I actually agree with AZ. Of course, I might feel a lot differently were I more emotionally invested in DBR's past work. Please take that into consideration before you get offended at what I'm about to say:
According to others, Melee and Brawl have failed to pay out numerous times in the past (S.N.E.S., Winterfest, and Pound V - am I missing any?
). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that such an event could happen again. Now, I'm going to go into total nerd mode and quote Firefly:
Shan Yu said:
Live with a man 40 years. Share his house, his meals. Speak on every subject. Then tie him up, and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.
Now Shan Yu may be a work of fiction, but I actually think this quote actually does apply to real life. It conveys the idea that even good people can do horrible things out of desperation, when the right circumstances present themselves. Once you accept this, it becomes a lot easier to understand how betrayal works.
I don't know Zelgadis, or anyone else in DBR for that matter, but I do know a fair bit about Psychology. And if there's anything that the discipline of Psychology has made painfully clear, it's that ordinary people are capable of horrible things. That could go for you, me, your best friend, or anyone - because
no one can escape human nature. Shan Yu is right in that the capacity to do horrible things can lie dormant - even in otherwise admirable people.
When you look at the situation this way, Zelgadis' behavior seems less shocking. I'm sure the people who knew him well would never have suspected such a horrible thing from him. Yet according to The King, Trebor had put himself into a bad situation and was heading down a destructive path. Maybe these events were the equivalent of Shan Yu's metaphorical volcano - the catalyst to unleash an action that the man himself might not have expected 5 years earlier.
So now that I've painted a rather bleak picture of humanity, I feel responsible to address the good of the situation that AlphaZealot was referring to. While I'm sure many of you are ready to take a negative view (no thanks to me
), I should probably point out that everyone else involved survived the test of the volcano, so to speak. While others may have handled such a betrayal poorly, DBR ensured not only that the prises paid out, but that the community was fully aware of what almost happened.
You see, that's why DBR still gives me hope for the Smash community. The majority of them passed the test of character, proving to the rest of us what good leadership entails. We could have easily had another S.N.E.S. or Winterfest in the hands of less competent TO's, but we didn't - and
that is why I consider today a victory for the community.
I hope that this event can serve as an example for future TO's who end up in similar situations - because it
will happen. Human nature does not change, so it will only be a matter of time until someone attempts something like this again. Yet this need not be a cause for concern if we know how to deal with it.
Before today, situations like this were typically handled poorly. S.N.E.S., Winterfest, and Pound V were never properly resolved. DBR has shown us that it need not be the case. And for that reason, I believe Genesis 2 is a
victory for moral character in the Smash community. We've had numerous bad examples in the past, so Zelgadis is nothing new. What is new is a good one, so I thank DBR for having the courage and fortitude to provide it.
