Imperial Order AII-13: Heir

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

Imperial Order AII-13

An Order to Appoint a Legal Heir to the Throne

I hereby name Scott of Hyperborea as legal heir to the Golden Mango Throne.

[Daniel Farewell]

*applauds*

[Jacobus Loki]

[Erik Mortis]

Is he willing to take it.. this time?

[Jacobus Loki]

Who cares, a sleepy Scott (with Corey in backup) would be a world of improvement.

[Erik Mortis]

Actually, I see that as perhaps one of the worst things for a Kaisership. The nation needs more then dead rulers. We need active and participating. Even if all they do is respond to posts, authorize other people's ideas...ect. A Kaiser must be Present. I admit we don't need to see any more big system changes for a while. Either reversions to outdated and broken, or new experimental.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

My bold strategy of lodging a vague complaint to the heir appointment process and then never responding paid off!

However, the complaint still stands...I have no idea where I will be at whatever time Death comes to claim our beloved Kaiseress, and there is a very good chance it will be somewhere I can't properly lead the nation (Haiti comes to mind). If that happens, I may talk to the Kaiseress in private or pull a Lacrymosa.

But although I may not be the best choice for long-term heir, I understand this is a stopgap measure in case the Kaiseress disappears or ragequits, and I am willing to serve in that capacity. I will talk to the Kaiseress at greater length before three months are close to up.

I thank Kaiseress Anandja II for this appointment and will pray to the Gods that it remains irrelevant for a very long time.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Scott in Haiti... good god... Scott in Haiti...

[Falkner van der Sluijs]

We need active and participating. Even if all they do is respond to posts, authorize other people's ideas...ect. A Kaiser must be Present.

Last time I was Kaiser, I overdid that "present" thing, being logged in, like, 24/7 replying to everything and trying to get new ideas rolling...

Maybe there is such a thing as too present...

[Jonas]

Congrats, Scott!

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

Maybe there is such a thing as too present...

I can't even begin to tell you how much I agree.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

And now, a word from your Crown Prince.

People have been PMing me in private telling me that they're angry with various things the Kaiseress is doing, and they're going to emigrate soon and never come back to Shireroth again and so on.

Please remember that I am your Crown Prince, and although my political opinions aren't very different from Anandja's, my style is different and I like compromise when I can get it.

I won't condemn the Kaiseress or her style: we need someone to play the "bad cop" if we ever want to get anything done, and she is doing it with flair. BUT, if we can all make it to Anandja's abdication without me rage-quitting or everyone else in the country rage-quitting or me becoming too busy or away to rule, I will take power, and I will be more receptive to your concerns.

So at least give me a chance before leaving the nation in a huff.

[Jacobus Loki]

May Death Spare the Prince!

[Harvey Steffke]

You know a reign is going great when the guy who's up next starts pleading that people don't leave the country before he gets power.

[Erik Mortis]

Scott, if you revert to the Duchy system.. I'll Rage Quit! I mean it! I'll walk right out that door and throw PHP code at you as I leave!

(Just making sure the rage-quit threateners aren't able to use that as a ploy to destroy what we've accomplished these last few months )

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

Perhaps people should get their shit together and stop threatening to leave when they don't get their way.

[Erik Mortis]

That would be a good lesson.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

Never understood 'ragequitting'. I don't quite get the point of it. The mob is fickle - as the flag debate shows - and it is usually straightforward enough to get enough of a faction together to reverse change x or y two or three months down the line.

[AryezturMejorkhor]

Antica hopes to improve relations with Shireroth when the Crown Prince becomes Kaiser.

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

A micronation is dependent on its citizens. In Shireroth, people use the threat, implied or expressed, of quitting as a means to influence the person or persons in charge at the time to do as they want. It's a sort of blackmail.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

It's a meaningless threat - over a long enough timeframe they all remain in a loose orbit around Shireroth. Even Bill pops up on the radar periodically.

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

And then we smash the radar.

[Erik Mortis]

I more or less ignore Rage-Quits. If they leave, they leave. There are a few I would care if they left, but they are the ones that I have earned enough respect that their rage-quit means something. Others, use rage quit so often its meaningless, and I wonder if we might just be better off without them.

People are allowed 1 rage-quit. After the first usage the threat is meaningless.

[Harvey Steffke]

You're all having a good lol at the "ragequit" thing, but it's more the constant atmosphere of combat and disunity around here that makes people not threaten to leave but just quietly go out the back door to do other things. In recent times it's cost us four people officially (Leo, Isabella, Cho'gall, WarVoid), at least one unofficially (Gman), and put a couple more on the fence (everyone in the Scott suicide pact: Daniel, ICEBREAKER, myself, and Scott himself)

So even if you laugh at the threats, it's a general attitude that's a problem, because we're losing people hand over fist right now and they're not exactly being replaced. I don't think we can continue to ignore this much longer without becoming an extremely close-nit, poisonous group that nobody wants to join because they're all hard and somewhat vile towards everyone including themselves.

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

I frankly don't know why Leo, Allot and Chogall left. I read something about displeasure about a rebellion again, but come on, this is Shireroth. Gman wants everything to be as it used to, so I don't think it has much to do with me personally. And you on the fence. Come on, cut it out.

[Harvey Steffke]

Yeah, see, this is sort of what I'm talking about. "I don't know why they left, but really who cares?" They left because of the rebellion culture and the attacking people at every turn thing we do around here. Is that something we can just stop in a day? No. Is it something we could make a decent effort to try to cut down on? Sure, but only if we actually realize we have to.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

I'm making light of the misguided tactic not the consequences. Allot and Co were a law unto themselves so you can't really plan for them or draw conclusions from them. The Scott Pact is, I would suspect, slightly remediated by Scott's scheduling as the heir. The Ryan situation was probably one that could have been better managed, the only question is how - letting citizens of long standing retain the use of their sandpit county even when they are not necessarily doing over much with it seems to lie at the heart of it. That ought to be manageable since there is, to put it politely a surplus of counties when matched to citizens. So really it should be a policy of laissez-faire with regards to the ambitions of anyone who doesn't cause trouble for the system - something that should be catered for by Scott's 'Spheres of Influence' proposal, now before the Landsraad.

[Kaiseress Anandja II]

We are who we are.

And yes, if Ryan would have stayed around a while longer, he would probably have gotten Mar Sara back. I just find it odd when a person just says "ah fuck it" when a board they don't use gets repossessed.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

I suppose it's akin to the reaction of an absentee landlord upon finding out that the levellers are at it again.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I can't even begin to say how much I agree with Harvey on this.

There are some people who do really well in an atmosphere of personal combat and conflict. There are other people who don't. We may be slowly driving out the "don't"s. I think a lot of these silly little triggers like taking away people's counties and the like are the straws that break the camel's back after a long time of feeling like they don't get any influence or respect.

I think there are a couple things we can do to help people out. I'm planning most of these for my reign but if you want to steal them I suppose we need them sooner rather than later.

- Create a big, glowing neon "OPT OUT" button for the economy. I don't care if the economy currently can be opted-out of by anyone with even a tiny bit of sense; most people don't understand it and wouldn't know. We need something that not only allays rational concerns about the economy, but allays the irrational ones as well.

- Spheres of influence proposal should help people like Ryan.

- I want to bring back Duchies. Not sure how yet, but somehow in addition to the House system. Maybe keep Duchies as a cultural entity and Houses as a political one. I don't think the system needs any major changes, but we can give the Duchy-lovers back their Duchies just to show that we care.

- Do something about rebellion. I have no idea what, but it's getting annoying. I know I was a big supporter of the law to decriminalize rebellion, but maybe it needs to have some kind of clarification so that people who aren't totally meshed in with the spirit of Shireroth understand that it's an attempt to work within the system rather than some kind of genuine civil war.

- I dunno what to do about the tone. I'd hate to pass a law like "You must be respectful of other people" because that sounds stupid. Maybe implement a karma system (don't worry, not linked to the economy) so that disrespectful people could get voted down and their comments collapsed?