by Etah » Wed Apr 09, 2014 4:21 pm
I said I would post yesterday but I wanted to mull it over for a day. The first thing I wanted to say is that I wouldn't have even stuck my nose in this at all if Kat didn’t decide mention my name and then proceed to get everything about that event totally wrong. So I figured, what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. I’m also a fairly neutral third party because it has been some time since I have been part of this land but I’m close enough to the land to have pretty much watched every single one of these events happen on some level.
I will first address Nakita’s post since it was fairly short and then I will address the key things that Kat mentioned, in what I hope will not become a small book.
Nakita
The first thing to mention is that you used words like antagonistic, belligerent, pointed, dismissive and confrontational. These are subjective words that are prejudicial and are used to make pathos (emotionally) based claims, rather than logos (logically) based claims.
You said that Ka’a made a unilateral decision to reject the Parade contract without letting Thor’s Refuge BOD review it. The problem is that you do not seem to understand the verbiage in the corpora or the scope of the BOD. The corpora says that the BOD reviews contractual obligations, not that they get to review potential contracts. In fact the Corpora says that the Board of Directors is specifically forbidden from having jurisdiction over local chapter functions. Participating in the parade would most defiantly be a local chapter function. You are calling Ka’a out for being a local monarch and making a call that local monarchs are supposed to make.
You mentioned that with Darkshore’s Paperwork, she was reluctant to request paperwork. I get that you are trying to draw comparisons between the Christmas parade and Darkshore paperwork, but any such comparisons are wholly fallacious. Darkshore is a Kingdom level event where she is the BOD President and the autocrats have been appointed by the prior monarchy. Unless and until the Westmarch BOD incurs contractual obligations, there is no right to DEMAND to see the contract. It also bears to mention that the verbiage in the Corpora is review, meaning the BOD has no authority to deny contacts that I can find.
You said that in the Facebook discussion about “the meeting,” Ka’a exerted authority outside of what is allowed by the Corpora. What the corpora says is that the monarch presides over all official functions and ceremonies. You were organizing a meeting of chapter members to discuss “problems at the park.” That is logically, necessarily, an official function of the park. Once again, Ka’a was well within her rights as monarch to make that decision.
I respectfully disagree with everything you wrote for the above reasons.
Kat
My biggest problem with this message is that it is rambling and incoherent. You cover all the ground that Nakita covered, winding together specifics with generalities, facts with opinions and binding them all in a general misunderstanding of what actually occurred. You randomly mention the same things multiple times throughout the message and much of what you have written is objectively, provably wrong.
I’ll start out by saying that the fact that you felt you had to say “this doesn’t mean our charges were groundless, slandering or bias” implies that your claims were groundless, libelous and/or bias.
I dislike that you tried to stifle discussion by demanding responses “from Ka’a and Ka’a alone.” This seems like an attempt to isolate her and I would use it as an example of bullying.
Your repeated use of phrases such as “the populace of the park” “some members of TR” and “several people” are too general to be serious claims and constitute a disingenuous attempt to imply that you speak for more than the 9 people that signed that petition. To be clear, you do not speak for Thor’s Refuge; you speak for the 9 people that wrote their name on that document.
You mention the “propane Issue.” You are angry that Porkins in his proper role as Liaison of the Thor’s Refuge Board of Directors contacted the Fair Oaks Park District and asked if there was a contract or waiver that could be signed to allow Thor’s Refuge to use propane and was told no. You contend that Thor’s Refuge should have allowed a couple who were not elected or appointed to any position to deal with the superintendent of the entire park district to develop an exception that doesn’t seem to exist? I don’t really have any further comment. The problem with that line of thought should be self-evident.
You mention that there may be an attempt to ban Lady T, but you are implying that the discussion included banning Teresa from Amtgard which is disingenuous at best. The discussion involved banning her from Thor's Refuge for a short time for violations of the Amtgard Code of Conduct.
You mention that it is an oddity that Lady T was asked to turn in the newsletter for editorial approval. Since the newsletter is part of the job of the Scribe and the Scribe serves at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, where is her authority in the corpora that was being violated?
By procedural oddities during Porkins reign you also imply an event but don’t have the courage to directly mention it. Teresa entered several items in a Dragon Master, but was the only one to do so. Instead of saying she won a competition when there was literally no competition, the Duchy Regent DV, who is the most morally uncompromising person I have ever met AND had a net positive opinion of Teresa at the time, chose the pull the event.
Pulling the competition had nothing to do with Teresa and everything to do with there being a lack of competition. I am confident that DV would have made the same decision regardless of who that one person was. It bears to mention that Sir Randall of Dragonspine in his video conference about awards mentions that A&S awards should be awarded like Orders of the Warrior and if there is not sufficient competition, no awards should be awarded.
You are claiming that Ka’a overstepped the authority of her position as monarch of Thor’s Refuge by trying to get Mistyvales contract pulled and by curtailing Teresa’s access to the ORK. But you are mentioning that having Mistyvale's contract pulled was being discussed without including the information behind it. Teresa threatened the Prime Minister of Thor’s Refuge that if he didn't enter the credits in days rather than his corpora allowed week, she would enter the credits under access through a different park.
It bears to mention that under the ORK3 that is a credible threat. No one was trying to get Mistyvales contract pulled. Everyone was trying to figure out why a member of Thor’s Refuge in the Kingdom of Westmarch was accessing the Online Records Keeper through the Prime Minister of a nearby freeholds account. Especially since only elected officials are supposed to have access to the ORK and you cannot be a member of one park, and be in an elected position in another local park.
Here is my favorite part, the part where you mention me, for no reason at all, and then get every single fact totally and absolutely incorrect. You say we rolled up, hopped out of our car and started yelling that there would be a battle game. The truth is that we arrived hours earlier, that we arrived without all of the necessary paperwork and so the official play test was going to be canceled. We fought for a little bit, me and Kind then headed to the local Kinkos, printed out the necessary paperwork and came back. Porkins never left, so he specifically didn't “jump out of the car.”
As I walked over to Euric, Ka’a and Porkins and showed them that we had gotten the paperwork, Euric began yelling that there would be a battle game. So I figured OK, let’s get this over with since my battle game is a timed 20 minute game from start to finish. There was no mediation, I was told to wait and treated like I had done something wrong even though this had been planned since February and I had recently been in contact with the local monarch.
I was concerned that if the official v8 play test waited until the end of the day, people would leave before they had a chance to participate. After waiting for over an hour for the battle game to end, I had to leave because I had work that night. Porkins told me that only a small group of people took part in the official v8 play test and even fewer filled out the questionnaire from which we are gaining data, data which will be collated with the data from all of the play tests to get an overall view of how Westmarch feels about v8. One of the largest lands in Westmarch will have the smallest say.
For all those reasons I respectfully disagree with pretty much everything you wrote.
The thing I am MOST concerned with is that this attempt to remove someone from office (which has been withdrawn but you chosen to air all these accusations anyway), was done so late in the reign. Did any of those nine people on the petition really think removing someone from the last one-sixth or one-twelfth of their reign would actually have a net positive effect on the park? If you think Ka’a being bossy has driven more people from your park or has had a worse effect on the mood of the park, than your attempt to remove her, you are delusional.
I am particularly troubled because the people planning this petition for removal had to know that the bar was too high to actually achieve removal, because Ka’a still has too much support and it has to be a large majority against her. Since I deem most of you to be of reasonable intelligence, I have to assume you knew it would fail all along, even before you pulled the petition removal. Which means this wasn't about removing Ka’a for the good of the park. This was about making a statement. This was about being right. This whole ordeal made being right more important than doing what is good for the park.
The only possible message to future office holders in Thor’s Refuge is fall in line or this will happen to you. The irony of your repeated and unsubstantiated bullying allegations burns, they just burn.
I wrote more words in this response than I did planning all the battle games for Darkshore, by over a third. I am almost 1900 words into this response and I have yet to mention anything to do with foam, classes, magic or wrap shots. That fact makes me incredibly sad. I think everyone involved in this needs to pull themselves away from this issue and gain a little perspective on the situation. You don't have to like everyone in Amtgard, but you do have to cooperate with them. You don't have to want someone in office or appreciate their leadership style but the appropriate response is to organize for a candidate with whom you do agree to run for office, or even run for office yourself. None of this is the appropriate response to disagreeing with someone’s leadership style.
~Baronet Squire Etah Landshark
Corsair
Shire of Aegir's Hall
"Hate is a strong word, but I found out if you say it backwards what appears is a bald nerd." - MC Nameloc