Working Alanside the most hated person in Orbis

[Palsada]

Intro

637 days after my last forum post, here I am again, getting out of yet another toxic relationship. On a basic level, any relationship that makes you feel worse rather than better can become toxic over time. Toxic relationships can exist in just about any context, from sports teams, to the boardroom to relationships with family members. In this context, I had the misfortune to find myself in two toxic relationships at the same time. One with Alan, and one with Black Skies who everyone in Orbis seems to love to hate due to Alan. 

In stories like these, there is no one who comes out looking good. And there will be those who will say I am throwing mud now that I have left and that I am saying that this is all the fault of Alan. And they would be right. There are two sides to every story, and this is just my side as I experienced it. I'm sure others will have their own side, and they are free to express it.

The Merge

With that out of the way, lets get to the parts you actually care about. Why? Why merge with Alan and Black Skies? Was I unaware of his reputation? No. I knew about his reputation. Many people messaged me about what a foolish mistake I was making. One would need to be deaf and blind to not know what one is getting into when working with Alan. The answer as to the why is rooted in hubris. I, Palsada, thought that with one hand on the wheel, as 2IC, could curb his worst instincts. Play the good cop to his bad cop. And while I did have a handful of successes in this relationship where I feel like I may have achieved that, I did find myself underestimating just how unilateral Alan could be in decision making. I never fully had one hand on that wheel. At best I could try to grab at it and try to steer us back to the road of rational decision making after Alan had already swerved to the realm of the mad. 

When one is going over the details of any merger, and any working relationship, it's always going to be sunshine and rainbows. I thought I had learned from my previous experience in the Empire of the Romans and tried to put in safeguards in order to have better conflict resolution and a more harmonious working relationship for when things were going to get tense. The problem with this is that when you are not ever a part of the decision making process it's hard to have conflict resolution. I would simply find out about things that were happening when others did, in announcements to gov and to general membership. While I would get an explanation afterwards, it was always a fait accompli, a done deal, and what exactly can be added to the conversation at that point? While there were some half hearted attempts to "resolve" this as it occurred, this one man decision making tendency only became more entrenched as time when on. I do give myself a little bit of credit though. I did negotiate to have the PRIU bank kept separate until February 2024 in case we ever wanted to reform. Little did I know that trying to reform would be considered poaching.

The Guides
 

So what? Many alliances have one person driving the alliance direction and decision making. As long as government is functional and everyone is happy with the decisions being made, what is  the problem? Well, there wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, that wasn't how Black Skies was run. Black Skies was run by guides and...The Handbook. Albeit, the latter only came into existence on the last day of me being there but it was the stray that broke this camels back. More on that later. Now I have nothing against guides. Guides are useful tools, great reference material and a good resource for government to have. But imagine going to school, and instead of a teacher, you have a book. Imagine starting a new job and instead of being trained, you get a book. Imagine whenever you have a question, the sole response you get is "reference the book". Whenever a situation pops up, reference the book. Failed your test and you want to do better? Reference the book. Want to know what exactly you would be responsible for in your job? Reference the book. That was/is Black Skies in a nutshell. I've been in quite a few govs since joining this game, and I will say this, Black Skies is probably one of the most dysfunctional ones I've ever had the misfortune of trying to navigate. Again, I was in Empire of the Romans. Let that sink in. It wasn't dysfunctional in a way I was accustomed with, like backstabbing govs members, outright incompetency and favoritism like all good Roman governments. This was far more insidious than that. This was having a Boss/Teacher who has it in their head exactly what they want you to do, but never communicate what exactly that was. They tell you to figure it out/reference the guide, and when you didn't do exactly what they wanted you to do to the letter, you would get put on blast in front of everyone else and have them hint that you were going to fail/be fired. Oh, and take financial penalties as well. And lest I forget, I shouldn't gloss over the fact that almost every relevant document from MA to EA to recruitment was held by Alan himself, and not shared with gov so they had no idea how to make informed decisions. It was very weird to see Alan run his own recruitment program at the same time as new recruitment officers, have good results and instead of sharing how he did it, default to lets just fire them. Its hard to ask EA to hand out player safekeeps with EA not knowing what player safekeeps are and then get blamed for not handing out player safekeeps, but that's how things were run. I know this may split the community, but I am of the opinion that this is a game. Something we do for fun and enjoyment. This is not a job. We do not get paid to put in hours upon hours of work a week only to get chewed out for not completing a job to the specifications that people were never trained on. That said, I would try to act as a liaison between Alan and gov. When I would seek clarification in response to gov members asking me desperately what they were expected to do, instead of that clarity, I would get lashed out at as well. Just told to handle things, without having the faintest idea of how he wanted things handled. And as I took these vague instructions and did my best to pass it on to gov members, who would then get threatened with termination for not doing it how he wanted it done, I realized that nobody in their right mind would put up with this. And I was right. Member after member dropped out of government. No time for this, demoralized, just sick of the constant negativity in gov. I didn't blame them. I figured Alan would change his tune as department after department emptied out and less and less work got done. Surely someone has to learn from that, right? Right?

Sorry to not keep you in suspense but no. Alan had a plan for that. I should do it. Apparently, if members quit gov because of how they are being treated, then its my job to pick up the slack. This differed greatly from my don't make it so person after person feels like quitting philosophy of how to run things, but I digress. When I refused, hoping against hope that he would perhaps find new gov that he liked to do the jobs, he just...did it all himself instead. As opposed to working with gov, Alan decided that he would just be gov. But if that was just it, I'm probably not writing this post. As most of you will likely know, during all of this something else was happening. That's right. Lets talk about war.

The Wars

War, what is it good for? Training. I'm not opposed to launching a war in order to train members on how best to fight, teach gov how to manage things during a conflict. That's not a problem. At least I didn't think it would be. But as I soon learned, one probably shouldn't do that while you're outside any major bloc and your name is Alan. Now everyone knows Alan isn't the most liked individual in Orbis. There are probably more leaders in Orbis who want to take a swing at him for one reason or another than there are horrible Marvel products since endgame. With that reality, the wisest course of action would be to keep your head down and not cause trouble because sooner or later another Alanfall would be rearing its ugly head. We did training week instead. We did training week...then got involved fighting Brofam. So slightly extended. Nothing that couldn't be handled though. But here is the problem with Alan doing most of gov. We didn't have anyone else doing FA. I'm sure this is a a surprise to everyone, but Alan doing FA is like watching trying to chisel the sculpture of David with a jackhammer. It is moderately entertaining but you just know its not going to end well. Brofam was offering a white peace, for what was in essence a case of wrongly escalating counters. Alan wanted terms. Much harsher terms. Terms Brofam would not accept. And then in what was probably the fastest case of Orbis Uno reverse card I've ever seen, Brofam signed with Samurai. Alan assured us Samurai wanted nothing to do with us. Mere hours later FSO, Nemesys, and to the surprise of probably nobody, Samurai, are hitting Black Skies. War week had turned into war month. Now getting zeroed in a war happens, but it takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to call getting rolled winning. But that is what happened. Members up and down the alliance were beyond frustrated in getting everything they had worked to build get annihilated and told don't worry, this is called winning. Again, Alan running peace talks was like watching someone trying to do open heart surgery with a hacksaw. It's pretty telling that after Alan finally gave me the go ahead to take over peace talks, Thompson and I got it hammered out in about 5 minutes. So after billions lost due to another Alan caused war, members broke, alliance not much better, it was only natural that people were stressed and things were tense. It was in the weeks after that this working relationship went from tense to truly toxic. 

Post War

With many members from Gov messaging me about how displeased they were after these series of bruising conflicts, and moral overall being rather low, I came to the conscious choice to go easy on people. Alan did the exact opposite. He started to accuse everyone of being incompetent, of being unable to do their jobs, and wanted to fire them. I put my foot down. No way, not after everything our members have just gone through. If he wanted to fire someone he would need to ask the rest of gov, not just himself making a unilateral decision. Alan found a nice way around that. Why fire someone when you could just make them quit? And thus began the most disrespectful period I have seen from any leader at any point of playing this game. Multiple people being told that they were having they safekeeps taken from them for not meeting the standards he wanted, but again, never clearly explained. Berating gov officials in front of others being told how furious he was in their performance. I know of three people who will be or already have deleted their nations because of being complete sick of the way Alan was running things. I know of another 4 who left the alliance being sick of Alan and getting dragged into war after war in his name.  And of course gov member after gov member quit. At this very low point, I finally decided that I would try to rebuild what he had so determinedly torn down. 

The Final Days, The Handbooks Tale

 

Its actually amusing how little the final war with the Singularity factored into things. When you're already used to getting zeroed time after time you just stop thinking about it. Sorry Singularity, I wish you had a bigger part to play in this chapter. With that said, I went on a mass recruitment drive for gov. But here the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So what was the main problem for gov? Not understanding to a tee what their individual responsibilities were. So I pressured Alan. Tell them exactly what you want them to do. Tell them exactly what tasks they are to be doing, so there is zero misunderstandings between leadership and gov. 

I expected it to go like this. 

Alan: Low gov IA number one, your job is to handle (_____). Do you understand?

Low Gov IA: Yes, for I am a reasonable human being and can understand tasks when they are clearly given.

Glory to Black Skies!

Instead, we got...THE HANDBOOK. 

This is the one thing I feel extremely confident in leaking, one because of how much I hate it, two because it was to be released to the general Black Skies population anyways. This was the guides on steroids. This was the Black Skies bible, Alan its Prophet. This document, and this is the best version of it I must say as in the hours after it was released was so confusing to members that it had undergone at least 3 revisions, was the end all of gov responsibilities.  New gov member wants to know what to do specifically? Consult the Handbook. Didn't understand exactly? Well, you're stupid. I wish that was hyperbole but, no. That was his actual response. So I decided to do something about it. This was my recruitment of new gov members and I would not set them up for failure. I was sitting people down and telling them what their exact tasks would be, referencing the sacred Handbook. Now a little bit about me. I have served 13 years in the military, 3 of which in the capital which involved working with politicians. In the Army, while some might be an infantryman, there are specializations. Mortar crew, Radio operator, Recon, all might fall under the title of infantryman. So this was the philosophy that I brought to the this task. Everyone in IA would do IA, but certain people would have certain tasks within IA. Alan...Alan did not like this. This was an affront to the Sacred Handbook. I was called a fricking idiot, I was told anyone who didn't understand it was stupid, I was called beyond useless, and I was flat out threatened with demotion for trying to implement this. I told him to do it, because I would demerge immediately. And then I realized, why was I doing this? Not the implement of a tasks system, but trying to run things with Alan? He was never going to change. Nothing about this was making me happy. Him threatening to demote me was the wake up call I needed. I was stuck in a toxic relationship and I needed to get the hell out.

So I told him as much, and told him I would consult with PRIU members about reforming. According to the Handbook, this was poaching. I kid you not, this was an actual thing that was said. Apparently keeping the bank of PRIU separate was for reasons other than having PRIU members remake PRIU. I was beyond giving a damn. The Handbook could burn for all I care. Alans response was predictable. Removed from all roles and then him badmouthing me to all former PRIU members in members channels I could no longer access. Unfortunately for him, the old PRIU servers were never deleted and as always, most of my members would leave, dropping Black skies to what it was before, a sad lonely alliance with no friends near 50th in rank. The damage done to what was PRIU is still almost beyond measure, with near half of its members having left or deleted during our time with Black Skies. Our future is still up in the air, but I do know one thing. No matter how hard it is to leave, and whatever abuse your ex will hurl at you, it is always, always better to leave a toxic situation and strive for something better than hang around someone who clearly has no regard for anyone but themselves and is willing to hurl verbal abuse without a second thought as the the person on the receiving end. I do not know what the future holds for Black Skies and Alan. He has survived many crisis in this game and gets points for resiliency if nothing else. What I will say is, after 4 months of working with him, he is most deserving of the reputation he has held for many years in Orbis. 

He is who we thought he was.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Palsada
Edit: Handbooks Tale, not Tail

[Emeralds]

Hell no I'm not going to read that 

 

[Dark Shinji]

This emerald guy is probably alan in disguise

[MinesomeMC]

Explain in fortnite terms 

[Emperor Metalicraft]

wall of text of the year

on a serious note, alanfall number 9

[Valkorian]

When are you going to realize that you’re the problem? You were the problem at EotR, and you were the problem at Black Skies, lol.

 

Edit: Alan sucks too, but you’re no better.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Valkorian

[Fine]

27 minutes ago, Palsada said:

Imagine whenever you have a question, the sole response you get is "reference the book". Whenever a situation pops up, reference the book. Failed your test and you want to do better? Reference the book. Want to know what exactly you would be responsible for in your job? Reference the book. 

Most advanced micro training,

From the sounds of it, pretty hilarious how superior Alan acted to the other micros dotted around when at the end of the day all he had built around himself was just as shit as them and he was too blind to see it looking at what to call shit next rather than working on the competency of his own ship as its captain.

And now all that rears its ugly head. Prophetic that the shit that stacked up too high was Black Skies itself.

Nice WoT.

[Kiingcat]

I am happy to see more and more people standing against Alan and his nonsense. Welcome back in Orbis, PRIU, and have fun!

[Monti]

37 minutes ago, MinesomeMC said:

Explain in fortnite terms 

Fortnite player excitedly finds a SCAR (a powerful weapon in the game), only for their squad leader (representing Alan) to snatch it away every time, symbolizing the overbearing and unilateral decision-making described in the forum post. Another scene shows the same leader taking credit for every kill, while the rest of the squad struggles and gets frustrated, reflecting the poor teamwork and leadership issues faced by the author in the alliance with Black Skies. The caption could read: "When your squad leader thinks it's a solo game." This parallels the author's experience of working under a domineering and uncooperative leader.

[Stanko1987]

Is this the beginning of the fall of the Drama King Alan? How does someone like Alan always manages to find himself into dramas each and every week?

[Copira]

How dare you say stuff so disparaging about my favorite player? /s

[darkblade]

1 hour ago, Palsada said:

 

 

[Hes_A_Dictator]

Oh my f***ing goodness!

12 hours ago, Hes_A_Dictator said:

Me: oh boy! It's been a rough day, time to check the forums a lil bit.

Sees another Alan related drama

Me: really, another one of those, I am getting really tired of this sh!t! And if you don't get your act together, you will be a freaking dumbass clown! *groans*

I take back everything I said last night 'cause if op had a toxic relationship with Alan that lasted four months, then Alan really is a dumbass clown that makes stupid decisions on his own!

[Kastor]

Can someone tldr 

[Diocletian]

6 minutes ago, Kastor said:

Can someone tldr 

No. Just don't bother reading that wall of cooked cancer in the first place. 

[Uncle Iroh]

I'm just glad i'm not the most hated person in Orbis

[Sketchy]

Oops?

[The Terminator]

Man I am so happy -Unity- doesn't have those problems

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by The Terminator

[Buorhann]

People shouldn't get too upset about all this drama.  It's the most this game has had in awhile.  So enjoy it while it lasts!

 

In all seriousness though, if you're running a small/micro alliance and you're thinking about merging - join a more stable alliance, not another micro that has no idea what they're doing.  At the very least, joining a more competent government in the game will show you how to better run a future alliance if you decide to create another again.

[Stanko1987]

I would strongly recommend reviving your alliance palsada, lesson learnt, you were in a toxic relationship not long ago before seperating and forming your own alliance, than you merged with Black Skies and got stuck into another toxic relationship back to back, it is the same concept as coming out of a relationship and going on your own to focus on yourself, instead of jumping from one bed into another bed, perhaps you should reconsider reviving your alliance and continue where you left of, focus on yourself and your members, grow your members, go on your own for a little, if later on you decide to merge with another alliance, make sure you and your members are 100% sure or else you might end up back to square one. Anyways all the best for you and all PRIU former members.

[Demon of TFK]

well , that's alan lol  nothing much you or us can do yk , i left the game almost 4-5 months ago not sure bcs alan would attack me everytime i start to build up leveling me to the 0 point and and it sucked .
however it's a game at the end , dw abt it that much bcs if alex shut this game tmr people will find another game and forget .
Trust your guts and do what you see best

[Krampus]

15 hours ago, Stalcho said:

Yous can thank me by gibing me sum mone
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=579187

 

sent 5m 👍

[Diocletian]

12 hours ago, Tomislav Milanovic said:

I would strongly recommend reviving your alliance palsada, lesson learnt, you were in a toxic relationship not long ago before seperating and forming your own alliance, than you merged with Black Skies and got stuck into another toxic relationship back to back, it is the same concept as coming out of a relationship and going on your own to focus on yourself, instead of jumping from one bed into another bed, perhaps you should reconsider reviving your alliance and continue where you left of, focus on yourself and your members, grow your members, go on your own for a little, if later on you decide to merge with another alliance, make sure you and your members are 100% sure or else you might end up back to square one. Anyways all the best for you and all PRIU former members.

You even get an achievement for doing so. It's win-win either way! 

[George Clooney]

On 11/18/2023 at 9:04 PM, Kastor said:

Can someone tldr 

Even the summary post (and bless the heart of the individual who did it...) needs a tl;dr. 

But the real tl;dr is: Never merge your alliance with another ruled by an absolute dictator, always merge with friends, and always get references first.

[Stanko1987]

There are definitely some alliances and some leaders who are very bad at people skills, terrible at FA, neglect it's members and do not back their members, but Alan and Black Skies is totally on a new complete level of all this. Drama after Drama, from one conflict straight onto another conflict, so many NAP's in such a short time. One of it's alliance that Alan/Black Skies was protecting ended up dropping Black Skies as their protector because of Alan's reputation and his actions in the orbis world.