"Worth it."

Living in Solitude can be challenging on supply lines. Jita and Dodixie are rather far away. It's possible to make these runs in a blockade runner or a deep space transport. But this can be time consuming. Instead, savvy pilots who don't want to go through that hassle or spend 10+ billion on a jump freighter must make use of wormhole connections to chart safe courses to the hubs. Using wormhole connections also affords unique opportunities to drop in and content create on unsuspecting victims players eager to interact with others in EVE Online.

My friends in <WHBOO> and myself were making use of said connections for a fleet operation when I noticed that we were in Kador, in a stretch of space that was all 0.5 security and absolutely filled to the brim with Athanors and mining ships on DScan. I informed my comrades that I had to take care of something, and wished them well on their mission. I broke formation, activated my <SAFET> assets, and started hunting. Far off the beaten path, I knew these krabs would have soft shells and be sluggish to respond to threats.

I was tired, and should have already been in bed. My good friend also wanted to play Valheim with me. I was wondering if it would even be worth it to try to gank some random in Amarr space. Would it be worth it? Time would tell.

I considered burning back to Anckee to pick up a Cheetah to provide cloaky warpins, but decided that would take too much time. I decided to use my Enyo instead. This would prove to be a fortuitous decision. While the first few mining gangs I landed on grid with warped away, there were a few miners in particular who just happened to be AFK. My Enyo sat in the middle of a trio of miners from the "Please don't shoot at POO" (ticker [POOO0]) corporation.The trio consisted of a boosting Orca and two Retrievers. Their mining drones were out, orbing the vessels uselessly.

As I sat on grid with them, both Retrievers locked in case I needed to scram one of them and hold it on grid while the Catalysts landed, a few of the bystanding miners began to warp to the Athanor. The jig was up! But there was no movement from the Retrievers. I thought to myself: what a lucky break! But my hope began to waver when I realized that the Catalysts were being blown up by CONCORD, but neither of the Retrievers had not yet turned into wrecks. Because the Retrievers had the same first names, and were in the same ship types, the Catalysts had actually split their DPS between the two! Oh no! I'm gonna fail the gank!

But I noticed that both the Retrievers were in low structure, so I made a judgement call: I overheated my neutron blasters, loaded with sweet sweet Void S, and opened fire, finishing off the first and then the second barge. CONCORD appeared shortly after and liberated me from the confines of my frigate's hull.

A few Catalysts and an Enyo to kill 2 mining barges. Not the best trade, but not the worst. Until I checked my interactions:

Suddenly the trade felt a lot better. The pilot had a few choice things to say in Local:

Not the most colorful or juiciest of tears that I've harvested while suicide ganking, but it was about to get much, much better. I waited out my criminal timer, hoping to loot the single ORE Strip Miner that had dropped. Alas, a Venture had beaten me to it. But as I sat on grid something wonderful happened. A Gila locked me up and, without bothering to activate the killright or waiting for me to go suspect, opened fire. In my excitement and bewilderment I was only able to capture this screenshot:

His drones pretty much instantly vaporized my Ibis, so I was unable to whore on the mail. But I was able to return in a fresh Ibis after bookmarking the wreck, and got some juicy loot (the losses incured from the gank were completely covered). "OldGuyMonty", a 2021 character, had his own choice words and rationalizations to make in Local:

It was quickly becoming apparent that my decision to stay up late was becoming worth it. While I missed whoring on the kill (I'm always caught with my pants down when someone uses an expensive pirate faction cruiser to suicide gank my rookie ships), it was luckily recorded to ZKill:

Apparently it was "worth it" for "OldGuyMonty" to sacrifice an 800 million ISK Gila in order to suicide gank an empty Ibis, providing over 100mil worth of loot to "a red" in the process, and thereby paying for the ships that "the red" had used in the suicide gank. This is the 4D chess level of logic I've come to expect from carebears. All in all, it was a good day and I was happy I chose to sacrifice my Enyo to James 315 and Princess Aiko.

It was worth it.

Now, normally, this would be the end of the story. However, it's not. "Morpheus", the mining barge operator, decided to get up close and personal in my EVEMails. He had a few things to say. He wanted to tell me how he really felt:

Oof. I'm not sure what transgendered persons have to do with this, but I'd obviously stumbled upon some crazy...

It went on:

Apparently, bravely enforcing The Code in a self-sacrificing act of elite PvP makes you a "soy boy loser", but raging and spewing bigotry over dying in a video game is the height of stoic masculinity.

It went on:

I tried to explain to Morpheus that his ship losses were his own fault: he was AFK and/or not paying attention. EVE is a PvP game, after all. Players are free to blow eachother up in every part of space. In fact, I would argue that, based on these conditions, undocking is consent to PvP. If not explicit, than at the least implicit. Morpheus didn't want to listen. He blamed me for "preying" on 2 year old newbies and for PvPing him in a PvP game. He accused me of "deflecting" my responsibility. On the contrary! I was fulfilling my responsibility to enforce The Code and keep EVE great.

All in all, despite staying up late and being pretty sleepy as I write this, I have to say it was:

Worth it.