically, of Proudwolf, as he was the most vocal Council member at that time) were bound to collide sooner or later. There also was (and probably still is) an association between the member of a Council who enacts a Council decision and the decision in of itself. Time and time again, the general population of the Allspark has shouted for a member of the Council's head because they enacted an unpopular decision, somehow missing the fact that the governing body of the Allspark was a council, not some kind of one-man show run astray (though you'd never know it sometimes). If anything, the enacters of unpopular Council decisions should be commended, because at least they have the intestinal fortitude to voice the Council's decisions. Over time, the "voice of the Council" has jostled back and forth between Proudwolf, Strafe, Swoop, Vindicator, and Kalidor, and every time an unpopular decision has occurred it is almost always the one who has made the decision public who takes the fall, rather than the others who lie hidden behind their ballots in the Council forum. And this time the voice of the Council was Proudwolf, and Kalidor was determined to question the Council decision, as well as settle a personal score that had been building between himself and Proudwolf for quite awhile now.
When the dust was finally settled, Richard Nixon was banned. But as a result of the animosity that followed between Proudwolf and Kalidor, the Council (all members of whom were Proudwolf's friends) now regarded Kalidor with a mixture of suspicion and vendetta. In a very real sense, the petty personality conflicts between Proudwolf and Kalidor had now been transferred to the Council as a whole, a fact that would later prove to be the true key to Kalidor's banning later that year.
Shortly following the subsequent verbal shoot-outs between Kalidor and Proudwolf, Proudwolf de facto relinquished leadership of the Council to Strafe and Swoop. These two individuals, by the way, are probably the most capable individuals the Allspark has ever had on its staff and led to the second period of "Golden Days" for the Allspark (the first being the general feeling of solidarity that last for about 2-3 months after the board was created). Strafe's joking and cheerful demeanor was an instant way to ensure his acceptance at any social gathering, and his "cut to the chase" style of discussing board problems ("Here's what's wrong guys, blah, blah, blah . here's what it means for us") helped to insulate him from potential political in-fighting. Swoop was likewise an optimist, a dreamer, and somebody who ultimately just wanted to believe the best about people. He's the kind of guy who would give you some spare change the street no matter who you are, and wouldn't ask to get paid back later. He had also been captivated by the Proudwolf Principle, or the belief that Hasbro will only listen to the fandom once it has unified itself in a manner somewhat similar to those of Star Trek or Star Wars.
What both of these individuals had correctly ascertained is that Machiavellian politics aren't always the best way to go about fullfilling your dreams, honestly being a nice guy works pretty well too. In addition, they understood one of the fundamental rules of succeeding in any kind of social politics: you have to work with and be respectful to people you may hate with a fiery passion in order to succeed. Aerosurge and I recognized this very early on when gathering support for the petition, which is precisely why The Matrix continued to print out positive material about the Allspark long after most of its staff had long ceased to be enamored with our board's leadership (once Iacon Harbor started picking up speed, that changed noticeably). However much The Matrix staff might have wished that the Council of Elders would collectively dropped off the face of the planet, they recognized the necessity of working with us in pursuing our collective goal of a united fandom. Pity most of the Council was unwilling to return the favor when it came to establishing formal relations with Iacon Harbor.
The Strafe-Swoop days were also the times when the Allspark continued to hurtle towards BotCon, a place at which we were determined to make our mark known to the fandom. I honestly don't remember who came up with the idea of Allspark T-Shirts, but they were a damned good idea and quickly sold like hot cakes. Despite the jokes by some posters that the Council was planning to form a cadre of "blue shirts," (blue was the colored favored by members of the fascist Falangist party in Spain during the 1930s as well as the Peronistas in Argentine in the 1950s) plans for future conventions were quickly drafted, including: coordinating with The Matrix to produce an actual magazine for distribution at BotCon, establishing an official Allspark table at BotCon (or perhaps two now, given all of the most recent schism), obtaining permission from Hasbro to sell a copy of a customized Allspark Beast Machines basic the following year, and printing off my Alternate Beast Machines in written form for distribution at the convention.
These were all good plans. They still are, at least in my opinion.
Yet they were never carried out, and now they likely never will be. The reason for this is because the Allspark was about to enter its first major period of internal turmoil. It would begin quietly, at first concerning only members of the Council, but by September it would have spread into the general population. Once again, board politics got in the way of legitimate progress for the fandom.
The Allspark could endure the end of Beast Machines (we endured this twice, due to YTV's decision to air Season 2 in early 2001). After all, Bob Skir and Renaud were nothing more than impersonal figureheads. Ranting at Skir was harmless, as there was no way any hardcore anti-BM fanatic could get close enough to him to actually do anything about it without facing severe consequences. It's not as though Transfandom has the healthy adult fan population that BattleTech (another of Skir's unfortunate victims, this one from the early 1990s) possessed when its members burned an effigy with the name "Bob Skir" written on it just outside a FASA convention he happened to be attending. I know, I was there. While the huge outcry for violence against Skir was enough to dissuade him from actually attending the convention, handling it was relatively easy for the Season 2 forum moderators. The Allspark was even able to capitalize on the fandom's rage and channel into more productive conduits (a hallmark of the Strafe-Swoop days that was absent the last time I visited the Allspark) by launching a grassroots fanfic initiative in the form of Defcon's Beast Machines Season, a board fanfic that I would strongly encourage any interested party to read.
Raging against Renaud, remember, has been encouraged by the Allspark leadership since Day 1, and I myself have been a vocal proponent of such action. In addition to providing the community with a sense of solidarity and a common focus for All The Bad Stuff that happened, anger against Renaud also provided a vent for the hatred that Defcon's fanfic could not deal with. While Skir was seen as aloof and unreachable, Renaud was very much a real bad guy within the fandom that we could all reach with a few clicks of a mouse. Further revelations of what I'm tempted to classify as "Beast Machines wackiness" such as the decision of Hasbro to reverse the thrust of the show to paint the Vehicons as the villains, Renaud posting as Bob Skir on Bottalk to trump up his own agenda, Skir's decision to opt for Renaud rather than Black Zarak as a Transformers consultant for the series, ect, only served to further entrench the idea that the Allspark was locked in an online "war" against Bottalk. While there is no question that Renaud carries no small responsibility for what transpired within the fandom during Beast Machines, I would in retrospect say that such jingoism and drum-beating by members of the administration (myself included) only served to further entrench the idea that the Allspark must be locked in some kind of a black-white struggle between good and evil. When not directed abroad, this sentiment was all too often directed at home.
This trick wasn't exactly a new one. Fascist groups across the world in the 1930s used the growing spread of communism as an excuse to trump up supporters and silence opposition, and Adolf Hitler invented the idea of a Jewish-communist alliance to destroy Germany to gain supporters. Even today, Egypt and dozens of other Middle Eastern nations keep their citizens distracted from all of the internal corruption at home by directing their outrage at Israel and the US. You'll notice that during the 1980s, when there was relative peace between Egypt and Israel and normal relations between Egypt and the US, regular Egyptians started seeing all of the corruption at home and enrolled by the hundreds in groups like the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Vanguards of Conquest to overthrow the Mubarak government.
Understand, I'm not trying to say that this was a conscious strategy on the part of the Council, or that all of this drum beating and continual spontaneous declarations of "We are One!" were part of some pre-planned agenda. What I'm saying that in a completely unconscious manner, the Council managed to harness one of the most powerful forces available.
The power of the mob.
The mob is the most potent weapon available to any ruler for the simple fact that while its leaders can be defeated, the mob ultimately cannot. It can simply be dispersed. And mobs can be used for both good or ill, dependingon the situation. The actions of the American minutemen at Concord and Lexington were primarily a result of the mob . as are the current Palestinian suicide bombers. In either case, an organization (the Sons of Liberty or Hamas) creates a sentiment so strong that it takes on a life of its own to the point where rejection of it becomes a rejection of other core beliefs. The average Palestinian need not be told by Yasser Arafat or Sheikh Ahmed Yassin that suicide bombings are a necessary part of the intifada due to the imbalance of military; the average Palestinian already knows this. Similarly, after the end of Beast Machines aired in Canada, hatred of Renaud (previously confined to such trivialties his attempts to get Ezboard shut down the Allspark, stealing our exclusive pictures of Obsidian, and censoring the word "pessimist" and "Allspark" in an attempt to stop Pessimist Prime) need no longer be shouted to the average poster by the Council. The general population bought the idea of Bottalk as essentially 2,000 Calibans laboring under the fanatical gaze of a handful of Prosperos. Interestingly, despite all of the changes in administration the Allspark has undergone since that time, the general perception of Bottalk remains relatively unchanged, despite of the fact that nothing has been heard out of Renaud and Co. for roughly a year. In all likelihood, they probably realized that the Allspark has no need of external enemies, our own internal problems are more than capable of destroying us on our own.
It was during this time as well that Vindicator began training his soon-to-be deputy, Motormaster. While I originally viewed him as little more than Vindicator's yes-man/sidekick, after several actual conversations with him I realized that he possessed a keen intellect and a strong sense of loyalty on his own. His arrival onto the Allspark, however, was preceded by that of an individual that even now I see as a Transfan version of the Roman emperor Claudius Nero Germanicus. A former leader at the Axalon Underground, a one-time Bottalk reporter, a consultant for The Matrix, and eventually a member of the Council on his own right. I am of course referring to the poster variously known Tigerhawk, Deathscythe, and finally Chronoscythe (whom I shall call Chronoscythe for the purpose of clarity), a top leader (possibly the top leader) in the ill-fated Mayhem Attack Squad and my right hand man in during my coup attempt.
Despite the various drawbacks that existed during the Strafe-Swoop leadership, I would say that had their tenure continued, the entire Allspark could easily have reaped the benefits of their work. Despite his ongoing feud with Proudwolf, Kalidor eagerly recognized the potential benefits of the work the Council was engaged in and decided to work with the Allspark's leadership rather than against it. The Council was more than willing to work with Kalidor rather than against him despite opposition from Proudwolf and Lady Demona (though even they agreed with Swoop's logic that an active ally, even one you don't like, is better than an active opponent). As a result, when the Council expressed the desire to establish an Allspark domain name for the board's official website, Kalidor (in what I believe was an honest attempt to show his cooperation with the Council) went out and registered the domain names for both theallspark and allspark in his name.
This immediately ignited a firestorm in the Council. Whereas some members (myself included) were more than happy to have Kalidor cooperative rather than comatose, others had completely personalized the nature of the Kalidor-Proudwolf feud to the point where they couldn't concieve of him performing a single beneficial act for theAllspark. This is a perfect example of what I'm going to call retroactive demonization, or successfully demonizing an opponent to the point where the individual doing the demonization gets so far in the habit of doing so actually begins to believe their own propaganda. The Council forum had long been filled with anti-Kalidor (or anti-whichever poster happened to be a pain in the Council's collective ass at that moment) rants in which various Council members would vent out their frustration at the individual who was now our most vocal critic. While the participants in these rants would probably surprise some (I myself contributed to them on occasion), their presence in the Council forum may help to clarify some of exactly why the Council was so frightened at the prospect of individuals breaching Ezboard "security" and getting into the forum. A number of these threads were not pretty, nor did Council members moderate their tones when discussing various individuals among themselves.
In any event, it was the fact that Kalidor had long been a persistent topic of these threads that led to an early attempt by Proudwolf to form ranks against him, believing that Kalidor intended use the domain names as a stranglehold against the Council whenever he felt we had gone to far. He could link the domain names to pornography sites, he could post anti-Council rhetoric on his webpages, ect, ect. If Proudwolf had had his way, the Council would have taken action against Kalidor long before September of 2000. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and a loose coalition of Strafe, Swoop, myself, and several others (I believe Shwiggie was among them) managed to dissuade the more militant members of the Council from acting. The logic behind our train of thought was clear: if Kalidor ever linked the domain names to pornography sites, it would mean political suicide for him as far as the general population was concerned. At the same time, if he proved uncooperative we could always purchase alternative domain names like trueallspark or allsparkgateway to maintain a website for the board. In the end, a loose compromise was reached over the issue of Kalidor that last for about five months (longer than most Israeli-Palestinian ceasefires) and the Council's attention turned to other matters.
I cannot emphasize enough just how much progress the Allspark made during Strafe and Swoop's tenure of leadership. When Proudwolf first rescinded control of the Allspark to Strafe after the Richard Nixon debacle, the board was largely a local phenomenon variously known as "those guys who got kicked off of Bottalk" by most the Transfan community. After several months of the Strafe-Swoop regime, the Allspark had become a widespread term to Transfans everywhere, with The Matrix, Radio Free Cybertron, and TransTalk all giving us great publicity. Older Transfan parastates like the AUG or the ATT that had previously regarded us as upstarts (though some members of the ATT still did for some time after this) now started paying attention to what was being posted on our board. This "Allspark Explosion" was not so much due to the fact that Optimus87 and Proudwolf had been bad administrators, it was just that Strafe and Swoop were that much better. Both men knew How To Win Friends and Influence People like the back of their hand and were loved by the general population and widely respected abroad.
During this period of unparalleled growth, the Allspark started expanding its operations to include its own contests (the Matrix Challenge), bi-annual public recognitions ceremony (the Allspark Awards), an RPG based on the Japanese Car Robots toyline, and numerous additional forums created to attend to the growing needs of the community as a whole. The new moderators were (for the most part) extremely capable, and the Allspark cultus patria was never healthier, kept strong and well-maintained by Renaud's continued antics against the board that seemed to be becoming more and more the work of an increasingly desperate and rather disturbed man. Take for example his ridiculous attempt under the pseudonym of Dinobot Grimlock: "Who Wants To Be A Transformers Millionaire?"
Note the retraction of some of the following comments concerning SPAT.
I was initially somewhat hesitant about dignifying SPAT's (SuperPrimeATron) seemingly endless crusade against Dinobot Grimlock and "User X" (a collective term for the various pseudonyms and lieutenants Renaud utilized during his campaign against the Allspark, who were initially believed to be one individual) with a comment, but seeing how much the general discussion the events took up, I suppose I should at least mention it. The lengthy andrather Byzantine web of intrigue surrounding SPAT, Kalidor, Aeronautic Quintesson, and Elder X in their various struggles against Renaud and Co are far too elaborate to deal with in writing, but suffice it to say that the whole thing is best summed up in a paraphrase from Byron: "It was mad, bad, and dangerous to be involved with." I suppose I should probably thank SPAT, as the "crusade" he and his rather dubious followers (or perhaps it was the other way around, I never really followed the whole thing once it spread beyond the Allspark and Bottalk) prevented Renaud from actively targeting the Allspark, but at the same time the whole thing was incredibly senseless. For example, on one occasion Screamer (a Renaud alias) attempted to court Kalidor's interest back while he was still on Bottalk by posing as a female and providing a link to a customized website with an attractive young lesbian making out with her girlfriend as "proof" of this. After Charon (the long-time benevolent dictator of Dewtropolis) provided the IP data stating that Screamer was User X and Strafe offered independent confirmation, Renaud's alternate identity was in shambles, though variations on Screamer's claim that Kalidor "stalked her" continue to resurface online to this day. I can provide other examples, but this is exactly the kind of idiocy that provided countless hours of entertainment for the Allspark leadership.
SPAT, however, was (and is, if some of his recent posts are any indication) any demagogue's dream: a competent mindlessly loyal follower easily captivated by any consistent militant ideology who will commit atrocities beyond anything his instigator ever dreamed of. Over the years, SPAT has been unconsciously used as an unwitting dupe by any number of individuals (Aeronaut, Elder X, myself, Deszaras, Pessimist Prime, Vindicator, Chronoscythe, and most recently Kalidor) to do the same kind of work Hezbollah does for Iran: terror by proxy. Able to undertake any mission, no matter how idiotic or unethical, in order to strike at his enemy of the day, SPAT has flamed posters, trolled boards, harassed via E-Mail, created social unrest, launched highly effective demonization campaigns, successfully instigated at least three coups, and continues (from what I understand) to act as a very effective dog on a leash for Kalidor as he continues to plot Vindicator's downfall (of course, he would probably say he doesn't care about the Allspark Classic, just like the Council of Elders "never cared" about Renaud and Bottalk). As SPAT's actions are all of his own invention, there is no E-Mail trail or verbal commands to follow, he does it all on impulse, allowing his backers (whomever they may be at the time) to disavow any knowledge of his actions or calm him down when he gets too far out of hand. If bin Laden had a dozen of guys like this at his command, America would be looking at far more than just the World Trade Center in ruins right now. And at the time of which I am writing, he was the Council's unofficial insurance that Renaud would have far too much trouble on his own hands to deal with us for awhile.
This state of affairs allowed the Allspark to continue with its boom well into the early part of the summer, at which time it was decided by the Council to shift all of the past Allspark rhetoric about Transfan unification from promises to action. Myself and Proudwolf had both been loud advocates of Transfan unification in the past, as it was the recognition of both of us that the only way Hasbro would actually pay attention to the fandom was if we were able to suspend the feudal in-fighting enough to at least present a united front to Hasbro. This could only be done by forming a coalition, much like those which have governed the organized Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms over the years in a mostly uninterrupted succession, devoid of all of the public in-fighting that has continually engulfed the Transformers fandom. In the end, two proposals were drafted by the Council: a call for writing up an organized constitution for such a coalition that all parties could electronically "sign," and the formation of the United Transfan Alliance (UTA) forum with an initial coalition consisting of the Allspark, Axalon Underground, Beastmachines2.com, and Transformers Extreme.
Unfortunately, acting as the organizing body for a unified Transfandom meant a major shift in the Council's duties, which had thus far kept of keeping the Allspark running and improving it to better accommodate posters. If most of the Council was going to create a unified Transfandom, someone had to keep things run during the interim. It was for that reason that the Allspark Cyber Corps was created: to act as a training cadre for the purpose of acting either as the vanguard of the UTA or to be trained as replacements for those members of the Council that intended to relinquish their Allspark duties in order to participate in forming the UTA. Swoop and I helped to run the former, while Proudwolf spearheaded the latter. Each member of the Council was able to select several members of the Corps, and you can probably bet by now that neither Kalidor nor Zac Shipley were asked to serve.
The anti-Kalidor sentiment (which had died down for awhile after the cooler minds in the Council prevailed over the issue of the domain names) again flared up in the Council over an alleged conversation between Kalidor and Proudwolf during BotCon. I won't get into all of that because I wasn't able to attend the convention due to family issues, but suffice it to say that Proudwolf actually believed that Kalidor was going to link the domain names to pornography sites in order to threaten the Council into taking him seriously. In addition, there were rumors that Kalidor had made light of the death of one of Lady Demona's family members, adding incense to injury. While the Proudwolf-Kalidor feud continue to spiral out of control, a general peace remained among most of the board for the next two months.
One of the earliest developments concerning the Cyber Corps was disclosing the true nature of Renaud's operations. Having previously enlisted Ruckus/Ahriman's aid in obtaining the information regarding Renaud being Bob Skir, I asked him to use his skills to obtain the usernames and IP numbers for the Bottalk leadership in order to determine who was actually calling the shots there. A few days later, I received an E-Mail containing a list of names and IP numbers of the Bottalk leadership and after comparing it with IP numbers from the Allspark's own directory, I determined that these were likely not numbers that Ahriman could have made up on the fly and thought it credible enough to share with both the Council and the Cyber Corps so that we could assess just who these people were and where they were coming from. After Vindicator tracked down the IP numbers of the Bottalk administration to as varied locations as Quebec, Vancouver, Florida, Michigan, and California. While Optimus87 made an executive determination not to release the information to the public (because such a release would lead to questions about exactly how we got it), I nevertheless passed it on to Kalidor so that he could understand the true nature of what we were up against. Despite his long-standing feud with Proudwolf, Kalidor agreed to set aside his differences with the other man in order to deal with a common enemy. Such cooperation may seem strange today may seem strange in a fandom where today the Allspark is as united as the Catholic Church was during Avignon papacy of the Middle Ages, but back then it was the opinion that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
In closing this section, spring and summer months of 2000 were as close as the Allspark has ever come to achieving its goal as a leader within the fandom. After September 2000, the board has been consumed by political troubles that can be directly tied in one way or another back to the bannings of Kalidor and Deszaras. But for about six months, the Allspark came as close as it ever has to achieving the unification of Transfandom, which is why my advice to any would-be Transfan leader is to try and duplicate the success of Strafe and Swoop's administration. They may have failed in their ultimate goal of uniting the fandom, but in the end, they created the kind of harmony that the Allspark's populace would remember for a long, long time.
There have been worse failures.
Addendum - It has come to my attention that some readers feel that I am painting over things with a rather broad brush and skipping back and forth over events, or skipping over events they feel deserve recognition. This may be so, but understand that this is not intended as an unbiased commentary. Rather, this is intended to be a very biased commentary of one individual: me. As such, I'm going to include those things that I thought of as important as they occurred. This is not intended as a slam on the things or people I don't mention, but rather as an attempt to keep with the originial reasons why I wrote this: to provide a history for those who will hear it, to offer my experiences in the fandom for any would-be leaders in the fandom, and to (I hope) provide hope for the future.
Dan
