I told the Mardonian story from their perspective... (Patreon)

Note: This post contains spoilers for my video "When my viewers run virtual democracy"

As President Jash of Julia issued a statement in an attempt to contain the diplomatic fallout from the Petition 81 crisis, she said something that stuck with me:

This is a sad day, and shows how fragile international relationships are - and the ongoing responsibility you have when you represent Julia, even formerly.

When I created my sequel documentary to the original virtual democracies video, I wanted to highlight just how true those words were by using Julia's relations with Mardonia as a case study.

More specifically, I wanted to highlight how "Julia's" actions — which they (and I) saw as incidents perpetrated by a few individuals — could be negatively perceived by the subject of those incidents (namely, those who were in Mardonia).

Instead, my video highlighted a truism of a different part of her statement:

It only takes 5 minutes of bad behaviour, or bad press, to ruin weeks of planning and diplomacy

Because in only a few hours after hitting the publish button, Julia had practically gone up in flames, with player after player denouncing me for making an offensive one-sided hit piece against the democracy they had poured their heart and soul into. Genuine grief, anger, and distress were expressed over a video I, too, had poured my heart and soul into — one that I intended to be a light-hearted send-off before everyone broke off for the Christmas holidays.

Instead, as it turned out, the video had become the very example of how "5 minutes of bad press" could've ended up ruining weeks of planning and diplomacy on my end.

It didn't — we talked it through. But it could've nearly done.

Juxtaposition.

Very early on in the creation of my video, I knew I wanted to use juxtaposition to compare and contrast the stories I was going to tell.

The story of SimDemocracy flinging open the gates — welcoming newcomers with open arms — conjured up dreamy images of hopeful arrivals on boats being greeted by the Statue of Liberty. An embodiment of the very words etched inside of it: "Give me your tired, your poor, [y]our huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Accordingly, I spent a good chunk of the video on a contrasting story — WolvHaven's — of a Minecraft server gripped by an almost hysterical fear of immigrants. A story that involved years of political turmoil as politicians frantically attempted to tighten their already strict immigration laws. It was a story of what could've been; of what SimDemocracy could've done.

When I interviewed Julians about the story of how their constitution was drafted, a thought came to my mind, "Aw, that's cute." One of the most common questions I received for my virtual democracies video was whether there were any success stories. Julia, unifying after a constitution-drafting exercise (albeit with a few hiccups along the way), felt like a fairy tale example of that.

But this cute story of Julia's founding and the writing of its constitution was a story about Julians, told by Julians. And it goes without saying — not everyone had this dreamy view of Julia. One group of people that definitely didn't was the Mardonians, who saw Julia in a very different light.

To the Mardonians, Julia was not a Discord server where everyone got metaphorical puppies and ice cream, but an imperialist juggernaut hellbent on achieving simgov domination. This fear of the "Juliasphere" was expressed not just on the Mardonian server, but on Huriya and Owlia too.

Mardonia's story, then, was a compelling one to juxtapose with Julia's story. Not only because of how it flipped the script by reversing how Julia was portrayed, but also because it was a story of car crash after car crash — of how a "state" (that didn't exist prior to the creation of my first documentary) managed to be born, engulfed in flames, and then die before I'd even finished creating my second video.

Julia was a story of success; Mardonia definitely wasn't.

Interpretation.

When I was interviewing both Julians and Mardonians for their side of the story, what quickly became apparent was that their narratives weren't reconcilable. While Julian and Mardonian sources could mostly corroborate the events that happened (e.g., the passage of Referendum 15), there was virtually no agreement on how these events should be interpreted.

Based on my interviews with Julian players and a review of primary sources (e.g., chatlogs from various Discord servers), their interpretations could be broadly summarised as follows:

Julia's "attempts" to annex Mardonia weren't serious. Referendum 4 and Referendum 15 weren't serious proposals (or, in Referendum 15's case, law) to annex Mardonia. As multiple sources have pointed out, it wouldn't have been practically possible for Julia to annex Mardonia anyway because they had no control (e.g., admin permissions) over its Discord server to effect its annexation. Likewise, calls to "nuke Mardonia" were also non-serious.

Many of the incidents that Mardonians cited weren't actions taken by "Julia" as a whole, but the actions of a few of its individuals. Julians who were signing up for Mardonian citizenship (and then subsequently signing a petition to annex Mardonia into Julia) were players who acted on their own accord. Julians who were making anti-Mardonian posts, such as memes denying its statehood (or memes to nuke it), weren't state-sponsored operatives, but instead people acting on their own.

The incidents related to Petition 81 were a particularly illustrative example of this. Rac, the proposer of Petition 81, intended for the bill to ban the posting of links to Discord servers that he perceived weren't enforcing Discord's Community Guidelines well, specifically those related to CSAM and sexual content. Rac said he had no intention to use the bill as a way to further Julia's supposed "imperialist" ambitions and, in fact, hadn't even considered the implications the bill would have on foreign simgov servers when he drafted it. The petition itself was deeply unpopular with Julia's populace and voted down (not to mention, in the Chief Justice's opinion, unconstitutional).

Toast's subsequent remarks to The PolSim Times, calling Mardonia a "colony," weren't the state of "Julia" calling it a "colony" — it was a single guy speaking out of line, calling it a colony. A guy who had no actual position of authority within Julia's government other than being its Discord server owner. These comments weren't well received in Julia either, and as mentioned previously, led to the Minister of the Registrar resigning in protest, calling for his impeachment.

Julia's foreign relations with Mardonia, then, were derailed by these incidents with genuinely benign explanations. This was a source of frustration for certain government officials, such as Jash and Jacobs, who genuinely tried to push for better foreign relations. The ability of citizens to submit their own initiatives, coupled with the misconduct of a few individuals, led Julia to become a loose cannon in the context of international relations — and, as highlighted at the very beginning of the piece with Jash's quote, they were very aware of it.

More broadly, fears of the "Juliasphere" and Julian imperialism were completely unfounded. The "evidence" that Julia's detractors had (e.g., the aforementioned incidents) fell apart once you examined them a bit closer.

Indeed, there is a good body of evidence to support the contrary proposition — that Julia was so afraid and anxious of being perceived as some sort of neocolonial power that it actively took steps to dilute its own soft power. A good example of this, in my opinion, was Julia's interactions with the Interserver Union (ISU) — another Discord UN-style body that Julia and some other servers were a part of. In May 2025, Julian representative and ISU Assembly Speaker 4EyedJay made an appeal to ISU members to recruit other states to "eliminate the Julian supermajority" in its Assembly. In that same month, 4EyedJay embarked on a "last ditch effort" to recruit non-Julians for the Inteserver Games Executive Committee to prevent the Olympic-style games from being run purely by a committee of Julians.

As an external observer, I'm convinced by their points — I think they're credible and backed with evidence.

But Mardonian sources (including what primary evidence I could gather — remember, Mardonia's Discord server was nuked several times) painted a very different picture. One where the "jokes" weren't seen as jokes at all. One where the incidents involving a couple of individuals were seen as a concerted, coordinated, and well-planned attack. One where the repetition of these flare-ups was seen as evidence of Julia's imperialist ambitions.

At least one of my Julian sources dismissed these views as ones held in bad faith — I disagree. From the perspective of an outside observer, I'm convinced that Mardonia was truly gripped by a downward spiral of siege mentality, paranoia, and hysteria — it wasn't just a hoax to make Julia look bad.

So how do you cover a story like this? One way I could've done it would be to do it from a "neutral" or "objective" perspective, one where I outline, "On the one hand, the Julians think this; on the other, the Mardonians think this."

But this would've made the story, in my opinion, basically untellable when you take into account the limited time I had to cover it. With Mardonians and Julians disputing every event of their chequered timeline, telling the story like this would've basically transformed my video into a PowerPoint presentation — every scene being littered with tables upon tables comparing the merits of both sides of the story. And even then, I'd have to add asterisks to every single point, because remember, "Mardonians" and "Julians" aren't a monolith. Julians and Mardonians disagree amongst themselves about how certain events should be interpreted.

And while I'm sure some of you would have the patience to sit through a video like that, I wouldn't have the patience to make a video like that.

Telling the story from a genericised Mardonian perspective was — in my mind — an obvious editorial decision to make. Firstly, it fit neatly into the theming of juxtaposition that I mentioned earlier. Secondly, it gave me the creative liberty to tell you a story — not just about how the Mardonians felt, but to put you in their shoes.

Because, as a reminder, we're talking Discord servers here. Specifically, multiple Discord servers squabbling over — in the grand scheme of things in our universe — utterly pointless and petty drama. For those involved in it, it's easy to forget the question, "Why should anyone, outside of our immediate circle, even care about this?"

The approach I took was to use pathos — an appeal to emotion. To make heavy use of allusions — references that people with no knowledge of simgovs (or even Discord in general) could use to put themselves in the shoes of someone who was part of the story.

After all, arguments between Discord servers don't literally involve transport planes, paratroopers, falling pieces of paper, radio towers, and summary executions. It's a depiction that draws on allusions to portray how those events would've felt like to those actually experiencing them, not a literal depiction of what actually happened.

This heavy use of allusions (along with other narrative devices), I hoped, would allow an external viewer to feel — at least just a little — the same paranoia of potentially being subsumed by a larger state. To make them feel the same "snap," blinding rage over a single news article. To make them feel the same dismay of living in a failed state that was going through its "Century of Humiliation" or Scramble for Africa.

That was my proposition for why an external observer should care.

Naively, in retrospect, I thought that perhaps the video could help the Julians themselves understand how the same events that everyone agreed had happened were perceived by Mardonians. Evidently, that wasn't immediately the case.

Critical lens.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: You should always watch my videos, like with any video essayist, with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Why? Firstly, we're not the sole arbiters of truth — we can be wrong, we can misunderstand, we can misspeak. Secondly, reality is complicated — there is always more to a story than meets the eye.

Trying to tell the story of Mardonia in 20 minutes is like trying to tell the story of the Troubles in 20 minutes. I can give my best attempt at it, but I'm going to leave a lot of things unsaid and a lot of things simplified — details that may otherwise have made one side argument's stronger or weaker.

I may also tell a few lies.

To give one example in a different part of the video, I claimed that WolvHaven debated the Permanent Residency Bill this many times:

That was a lie. The Permanent Residency Act was actually only debated thrice before it became law in March 2018.

So why did I lie?

Because the Permanent Residency Act 2018 wasn't actually put into force. Under section 6, the Permanent Residency Act stated:

Implementation

a. This act will only go into effect once the following are met:

i. Approval from the President,

ii. Approval from the incumbent Prime Minister, and

iii. Server permissions updated according to the act details.

Every single Prime Minister, after the passage of the Permanent Residency Act, chose not to give their approval under section 6(a)(ii). Why?

Well, one massive reason was that the Act was still deeply controversial — its opponents (be it ordinary citizens, MPs, and cabinet officials) still thought the Act went too far. I could hazard a guess that no Prime Minister wanted to take the political risk of putting the law into effect and risk backlash if something went horribly wrong with its implementation.

So, the government, having gone through the process of passing the Permanent Residency Act, opted to reopen the question by proposing the Permanent Residency Referendum Bill — to ask the entire server whether they wanted it to go into effect and what parts they wanted. It was the referendum bill that went through legislative purgatory, as MPs were effectively invited to re-debate the whole thing again.

I could've mentioned this in the video, but I elected not to because every minute of video I add quite literally adds another hour of work (if not more). My omitting this fact does nothing to stop me from conveying the more general message that permanent residency was debated to death by WolvHaven MPs.

All of this is to say that my videos — like with any other documentary for any other topic — shouldn't be relied on to be the gospel of truth (because it definitely isn't). You should view my videos with a critical lens, because more importantly, I'll be writing my scripts under the assumption that you'll be doing that. I'd like to think (you may say, naively) that my audience is capable of doing that.

Thus, when I repeatedly indicate that the chapter was told from a subjective Mardonian perspective (some examples below), there's an expectation that a viewer should ask questions about the narrative they're being told:

Julia’s repeated attempts to annex the Mardonian server had put local officials in a tailspin, who had begun to fear the worst [...]

In particular, some within the region were worried that the server was susceptible to divide and rule—a tactic where foreign or domestic powers would exacerbate divisions between the Craelians and the Haevians in an attempt to split Mardonia into two [...]

The Julian mainland, Mardonian leaders feared, had already made its move [...]

The Mardonian people had not forgotten the many attempts Julia made to annex it. The Mardonian people had not forgotten the international isolation it received as Julia threw its diplomatic weight around.

The Mardonian people had not forgotten the coup of April 2025, when its then-President, Catieac, took over the server and proclaimed himself King, banning scores of political opponents protesting his regime [...]

The Mardonian people were sick and tired of having their server be treated as nothing more than Julia’s doormat—a plaything for the Julian state to make and break at will.

For the Mardonian nationalists, it felt like a dream come true [...]

Sowing doubt.

That said, I still obviously had a concern that some of my viewers could potentially accept the Mardonian narrative at face value. So I had to ask myself: how do I prompt the viewer to ask questions about the story they're being told?

In hindsight, I could've added massive red bold text reading "THIS IS THE STORY TOLD FROM THE MARDONIAN PERSPECTIVE! THIS IS HEAVILY DISPUTED BY JULIANS!! DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU'RE TOLD AND QUESTION EVERYTHING SHEEPLE!!!"

And perhaps you may have thought I should've done that. Rightly or wrongly (and after talking a bit with aggrieved Julians, I'm admittedly doubting whether I made the right call), I opted to prompt these potential questions in a less crass way instead.

I could be here all day dissecting every scene of that chapter (and my thought process behind them), but because I want to actually enjoy my Christmas break (I've already spent 1.5 days just writing this article), I'll give two examples, starting with a shorter one:

In one part of the chapter, I described how some in Mardonia feared they could be split using divide and rule, where outside powers would try to exacerbate divisions between the Craelians and the Haevians to split Mardonia into two. This fear turned out to be well-founded, as revealed at the end of the chapter.

One way I elected to show how that fear manifested (attempted suppression, e.g., the Mardonian Integrity and Treason Act) was the use of the above scene, depicting the execution of a Craelian by Mardonian forces, next to what were implied to be executed Julians.

Now, obviously, this didn't literally happen — Mardonians didn't literally shoot Craelians and Julians (remember, we're talking about a Discord server here) — so this was a metaphorical depiction of what happened. The scene itself was inspired by two paintings I had in mind: The Execution of Lady Jane Grey and The Third of May 1808.

The white glow of the Craelian was no accident — I wanted to invoke this almost religious imagery in the minds of the viewer (which, again, would also help reinforce the fact that the depiction was a metaphor).

Shown this, my hope was that viewers would ask at least some questions (even if fleetingly). A basic question, perhaps asked by younger viewers, would simply be, "Wait, were the Mardonians the bad guys, or the good guys?" A more nuanced question, perhaps, would be whether such a suppressive approach risked creating martyrs and weakening the unionist cause.

A far more important series of scenes — and my second example — was where I went through, rapid-fire, a list of Julian grievances about Mardonia, namely regarding the election of a fascist, the banning of Julians without charge or trial, and the support of a foreign coup d'état.

This was meant to be the dramatic reveal moment — the moment where it's revealed that I hadn't told you the full story. This was where I expected viewers to question: "Wait, hold up — What? This seems like extremely important context to what just happened that I'm only just learning now."

But I don't stop there, because then I bring out the receipts of Mardonians themselves acknowledging their serious problem of being a "prison colony" and "second stop for exiled politicians":

This is where I wanted to sow doubts in the viewer's mind. If the viewer, up until this point, had sympathies for Mardonia, I wanted them to ask whether that sympathy was perhaps misplaced. Was Mardonia really the poor, helpless victim it was claiming to be? Or was it also a perpetrator of grievances?

The fact that I'm pulling up quotes from Mardonians themselves was intentional — it lends credibility to Julia's grievances and should make viewers question whether they had a point.

But to hammer these doubts home, I do it again — doing an almost identical rapid-fire grievances section for SimDemocracy. It's not a coincidence that the allegations those members made were similar in spirit to the ones made by Julian members.

If the viewer was questioning whether the international indifference towards Mardonia's pleas was perhaps Julia forcefully overpowering Mardonia's narrative, they now have to ask themselves — but why do others claim the same thing? Why isn't it just Julia who has these extremely serious grievances with Mardonia? Are the Mardonians, really, the victims I should be rooting out for in this story?

Conclusion.

In hindsight, Julia's reaction towards the video should've obvious — I was telling a story that involved them from a perspective they vehemently disagreed with. A perspective that, while I myself disagreed with, I nevertheless believed was valid, because my opinion was formed (1) with the benefit of hindsight, (2) with a plethora of sources that Mardonians back then wouldn't have had access to, and (3) with the opinion that Julians were, in fact, acting in good faith (which they're more than free to disagree with).

As I mentioned before, I'm not (and can't) be the arbiter of truth. With history, there's bound to be differing perspectives on the same events, and I can't exactly be the one to tell Mardonians that their Century of Humiliation-style narrative of national tragedy and subjugation was objectively wrong.

Where I fell short, however, and will readily admit, was that I didn't spend enough time presenting Julia's side of the story.

I am of the strong belief that no one is entitled for me to make a video about them or what they say. Accordingly, I reserve the right to not include anything that someone says during interviews. After all, I could equally just shut my YouTube channel and never make YouTube videos again. This is, in my view, a key pillar of editorial independence, and I'm not going to compromise on it.

However, this is offset by a basic principle of journalism — that the subjects of stories have a right to respond to the main claims made against them. That's not to say I have to necessarily provide equal coverage — I'm entitled to cover one side's telling more than another (because I, equally, have no obligation to be "neutral" or "objective"). But I do have to provide a fair minimum.

I admittedly tunnel-visioned so hard into trying to understand and subsequently share the Mardonian perspective that I didn't give the Julians a proper and fair chance to defend their case. There was nothing, for instance, that stopped me from adding text at the end of the chapter that gave a summary of Julia's viewpoint (which I did at the beginning of this article) — it wouldn't have broken the narrative flow, it wouldn't have been irrelevant, and all it would have done was give further, crucial context to the viewer.

And it is for that reason that I apologise to Julia and write this open article as a way to set the record straight.

[This is the end of the post. Below is a comment section for patrons.]