LAST EDITED ON Aug-15-14 AT 06:45 AM (EDT)
 
>So, all their successes are actually done by someone else, or don't
>count. And all the fuckups are their fault. Got it.

What successes? The EA was being prepped to fail. They were no more having "successes" than my hypothetical stick-up man. Just about all of their major policy initiatives were designed to not work. In that sense, I suppose they were succeeding, but...

>>It's like... mmm. Imagine a guy who sticks up a 7-11 and, instead of
>>just bailing with the register contents immediately, sticks around
>>getting drunk off malt liquor and ordering the cashier and customers
>>to dance for his amusement. Now, what are you going to think? "That
>>guy has things going all his own way; he got a bunch of money and
>>booze and all these people are terrified of him and doing what he
>>wants?"
>
>If you're one of the customers getting a gun waved at your face? You'd
>be shitting your pants, and wondering if someone is going to be able
>to stop him before he shoots you. The thing about villains isn't 'are
>they going to win?', it's 'what will happen before someone takes them
>down?'

By this rubric, though, every nameless minion stormtrooper, demon, or Boomer who as carrying a grenade-equivalent on them was a major villain, because they held the power of life and death over a whole lot of people if they lobbed it right.

>>The EA is that drunk stick-up artist, in my mind. Everything they did
>>was so obviously, painfully designed, not to build them up into a
>>long-lasting, stable, Evil Empire, but to inflame the situation around
>>them until they imploded under the weight of their own incompetence
>>and arrogance.
>
>So was Nazi Germany. So is North Korea, Zimbabwe and (some would say)
>Russia.

... Nazi German was being run by people who were deliberately trying to make it fail? Wha?

>Just because it looks insane from the outside doesn't mean that the
>people on the inside can see that.

That's true, but it also doesn't make them not incompetent jokes.

-Merc
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