Hi, I'm that previous ember anon that warned y'all that this year's ff push was giving me a bad gut feeling that it'd blow up and i did see some people come to support.
I just want to be very very clear about this.
there was a plan by a few users to actually, yknow, make a new dom team. for years, actually. every time someone says "oh Duchess should step down and let new people lead" I can't help but have to laugh because how many times has that been said only for wider response by the community is to...keep letting this happen instead of sticking to your guns and standing by these very people when we actually go to talk about it.
Admittedly, this annoys me, because I have seen people be wary of Fire's reputation within our flight because of the fiasco upon fiasco that keeps happening. Especially when that impacts the support we get from OOF. We need OOF support to be able to pull this off and we need to ensure that we have that support.
You guys did it with Arcane and the old Celestial Senate dom team, and you all supported the other flights with the same energy when they needed to push out bad actors in their leadership. I think we genuinely need OOF support, especially from other Dom Teams, to put pressure on Duchess to either give up the reigns or at least step back and let new blood lead. The rest of the AA? Are actually sweet. They're just as frustrated as the Embers are, and as you guys are, that these issues keep happening, based on the convos I've had with them.
It's not the team making the decisions.
It's Duchess.
And if the flights altogether want the best for Fire, we need your support in actually making a change of guard with Duchess happen. You guys need to put pressure and a spotlight on this. If you all knew about these issues being a result of Duchess' leadership for years, then this is the call of action you need.
The real reason we haven't done a 'mutiny' like the lore of our Flight? Because we can't tell if OOF is going to actually support this new team. Embers would need to take some time readjusting. But the main bulk of support we need is from the outside, because without enough OOF support, it'll fail and we become more disorganised. And then the same issues will continue to crop up again and we're back at square one.
I realise that this could be a bit of a hot take and turn some people off, but at the end of the day, if you want something done you gotta push for the change to make it happen. If the other flights want Fire to make a change like what's being proposed, then you guys gotta help make that happen.
I'm all for it myself, but I don't know how I'd be able to spread the message outside of drama communities without violating FR's callout rules. I wasn't around for the other events you mentioned, how did they happen?
To be fair, a lot of the things I'm referring to have happened over the years, and I've been around since Dec '14, so there was a lot of dom drama that's happened over the last couple of years. I think a few anons will remember. I vividly remember the Celestial Senate mayhem, the back and forth with a certain former Lightning dom team member, there's been enough people across the flights who just didn't want to let go and had to be basically pressured by both in-flight members and out of flight support being redirected elsewhere if things weren't changing.
In regards to getting support out there, when the time comes and we're ready, one of us may deanon and you can send your support there. Right now a few of us don't want to jeapordise the push further than we need to atm.
As someone who also been around since '14 and knows those events that happened.
I'm not sure why you saying that you need oof support to start the internal changes, arcanes change started all within the flight, not out of it. Oof members only hindered and harassed the people who took no part in the CS and did not much good. As for the lightning thing. Its very easy to see that the user you referred to is still in play and a member of the team, granted more silent now a days but still they are around. With the backlash, yes there was some support oof but the main things all happened shockingly in flight.
Fire also needs to get it together and actually do something, oof can not solve this for you. You as a flight need to do something about duchess, once everyone sees that. The support for the new team will come. There are a lot of members all over who will gladly help but only if it is seen and proven that she is not to touch fires Dom team or control anything anymore.
But again, it starts and needs to be held in flight.
NAYRT I was not around for the Celestial Senate debacle so I don't know what OOF support or lack of support looks like in this context. If you are willing to elaborate on this and what specific actions OOFers can take to help, I will de-anon myself to you by messaging Pessi and asking them to put me in contact with you. I am currently deeply involved and invested in dom and would love to help improve the overall dom scene.
As a not-intensely-involved-these-days OOF person, the main thing you'd need to do to get my attention and support (and, I'd imagine, that of the many users in a similar boat to mine) would be to have recognition on the Dom Watch thread. I don't know exactly how the people running that (looks like Sadistic and October, currently) vet who is and is not allowed to submit push announcements, links, etc, but aside from occasionally browsing ARR, there's no way I'd have a clue about any Fire dom efforts that weren't highlighted there. So reaching out to them might be a way to start, if at present they'd only accept submissions from the 'official' dom team.
Sadistic and October are lovely folk but they're unlikely to want to get involved in this mess. Not their circus, not their monkeys and so on. They "vet" Dom teams by knowing who the old guard of the dom teams is and checking in whenever a new member pops up if they need to. Reserving a post on Dom Warch is not particularly safe guarded, all one has to do is message that week's host as a representative of a flight with an announced (or unannounced) push
Has there been attempts by Embers on AA to talk with Duchess about her stepping down? A sort of "hey, we've been discussing, and we think it'd be best if (...)" conversation. I feel like she'd brush it off and say no, but in any case that'd be a good bet on a friendly break up between old and new team, if that makes sense.
If that doesn't work it'd probably end up with an alternate dom team trying to take up the lead... in which case, good luck ans godspeed
wasn't there literally a poll in the fire forums last year run by the dom team about if people should step down? what happened with that? was it real? was it rumor? what were the results.... and can we believe them...
hello yes, I am an ember so I decided to go look...
four dom leads stepped down last fall, all of whom I remember were pretty involved. applications were opened for new members, but no existing AA members were asked to step down or voted on for remaining on the team. all seven of the applicants were accepted.
Honestly as an ember, can I get it off my chest that I was sad to see Hinumi leave? I appreciated all they did for foddart, and I feel like all that really resulted from the step downs was cleaning the slate for Duchess to have even more authority over the new folks
As an OOF person who wasn't around for the drama with Celestial Senate and whatever else relevant, I'm not sure how OOF could help with pushing Duchess off your dom team. OOF is the least likely to know the details about whatever's going on in firedom for years and also has the least power in effecting change in your flight. The most we as OOF can do is to participate or donate to your events but there's not much point if structural issues still exist in firedom that the funds ends up in her hands anyway. Personally, I'm a little hesitant in participating any more than the OOFR as I don't know if the funds will end up squandered in Duchess' hands.
I have to say that the narrative around Duchess' absence is not helping at the moment. People are assuming that something bad happened to Duchess IRL, which could be very much the case, and so have a lot of empathy for her at the moment. Kicking her out now might very well paint the dom team in a very negative light for having no empathy and cutting off someone's head for something out of their control. HOWEVER, if you can communicate to OOF that it is a repeated pattern of behaviour which becomes a problem in itself to remove, you might very well earn the support of OOF you want when change eventually comes from within the flight.
I'm curious: by OOF support, do you just mean emotional/moral support, or is there something material you'd like other flights to be doing?
I think everyone here to read your post does support a change of power, since we can see the years' worth of issues lined up. I'm happy to let other people in my circle know what's going on too, although it's not very big because I'm a pretty introverted player. But is there anything else you want us to do? More material ways you're seeking support?
I'm not really big in the dom scene, so maybe there are obvious ways to help that I'm missing. Nonetheless, I'd like to know what we can do.
Except someone in Fire DID tell Duchess to step down. I saw it publicly on the discord. It seemed so out of pocket for the user who did it who was usually friendly that it took me by surprise. The venom in that user was so out of left field that I seriously thought she'd been hacked. Then Duchess [remember folks duchess runs the discord] removed that user and all of the posts from them that discredited them. That user was always helpful and I really wish someone else had helped them or listened to them.
They left fire shortly after that and I remember DM'ing them. They said they had tried to talk about it but because they called her out on DM's on FR the user had gotten a warning on their account from mods. They literally could not keep fighting and so they left fire altogether. I saw the account of that user go dead for months before they picked it up again and I miss them so much.
People telling fire to stand up to Duchess, it's been done and it results in people losing interest when no one supports them. I wish I had supported that user almost a year ago but the way they snapped so out of the blue threw me for a loop. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more deleted comments that I didn't catch. I really miss a few of the old members of the AA but it feels like Duchess is just this powerhouse who has the mod support too.
I really think that the whole flight needs a new bank and to just cut their loss. It's been almost a week since the unexpected vanishing of duchess. She, the items in the account she has for all of fire and the gems/treasure are not coming back. Time to cut our losses and start mad saving for FvW!
Just to add context a large portion of that discord conversation (I would imagine? Unless there's been multiple...) as well as the board that was made publicly in FRD about Duchess and the AA (so if that was your friend, it may have started in DMs but it sure didn't end there lol) was leaked to this site via screenshots/archive. Just gotta go back and find the thread from that time period if you wanted to relive those "precious memories".
Most people who have been around a while are well aware forcing a change of leadership in Fire has been attempted but never succeeded.
Which is why it's been frustrating to a lot of players. I really hope when/if duchess comes back it's with an 'I'm so sorry and I think this proves I need to step down'
but i am more on the side of the anons that are saying that she will come back with a sob story and anyone who tries to say something will become the bad guy in fire
How divided is the rest of the Dom team on this? Because if they present a united front, what can she actually do?
If they can keep it to the practical stuff on FR proper ("This is a recurring thing, and so we've decided to move the Dom bank." etc.), surely that's not deserving of a warning.
I think that conversation started in dm's where a user who covered all of the out of flight prizes that duchess coded and promised to pass out but didn't. The user wanted Duchess to turn over all of those prizes to someone else and step down as Dom leader. Duchess said something along the lines of 'since this user covered the prizes, now Duchess didn't need to give up the prizes.' She refused to reimburse the user who covered for her absence or to give the items back to dom. The user had basically said 'I got this for now, just when she shows back up, lmk'
Well with that response it burst from dm's into public chats, then onto the site. The user posted a public call out page that a mod was quick to take down but not before the user provided screen shots of the conversations and then... got an official warning for inciting harassment or some bs and went to another flight
All the prizes in the oof are lost to embers I think. Duchess isn't coming back
hi, I'm a droplet. I can confirm that they've backed out, but the announcement in the water flight told us not to announce it publicly until it's also announced in fire. well, i say screw that.
i've moved flights quite a lot, and when i moved to fire i figured i'd stay there. the discord community was genuinely very nice and engaging, but we were held back by duchess so often. while i don't like duchess, i hope she's okay with whatever is going on in her life, but she needs to step down if her life gets in the way of being head dom org this frequently.
personally, while i'm pretty mad that they chose to back out, i think in the end it was for the better since the flight is so disorganized. water would not want to be caught in the crossfires of that, and we are still planning to push october 8-14.
One of the Ember’s here. I would like to say, that we told about this earlier today. As far as we know, yes the push is canceled. But that’s because they’re restructuring the dom team. Prizes from the Flameforgers raffle should not be affected. Contrary to rumors going around we were not ghosted. The dom team leader is in the hospital. We are awaiting further updates and information
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all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 02:49 am (UTC)(link)I just want to be very very clear about this.
there was a plan by a few users to actually, yknow, make a new dom team. for years, actually. every time someone says "oh Duchess should step down and let new people lead" I can't help but have to laugh because how many times has that been said only for wider response by the community is to...keep letting this happen instead of sticking to your guns and standing by these very people when we actually go to talk about it.
Admittedly, this annoys me, because I have seen people be wary of Fire's reputation within our flight because of the fiasco upon fiasco that keeps happening. Especially when that impacts the support we get from OOF. We need OOF support to be able to pull this off and we need to ensure that we have that support.
You guys did it with Arcane and the old Celestial Senate dom team, and you all supported the other flights with the same energy when they needed to push out bad actors in their leadership. I think we genuinely need OOF support, especially from other Dom Teams, to put pressure on Duchess to either give up the reigns or at least step back and let new blood lead. The rest of the AA? Are actually sweet. They're just as frustrated as the Embers are, and as you guys are, that these issues keep happening, based on the convos I've had with them.
It's not the team making the decisions.
It's Duchess.
And if the flights altogether want the best for Fire, we need your support in actually making a change of guard with Duchess happen. You guys need to put pressure and a spotlight on this. If you all knew about these issues being a result of Duchess' leadership for years, then this is the call of action you need.
The real reason we haven't done a 'mutiny' like the lore of our Flight? Because we can't tell if OOF is going to actually support this new team. Embers would need to take some time readjusting. But the main bulk of support we need is from the outside, because without enough OOF support, it'll fail and we become more disorganised. And then the same issues will continue to crop up again and we're back at square one.
I realise that this could be a bit of a hot take and turn some people off, but at the end of the day, if you want something done you gotta push for the change to make it happen. If the other flights want Fire to make a change like what's being proposed, then you guys gotta help make that happen.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 02:56 am (UTC)(link)Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 03:04 am (UTC)(link)To be fair, a lot of the things I'm referring to have happened over the years, and I've been around since Dec '14, so there was a lot of dom drama that's happened over the last couple of years. I think a few anons will remember. I vividly remember the Celestial Senate mayhem, the back and forth with a certain former Lightning dom team member, there's been enough people across the flights who just didn't want to let go and had to be basically pressured by both in-flight members and out of flight support being redirected elsewhere if things weren't changing.
In regards to getting support out there, when the time comes and we're ready, one of us may deanon and you can send your support there. Right now a few of us don't want to jeapordise the push further than we need to atm.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 04:05 pm (UTC)(link)I'm not sure why you saying that you need oof support to start the internal changes, arcanes change started all within the flight, not out of it. Oof members only hindered and harassed the people who took no part in the CS and did not much good.
As for the lightning thing. Its very easy to see that the user you referred to is still in play and a member of the team, granted more silent now a days but still they are around. With the backlash, yes there was some support oof but the main things all happened shockingly in flight.
Fire also needs to get it together and actually do something, oof can not solve this for you. You as a flight need to do something about duchess, once everyone sees that. The support for the new team will come. There are a lot of members all over who will gladly help but only if it is seen and proven that she is not to touch fires Dom team or control anything anymore.
But again, it starts and needs to be held in flight.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 03:29 am (UTC)(link)Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 03:55 am (UTC)(link)Sadistic and October are lovely folk but they're unlikely to want to get involved in this mess. Not their circus, not their monkeys and so on. They "vet" Dom teams by knowing who the old guard of the dom teams is and checking in whenever a new member pops up if they need to. Reserving a post on Dom Warch is not particularly safe guarded, all one has to do is message that week's host as a representative of a flight with an announced (or unannounced) push
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 04:08 am (UTC)(link)Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 04:10 am (UTC)(link)If that doesn't work it'd probably end up with an alternate dom team trying to take up the lead... in which case, good luck ans godspeed
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 04:16 am (UTC)(link)Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 04:41 am (UTC)(link)four dom leads stepped down last fall, all of whom I remember were pretty involved. applications were opened for new members, but no existing AA members were asked to step down or voted on for remaining on the team. all seven of the applicants were accepted.
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)I have to say that the narrative around Duchess' absence is not helping at the moment. People are assuming that something bad happened to Duchess IRL, which could be very much the case, and so have a lot of empathy for her at the moment. Kicking her out now might very well paint the dom team in a very negative light for having no empathy and cutting off someone's head for something out of their control. HOWEVER, if you can communicate to OOF that it is a repeated pattern of behaviour which becomes a problem in itself to remove, you might very well earn the support of OOF you want when change eventually comes from within the flight.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-23 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)I think everyone here to read your post does support a change of power, since we can see the years' worth of issues lined up. I'm happy to let other people in my circle know what's going on too, although it's not very big because I'm a pretty introverted player. But is there anything else you want us to do? More material ways you're seeking support?
I'm not really big in the dom scene, so maybe there are obvious ways to help that I'm missing. Nonetheless, I'd like to know what we can do.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-25 04:37 am (UTC)(link)They left fire shortly after that and I remember DM'ing them. They said they had tried to talk about it but because they called her out on DM's on FR the user had gotten a warning on their account from mods. They literally could not keep fighting and so they left fire altogether. I saw the account of that user go dead for months before they picked it up again and I miss them so much.
People telling fire to stand up to Duchess, it's been done and it results in people losing interest when no one supports them. I wish I had supported that user almost a year ago but the way they snapped so out of the blue threw me for a loop. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more deleted comments that I didn't catch. I really miss a few of the old members of the AA but it feels like Duchess is just this powerhouse who has the mod support too.
I really think that the whole flight needs a new bank and to just cut their loss. It's been almost a week since the unexpected vanishing of duchess. She, the items in the account she has for all of fire and the gems/treasure are not coming back. Time to cut our losses and start mad saving for FvW!
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-25 05:21 am (UTC)(link)Most people who have been around a while are well aware forcing a change of leadership in Fire has been attempted but never succeeded.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-25 05:50 am (UTC)(link)but i am more on the side of the anons that are saying that she will come back with a sob story and anyone who tries to say something will become the bad guy in fire
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-25 08:34 am (UTC)(link)If they can keep it to the practical stuff on FR proper ("This is a recurring thing, and so we've decided to move the Dom bank." etc.), surely that's not deserving of a warning.
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-25 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)Well with that response it burst from dm's into public chats, then onto the site. The user posted a public call out page that a mod was quick to take down but not before the user provided screen shots of the conversations and then... got an official warning for inciting harassment or some bs and went to another flight
All the prizes in the oof are lost to embers I think. Duchess isn't coming back
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(Anonymous) 2023-08-26 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-26 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)i've moved flights quite a lot, and when i moved to fire i figured i'd stay there. the discord community was genuinely very nice and engaging, but we were held back by duchess so often. while i don't like duchess, i hope she's okay with whatever is going on in her life, but she needs to step down if her life gets in the way of being head dom org this frequently.
personally, while i'm pretty mad that they chose to back out, i think in the end it was for the better since the flight is so disorganized. water would not want to be caught in the crossfires of that, and we are still planning to push october 8-14.
Re: all things related to fire and dom
(Anonymous) 2023-08-26 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)Thanks for the confirmation. Do you have a screenshot of the announcement?
That's wild they told you before they told Fire, there's fire anons on SMR right now denying it.
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