Darker Days
Today I watched the leaves dance behind the wheels of a truck on a rural road and tried not to be angry.
Last year (2012) was one of hope and promise. There were problems of course, there are always problems. But everything was vectored toward the positive.
...
I've been running a larp now for about a year and a half. It has been going moderately well. It is growing, getting better, and I'm really happy with the community that has sprung up around it. It has also been difficult. On paper I have two partners. Both of whom have been my best friends for several years now, and one of whom I was the best man at his wedding last year. To say we have been having difficulties lately is an understatement. In reality I have 3 partners. One of whom is Jenn. She has been the reliable one, the versatile one, she has spent the better part of the year working either full time or part time to help this thing along. She does more work than any of us, including myself, though she debates this last part. However she is the one who is up until the wee hours of the morning the day before an event working on projects for the game.
A few months ago she asked to be added as a partner, and was denied. I don't think it bothered us overmuch at the time, there was a lot going on, but as time passed the reality of it started sinking in. She was getting screwed. She had more of a stake in this company than the other partners, both as a commitment of money and a commitment of time, and yet she was being denied something that gave her a chance to call a piece of this her own. This brought to surface a number of other problems I've had with them, that go beyond denying her partnership.
Chris has been in and out of this from the beginning, every six months or so he would doubt his commitment to sparkle motion, we'd rearrange stuff to keep him in, and things would go on, never really getting fixed. Last time he did this he told us that "I'd have left already but you guys can't afford to have me leave,"...afford in this case meaning that we don't have the money to pay him off. At that point I was done. But Brendan (the other partner) convinced me to give it another go, with our duties clearly defined, and our sides of the universe separated by himself.
Brendan was in this since the beginning. He helped me devise the rules and the world and we held semi-weekly meetings for over two years talking about this...and drinking. I owe a lot to him for providing the sanity to my insane ideas. That said, I have always taken the lead. I have pushed this project, and he has come along for the ride. He has rarely ever taken action without my say so, and even those things he has been appointed to do, he has not readily done without my pressing him to get them done. When he actually does something he is incredible at it, but getting him to that point is often frustrating, and often times it would be far easier to do it myself than to ask him.
Jenn goes out of her way to offer help, to make things better, to keep things organized. We need a giant robot, Jenn builds a giant robot. She has been the person all of us have turned to at one point or another to make our vision become reality.
In the new paradigm, Jenn is effectively out. She could stay on if she chose to, but it would not be in any capacity save for that of someone who was volunteering her time. Brendan would take over the financial stuff that Jenn handles (I have no problem with this in theory...but I don't exactly trust Brendan to handle it in a timely fashion). Chris would run other non-doomsday parts of the company.
...and I really don't want to be part of this new paradigm. I want to run Doomsday. But removing Jenn from the situation makes running this game difficult if not impossible. I do not believe that Doomsday would have survived beyond the first few events were it not for Jenn. She stepped in where she needed to, and there were a lot of places that needed stepping into. And that they can't see this is my biggest stumbling block when it comes to consider continuing on with them.
So we have reached and impasse. We are meeting Saturday to discuss the future of everything. I don't know if there is anything they could say to me at this moment that would make me change my mind. I'm willing to listen, but I'm not as willing to compromise as I once was. Up until now any compromise I have made has been to my detriment, and to their benefit, and I can't do that anymore.
Especially not when they are screwing over the most important person in my life.
Last year (2012) was one of hope and promise. There were problems of course, there are always problems. But everything was vectored toward the positive.
...
I've been running a larp now for about a year and a half. It has been going moderately well. It is growing, getting better, and I'm really happy with the community that has sprung up around it. It has also been difficult. On paper I have two partners. Both of whom have been my best friends for several years now, and one of whom I was the best man at his wedding last year. To say we have been having difficulties lately is an understatement. In reality I have 3 partners. One of whom is Jenn. She has been the reliable one, the versatile one, she has spent the better part of the year working either full time or part time to help this thing along. She does more work than any of us, including myself, though she debates this last part. However she is the one who is up until the wee hours of the morning the day before an event working on projects for the game.
A few months ago she asked to be added as a partner, and was denied. I don't think it bothered us overmuch at the time, there was a lot going on, but as time passed the reality of it started sinking in. She was getting screwed. She had more of a stake in this company than the other partners, both as a commitment of money and a commitment of time, and yet she was being denied something that gave her a chance to call a piece of this her own. This brought to surface a number of other problems I've had with them, that go beyond denying her partnership.
Chris has been in and out of this from the beginning, every six months or so he would doubt his commitment to sparkle motion, we'd rearrange stuff to keep him in, and things would go on, never really getting fixed. Last time he did this he told us that "I'd have left already but you guys can't afford to have me leave,"...afford in this case meaning that we don't have the money to pay him off. At that point I was done. But Brendan (the other partner) convinced me to give it another go, with our duties clearly defined, and our sides of the universe separated by himself.
Brendan was in this since the beginning. He helped me devise the rules and the world and we held semi-weekly meetings for over two years talking about this...and drinking. I owe a lot to him for providing the sanity to my insane ideas. That said, I have always taken the lead. I have pushed this project, and he has come along for the ride. He has rarely ever taken action without my say so, and even those things he has been appointed to do, he has not readily done without my pressing him to get them done. When he actually does something he is incredible at it, but getting him to that point is often frustrating, and often times it would be far easier to do it myself than to ask him.
Jenn goes out of her way to offer help, to make things better, to keep things organized. We need a giant robot, Jenn builds a giant robot. She has been the person all of us have turned to at one point or another to make our vision become reality.
In the new paradigm, Jenn is effectively out. She could stay on if she chose to, but it would not be in any capacity save for that of someone who was volunteering her time. Brendan would take over the financial stuff that Jenn handles (I have no problem with this in theory...but I don't exactly trust Brendan to handle it in a timely fashion). Chris would run other non-doomsday parts of the company.
...and I really don't want to be part of this new paradigm. I want to run Doomsday. But removing Jenn from the situation makes running this game difficult if not impossible. I do not believe that Doomsday would have survived beyond the first few events were it not for Jenn. She stepped in where she needed to, and there were a lot of places that needed stepping into. And that they can't see this is my biggest stumbling block when it comes to consider continuing on with them.
So we have reached and impasse. We are meeting Saturday to discuss the future of everything. I don't know if there is anything they could say to me at this moment that would make me change my mind. I'm willing to listen, but I'm not as willing to compromise as I once was. Up until now any compromise I have made has been to my detriment, and to their benefit, and I can't do that anymore.
Especially not when they are screwing over the most important person in my life.