Governance Overhaul: The Full Story

Based on a true story, with names and exact dates obscured. If you somehow manage to decipher this piece, please do not harass anyone alluded to.

By Snarky LisaPublished 4 months ago • 8 min read

This is not a story about the government of America — or any country’s government, for that matter. It does not tell the tales of any major corporate boards or workplace unions governed by democratic elections and mind-numbing papers which would have likely ended up on the news by now, nor does it recount the urban legends surrounding such places in particular.

The story this piece chronicles derives from a more creative space. This is about an artist collective, some might say, consisting of passionate storytellers with strong views on morality and ethics. For better and worse, they built up a hierarchy which saw multiple changes over the years until it stabilized enough for roughly defined terms to be held.

Their second notable leader, Imogen, was arguably their most influential. With masses of fans and thousands of followers, she crystallized the collective’s image in much of the public’s eyes. She was well-spoken, emotionally intelligent, and knew how to please people enough to take sufficient attention off any potential wrongdoings of hers.

When she wasn’t busy taping videos or writing drafts, Imogen would often spend her free time attempting to resolve the conflicts of others within the collective. Someone needed to do it, after all, or they’d crumble under the weight of their own disagreements and occasional hidden grudges. As far as it mattered to the outside world, it mostly worked..until it didn’t.

One day, Imogen disappeared. The stress of maintaining her cushy position combined with the shadows of her own negligent past had finally gotten to her. With a speech and a sigh, she entrusted the fate of the collective to its members. From there, an intelligent man by the name of Westley and a spirited maiden known as Estelle took the reins of Imogen’s former predicament.

How they got there, though, is far more murky.

The Objective Facts

Despite the possibly unreliable and oftentimes contradictory narratives of how the collective’s election transpired, there are a few things that have managed to stay unambiguously clear.

Estelle has generally not been considered to have been good at heading the collective by its members. She was vindictive, emotional, and manipulative: an unholy triad of characteristics which could never hold together the collapsing group in the long run.

Her past was marred by the abusive and lustful men who made headway into her life as well as by the fights she got herself in via her own high position. Her persona as a leader then became tainted by sex scandals and hasty decision-making that, regardless of her intentions, led to victims being worse off than they started. No matter what, her youth was rather evident.

Westley, on the other hand, developed a far more collected personality. An avid writer and media analyst, he has frequently found comfort in works that pull off the art of complex meaning. Compared to the lyrical pursuits of Estelle, Westley has preferred more sophisticated displays.

He’s been intellectually and socially gifted for much of his life. Even if these talents didn’t necessarily work out for him at first, he always ended up ensuring they do. On top of this, he started a faction with fairly loose membership rules in comparison to those of his contemporaries. This didn’t mean he was immune from moral failings, of course.

When Westley got his hands on so much power during a time when others already sympathized with him due to his connections, he could occasionally be…apathetic, for a lack of a better word. Upon seeing an underling in a situation he had practically nothing to lose, he seized every opportunity to get away with everything he could short of crime and abuse. Thankfully, he avoided outright bigotry.

To this day, few have publicly questioned his actions then thanks to his machinations designed to discourage them from doing so. He’s smart, fairly competent, and can appeal better to the more bigoted customers of the collective due to his privileged identity. Why would they get rid of someone decent enough?

Make no mistake: Estelle and Westley were friends. But as one could probably expect from such a deep personality clash, things got out of hand. Information wasn’t properly controlled. The collective’s morale decreased more than it had to. Disagreements turned into arguments — and arguments into complex schemes which lead to a near-death scenario at its worst.

None of this really explains how exactly two deeply conflicting individuals ended up in the leadership positions they got thrust into. Not even their own allies got their stories about it consistent.

Option #1: The Election

If one chooses to believe the words of Margot Rouge, Westley won his role fair and square through the power of democracy.

According to Margot, there was an election to decide Imogen’s successor sometime after she left. This election included two major contenders: Westley and another woman named Sloane.

Sloane was similar in character to Estelle. That being said, she had a somewhat more serious affect than the latter’s and a backstory cloaked to a greater extent which might have been less dark than hers. Combined with her history of wronging a lively young artist named Freya with little remorse, this made her the centre of many controversies.

Ultimately, though, Margot couldn’t truly be sure why Sloane lost. Nonetheless, she apparently did. As a result, she supposedly over-analyzed Westley’s every dubious action until she found some that she could use or twist against him as retaliation. Once she seemingly did, she released a videotaped statement on the collective which called him out before trying to dip.

I have watched Sloane’s callout before. It was…questionable, to say the least. She was right about the broad strokes of its morale, and she had a point regarding how Westley wasn’t always the best at information management. However, her arguments were contradictory and her proof, shoddily displayed.

Nonetheless, Sloane’s video alongside Estelle’s scheming both tainted Westley’s reputation for a short while before he maneuvered to improve it once again. He took a hiatus from running the collective before, of course, regaining control.

For the record, Margot never really associated that closely with the collective. She helped out with it and knew many of its members. Ultimately, though, she was far more powerful in her own domain which, while related to it, often stayed separate from the collective.

Indeed, someone with actual administration experience in the collective told a very different story.

Option #2: Occam’s Razor

Occam’s razor is a principle that postulates the most mundane option in a situation is also the most likely to happen. Whether it’s true or not for a given scenario is another story.

The simplest and easiest reason for Westley’s ascendance, then, would just be him being chosen by his predecessor. This is what a collective associate named Carter suggested was true — albeit with a bit of uncertainty.

Carter was a semi-popular gamer in the collective known for their strong fan relationships and interactions. They were the kind of person geeky men and women would easily throw themselves at. They held an administrative role in the collective during Westley’s tenure there until they resigned from it.

If anyone telling the story of Westley’s rise to power would actually know it, there’d be a good chance of one of them being Carter. But given how incongruous the public tales have been, how accurate was Carter — especially when they contradicted Westley on it?

Option #3: The Mixup

The last possible option I’m covering in this article, as the previous section implies, is Westley’s narrative itself.

I’ll be blunt: my memory has a decent chance of being at least a little off on these next details. One of the sources I discovered regarding Westley’s account of events has now been deleted. For reasons I won’t disclose to protect myself and potentially others, I’m not in a good position to try and get it back over such minute details like the specifics of a governance overhaul.

With that being said, here’s what I can recall:

In a publicized statement made several months after Sloane’s own, Westley claimed that he rose to the top of the collective because he was its owner in an argument bordering on circular reasoning. This statement is still up.

What went down, however, was a video made by one of Westley’s friends in the collective. It wasn’t exclusively about Westley’s stint of running the collective alongside Estelle, as other creators were discussed. That being said, though…it did contain some rather curious details regarding Westley’s appointment as a leader.

From what I remember, Westley stated that he and Estelle helped pick out potential candidates for a collective leader after Imogen left. Multiple names of various respected members were allegedly thrown around — including themselves, of course. These names were ostensibly to be suggested to a deputy Imogen picked upon her departure.

Intriguingly, Westley claimed he recommended a relatively low-ranking friend of his the most. While liked, said confidant wasn’t exactly a higher-up for the most part. This person obviously didn’t get the role. Instead — according to Westley — Estelle proposed to the deputy that Westley be made one of the collective’s leaders. Whatever happened, it worked.

The now-deleted video where Westley gave his ascendance insights also had him make other claims about Estelle, in one of the few places I’ve seen where he dared to make original statements of his own about her post-exile.

Some were not surprising, like how he claimed she constantly started arguments as their friendship went downhill and later tried to sabotage his position because he argued well. The specifics, though, were more striking, with declarations that Estelle didn’t understand the simplest of commonly known legal principles and of the sheer frequency they fought.

Do I trust Westley on this? Well, he gave about just as much evidence as the previous two guard-change recounters did for his rise: which is to say, little to none.

He also has an air of untrustworthiness that the other two don’t have — albeit reserved for very particular circumstances that don’t really connect to his run with Estelle. That’s not even getting into his confession in a nuked tape that he straight up said things on par with or worse than torture threats in the past. Fortunately, he seemed to regret those actions.

However, he’s right up there — and arguably above Carter — in being one of the most likely people to know what really got him and Estelle past the pearly gates of the collective’s top thrones. Besides, there’d be no reason for him to lie about how he was promoted. Right? It’s not like any governments or boards anywhere have ever obscured their leaders’ rises…

…

Leaders don’t always have straightforward stories of promotion. Indeed, Westley definitely did not.

Any other thoughts on this? Let me know in the comments!