Well, I guess that's a step above a SyFy production. Not enough sharks were involved.

>2) What actually happened was a much richer and more complex
>takedown than what we saw onscreen. It wasn't just a really good
>Type-33-S Gryphon plant, Shasti, and a media blitz. It was them and a
>backbone of very highly skilled intelligence officers who had spent
>decades infiltrating the WDF and every other organ of galactic
>governance, including the UG Assembly and Salusia to the extent
>they could do that without getting rid of Asrial, combined with a
>covert military buildup.

An undertaking that had even the Illuminati going "Damn, this guy means business!"

>In addition to that damning video, there was probably a boatload of
>forensic evidence planted at the scene, which was quickly analyzed
>locally and then leaked to the media and international governing and
>police organizations before the whole place conveniently went up in a
>fireball and couldn't be re-examined.

Puts me in the mind of how the RL modern media likes to handle such tragedies today, with the scramble to be "first" with an exclusive new tidbit, repeating assumptions and half-truths before the cops can address them, and overall turning a criminal investigation into a circus in the first few minutes. Just the sort of environment that a Genom smear job would work well in.

>There was also probably a lot of evidence planted that this sort of
>thing had happened before and been covered up. The WDF had a nearly
>300 year long track record at that point, and, well... archive
>security is important, but usually not considered something vital,
>especially for declassified materiel. Someone goes back and carefully
>doctors the official mission logs, yearly psyche evaluations, etc etc.
>to make very ugly implications in hindsight, but which might not be
>noticed even by the people who WROTE those reports if they go back and
>review them. And really, is Zoner gonna spend his evening re-reading
>the mission report Gryphon wrote him seventy years ago about that time
>he walked into that restaurant and the evening took a weird turn and
>ended with twenty dead Cerberus troopers and a burning warehouse? I
>think not.

Again another of those parts of the plan that were likely helped by outside forces, namely skeptics as well as critics of the WDF who would be looking for evidence that the Wedge crew had "something to hide." Even non-edited reports likely were the subject of much scrutiny, with articles and entire books published both inside and outside Genom's influence about how the WDF was a ticking time bomb.

>Probably the personality fault lines we saw exploited as the WDF high
>command fell apart weren't just "poked" at. MegaZone and Kei had
>always been somewhat unstable to begin with, with Zoner probably
>having either undiagnosed or untreated depression and Kei being prone
>to making really bad snap judgments she would stick with out of pride.
>I imagine Genom recruited the very best sci-fi style psychiatrists to
>do things like spend decades slowly and carefully working on those,
>possibly using telepaths (there were SOME around at the time) or
>technological-telepathy equivalents to slowly and carefully shape
>their minds into ways that would encourage them to collapse like a
>Jenga tower when poked.

I doubt that telepaths were involved beyond the equivalent of psychic recon. As noted, there wouldn't be the need for any shaping when Largo had a complete map of who to push in what way to get the results he wanted. I'm not sure he'd have wanted to spend so much time and money on a plan that might fail if a single operative popped a blood vessel under the strain and gave the whole thing away.

>That's all just the tip of the iceberg. Combine that with your
>infiltration of the media and government organs of the United
>Galactica, and you actually don't really care what Joe Public thinks
>or doubts. You've removed the WDF's legal sanction and veneer of
>respectability among galactic elites and power brokers, which is
>enough to move against them and turn them into outlaws and pirates.

Yet another instance where Genom likely capitalized on negative opinions of the WDF, in this case from the elites and power brokers who felt they had little or no influence over galactic politics with the Wedge crew acting as galactic problem-solvers. I imagine it sort of like Dark Knight Rises, with Largo playing as Bane, offering the illusion of these men having power over him if they went along with the plan. Some wouldn't even need to be paid off, just told "Help me bring down the WDF and your world will enjoy a bigger role in the new order."

>It's worth noting that, galacticaly speaking, those members of the
>galactic intelligentsia who were ideologically sympathetic to the WDF
>and suspicious of hell of Genom DID doubt what had happened.
>Extensively. As the man once said, if you read the Exile you get the
>impression that "everybody and his DUCK believed in Gryphon." And as
>time went by and Genom made the miscalculation of forgetting to keep
>the pressure on as they prepared for Phase II: Buy Everything, that
>impression worked its way back into the general public as well.

Very likely the seeds of doubt in Genom's version of events was there on Day One, they just lacked the proper environment to flourish. As time went on and people got a good look at who Genom was when its counterweight was gone and Largo didn't need to keep the illusion up any longer, the popular opinion likely edged back in the WDF's favor.

>This is all speculation, of course.

Something that messageboards tend to thrive upon.

>Basically, in my head, Gotterdamerung was so epic in scope,
>conception, and execution that it makes the game Eidun Palpatine and
>Bill Clark (and Bill Clark's bosses) played with the Federation look
>like Babies First Galactic Conspiracy in comparison. It came at the
>WDF from a direction they weren't really expecting and fucked them up
>hard.
>
>It doesn't really work as a narrative otherwise.

Or they were just reading Largo's book: "Galactic Conquest For Dummies." Funny how it ends halfway through the chapter on going to war with the powers you haven't bought out yet...

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CdrMike, Overwatch Reject