- TopGoon[555]
- Aug 30, 2003
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Alright, time to sit down and go through this.
So basically, Endie is the Kim Kardashian of EVE. Famous for being famous, image conscious, big on appearance, thin on substance, etc. It’s one of the reasons you don’t see GSF people responding too much to him since he feeds off attention and notoriety. I’m a nobody now, he can have my undivided attention if he so wishes and it doesn’t impact in game or alliance stuff at all. The more time he spends swinging at my irrelevant ghost, the more overall time he’s wasted in general. Regardless, buckle up, this is going to be long.
And yeah I guess makes GSF Ray J, and PL Kanye.
The one nice thing about Endie is that he's predictable and only has a few tricks up his sleeve. Finely honed due to practice, for sure, but once you get used to it it's always the same general rotation of stuff. In this case, it's his classic "I'm going to mis-characterize what someone said and argue that rather than argue what was actually said" thing. Drove Kazanir up a wall, I mostly just rolled my eyes.
Note to keep in mind as you read, GSF 2010 was different from GSF 2016, but I'll get to that eventually. Until I get to that point, some of this is going to read a bit strangely to those who were unfamiliar with GSF internal workings during that era.
In 2010, I'd just made my way back to EVE following my hiatus after our victory over BoB in Delve. I'd done Theta and Blackops pretty exclusively as my in EVE activities, so was disappointed to see that Blackops had left due to some drama while I was away from the game. Figured I try applying to CD, Vile Rat accepted my app, and was greeted with a weird new world of how EVE and GSF worked.
What soon became apparent was that The Mittani had a right hand, a left hand, and what was sometimes called the voice. Those positions were Chief Diplomat, Head of the GIA, and Skymarshal. Respectively, Vile Rat, Endie, and Rydis. Vile Rat I knew from the Syndicate days onward, Endie was a new face I'd never heard of, but was apparently now the GIA guy. Rydis too I'd never heard of, but would come to respect a great deal.
It was a strange dynamic for a new diplomat like myself, particularly since VR and Endie loathed each other. To be fair, I don't know for certain that Endie loathed VR, but VR detested Endie. During their numerous spats, he frequently kicked Endie out of CD until Endie would whine to Mittani about needing access because he was spy guy and Mittani would tell VR to let him back in. This cycle repeated about every six to eight months or so. In what I assume was a proxy power thing to this, the GIA and CD had a massive internal turf war, much of which I found out only later as I spent more time as a diplomat and VR would talk about it more, and then later as I got to it see first hand.
One of the biggest flare ups of this bit of drama was when Mittani had to go to Iceland for some CSM thing or another, and "had to" leave someone in charge while he was away. I can't remember who ended up 'winning' that particular round between VR and Endie, but it was weird at the time, and served to drive that animosity deeper. It was also the last time Mittani explicitly left someone in charge of the alliance during a brief absence due to the drama fallout from it all.
Shortly thereafter, the VR-Endie drama flared up again when VR got his way for the Branch invasion, the first offensive war the CFC attempted. Endie was convinced it was doomed to failure, and that the war was a terrible idea. To this day, I don't know if he was actually against it, or merely against it because VR was pushing for it. In any case, GSF and the then CFC won that war, and the follow-up credibility VR gained from that and from how CD had helped Rydis manage allies during the effort gave him huge say in how we handled the victory and the spoils. Again, VR and Endie clashed, Endie wanted to keep the bulk of branch (including one entire constellation for BAT) and VR insisted that we try to divide stuff fairly to give allies resources to grow. VR reasoned that we already had a region, and that strong friends meant we were all stronger collectively. Again, likely an outgrowth of hands on time with BoB and the NC. VR won that round, too.
2010 to 2012 was full of this sort of stuff, more than what I can remember offhand without sifting through my logs. Endie wasn't always going after VR, but Endie did always have to have a Big Bad--someone who was threatening his position, threatening his ego, threatening his access, whatever. For a while, it was VR. Then it was Rydis. Then Kazanir. Then the then-Mrs. Mittens (this one was super awkward). Then Zarks, then Rydis again. Then Kazanir. You get the idea. Eventually, inevitably, I became his new Big Bad. It was always the same old, "so-and-so is trying to convince Mittani to listen to them, I can't have that, they’ll bring the alliance to ruin without my sage input" and he'd run around behind the scenes sabotaging stuff. You can see it in his posting here, the "if only Mittani had listened to me" and the "I did so much work for him" and basically variations of "sempai notice me." Gevlon Goblin did an excellent and on point write up about just this, actually. Anyway, without fail, he'd accuse whoever his current target was of trying to be "the grand vizier", not having Goonswarm's best interests at heart, and how only he could fix whatever real or imagined problem there was while he ran around behind the scenes setting things on fire.
This naturally led to all kinds of drama, some of which made it public, most of which didn't. Endie, in a testament to his incredibly thin skin, holds the second place all time record for being trolled out of Illum, just behind Boat. Rydis once trolled him out single handedly. Each time he would come back only when Mittani personally requested he do so. Odds are high that's what he thought would happen that final time he left, too.
From my position as a line diplomat, it looked like a struggle between two vastly different world views. Vile Rat, with his general famake people a better version of themselves. Like I've said, he had a way of bringing about the beith in people, his good faith dealings, and his uncanny ability to teach people, help people, and st in people. And he enjoyed doing it, enjoyed watching people succeed. And then there was Endie, who in contrast is exceptionally talented at spotting insecurities people have and using his command of language to exploit those insecurities. As one member of the CSM would later say, and which I think well sums it up, “he’s the most casually cruel person I’ve ever met” and that he would “use any words you say in any context as a weapon against you if he thought he could gain from it.” Or to put it another way, VR built people up and set them off to better use their talents, Endie brought people low and crushed them so he could better control them.
It wasn’t exactly a struggle between good and evil, or light and dark, it was just dramatically different takes on the world, how it should be, and how it was.
Anyway, from 2010 to 2012, this was all going on behind the scenes while we were building the coalition, and in early 2012, VR told Mittani that Mittani needed someone to help sort out the piles of drama within the alliance as it was taking way too much of Mittani’s time. He suggested, based on my by then two years of work, that I’d be a good fit for the spot. And that’s how I went from anonymous behind the scenes line diplo guy to what was essentially the director of directors, or as Tector immediately dubbed the position, Illuminanny. It was, no doubt, seen by Endie as yet another VR victory, as I don’t think he ever saw me as anything other than another pawn in a game I clearly didn’t understand played amongst my better. That, as far as I know, is still true of his opinion of me. It’s another one of his weaknesses, his necessity for control over other people dictates that he always be the smartest person in the room.
After about three months, I’d sorted out a large portion of the problems that had been given to me, and so Mittani gave me the biggest task of all--fixing the GIA. I was given control of the GIA due to Endie being largely inactive doing it, and the other director at the time also being mostly MIA, a gentlemen named Hratli Smirks. The reason this was the last major project given to me was because it was such a broken organization, nearly to the point of uselessness. This was of course never made public, because it suited our needs that it be considered a highly effective spy network. Once I got the logins for the accounts, what I found was that spies hadn’t been paid, we didn’t have anything resembling an accounting of assets, even generally, and that the GIA dropbox hadn’t been checked at all in a about a year. In the dropbox itself there was piles of actionable intel that was missed, simply because Hratli and Endie didn’t bother to check it. At the time, I was appalled, and had to confirm directly with Hratli that they hadn’t been checking it though some other means, and that the unopened mail had indeed been read or forwarded or something. It hadn’t been, all the tips and intel people had sent in the previous year from early 2011 until early 2012 had just been straight up missed. The grim reality was that during Endie’s tenure, the GIA had suffered even while it’s reputation soared, he was so effective at convincing people that it was A Thing that only a couple people knew just how bad it really functioned. Or more accurately, that it didn’t function.
I’m not a spy guy, not really. It’s not how my brain works, and I never enjoyed it even when I did spy back in the day myself. But org work I could do, and I set about trying to clean things up as best as I could to make it at least semi-functional, all while facing pushback from Endie about how “impossible” something was or that something “couldn’t be done” because he either hadn’t done it, or thought it couldn’t be done. But before I could sink my teeth into it all for more than a couple months, VR was killed and in short order I had to drop the GIA to focus on CD and Chief of Staff duties.
Also during this time, prior to September 11th, CD had itself hit a rough patch. VR was aware of it, and one of the last conversations I had with him was about the sorry state of CD and him saying that to fix it, he’d have to “get off my rear end and actually direct.” So in addition to the tragedy that I outlined earlier in this thread, I had the additional challenge of rebuilding the organization itself.
When I dropped the GIA, Endie did not resume running it. It was first handed off to Gicer, then Midge was added, and later, Psychzz (which I think I’m misspelling). Gicer is a stand up guy, and he and I had worked together as diplomats for some time as well prior to this. With the passing of VR, and with Endie no longer in charge of the GIA, the GIA-CD feud came to an abrupt end, although it remained true for the rest of the time Endie was around in GSF that a sure fire easy way to get a rise out of him was to insult the GIA. Only quicker way was to say that Amok. was better than BAT. A close third was “Kismeteer is going to be running stats.” Heh.
The reason I know who was director when was because I was still doing Chief of Staff director staffing and kept meticulous records, and at no point from my time as CoS starting in 2012 until Endie left for PL in 2015 was he ever in charge of the GIA. He liked to claim that he was, and perhaps he saw Midge, Gicer, and Psychzz as proxies or puppets that he controlled, but he was not himself running the show or the day to day, and not responsible for the condition of the organization. In fact, he directly requested that his name be taken off the GIA director list because people “kept bugging” him about spy stuff.
Which itself led to it’s own hilarity. After his name was taken off the GIA director list, Endie wasn’t anywhere on the director list at all. He had no purview, no responsibilities, no area of authority. But he would routinely say “I’m Mittani’s number two, you have to listen to me” to new directors, who mostly didn’t know him and were like “who is this guy then?” This led to numerous Endie flip outs, and eventually he was given some kind of fluff title to make him feel better, something rp like “high inquisitor” or something. He was all “no no, I don’t need a title, I’m just a polite WHY AREN’T THEY RESPECTING ME.” It was awesome, and Endie is to this day the only Goonswarm director in the modern era to have had a vanity title with no associated director duties. Caused no end of confusion as the years went by, either. “So uh, what does Endie actually do?” was one of the most common questions I got when I’d onboard new people.
This was also around the time when Endie starting making noises that Mittani should step down as Waffe CEO, and that he he should be put in charge. At the time, Endie had “renounced” his BAT affiliation and was in Waffe, but was still very much running BAT. It was a transparent charade, but one people generally didn’t poke at because it would set off Endie’s delicate sensibilities and at the end of the day who really cared anyway, we were all in the same boat. At the time, he argued that someone with experience running a corp, someone in The Star Chamber, and someone already in Waffe should be made CEO of Waffe, and that Mittani should focus on the alliance. There was, quite unexpectedly, only one person who fit that description. When confronted on this point, he said something like “oh, well, I mean I’d never want to do it anyway! Not unless you asked me.”
Which brings us to another enduring cornerstone of the Endie playbook, Endie as reluctant only if you ask me three times no really I defer you have to ask me at least three times guy. Closely related, but distinct, from Endie as martyr. It’s a sort of genius trick if you can pull it off as Endie could, make drama, create a need that conveniently only he could fill, then defer endlessly so that it didn’t look suspicious, then be like “okay I guess I’ll do, but I want it clear that I’m doing this under duress.” It created what amounted to a false scarcity, and worked for years. This is what you see in his recounting of tales of how he was begged or coerced into doing something he didn’t really want to do, or didn’t have time for, or whatever, like the TMC gig or the recruitment posts. Endie himself named the site, he was pretty personally invested in it for a while because he wanted the prestige of it all. I was asked to work on it at launch as an editor as well, but I’m a grown rear end man, and I said “no” instead of “only reluctantly because you asked me the required three times and ps I’m going to trot this out as an example of how selfless I am for the next four years after I dabble in it for a few months and wander off.”
No one could make Endie do anything if he didn’t actually want to do it, as we found out repeatedly when he was asked to fill various positions that took actual work instead of the meaningless title he then had. Which made the whole “I was press ganged into doing this thing” charade all the more laughably transparent every time he pulled it. Mostly, his need to have his ego stoked was indulged, and it’s very likely that he was never aware that people were wise to that particular game of his. The only way to get Endie to do something was if he wanted to do it. The only real question was how many hoops he would make someone jump through before finally doing what he wanted to do anyway while ideally making the other person feel guilty and that they owed him something. Like I said, kind of genius in a way.
Anyway, so Gicer, Midge, and Psychzz kept running the GIA for a while, and were content to let their CEO take public credit for doing so. But they eventually moved on, and a dude named Vicki Rail was hired on to do the GIA thing, along with Darkstarwarrior, both of BAT. Vicki can best be described as a kinetic ball of hyperactivity. The dude ran riot (heh) and swiftly accomplished all of the things Endie had said were impossible back when I was trying to fix it. Between the two of them, Vicki and Darkstar managed to develop a coalition spanning unified spy network, place a poo poo load of agents, fix a stack of tech problems, and generally work magic. Instead of being being proud of his corp members and all like “that’s my boys”, Endie opted to be pissed that Vicki wanted to rename the org to “The Black Hand”, which better reflected the coalition (now the Imperium), and had a snazzy logo to boot. But nope, those realities of the changing nature of the org and the sweeping reforms instituted aside, what it really meant in Endieland was that Endie could no longer coast by on the GIA reputation and his tenuous and passing relation thereof. And it was suddenly blindingly obvious that--whatever Endie said--he was totally detached from the spy game.
In addition to this, part of being a kinetic ball of hyperactivity meant that Vicki was utterly immune to Endie’s usual insecurity games. He was also, though newer to the job and younger, a spying savant and easily outclassed Endie at his own game. And worse yet, he had Independent Ideas. In the space of about four months, Endie went from “you should promote Viki to head spy guy” to “Vicki is going to be moving soon. You should use that time to fire him.” When I asked him why, he said that it was because he was disloyal to Goonswarm, surprise surprise. Why he really wanted to fire his own corp member from the directorate but not kick him from corp is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but it was a classic Endie response to him feeling like his status and position was being threatened.
As an aside, unlike from 2010 until 2011 when Endie ran the GIA, the new Black Hand isn’t just a creature of reputation. It’s a fearsome organization that far surpases what the GIA was even in reputation during those two years, let alone in fact. Markonius Porkbutte helped run it for a while after Vicki wandered off, and I’m told that now Sadus and DSW run it. Sadus used to be a diplomat, and met him in vegas. He’s a literal giant of a man, highly intelligent consultant type. I’d not be surprised at all if he’s the next big name to come out of GSF’s intel apparatus.
I think this is around the time Endie started making plans to leave to PL. The organization of GSF had changed a lot from 2010 to 2015, had grown by something like 12k people, a pile of space, and heaps of squads and SIGS. From 2012 onward (and likely earlier, that was just the first time I was in a place to see it), Endie insisted that GSF was like Nazi Germany, and that Mittani was Hitler in that a bunch of advisors must lobby for Dear Leader’s favor and in-fight with each other in order to push agendas. If you didn’t infight or maneuver, you were doing it Wrong, capital W. Presumably since he saw it that way, that’s why he played all the messy internal political stuff, why he spent as much time trying to look good instead of be good.
But 2015 had long moved the alliance past that, though it probably was in fact that sort of situation in 2010ish. But the alliance evolved. A director position was a spot with duties attached, clear lines of purview, and clear lines of authority, given out based on merit and desire to do the required job. GSF had no number two, there were no agendas to push, only a sprawling, complicated, and growing organization to run. He was increasingly out of touch with that reality, and significantly, the reality that upper GSF leadership had been working closely with each other for over half a decade. He kept treating it like some kind of Nazi political larp rather than the mutual friendship and respect that it had become. As time went by, as relationships evolved, and as the organization changed, he had less and less room to do his usual run around and divide people thing. Endie was either unwilling or unable to change with the organization, and as far as I or anyone else could tell is still stuck in the 2010 mentality. At the end of the day though, I think Vicki and Darkstar knocking the Black Hand revamp out of the park sealed his bitterness for good. They’d inadvertently shown him up in spectacular fashion, and there was no way whatsoever to hide it.
That’s likely when Endie decided to leave GSF, predictably for PL, despite his initial claims to the contrary. It’s the only place he could ever personally end up, and people still with BAT say he bludgeoned Midge into going there despite Midge not wanting to, because a the end of the day, Endie runs BAT and is their CEO. PL was the only place that Endie could go that wouldn’t be a straight up loss of credibility due to alliance ticker, and for a guy with a fragile ego that’s desperate for validation, it was always a forgone conclusion.
What was hilarious about this whole departure event was that Endie went off on a tirade about how there was this mass conspiracy to kill BAT’s supercaps when they left, and that he had proof due to all the API calls or something. To anyone who knows how our system works (like in theory Endie would, or certainly the other BAT technical whizzes like Midge would) or how API’s work, this is pants on head retarded. GSF requires full API’s and regularly polls those API’s and caches the results. If there had been a plan to kill BAT supers on the way out (there wasn’t), they never would have been able to tell. Could have just used the cached results and they’d never have know the difference. My pet theory is that someone inside BAT with access to the API’s hit those calls themselves for fun just to wig Endie out. If so, it worked beyond this prankster’s wildest dreams and we all had a good chuckle at a self proclaimed super spy being played so badly and so publicly even until the last.
I also have no idea why Endie is still clinging to the whole “used to be number two” and “Mittani once told me I was his successor!” He was always big on badge flashing and telling people how space important he was, but uh, he left. So I mean I guess it’s a historical badge and he wants to show that no really, he was at one time important in a spaceship videogame? Desperation? A yearning and persistent desire to finally be recognized by His Fuzziness as his one true soulmate?
This is why Endie leaving was barely noticed by GSF leadership as a whole. He’s stopped being an active member of the directorate before my time, so at least not from 2012 onward. Instead of spending his time trying to better and serve the alliance, he spent his time on infighting, on stupidly blatant plots to poach SMA members, trying to get Mittani’s attention, and wowing people with his posting. To be fair, he’s does post pretty. So I guess if that’s what does it for you, that’s cool. But for those of us running the space org, his departure sucked a shitload of drama out of GSF, nearly all of the director level drama, and represented the last departure of the final hold out who really enjoyed setting people against each other internally.
And again, to be fair, Endie is excellent at it. He’s fantastic at managing his external and internal image, and managed to skate by on hurfed blurfs for years in a generally demanding spaceship directorate while collecting reddit upvotes and pubbie adoration of all kinds. He’s a pro at getting people to believe what he wants them to believe, spinning situations and words, making people feel self conscious, and setting up crisis situations between people that he can then step in to resolve. He’s well read and has a great grasp of written language.
This is indeed one of the facets that always fascinated me about the VR-Endie dichotomy. They were in so many ways so similar, but also so very different. I always knew why VR did what he did, he wore his principles on his sleeve. I to this day don’t know why Endie did what he did, and my best guess is that he enjoys power games and dominating people. It would certainly explain his frustration and befuddlement when people simply stopped playing those games inside GSF.
I think the clearest way this is seen is in the way people talk about VR and Endie. Endie is invariably “a good poster” or something along those lines. VR is invariably “a good guy” or some such. One description speaks to what a person does and how they wish to be seen by others, the other, to who the person is. Endie’s finest moments are all about posting, vulgar public displays designed to garner attention and adoration in public. VR’s finest moments we all quiet and behind the scenes, frequently between no one but VR and whoever he was trying to help. Or more succinctly, Endie is dedicated to appearing, VR was dedicated to being. If nothing else, I’m thankful for that insight and for having such extreme examples of both to see the particular life lessons in that nugget.
At any rate, I’m professionally curious as to how much inadvertent damage he can do in PL’s structure. Unlike GSF, there’s a lot of big personality types rather than quiet work behind the scenes types, and PL itself closely mirrors the reputation and appearance pursuit that Endie himself craves. Or maybe he’ll remain focused on “that one time Mittani said I was #2” and “I ran the GIA” thing as vestiges of relevance for another half decade. Maybe his new thing will be coasting on “I’m a big deal in PL.” Maybe next he’ll go after Querns or Aryth, who I have on good authority Mittens consults with regularly. Don’t know. Whatever the case, unless he actually does something new and noteworthy in game he’s going to be relegated to rehashing history of past mostly made up glories with washed up has-beens like me. And I’m pretty sure that takes you from Kim Kardashian to Corey Feldman right quick.
One long time diplomat and good poster, Particle9 (who infamously banned Solo from our own forums and would regularly troll Endie into raging flameouts) said to me back in 2012 that “Endie is not your friend. He never will be. He only cares about himself and his image. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.” I didn’t believe him, I figured it was just space drama stuff talking. Right up until the last real conversation on Skype that I had with Endie, who at that point I’d been working with for half a decade, and flat out said that a lot of the stuff we were arguing about was petty and dumb, and that given our working relationship and status as bros we should be able to talk and work through it all. Silence. So more to the point, I was like “dude, do you not consider me a friend? We’ve been doing this for ages, I thought we were.” More silence, then an eventual--but exceedingly final--deflection. It was at that moment I realized Particle9 had been right. I relayed this anecdote to someone in BAT, who said “yeah, that’s Endie. I don’t think he has any real friends, just people he uses.”
Hmm. Yase. Agreed.
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Apr 27, 2016 01:47
for the next three pages if I said some poo poo like that) but because it hurts to read. I really like Endie, and I mean a lot. I really like Sion a lot too. I have certainly enjoyed getting spacefat off of their hard work in helping to build us up. I don't have to pick a side here and won't. I will say after reading Sion's post that I felt really bad for him and wanted to give him a hug, and I'm not much of a hugger. It just seems like he's genuinely hurt by all of it - the wear of the road finally did get to him. I get that's why he left, but to have him come out and say those things now... I wish he hadn't done that here. I wish he'd kept that private or at the most between him and a few other select folks - Endie included. We didn't all need to read that pile of dirty laundry. 
