(I spent too much time writing this for a thread in the CoH Forums to see it scroll off the board…)

Fun was knifed in the back by his old pal Xp. Was a time when Fun and Xp were inseperable buddies, but then Xp realized that it was he that the players really wanted to hang out with–that tons of players would do the most dreadfully boring stuff, even hang around logged in but afk, if only they could still be in tight with Xp. And Xp started thinking Fun really wasn’t pulling his weight, and resentment started to build.

The more he read the boards, the higher the resentment grew, after all there were all these posters claiming Xp WAS Fun, that Statesman was a horrible tyrant and fool for trying to force people to hang out with that loser, Fun. If Fun was all that, why would Statesman have to do anything to give him a hand, let alone try to arrange it so people couldn’t just chill with Xp?

Badges were the last straw. No Xp for badges, what was up with that? Sure, there were some things that Fun always did without Xp–the player’s first travel power, seeing a new Zone for the first time, but this wasn’t like that. This was something that Fun got States to do deliberately to exclude Xp. After that, things were never the same. Sure, they both could be found together some of the time, particularly in some of the low-level missions and Task Forces; after all, they were co-workers, they couldn’t avoid eachother entirely, but Xp knew who his real friends were, the groupies who practically worshipped him, and he did his best to spend all his time with them and screw Fun and the horse he rode in on.

He started locking himself in Portal Corp missions, where Fun had difficulty negotiating the Portal more than once or twice, and doing them over and over and over with his fanbois. He let himself go. Once he had a certain pride, he wouldn’t pal around with just anyone–people had to be willing to take certain risks to be part of his posse, but now, anything went. He’d sit around all day with people who were doing literally nothing, just breathing and being the right level to Bridge.

Fun and States worried about him, but that just irritated him further. He was the star of the show, he was the man it all revolved around. They were nothing without him! Didn’t all his adoring fans flood the boards with threats to quit whenever States made the slightest move to try to reconcile the two?

And that’s the story.