I don't understand the emphasis on mechanics over RP. The mechanics aid to give us guidelines and rules to play agreeably with, but RP is the GAME. If the game cannot give us a schism, why not create one ourselves? Didn't Jonsu offer to promote factions for a schism? If we continue to play as friends, then we can get all the good stuff we want the devs to do (while they are busy with more important work). Did Jonsu threaten to destroy the church, or did Justin? Either way, it was likely a bluff. We made an OOC agreements on how this would go. Jonsu may be a bitch, but Justin has been around a while. If he wasn't 'playing with friends' he would likely have been deleted by now.
Does everyone really dislike and distrust Stabbity that much? Or are their characters so butt-hurt by Jonsu that it has become OOC? Is there a better indication for "who seems like a player worth trusting" than all those damned trust medals?
I think it is obvious that Justin is a polarising player. As is obvious he has many Fun and Trust medals, yet there is definitely a large group of players that don't trust him.
In terms of mechanics trumping RP, so far as I know the rule exist for exactly issues like this. It simplifies things for those that need to make ruling since they can just refer to the mechanics and not have to try and access masses of RP's, many of which may no longer be accessible in order to determine if someone's actions run counter to established RP. Then try and decide did that player have access to the RP or would be aware of the systems etc.
It is not a rule that says you can't use RP to achieve things that the mechanics don't specifically support. It exists to allow disagreements to be resolved in those cases. As soon as you move into RP structures, you open the system to risk from people that will use the mechanics to upset it, as we have seen with the charter.
