The Folly Red Delegacy - Folly Red Vixen for June 2025

Eastern Alksearia Fountain Plaza The Conclave Delegate Election
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THE FOLLY RED DELEGACY

Good day, members of the East Pacific! It’s one of your many Deputy Provosts of the Magisterium, responsible for drafting and enacting the laws that govern this region, in addition to a member of the Eastern Pacific Police Service, dedicated to keeping you safe by preventing any potential endorsement cap violations!

Alright, lemme tell you who I am. The name’s Vixen, Folly, Vix, the Clockwork Multiverse, whatever. Whatever name you’ve heard people call me. I initially joined The East Pacific when I was in Grade 9, which was back in 2020 (I think). I quickly got involved, participating in RMB roleplaying before involving myself on the Forums as a Magister. I became one of Zukchiva’s Deputy Provosts during the 51st Magisterium, before I took the role of Provost for… about a month into the 52nd. That didn’t… go well, to be blunt. However, I was much younger then, and much less mature than I am now. I did leave NS for a few years before making my return in August or September of 2024, where I’ve tried many different things, whether that be Foreign Affairs, EPSA, EPPS, and the Magisterium, and that brings us to today!

A key trait about myself was that I’d always participate in a Delegate election, even when I knew next to nothing about politics and how things worked.
Oh god, imagine if I did manage to get Delegate back then…
That trend remains true to this day! I’ve participated in the elections when Dead was first elected, then the February 2025 elections, and now here!

Right. Onto the important stuff. You’re not here to listen to me go off on a tangent. You’re here to see if I’d make a worthy candidate for the highest authority of a game-created region, arguably the most valued asset in all of NationStates. Well, I have some plans.

Part 1 - Executive Reform

First of all, I’d rework the entire Executive structure, like so:

So, why an entire rework of the Executive? Well, I have a few reasons.

  • I felt that we had too many Ministries that did things that were (in my mind) very similar to each other, so I decided “why not cut down a bit, while making sure nothing is fundamentally changed?”

  • In previous Delegate elections, a common concern was government inactivity and how the candidates would solve that. My solution to this would be the introduction of Oversight and their auditing system, which will ensure that each Ministry is actually doing their job.

  • Additionally, through a conversation with Dead, I learned that Recruitment and Outreach had some overlap, which I felt was unnecessary: both recruited people to regional government. So, I decided that I would move recruiting as a whole to one Ministry.

  • My hope with this reform is that it would make things more efficient and streamlined, as, without certain things essentially being spread across several Ministries, people can focus on mostly one major aspect.

Part 2 - My Values

As a person, I value a great lot of things. But as a Delegate, I’d prioritize things like trust, impartiality, transparency, respect, honesty, fairness, and kindness. After all, my time in the Air Cadets program has taught me a bunch about leadership, and that’s basically what the Delegate is: a position of immense leadership. I’ll have 5,083 people looking up to me, plenty of which have been here on for a lot longer than I have, and a number of those people have themselves been Delegate.

Part 3 - Additional Notes

A Delegate is supposed to be impartial. While they are the highest executive authority, they also cannot prioritize or show favour towards any branch of government or let personal biases influence the decisions of the other branches or their own. A Delegate of a GCR, arguably one of the most powerful assets gameside, must be careful and only rule on things that they feel are for the absolute best of their region.

Of course, nobody’s perfect, and mistakes are bound to happen. However, what matters when a mistake is inevitably made is how the Delegate addresses those mistakes. After all, we all know the consequences of a poorly-handled situation. If you were to ask me what I were to do in these situations, I would do whatever I could to rectify the situation, including taking corrective action, making compromises if needed, and issuing a proper formal apology.

And finally, whatever the outcome of this election is, I’d like to thank you for reading through this entire thing of mine and giving me your consideration as a Citizen. I started planning this entire platform on May 10th of this year, so a lot of thought went behind it including asking for advice from a number of people (mainly Dead and AMOM).

Best of luck to my fellow candidates,
– Folly Red Vixen

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Do you believe that we would have enough staff to run the new Ministry? Also what motivated you to want to condense Culture and News into one singular Ministry?

Also I will say, Outreach more so makes announcements on the other Discord servers (for elections, exe applications, etc), where Recruitment uses NS telegrams. Do you plan on making Recruitment do both of these?

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  1. I don’t expect the MoIA to go smoothly right off the bat, and hell if I get the Delegacy the person after me might very well dissolve it if they see it necessary. However, I have faith that Internal Affairs will be successful, given some time.

  2. I wanted to condense News and Culture into Regional Affairs because they’re both responsible for some aspect that affects the entire region. Culture with their events, and News with EPNS.

  3. Yes. After all, there’s no point in having two Ministries do effectively the same thing through different means, I feel.

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A couple of preliminary questions, if you don’t mind.

  • Why would you make the WA ministry responsible for Delegate transitions?
  • ministry of Internal Affairs: this seems like the Delegate’s job. Why not do that yourself or with the help of an appointed person, under the office of the Delegate? That saves out on a department.
  • MoFa: shouldn’t the ministry take care of existing relations as well?
  • and if you want to consolidate, why not merge the recruitment ministry in to regional affairs?

Lastly, about this:

“A Delegate is supposed to be impartial. While they are the highest executive authority, they also cannot prioritize or show favour towards any branch of government or let personal biases influence the decisions of the other branches or their own.”

I think I understand what you mean, but I think a Delegate is a political actor, the most political position we have, which does not require the impartiality you’d expect from an Arbiter, or the TEP admins. I hope, as Delegate, you’d push your vision and project, and not pursue neutrality for its own sake. I think a Delegate should not be a manager of the status quo, and I’d like your input on this point.

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The Delegate is a World Assembly position, is it not? And endorsements are a World Assembly affair, if I’m not mistaken.
(Note: don’t take this as me being condescending, I apologize if it came off as such)

Internal Affairs would be acting on the Delegate’s authority, helmed by the Vice Delegate (which I probably should have specified). That way the Vice Delegate isn’t a ceremonial position (from my perspective as Dep. Provost and limited experience in Cabinet). There’s nothing in the Concordat or other statutory law (as far as I’m aware) that prohibits the Delegate from making this sort of decision.

Yes, you’re right. My apologies. I’ll edit that into my campaign promptly.

That… is a valid point. I hadn’t thought about that. Despite me having been planning this for about a month in advance, there appears to still be things I overlooked, heh.

Personally, to each their own. I do see what you mean, however. Everyone operates differently, whether that be methodical, direct, or whatever else. So your way of running the region might differ from how Dead is running it, which in turn might be different from how Zuk ran the region. This is all my opinion, however, which is essentially what you asked for.

Impartiality can be a double-edged sword, too. If you’re too neutral, people might think you don’t care that much. However, if you’re not neutral enough, then there might be accusations of bias or favouritism.

I appreciate the questions and the points you brought up!

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  1. How is WA voting as it currently stands (WA hussars voting decide the Delegate’s WA vote unless Delegate overrides) to be changed under your proposed MoWAA?

  2. Running cultural events, a newspaper, AND recruitment are all hard enough on their own - to do all three together would take someone who is at the stage of their life where NS is their entire free time; otherwise, one or two of those duties will simply not happen. I don’t need names but do you have any potential nominee you think would be willing to do all those 3 things at once? What happens if you find no one up to the task?

    You imply the reason for this is because the duties seem similar to each other - but the problem is those three duties are each a heavy workload that’s hard for one individual to do per duty.

  3. What happens if a Minister reports bad outcomes in one audit from the MoIA? And more broadly speaking: what will you do with a Minister who is underpreforming?

  4. Why is the MoFA doing recruitment? Who in the MOFA will be doing recruitment - the IC-FA? The ambassadors? A new role? Why not just consolidate recruitment/outreach into one Ministry distinct from the others?

  5. Speaking on those things, what are your plans regarding the IC-FA? Are you keeping it around?

  6. Do you plan on reaching out individually to people you believe would be a good fit for some project the government is working on? Ancient example of this is Delegate Yuno reaching out to Lib to get Lib working on EPNS since Lib was making independent news articles for RMB RP, for example.

  7. What have you been doing in the Executive for the past four months?

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I don’t really think it needs to be changed, I like the system as it is now to be honest.

I don’t have any names to give for who might be willing to take up such a task, but, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Concordat says that the Ministers can appoint staffers to assume the duties of their Ministry. It doesn’t say how they do it, just that they can. My plan for this would be that the Minister for Regional Affairs would appoint distinct Heads of each aspect - EPNS, gov. advertisement, and cultural events - and go from there.

And I entirely acknowledge that. I’m not expecting the Minister for RA to do everything at once (see above).

Obviously I wouldn’t dismiss them immediately. I understand that sometimes people might be having an off day, so judging them based off of that wouldn’t be the kindest. Now, if they were a repeat offender, then I might consider the dismissal.

Additionally, it wouldn’t just be the Ministers who would have to worry about dismissal. If a Staffer isn’t doing their part for the majority of their time there, then I might give a nudge to the Minister in charge.

Regional recruitment is a foreign affair, I feel, so I thought it appropriate. As for who in FA, I feel that a designated Regional Recruitment division of FA could do the trick.

Additionally, could you elaborate on what you mean by “IC-FA”? That’s my first time hearing the term, if I’ll be honest.

Again, see above. IC-FA is a new term for me.

For now, my initial plan is to do the same thing Dead did: do an application form for Cabinet. Unless that’s not particularly what you meant…

Primarily Foreign Affairs (I’m currently tasked in Vibonia and Blue Ridge), but that only started… guh, how long ago… midway through Dead’s second term? I think? So I haven’t been there for too long. I do remember temporarily being in World Assembly Affairs, but I wasn’t really doing much so I decided I’d tender my resignation this past week.

Thanks for the questions! <3

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Additionally, could you elaborate on what you mean by “IC-FA”? That’s my first time hearing the term, if I’ll be honest.

Oh whoops, I mean the Foreign Affairs Council by that term.

For now, my initial plan is to do the same thing Dead did: do an application form for Cabinet. Unless that’s not particularly what you meant…

Good but not quite. I mean: do you plan to direct message interesting randos/newbies/people you never talked to to get them into government?

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Ah, all good.

Now, to properly answer that question I left…

I honestly might get rid of it. I feel FA does well enough with their volunteer system. Hell, that’s the system I know right now, as a current FA staffer. Unless there’s something going on behind the scenes that I haven’t noticed.

I think I would probably leave that to Recruitment, for the most part. However, if someone seems prospective enough, then I just might.

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Alright, thank you for your questions.

I’ll also add that this is your best campaign by far and it is actually relatively pretty solid. Good work on it!

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I do tend to get better every time, it just takes practice :stuck_out_tongue:

You sayin’ my other ones weren’t? /silly /teasing

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Hey Folly – and everyone else who’s reading. I’d like to start this post off with a disclaimer that I am running against Folly, but that this message is in no way meant as an attack on their candidacy. I only hope to ask for clarification on ideas that may form the future policy of The East Pacific. If Folly wins, I want to make sure that I have not held out on sharing my perspective, thoughts, and critiques. I expect and hope I will receive the same from Folly herself and all my opponents. I apologize to Folly personally for any unintentional antagonism this might imply and I will be willing to edit or delete my post if either Folly or the Conclave sees it or its wording as unfair. Also, my apologies for the delay in making this post.

1… How do you envision MoWAA’s xpertise translating to delegate transitions? WAA tends to refer to WA proposals rather than WA membership/endorsements, which tends to fall under the Praesidium, with support from EPPS (compliance), EPSA (extra WAs), and FA (foreign pilers).

2… In terms of uniting News and Culture, you mention appointing “Heads” of each section. How do you see this as functionally different from separate Ministries?

3… What is the reason behind the Internal Affairs naming, which could be confused with Regional Affairs? Is the goal here to have assistants to the Vice Delegate in the audit role?

4… How do you see Recruitment as a “foreign affair”? They don’t seem very related to me personally. Again, if there is a designated division, what is the functional difference to a separate Ministry?

5… How would you address the UTEP activity crisis, considering you’re leaving it untouched?

6… You speak a lot on structure, but what are your goals for each Ministry, other than IA?

7… For your justification of merging news and culture, you say their similarity is that they “affect the entire region” – I would argue that’s the same for every single Ministry, so I’m wondering if that’s something you disagree with?

8… What are your thoughts on the recent veto by the Delegate? How will you navigate relations with the other branches of government?

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Hm… I hadn’t thought of that… I’ll have to think on that and come back to it on a later time.

Not in particular. Again, this is just my plan, but of course the Minister of Regional Affairs is welcome to do whatever they please. I’ll definitely encourage them to not take on the entire thing themselves, though, since as Zuk pointed out that would be an utterly massive task.

Internal Affairs was named as such because it deals with matters internally, within regional government. As for the intention, it’s 1. to give the Vice Delegate something to do and 2. limit government inactivity.

For the first part of your question (how is Recruitment a foreign affair), I see it as such because it involves people reaching out to foreign individuals, inviting them to our region. For the rest of this, I’m unfortunately gonna have to ask you to elaborate.

Again, UTEP was never really my area of expertise, so I’d need a bit of info on what it does. Is it essentially just creative writing on a larger scale? Or am I wildly incorrect? I can’t give a concrete answer without knowing what it is I’m talking about.

Was I too vague with my initial structuring? I thought I was pretty straightforward… hm. Might have to think on that, too.

Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, all the Ministries do affect the region as a whole in some part, but I more meant that Regional Affairs is essentially the identity of the region. Basically, what we’re known for. Our public image, if you will.

Huh, I thought I abstained from that vote… guess my memory’s being a bit funky…
I’m bound by my campaign to be honest, so I’ll say it. I’m not particularly a fan of the choice to veto. As someone who voted for that proposed amendment when it was at vote in the Magisterium, having our efforts shot down like that was definitely a bit shocking.
Probably doesn’t help that I awoke that morning to the Magisterium in flames because of said veto…
But, of course, we did eventually come to a compromise, which is currently at vote and closes in approximately four days.

As for how I will navigate relations with the other branches of government, as I pointed out in my initial campaign post as well as in my response to Bach’s questions, I’ll mainly be impartial, showing no favour to any branch in particular, while also making sure that I’m not coming off as entirely hands-off.

Thanks for the questions, and I apologize that I wasn’t able to answer everything right away. I will try my hardest to come back to the questions I missed at a later time before elections have closed.

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Ah I see. I think it can be confusing wording because “Internal Affairs” tends to refer to “within the region” rather than necessarily “within the government” in all NS contexts that I’m personally familiar with – f.e. IA in FNR was news and dispatch infrastructure, with some recruiting at times.

And to clarify, the goal is not to have Ministry staff, just the VD?

When it comes to “foreign individuals” I don’t think that’s something that most of NS sees with Recruitment. Newly founded nations tend to be considered not really a part of the region they’re a part of for a little while by most people. I feel like that’d be confusing.

My point for the latter is that if FA is going to be like RA, where there’s multiple major functions being brought together under different ‘Departments,’ why not just keep them separate, independent Ministries? Why the consolidation, if it remains functionally separate? Is it for the extra layer of oversight between the Delegate and the Head?

UTEP is essay writing – which can be anything from an article on Catra and Glimmer’s parallel story arcs in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power to an essay on misinformation in the digital age to a historical analysis of the divergent evolution of GCRs in NS to an in-character essay set in an RP world from the perspective of a researcher there.

Well the structuring is clear, but I’m asking what you want to accomplish in each Ministry, not what Ministry you want in charge of what tasks. So like, f.e. two cultural events a month, which is a goal Dead and I both share, or something along those lines.

I see. Again, I’m not sure if that’s clear – I think both RA and IA can be better named to reflect what you want out of them, but I just can’t think of names rn.

So you’ll try not to interact with the branches as much, or at least not oppositionally to advance a political goal?

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The VD would be allowed to appoint staffers, since I feel that if it were just the VD it would take much longer.

I think I see what you mean.

Granted, I didn’t necessarily think on the whole logistics of everything when I was drafting this. I asked around, got some opinions, and went with what I knew. If I need to rework my whole plan, I can do that. It might simplify things, too. So far the biggest areas of concern seem to be RA and FA…

Ah. I see. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s been through the education system (especially if you’ve been through college) would say, not a lot of people like doing essays. Sure, you can write about whatever you want, but I think high school and post-secondary has made essays synonymous with stress. While this might be a bit of a killer for me, I’m probably going to be hands-off in regards to UTEP.

I see. How about…

Would something like Government Affairs be a better name for IA?

Basically, I’ll be cooperative with everyone, unless I absolutely have to say no. And believe me, I’m not the type to say no for the hell of it, so if I have to veto I’ll absolutely explain my reasoning.

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No.

As a just-recently former MoWAA, had I not stepped down, I am not willing to fulfil the Viziers’ and MoFA’s & EPSA Commander in Chief existing duties to the region to domestically coordinate the Delegate’s transition, to the former, and contact foreign relations and coordinate military mobilizations to time the final transition and ensure the Delegate remains stable above the highest Vizier post-ascension.

I count votes and talk about, and rarely write or help others write, funne legal proposals.

No.

As a former EPNS Editor-in-Chief, had I not burnt out, the News Ministry has its separate space for a reason. A well-staffed News Ministry is gaseous, consuming its entire channel and everyone’s duties. Without the editing staff, your one Editor-in-Chief is enjoying their favorite energy drink slogging out the dispatch for 6-8 hours straight at or after the monthly deadline. It kinda sucked, and I don’t wish that and more on my worst enemy, much less who is supposed to be heading ALL of TEP’s RA if the heads aren’t explictly separated.

Which, if it is, News might as well be its own ministry anyway, since invariably over history it consumes whatever you give it because it needs to.

And no.

We don’t even have the crew to have a separate Delegate, VD, and separate IA auditor under the VD, much less able to dispose of one of TEP’s few technical or executive experts over whatever IA’s standards may be. This is just middle management for the sake of making some spreadsheets look nice, when really all an audit takes is “hey man - ministry going good? need anything?”. I didn’t know what to put for Dead’s audits since I don’t have a deliverable - I count votes and rarely inspire people to write.

Frankly with the wild underestimation of WAA authorship, of which we only just got someone active and willing to foster a scene only this very month after a long time of not having one free to focus on an authorship scene (respecting previous TEP authors interest but pre-occupation as other major principals in TEP government), and in underestimating News’ structure necessitated by its pressure to consistently perform on time, I am not sure what an uninformed audit may be able to achieve.

This just feels ignorant and like management is the answer to problems management won’t solve. How do I know? I was around for “Dynamic Ministries” and the CMoRA, even was a shitty CMoRA myself. The audit is just the latter and making a few big ministries is just the former with less defined heads.

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I think that would work. Or Ministry of Oversight maybe.

Anywho, I have no further questions.

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Good to see you running again. This campaign has definitely built on the last time around, and I can see them getting more detailed every cycle, which was definitely needed.

With that said, I have a lot of issues with this platform.

I disagree quite heavily with much of the executive rework proposed. I don’t like the broadened scope of the WA arm of government. I don’t understand why it should have anything to do with Delegate transitions. While yes, the World Assembly is technically relevant to the delegacy, it’s obviously not the same as having the ministry that handles GA and SC voting handling regional security matters such as a transition period. That should always be handled by the Praesidium, EPPS and EPSA in varying degrees of authority.

Oversight is a hard no. We don’t have enough activity to do monthly audits, let alone fortnightly audits. I also don’t see the positives that would come from this outside of subtly pressuring ministers to get stuff done. What’re you gonna do, fire them? Who would you replace them with? We struggle to fill seats. The focus of the Delegate should be on giving the ministers and ministries what they need to perform, not pressuring them to do so.

MoFA handling recruitment isn’t terribly outlandish. Recruitment seems to be in a weird limbo where we can’t assign it directly anywhere because no-one really wants to handle it, so it just sort of gets pushed towards one area or another in the hopes they’ll do it for more than a week.

Largely, this campaign fails to grasp the issue in the executive is not the performance of ministries, but a lack of interest in joining the executive and the manpower issues that go along with that.

While this was a little blunt on my end, I’m still very happy to see you giving these campaigns a shot, and I look forward to seeing them continue to develop.

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Notice to all:

I’ve updated my campaign, taking some advice from previous comments both here and on Discord.

For those concerned, Oversight will be remaining, even if the auditing system cannot be implemented right away. After all, as I said in my initial post, Oversight will also be tasked with being the liaison between all of TEP’s official platforms (instead of the current Ministry of Outreach)

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With voting underway, I would like to formally extend my best wishes to my fellow candidates!

Ex Oriente Lux!