I Promise To Not Accidentally Move To Cudreobar (Only Purposefully)

[Salem]

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An Intro:

Howdy Rejects. I'm Salem, our resident black cat.

For an introduction about myself and my time on NS, I joined the game back in 2017 and got involved in a Star Wars region despite knowing zero about Star Wars. I eventually settled into The Black Hawks and Osiris. In TBH I joined the Council of Hawks and my primary focus was building up a community such as coming up with community events and helping create an active region that would appeal to the newbies. I probably trained most of the recruits TBH saw over the course of 2 or 3 years. In Osiris, I started off as the Vizier of Gameside Affairs, then Chief Vizier, then Pharaoh (WA Delegate). Since putting my primary focus into TRR, I mainly focused on the cultural side of things - Popmaster, movie nights, Jackbox game nights in the beginning. I eventually felt comfortable enough with my time on the defender side of NS to run for Foreign Affairs Officer last year and during my time as Officer of Foreign Affairs TRR we saw the scandal with Europeia and the Aegis Accords.

So basically - I've put too much time into this game and here I am trying to put more time into it.

General Delegayte Shit

If elected, three general tasks to do:

• Audit the department channels. There's not any harm being done by it, but I also don't see the need to keep people in channels when there hasn't been participation in over a year. Anyone who doesn't respond to a roll call will be demasked (but can obviously re-apply whenever)
• Work on updating resources for the region. I intend to keep an active eye out on our citizen applications, and that includes making sure new citizens have accurate and updated resources. One of our Gameside dispatches still lists that we use IRC!
• Move to Cudreobar at the end of the term.

Now For The Department Specifics:

Foreign Affairs:

Right now I feel like TRR needs to have some conversations about our FA goals and directions as a region. Do we want to reach out to more frontiers? Finally archive some of the old embassies that haven't been touched in years? Reach out to some older and more distant allies we haven't done much with to see what we can do to reignite friendship? Close some of our older embassies that we haven't had communication with in a while? I'd like to have the assembly be more in tune and in the know with our FA decisions.

While we’re having those broad discussions, I do have some specific regions that I would like to work with -

This weekend I’m running a Barbie day with The Grey Wardens and the South Pacific. I’ve been in communication with Declansburg and we have the intention to do a gameday together. I joined the Discords of Community, Carcassonne, and the Wellspring that we do have embassies with, but I’ve also popped into frontiers we don’t currently share embassies with in order to look out for future frontiers we can partner with. Actively partnering with our friends has been important to me and will continue to be.

World Assembly wise - Obviously the delegate votes in accordance with the citizens, but I'll make sure to be active in approving proposals and helping vote stomp proposals that are promoting our defender ideals.

To the citizens reading this, you have my promise any major FA policy changes that may present themselves will be done with a conversation with our citizens.

And to the foreigners peeking into our election, feel free to reach out. Whatever conflicts may have been had in the past - through TRR or otherwise, I'm happy to talk. I'm here for the Rejected Realms, so whether it's needing a proposal approved or stomped, to schedule an event, or to talk through any concerns, I'm here to listen.

Culture:

Following a 3am admin ping, the events feature on TRR is now enabled and I’d like us to start regularly using it. The #announcements channel will still be utilized, but hopefully the events feature will bring about more participation.

I am a college student, I work horrible hours, and I often sleep 10/12 hours a day. So I'm not going to promise any crazy culture events - but I can at least keep the basics going or help facilitate getting the basics started back up again. I've run movie nights, game nights, and popmasters before in the past. Theme Tuesday is something easy we can re-start up (biweekly though, preferably). At some point I'd love to do a Battle of Discord Pins. Submit your favorite Discord pin and we'll do a bracket of which pin is the best (kinda like the quote of the year, but a bit more interactive!). Werewolf is thankfully and appreciatively being run by Miravana consistently right now.

Outreach/Gameside:

For starters, I despise our RMB. But my hope is we can reach out to our natives more in telegrams. Recently I sent out a telegram to TRR asking them to help out with our defender efforts and we had multiple Rejects join Libcord to participate. Telegramming them works.

~ When endotarting, I'll be sending telegrams to WA nations asking back for their endorsement and letting them know about our Discord and what we offer off-site.

~ Regional telegrams will be utilized more. My current plan is to found a specific nation to use for endorsement campaigns, that way if natives decide to block the generic endorsement campaign nations they can still receive more relevant telegrams about regional happenings.

~ -non-WA nations will be telegrammed beginning of every month asking them to join the World Assembly & join off-site. I look forward to the angry telegrams back, and I will personally telegram every "fuck off", "suck my dick!!1!!", and generic slurs a "yo mama". Very professional shit here.
~ WA nations will be telegrammed every six weeks asking them to endorse the delegate if they haven't done so already and to join off-site.

For all encompassing regional telegrams sent with the delegate nation, I plan on telegramming the region about upcoming elections such as the Officer and the Speaker election April 1st. Hopefully we can get some deputy officers in and hopefully find someone to be a deputy speaker.

The RRA can get some love too for a recruitment campaign.

Overall, I'm gonna annoy some nerds. Telegrams can be blocked if they're truly an annoyance, but if we can get some more activity off-site that'd be beneficial for us long term - we need it.

Conflicts of Interest

I'm in Osiris as a Guardian, Priest, and admin. My role as Guardian I’ll be stepping down from Feb 1st. Priests in Osiris just make sure actions taken by the Pharaoh are legal and then help with court cases should the need arise.
In Conclusion

TRR is a special region. We're older than some of the players in the region, we have no working ban button, and we have our own special quotespeak. I personally switched here in 2021. I had just "retired"* as the Pharaoh of Osiris and on the Council of Hawks when I had messaged our CitCo and RRA Commanders about the opportunity of doing an alt here to explore my transgender identity. On an OOC level, I was given the chance to explore my identity in a safe environment. On an IC level, I was given the trust of joining the RRA despite my extensive raider past. Eventually I was trusted to be your Foreign Affairs Officer. And I hope to have your vote and trust to be your next delegate.

Happy to take any questions and happy to snark at any French people.

- Salem

* got retired lmao

[Manson]

What have you taken away from your Osiris delegacy that’s stuck with you?

[Gorundu]

What do you think about Bormiar's media-related proposals?

Also, how would you allocate the portfolios if you were elected Delegate and Bormiar is elected Officer?

[Bormiar]

Also, how would you allocate the portfolios if you were elected Delegate and Bormiar is elected Officer?

Hey, quick question Gor: Would you need a response from Salem about this now, before the election?

[Vis]

How are you planning to approach recruitment? Stamps, API, or getting the citizens to telegram new people? Because mass TGs are nice and all, but a personal touch is needed in my opinion.

How would you approach a second crisis in Aegis (one that doesn't necessarily involves TRR directly)?

Would you prod the culture officer to release culture calendars or something else in the same vein?

[Salem]

What have you taken away from your Osiris delegacy that’s stuck with you?

Always have a team you can rely on. It's not a shocker to hear being a GCR delegate can be one of the most stressful positions on the game, however having a good team can help make the stress more bearable and help keep the policies and decisions being put out consistent.

I'm very grateful to say that I think TRR has a solid FA team. During the Aegis incident, we were constantly in communication with each other and making sure that the messages and arguments we were putting out were ones that we as a team thought were for the best of the Rejected Realms. There were times during the Aegis Accords incident where I disagreed with the FA advisory team, but ultimately the Aegis Accords incident was The Rejected Realms versus Europeia in that argument. Had I acted upon the arguments I wanted to make regardless of the opinions of the rest of the team, it'd have put conflict between us and weakened our arguments. I don't think TGW (who helped get us an apology when we couldn't get one for ourselves) would have been as sympathetic to us had they been watching me argue one thing in Aegis then Catalyse arguing an entirely opposing point. Delegates and FA Officers are people. We won't make the right decision every time but having a good team for FA will make our delegate, FA officer, and overall FA standing a lot stronger.

Internally - there's a lot less pressure on having a stong internal team, and the cast of characters who are running internal programs has had a lot more variance here. This is for a variety of reasons - social functions are easier to get into and start, if you're busy IRL it's easy to pick up running one day while it's hard to remain in the know on FA if you're not around, etc. But we do have some good folks who can be relied on for creating some fun activities for us - such as Vis, Giang, & Miravana. MJ has been rocking it out with Gameside but if he needs any help from me, I'm happy to step in to assist even though I do prefer avoiding the RMB where possible.

What do you think about Bormiar's media-related proposals?

I have mixed feelings here so this is sadly going to be a bit of a non-answer: I do like the idea of having media get folded into the government. In the two and a half years that TRR has held my primary focus, I've seen it maybe get one or two spurts of life. I can understand the value of it being separate from the government such as the RRA, but because it hasn't been under the government umbrella it's been near completely ignored.

As FA Officer, I've wanted to start posting updates out to our forum embassies. It's a very basic thing we can do that shows our region is alive and what it has to offer. However I felt like if I wrote anything that wasn't under the TRT banner, I'd be stepping on the toes of the EiC/TRT. However I don't think that I as the Foreign Affairs should have been made to join the staff of TRT just to write an update to send out (but also, writing on NS has never been my favorite. I would never have the motivation to write TRT articles).

So the non-answer part is that I think it would a beneficial experiment to see what could be done with Media if done through the government, but I do understand why some would want to leave TRT separate (worry of censorship, etc). I think any significant change done though with media should involve an Assembly conversation. I wouldn't want to implement an Officer of Media unless that's something we as a region think is worth trying out.

Also, how would you allocate the portfolios if you were elected Delegate and Bormiar is elected Officer?

Sorry, Gor, you ask the questions I don't have the best answers for. If elected, this is a conversation I'd prefer to have with all Officers present in the cabinet chat. From my own campaign and from what I've read on Bow and Giang's, there is a need and want for us on the government to be in closer communication with the overall citizenry when making decisions. If I'm not elected I hope I will get to remain FA Officer (and I'll be happy to start the FA discussions), but if I'm elected I also hope any Officer who wants to step up for FA Officer should know that we'll be regularly holding conversations with citizens. Borm just posted on his campaign that if he's put into the FA role, he'd like to confer with the delegate about Balder. I'm hoping he already recognizes though any conversation about Balder is one that will need to be done with y'alls input in mind as I've already stated I won't be making any large changes to our FA standings without the Assembly's input.

[Goobergunchia]

Who is your favorite Lord of the Empire?

[Salem]

How are you planning to approach recruitment? Stamps, API, or getting the citizens to telegram new people? Because mass TGs are nice and all, but a personal touch is needed in my opinion.

If there's an RMBer we notice who seems well-adjusted and someone worth putting in the effort to get off-site, something I did for Osiris was look into their nation a bit closer to see if there's anything I could telegram them over. I could read their dispatches and telegram them something I thought was cool about the nation. If their flag was pretty, that's something I could telegram them about. Obviously I won't do this with every nation because I'd be writing telegrams non-stop, but the little effort helped.

Would you prod the culture officer to release culture calendars or something else in the same vein?

Generally I think we've found a culture calendar to be useful so yes a culture calendar is something I think should be prodded and poked about.

Btw your Aegis question hasn't been ignored. It's just 2am here and I'll get to it tomorrow alongside Goob's question.

[Salem]

How would you approach a second crisis in Aegis (one that doesn't necessarily involves TRR directly)?

This one has so many different possible answers just due to how many different types of crisis could occur and how many different outcomes could occur, so I'm going to answer this more so based on how I wish we had been treated and the things I wish I had done differently.

Should another Aegis incident occur, TRR will be in communication with the aggrieved party to see what type of resolution they think is needed. Under zero circumstances will TRR do what some regions did to us - tell us they consider the matter closed without there being actually any sincere attempts made at resolution. I'm grateful for TGW and the work they put in to help us reach a better outcome - they were a shining example of what an ally should be during the Aegis Accords incident. The South Pacific was also in regular communication with us during the Euro scandal, and while they didn't go to the extent TGW did, I'm still grateful for them reaching out to us. They were actively trying to come up with compromise solutions for us and Europeia rather than being content with leaving us completely dissatisfied.

As for something I wish I had done differently - I do wish we had kept the Assembly more in the know about what was going on while it was going on. We didn't purposefully leave the Assembly in the dark, but I remember there was multiple occasions where frustration was voiced at not knowing what was going on or not having the latest updates. Whatever decision we decide to make as a region following another incident will be made with more knowledge on the subject.

Who is your favorite Lord of the Empire?

I'm reading this as a Star Wars question and because the only thing I know about Star Wars is that Harrison Ford is a cutie, here's a gif of him looking cute:

Spoiler: click to toggle

[BowShot118]

Are you open to moving to regions, accidentally or deliberately, that aren't Cudreobar at any point during your term?

[Bormiar]

Which humorously named switcher will you use as your WA nation?

[Salem]

Are you open to moving to regions, accidentally or deliberately, that aren't Cudreobar at any point during your term?

Name something that would be a funnier timeline.

Which humorously named switcher will you use as your WA nation?

Right now still trying to decide. Options are One of the Drunks, Our Father Who Arent In Heaven, Ursibae Did Nothing Wrong, A Man Without Honor, or Be Trans Throw Hands. Personally - leaning towards One of the Drunks.