the-systematizing-instinct posted this:

Recent events have me thinking about Shelley Tate.

Shelley Tate, codenamed Pell Mell, is an esper who worked the 2030 confluence under the direction of Dungeoneers Without Borders.

Tate was and is almost certainly involved in organized crime.  At the time of the confluence she was wanted for questioning in connection with a protection racket.  Prior to that she was found not guilty of distributing controlled substances to minors in a trial marked by multiple credible, underinvestigated allegations of jury intimidation.  During the confluence she made a social media post implying she was connected with the hospitalization of Colleen Minor.  Multiple agencies have declined to work with Tate citing these allegations.  This is not a misguided person who made mistakes in her youth; this is a proud, even smug career criminal who bragged about her crimes with a thin veneer of plausible deniability during the time she was running dungeons.

Dungeoneers Without Borders claims not to have been aware of this, but Tate operated under her legal name and registered codename while working with them, and it is simply not credible that no one in the organization was aware of the highly publicized legal issues surrounding her at the time.  They chose nonetheless to deploy Tate or enable her deployment to multiple dungeons in countries like Indonesia, including Vector Grid (whose core she destroyed) and the now-infamous 2025.8.11.09099 (whose core I and many others do not believe Lackadaisical could have located without Tate's assistance).  Tate saved lives and by all accounts behaved quite professionally while doing so.  I'm not interested in debating whether this absolves her of her crimes, or what it says about her character, nor in tallying up lives saved versus harm done in expectation; but Tate was a resource which Dungeoneers Without Borders successfully deployed.  Tate acting alone could not have coordinated with Lackadaisical well enough to locate 09099's core, and any other esper organization would not have been able or willing to deploy her at all.  Because of Dungeoneers Without Borders' policy, people are alive now who would otherwise be dead, and Vector Grid no longer exists.

It was not a photogenic choice, or one that would play well with commentators, but it was a choice that saved many, many lives.

#discourse