Work Text:
FORUM: The Moderator Bunk
THREAD TITLE: GB (again) (again) (again) (again)
USER: Mod RainsOfAlice
We have a problem.
Lorie, I know you feel very strongly that everyone is entitled to the exact same amount of privacy no matter who they are or what they might be doing in their outside life, but I need everyone to read this, and I'm sorry but that includes you, too. It's important.
George Neuberger works at UVS. An Imperial Auditor's wife is known to him. It's gotten to him through the grapevine that her niece is in the late stages of courting the Emperor and an engagement is expected soon.
The niece's name is Ekaterin Vorvayne.
This same Ekaterin Vorvayne, George made sure to find out, used to live on Komarr and has a son named Nikolai and an ex-husband in prison. There is no chance of confusion on this subject.
Only_A_Gardener has attended meet-ups in Solstice and in VBS. Her name is Ekaterin Vorvayne. Her son is named Nikolai.
I know we all like to extend as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and I'm sure we can invent a universe where Ekaterin Vorvayne is cheating on the Emperor with GB, but I think we need to deal with the possibility that she is not, in fact, cheating on the Emperor with GB.
USER: Mod SubstituteAchilles
Okay but I'm not actually sure she's dating GB in the first place.
You know I've always thought that GB isn't actually Vor. I was born here and I grew up among the rich ex-pats and the upwardly-mobile, and GB has always struck me exactly the same as some of my friend's dads did: he's an upwardly mobile prole. His parents were probably upwardly-mobile and his grandparents were probably respectable; you'd have to dig through his family tree to find an actual peasant. He's the sort of prole whose children all marry Vor, but he's not himself Vor nor ever will be.
Is GB well-positioned? Yes, that's without question. But he's much more likely to be a member of the Prime Minister's staff than anyone important as of himself.
And so GB and Only_A_Gardener are going to shows together. So what? GB's too focused on his career to risk going with some Komarran who might be awkward to acknowledge in public, but Ekaterin Vorvayne the future Empress? And if I were the Emperor, I'd want to make sure the people going to shows with my wife were loyal and trustworthy.
And I'm sorry but I know Vor and you all don't. Not a single Vor in existence would protest being Vor as much as GB does. The only person who would protest this much is someone who understands -- as an upwardly mobile prole perhaps with his eye on a Ministry for himself -- that he can be executed for wearing the wrong uniform or _pretending to be Vor_. The Vor take their title very seriously. They will come down like the wrath of god on a prole with pretensions.
GB might even be an Imperial armsman! But he's not the Emperor. He can't be. There are so many reasons he can't be.
USER: Mod RainsOfAlice
I wish you were right, but I think we need to deal seriously with the possibility that you're not.
And even if GB really is someone else, we need to figure out the moderation strategy because everyone is going to follow this exact same logic once the news is public.
George is sitting on it for now, and I imagine Deirdre Romans knew a month ago. Everyone who knows is probably keeping quiet for good reason. But this is going to stop being quiet soon and we need to figure out how to handle it.
USER: Mod Lorie
I don't see why it needs to be treated any differently than any other situation where people keep trying to link forum members to their public identities. If I can ban someone for saying that a certain user is a specific musician, then I can certainly ban them for saying Only_A_Gardener's name is Ekaterin Vorvayne.
USER: Mod Fay A
Speaking of Deirdre Romans -- I know she's provided legal expertise in the past and she's always been happy to help. Can we ask her if there's any way to find out for sure? I think our strategy if GB is going to marry Ekaterin Vorvayne has to be different than if he isn't.
Because I think if GB is going to marry Ekaterin Vorvayne, we need to ban GB permanently.
USER: Mod Lorie
Not this again. GB has not done anything banworthy lately. You can't ban him just for toeing The Rules in a way that bothers you.
USER: Mod Fay A
I think we owe it to everyone on this board not to have to watch their step all the time because Ekaterin Vorvayne's husband might be reading it.
USER: Mod Jessssssa
ImpSec reads this board. And I notice you're not suggesting banning Ekaterin Vorvayne.
USER: Mod Fay A
I figured that one went without saying, if she's marrying the Emperor.
USER: Mod Clement
Coming in from Earth as I did, I always wondered why the Komarrans on Barrayar felt so fondly about the Emperor. It's not like we curse him along with Aral Vorkosigan back on Earth, but we don't _like_ him.
So I looked into it, with the perspective of a curious outsider. And:
The rumors about GB have been around since the RK mailing list days, where he used to fix everyone's homework and give them directions to the best bars. At a meet-up last year, Lavinia Alliman went on and on about how if they needed to get someone bailed out, they'd make sure to put it on the list and magically, it would happen. Everyone has known there's _something_ about Greg Bleakman for This Entire Time. And yet he's not permanently banned anywhere, and you Komarrans here talk fondly of the Emperor as if he's on your side. Did he buy your loyalty with Imperial patronage of Komarran music? Absolutely not. He bought your loyalty because, deep down, you all HOPE he's GB.
And every time the Emperor does something Imperially that isn't great for Komarr, behind all your feelings is disappointment. Because your friend Greg Bleakman wouldn't do this to you. And surely Greg Bleakman has to be the Emperor.
He promoted Rostov to the General Staff, even knowing that Rostov was involved. Why? Were there truly no better candidates than someone whose name is anathema on Komarr? Of course not. He did that because he's the Emperor and it was a political decision and because, despite how much you all hope he is, GB is not the Emperor.
Banning Ekaterin Vorvayne for daring to get married is a different discussion topic altogether, and I think she'll make the decision for us by stopping posting by herself, she's already posting here much less than she did on Komarr.
But GB being the Emperor is a conspiracy theory and I wish people would stop taking it seriously. The topic is already banned on all respectable discussion forums and lists for good reason. Lorie's right that GB deserves privacy; you can't force him to PM you his name and address just to appease people who think he's someone he isn't.
USER: Mod What's Dressage
Yeah I'm with Achilles and Clement on this one. I think people forget that there's good reason for a Barrayaran not to want to hang out with us in public. It actually could ruin his career, if he does have aspersions to political power in his own right. He definitely went to ISA and served his 20, he might even still be doing it. He's likely in a position where he could lose his job and potentially his social standing if he were to publicly associate with, oh, let's pull a name out of the hat -- Duv Galeni. You know, the well-respected professor who had to take the amnesty because of who his entire family was. GB and Not David can be friends. GB can chat with Not David whenever and wherever he wants. And that's only true because of pseudonymity.
He's Barrayaran. It can come with a lot of baggage. He's not skipping meet-ups because he's the Emperor, he's skipping meet-ups because he has a security clearance and Duv Galeni shows up to them. And GB loves Duv Galeni, because he can do that where no one who matters in his life can see him.
USER: Mod RainsOfAlice
Even if that's the case, we're about to have a moderation storm on our hands.
USER: Mod Ashford
My vote's on ban everyone who can't play by The Rules. GB's not different from anyone else. And isn't that the status quo anyway? I distinctly remember when I was given mod powers, I was told that we treat everyone the same. I've certainly handed out my share of one-day and one-week bans and deleted posts asserting the Emperorness of specific forum users.
USER: Mod ZRJ
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm old enough (4 years old) to remember the last time we had a major discussion on banning GB over some of his antics in politics. As Jessssssa pointed out, ImpSec is known to read this board. I should feel it is obvious that 1) ImpSec knows who GB is, and 2) there is some mutual knowledge there from GB that the actual _Imperial Security_ is aware of what he's doing here.
In other words: there is no universe in which GB is someone who needs to worry about his security clearance or his career path or anything that could be hurt by him being arrested by ImpSec. He's not someone who is trying to become the next Arts Minister, because if he were, he would not be pulling half the shit he pulls. There is no background check that GB is worried about. There is no fast-penta in his future.
He's either nobody or he's someone too important to touch. And if he's a nobody, then he couldn't have pulled all the strings he is known to have pulled for his friends from RK.
Who that someone too important to touch is, I actually don't know. Is he Miles Vorkosigan? No, he hates Aral Vorkosigan too much. Is he Henri Vorvolk or Ivan Vorpatril or Peter Vorinnis? It's possible.
But he's Vor. There's no prole this untouchable who isn't the Prime Minister, and I think we can all agree Quintillan and Racozy were not in VBS at the right time to fall in love with Komarr.
USER: Mod Terra Komarrus
Rostov's appointment doesn't mean anything either way. We don't know who the candidates were for that position at that point, but we know that everyone who could have possibly made that rank by that point was commissioned under Emperor Ezar and would have served on Komarr at some point. It's possible that every single option was terrible. Secondly, Rostov "retired" 16 months after being appointed and was replaced by a general who was so new, his tabs shone in the dark, and had been on a long cruise with the navy until then. Rostov doesn't mean that GB isn't the Emperor. Rostov may very well mean that the Emperor had to act as the Emperor and make a bad decision, and he rectified it as soon as he had any other candidate for the post.
USER: Mod Unspeakable Album Cover
We're not the only ones having this discussion. I checked in with my roommate, who mods KFFR, and they're taking the approach of playing it as it happens.
Which also means the news is going to get out really soon.
USER: Mod Sun
First off, my apologies for coming so late to this thread, I actually just got back from the jumpship thirty minutes ago.
I guess it's time to tell everyone what only a couple of you know. I used to work at RK. I spent three years there in the early years, back when Galeni was still around and Greg Bleakman was calling into his show every single week without fail. I was there when the mailing list started and the only reason I passed my Barrayaran history classes was because Greg sent me several helpful mnemonics and explained things in Komarran terms to me.
Even by then, the conspiracy theory was around. So I have to tell you what most of us worked out with the information we already had: he's not the Emperor.
He used to send updates to the list while the Council of Counts was in a closed session. He did that more than once. He once replied while the Emperor was on Komarr. He's an orphan, yes. He used to complain about his foster father, I remember that strongly because he always had terrible self-esteem about the whole situation. Those of you who only know him as a fully-confident adult probably can't imagine it, but GB used to ask for advice all the time on how to handle his family situation, which quite frankly was awful. He didn't seem to have any friends, and he sometimes would ask if certain things were normal on Barrayar, not Komarr, because he didn't know either.
Anyone who listens to as much middle-of-the-night radio as he did -- because this is years before we started recording -- who didn't have a damn good reason for being awake at that time has _insomnia_. Someone I worked with used to mutter that all our regular listeners had something wrong with them, and the things wrong with Greg were a shitty home life, loneliness, and depression. He truly blossomed once he realized that, even with his shitty life, he could help his newfound friends.
He's not the Emperor. And banning him just because of a conspiracy theory that began _as a joke_ is just being shitty to someone who is too shy to show his face to his friends and risk them rejecting him because he's exactly as Vor as his accent indicates.
USER: Mod Sun
Oh and also, I'm not sure when everyone became certain that Greg went to ISA. He didn't. He wasn't a cadet. He might not have been on the same campus as the rest of us -- we never were sure about that, but we also didn't associate with anyone Vor -- but our broadcasting range wasn't great to begin with, and ISA cadets have strict schedules and leave campus all the time for classwork. But Greg was a steady presence. He didn't go to ISA, he wasn't in the Barrayaran military, he's not that kind of Vor.
We were never too sure about his exact age but he was a student like we were. If he started around the same time he was calling in to Galeni all the time, then he's also too old to be the Emperor, because the Emperor would have still been in that Vor prep school.
It's one thing to have some fun at the expense of the token Barrayaran who doesn't mind the joke because of how absurd the idea is, but it's another to take it seriously.
USER: Mod Sun
And he's not dating Gardener. That's another case of people seeing what they want to see. He's friendly with Gardener in a way he's not friendly with people here, but I've seen him have the exact same type of interactions on more private lists. He banters with her the same way he's done thousands of time before, with other people. He's comfortable with her and he's met her. Finally, people think, finally GB is doing what we think he should be doing: showing someone his face.
But he's doing that with a Barrayaran Vor _because_ she's a Barrayaran Vor and won't judge him. Considering the way everyone talks about Vor in this subculture -- yes, even including Galya Voraiken who _has posted here_ -- can you really blame GB for not wanting to meet any of us? Oh it's fine if we can pretend he's not who he is, but I don't blame him at all for not being sure we actually want to meet who he actually is. Yes, he's a well-connected Vor. Yes, he's also someone who grabbed hold of Komarran music as a lonely teenager because it was the only outlet he had. No Barrayaran Vor is as active as he has been _for decades_ unless, as my coworker really meant, there's something wrong with his life. You can be a well-connected Vor and still be miserable and need friends, and I think everyone has forgotten that.
But everyone on this board is really invested in GB dating Gardener because they think this is the natural result of two Vor being friends and that's also a problem. I don't blame either GB or Gardener for not saying explicitly that they aren't dating. They shouldn't have to.
USER: Mod Sun
As for the situation with Gardener herself, my vote is we tell her right now to make a new username, and then ban the Only_A_Gardener username once the announcement is public. This is for her sake, not ours. I don't think her experience on this bulletin board will be very pleasant once everyone knows that if they want to contact the Empress directly, they can just PM her.
The closest situation to this one is when the Komarran side banned all the Justins for a year, but that was because they couldn't keep their dramatic breakup out of their board interactions. Gardener has done literally nothing except be a well-connected Barrayaran Vor who is about to get married. That's not a bannable offense, and we already allow multiple accounts for people when necessary. Treat her like Benny Lakowsky and let's be done with this.
USER: Mod Joy Anderson
Back when I was running PLDMAS, we had an incident. I received a message at the time from a long time RKer who gave me permission to pass it along here now without attribution:
"Ah, the eternal conundrum of what to do about Greg Bleakman. Would you believe we had to make an official policy on this one? It was an issue that would never die, so we had to kill it. Here's the final word on Greg Bleakman: it's good if he's the Emperor, because that means he's paying attention to us. Ezar wanted us for our money, but Greg Bleakman loves us. If he's not Gregor Vorbarra himself, he's someone who knows Gregor Vorbarra. This is an unlookedfor benefit we could never have otherwise managed."
She sent me this again after the festival they had the audience:
"It seems like everyone has now changed their position, whichever way it was, on the question of Greg Bleakman. But the final word is still the final word. If we just met Greg Bleakman, then he spent five minutes telling us how wonderful it is that Komarran youth are expressing themselves and integrating within the Barrayaran arts landscape. And if he's not Greg Bleakman, then Greg Bleakman put every single one of those words into Gregor Vorbarra's mouth."
Now, speaking personally: I don't know Greg Bleakman, but I will be the first one to be brave enough to say that I do think he's the Emperor. However, I'm not sure how much that matters. If it were going to matter, it would have mattered a long time ago, and it hasn't. So I've used it instead as a way to remind myself that Gregor Vorbarra is not his grandfather and certainly not his father. He inherited this and grew up in this, and he's responsible for it now, for better or for worse. But I think he is the Emperor and he knows exactly what people think of the Emperor and the Vor and he's still here, and I couldn't swear to it that he doesn't agree with us about those matters most if not all of the time.
It's been reminding me that things are more complicated than they seem, that the Barrayaran push for Komarran integration is sincere, and if what you're saying is true, that the Emperor is about to marry a divorced mother his own age who spent the last decade on Komarr, who isn't even a lady, whose ex-husband defrauded the Imperium, then I really don't understand the Vor, and realize that I never have and never will, but they're not who we think they are if Gregor Vorbarra is marrying Ekaterin Vorvayne, who was a nobody on Komarr and isn't anyone special on Barrayar either. That's not something from any Vorrish soap opera.
Because many things can be true. Gregor Vorbarra can be the Emperor and he can be an orphan who had a terrible relationship with his foster-father, who just so happened to be Aral Vorkosigan, who Greg Bleakman hates more than my _mother_ hates him, that was half the problem on PLDMAS. He can have been a cadet at the prep school, which, yes, actually is within the RK broadcasting distance, and lonely and apart from his classmates, who probably didn't know what to do with a teenage Emperor any more than we would have. He could be all these things and more, and so I'm another vote for not banning him. Nothing good would come of it, and since we've treated him like everyone else for so long, it would be cruel to change our minds now when he's done nothing to deserve it.
USER: Mod RainsOfAlice
Really? The consensus is we do nothing? Really?
USER: Mod Lorie
Seems that way.
USER: Mod RainsOfAlice
This is going to be a nightmare.