I don't agree with the tone of this anon's response but it is strange that there was nobody available to make functional replacement posts (at this point the oof raffle is up but there is no way to send to it) and that it appears that no graphics are complete when that is a process that should've begun weeks ago.
It is possible to both have empathy for those involved and acknowledge that a better plan could be put into place to handle events like this in the future. I hope everything turns out alright for all involved.
I hope the people involved are alright in the end and that this is just a one-off incident. It's not a good look with an ember warning us here a month or so ago and with whatever the fuck happened last year though.
Ngl, I have to say the response by Pessi citing IRL issues kinda came off like what arcane dom was doing and I really hope this isn't something to be repeated as an excuse. IRL is something everyone has to deal with but a dom team is supposed to have multiple people behind it. There's also the entire flight to back them if necessary and drawing help from them (by you know, actually asking since people can't read minds) shouldn't be something that the dom team avoids.
It's very odd that even embers seem to be clueless as to what's going on.
hi, I'm one of the embers that came to warn everyone a few months back (at the end of Thundercrack, actually) about how I didn't have faith in the Dom Team to have stuff ready for this push and cited last year's problems.
The thing is, the majority of the team is fine. Most of the people had major issues with Duchess' handling of things, and if people remember the leaks of the Dom Issues thread in the Fire Flight Discord, the main problems outlined were:
- communication from the team to the flight - who can run events - lack of proper prep for the flight's push - wanting more pushes/more events
This may be outing myself slightly but I was one of the main vocal people in that thread trying to propose solutions, and a number of us very concerned people from last year decided to take on new roles to try and alleviate the issues we had with last year's push. I became an event runner, and Pessi was one of those people who also stepped up and joined the AA to try and help fix the issues.
I don't want to think that this is the case, but I had people warning me last year that the issue is more to do with a particular head of the team that wants to keep it so that they run things and not let the others deviate just slightly. It's most likely why the rest of the team were like "what do we do what do we do" instead of going to deviate and getting the thread up without the graphics so the attendants could actually do their jobs.
I honestly wished my gut instinct wasn't correct because it was warning me that this year's fest push would go up in flames (har har) spectacularly and I wasn't expecting this. Especially since I encouraged a lot of new people to help join the events and the raffle/public buy so that they felt involved and could help out.
Sometimes it feels like I've poured more into the community with what I've done than what the main lead has done over the course of the year alone and I don't think it's fair tbh.
honestly you should ice this person out. unless they have the whole dom/raffle bank or they're the owner of the discord or something they actually don't have a lot of power on their own. even if they have significant flight resources those can be fundraised for. you can just all make your own threads and spreadsheets yourself. you wouldn't even be starting from scratch if you had some current leads on the new dom team.
it's not a great time to start afresh considering the upcoming battle but i think people would really root for you if this happened, and you can crowd source knowledge. i used to be a dom lead and if this situation happened i would gladly reach out to offer advice and what bit of institutional knowledge from my flight i can pass on. i think a lot of other people would feel the same, and the water flight team doesn't seem like they'd be dicks about it or anything, so.
Fire seems like a tough flight to try to do dom in. You guys could be like earth, but Fire has had so many collapses and the blows never seem to stop. Idk how you sustain an organization in that, it would make sense if its just one person trying to keep the reigns and letting it fall apart around them. Still, I really hope its just that Duchess had something happen and ultimately shows up healthy
That's terrible to hear fire nonny, but I, an icicle you've never met, am proud of you and your fellow volunteers for trying to do the right thing.
Does Duchess control the flight's funds? From my limited perspective, if Duchess only has power over the dom team because of a title and some history, then it should be pretty straightforward to collectively go "no, we're not going to listen to you anymore, we don't need you" and take some independence back, right?
Duchess has all funds and all items. They use this to decide who does dim and who doesn't. When they were asked what happened to donated items that I donated I was told they were used... but we hadn't done anything in Dom in recent months. After I asked where, the question was ignored. Never answered. I left fire after. I know it was just good battle stones but still!
I mean, while I'm of the mind that donations are donations and really shouldn't be micromanaged that hard... It should be possible to track where they went.
Also... Uh, having a single dom organizer have everything seems like a horrible idea. What if Dutchess gets hacked? Or banned?
Fire already suffered a total wipe of their dom bank when their treasurer got banned for black market trading once.
To compare, in Light, we have our valuable items in one account, half the vault in one account, and half the vault in another account. And every single cent and every single item is traceable from donation to usage. Transparency is so important
So the entire bank ended up funneled to Duchess despite that being a massive no-no...? I don't know the full detail of whatever the fuck happened last year, but it seems bad enough that multiple users got essentially kicked. Was Duchess part of the old dom team that was part of the problem? Seems awfully sus to continue putting her in power if that's the case.
Unless I am mistaken all of the prizes we have listed on the OOF Raffle are locked up in Duchess account. I don't think any of the dom team has any of them at least not from what I've been led to think.
I hope Duchess is ultimately all right, but it also sounds like it's high time for Fire to cut their losses. Just, stop sending Duchess any more Dom items or funds. If she's a halfway decent person, she'll still give back items and funds/let you use up what she's holding before you dip into the new stores. If she flounces or otherwise refuses to give it back, that's solid proof that you'll *still* be better off in the long run.
It's a kind of Sunk Cost Fallacy. She has the upper hand because you fear the items/funds will be lost otherwise. Strictly speaking, the Cost is not Sunk yet (except for those seemingly lost items, and possibly funds (who's keeping track of them?)), but it keeps the cycle going of her getting items/funds, that you don't want to lose, etc. She may not be doing it for nefarious reasons, but that's no reason to keep going. It's clearly not doing anything good for Fire.
PLEASE embers start your own bank and stop sending things to Duchess. It's gonna be rough starting over with no funds but you can do it. We believe in you. I'm sure even OOFers will send their support, I know I will. NOTN is just a few months away and it will help fill your coffers too.
Love how everyone is jumping straight to dom mutiny without knowing the other half of the story. Not an ember, but I will agree that it does seem like Fire needs some reorganization. However, it's super easy to tell another flight what they need to do dom-wise, but a lot harder to implement than you think. I'm not sure how many of you have been on a dom team, but the dom culture in each flight is different. Sometimes it is very hard to find capable committed volunteers to run things. People often volunteer and then disappear when they realize how much work they actually have to put into running things. The volunteers that do stick need to be team players and get along with the rest of the members of the team. Which doesn't always happen. And it's a whole other thing to find trustworthy people to hold dom banks and valuable items. Add to that that Fire has lost their entire dom bank before, and I would guess that it's a little difficult for the dom lead to trust new people. (To be clear, I'm not saying that Fire doesn't need new leadership, I'm just saying that sometimes there's a lot more to it than you think.)
Except Duchess claims IRL instances for everything she misses out on and she has missed out on a lot. She'll come back mid-week or a week or two later and claim some ailment. I *left* Fire because of that behavior. It will be some illness or accident that you can't call her out on because then it makes you look bad but it is ALWAYS something.
Didn't give overnight funds to someone and so people used personal funds instead of dom funds? 'I had to take care of my pet'
Didn't give out prizes or make a peep on a dom thread after a week? 'The stress of the dom push made me sick, I had to go to the hospital for ulcers'
It is every time and fire peeps just refused to listen. So there will be another excuse, people will rally behind her and send her gifts to hope she gets better and fire will move on with this train wreck. Just saying to all the other embers? It's completely different in other flights. Good luck.
It just sounds like she shouldn't be in Fire's dom team if she's running into so many issues that actively prevents her from doing her fucking job. Why are some embers enabling this? What exactly is she providing to the flight, other than her holding on to most if not all of the dom bank, that folks are letting her stay in power? Seems like it's better in the long run to just cut their losses and kick her out. Hopefully this time embers will learn NOT to put their entire bank on one person.
So I've been in the talks with the AA and somehow they're saying that Duchess has never done these things. Which is complete bullshit because there's proof out there that she's done this. So I'll show them myself if I have to.
So folks, give me evidence, while I can trawl through the Fire-side of things. Apparently, because they want proof these things happened, they're more inclined to believe this has only happened once. You know, the whole disappearing act.
NAYRT that's totally fair but Duchess preventing positive change from occurring and otherwise hindering Fire Dom from improving has been a known problem for years. of course embers may not have the werewithal to mutiny which i obviously get but the alternative is the current situation proceeding unchanged. Fire has artists (their foddart offerings are impressive) and attendants, as well as new orgs like Pessi who want to change things and are chafing at the bit. there's a lot of potential for improvement.
i really care about the dom scene on FR and i legit feel for all the embers who love their flight and community but whose experience is not as good as it could be due to the actions of a single or small group of people. it's not fair, and it's also a bummer for the other flights because having another competitive team in the dom space would be great for everyone. we're stuck with 11 flights so if some of them aren't dom oriented there's fewer good matches for battles and fewer new ideas being generated.
Fire is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They might need to start over fresh and I am sure people will support them. Look at what embers are doing! Look at the 50/50 for example. Those prizes below the prize pot are amazing. I just really hope that host does not give generated funds to duchess but instead to pessi.
I am going to bet that duchess comes back end of the week and says I am so sorry guys I had a medical/environmental/personal emergency pop up and couldn't contact anyone to let them know what was up. Then write this whole woe is me thing again and make people feel so bad for doubting her. People will send her items out of guilt for thinking ppoorly.
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Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-21 04:51 pm (UTC)(link)It is possible to both have empathy for those involved and acknowledge that a better plan could be put into place to handle events like this in the future. I hope everything turns out alright for all involved.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-21 07:38 pm (UTC)(link)I hope the people involved are alright in the end and that this is just a one-off incident. It's not a good look with an ember warning us here a month or so ago and with whatever the fuck happened last year though.
Ngl, I have to say the response by Pessi citing IRL issues kinda came off like what arcane dom was doing and I really hope this isn't something to be repeated as an excuse. IRL is something everyone has to deal with but a dom team is supposed to have multiple people behind it. There's also the entire flight to back them if necessary and drawing help from them (by you know, actually asking since people can't read minds) shouldn't be something that the dom team avoids.
It's very odd that even embers seem to be clueless as to what's going on.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 02:25 am (UTC)(link)The thing is, the majority of the team is fine. Most of the people had major issues with Duchess' handling of things, and if people remember the leaks of the Dom Issues thread in the Fire Flight Discord, the main problems outlined were:
- communication from the team to the flight
- who can run events
- lack of proper prep for the flight's push
- wanting more pushes/more events
This may be outing myself slightly but I was one of the main vocal people in that thread trying to propose solutions, and a number of us very concerned people from last year decided to take on new roles to try and alleviate the issues we had with last year's push. I became an event runner, and Pessi was one of those people who also stepped up and joined the AA to try and help fix the issues.
I don't want to think that this is the case, but I had people warning me last year that the issue is more to do with a particular head of the team that wants to keep it so that they run things and not let the others deviate just slightly. It's most likely why the rest of the team were like "what do we do what do we do" instead of going to deviate and getting the thread up without the graphics so the attendants could actually do their jobs.
I honestly wished my gut instinct wasn't correct because it was warning me that this year's fest push would go up in flames (har har) spectacularly and I wasn't expecting this. Especially since I encouraged a lot of new people to help join the events and the raffle/public buy so that they felt involved and could help out.
Sometimes it feels like I've poured more into the community with what I've done than what the main lead has done over the course of the year alone and I don't think it's fair tbh.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 02:54 am (UTC)(link)honestly you should ice this person out. unless they have the whole dom/raffle bank or they're the owner of the discord or something they actually don't have a lot of power on their own. even if they have significant flight resources those can be fundraised for. you can just all make your own threads and spreadsheets yourself. you wouldn't even be starting from scratch if you had some current leads on the new dom team.
it's not a great time to start afresh considering the upcoming battle but i think people would really root for you if this happened, and you can crowd source knowledge. i used to be a dom lead and if this situation happened i would gladly reach out to offer advice and what bit of institutional knowledge from my flight i can pass on. i think a lot of other people would feel the same, and the water flight team doesn't seem like they'd be dicks about it or anything, so.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 03:22 am (UTC)(link)Fire seems like a tough flight to try to do dom in. You guys could be like earth, but Fire has had so many collapses and the blows never seem to stop. Idk how you sustain an organization in that, it would make sense if its just one person trying to keep the reigns and letting it fall apart around them. Still, I really hope its just that Duchess had something happen and ultimately shows up healthy
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 03:30 am (UTC)(link)Does Duchess control the flight's funds? From my limited perspective, if Duchess only has power over the dom team because of a title and some history, then it should be pretty straightforward to collectively go "no, we're not going to listen to you anymore, we don't need you" and take some independence back, right?
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 03:42 am (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 03:47 am (UTC)(link)Also... Uh, having a single dom organizer have everything seems like a horrible idea. What if Dutchess gets hacked? Or banned?
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 04:00 am (UTC)(link)Fire already suffered a total wipe of their dom bank when their treasurer got banned for black market trading once.
To compare, in Light, we have our valuable items in one account, half the vault in one account, and half the vault in another account. And every single cent and every single item is traceable from donation to usage. Transparency is so important
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 04:23 am (UTC)(link)Why the fuck did Fire think it's a good idea to have their whole dom bank on one person again after that?
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 07:36 pm (UTC)(link)We had the bank spread between multiple accounts, but those users stepped down from Fire Dom after last year's Flameforgers
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 07:49 pm (UTC)(link)Makes sense to me.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 20:34 (UTC) - ExpandRe: FF2023
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 04:30 am (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 07:46 am (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 09:04 am (UTC)(link)I hope Duchess is ultimately all right, but it also sounds like it's high time for Fire to cut their losses. Just, stop sending Duchess any more Dom items or funds. If she's a halfway decent person, she'll still give back items and funds/let you use up what she's holding before you dip into the new stores. If she flounces or otherwise refuses to give it back, that's solid proof that you'll *still* be better off in the long run.
It's a kind of Sunk Cost Fallacy. She has the upper hand because you fear the items/funds will be lost otherwise. Strictly speaking, the Cost is not Sunk yet (except for those seemingly lost items, and possibly funds (who's keeping track of them?)), but it keeps the cycle going of her getting items/funds, that you don't want to lose, etc. She may not be doing it for nefarious reasons, but that's no reason to keep going. It's clearly not doing anything good for Fire.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)Love how everyone is jumping straight to dom mutiny without knowing the other half of the story. Not an ember, but I will agree that it does seem like Fire needs some reorganization. However, it's super easy to tell another flight what they need to do dom-wise, but a lot harder to implement than you think. I'm not sure how many of you have been on a dom team, but the dom culture in each flight is different. Sometimes it is very hard to find capable committed volunteers to run things. People often volunteer and then disappear when they realize how much work they actually have to put into running things. The volunteers that do stick need to be team players and get along with the rest of the members of the team. Which doesn't always happen. And it's a whole other thing to find trustworthy people to hold dom banks and valuable items. Add to that that Fire has lost their entire dom bank before, and I would guess that it's a little difficult for the dom lead to trust new people. (To be clear, I'm not saying that Fire doesn't need new leadership, I'm just saying that sometimes there's a lot more to it than you think.)
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 01:30 pm (UTC)(link)I can only go by what's been said. If it isn't what it sounds like, I assume the people involved know and can shrug off any useless suggestions.
It seems likely that Duchess's absence right now is for RL reasons and not deliberate, and hopefully she's okay.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 02:53 pm (UTC)(link)Didn't give overnight funds to someone and so people used personal funds instead of dom funds?
'I had to take care of my pet'
Didn't give out prizes or make a peep on a dom thread after a week?
'The stress of the dom push made me sick, I had to go to the hospital for ulcers'
It is every time and fire peeps just refused to listen. So there will be another excuse, people will rally behind her and send her gifts to hope she gets better and fire will move on with this train wreck. Just saying to all the other embers? It's completely different in other flights. Good luck.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 18:31 (UTC) - ExpandRe: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-27 05:14 am (UTC)(link)So folks, give me evidence, while I can trawl through the Fire-side of things. Apparently, because they want proof these things happened, they're more inclined to believe this has only happened once. You know, the whole disappearing act.
Re: FF2023
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 03:56 pm (UTC)(link)i really care about the dom scene on FR and i legit feel for all the embers who love their flight and community but whose experience is not as good as it could be due to the actions of a single or small group of people. it's not fair, and it's also a bummer for the other flights because having another competitive team in the dom space would be great for everyone. we're stuck with 11 flights so if some of them aren't dom oriented there's fewer good matches for battles and fewer new ideas being generated.
Re: FF2023
(Anonymous) 2023-08-22 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)I am going to bet that duchess comes back end of the week and says I am so sorry guys I had a medical/environmental/personal emergency pop up and couldn't contact anyone to let them know what was up. Then write this whole woe is me thing again and make people feel so bad for doubting her. People will send her items out of guilt for thinking ppoorly.
Re: FF2023
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