So I haven’t made very many post really, but something happened today that just pissed me off so much and I have no one to really talk to about it because if I do I’ll probably break down. So I’m coming to you all, the lovely Mer-community to vent a little. Fair warning this is a long post…..
A little back story about this. For the last nine years of my life I have been a part of an amazing LARP (Live Action Role Play). It was created by my father and the whole family and some friends worked together to make this really cool game for everyone to play. It was great and we all aspired for greatness of course, hoping that one day we would become big enough to run a LARPing Ground, a place that people could come to all year long around to simple escape (basically an all year around renaissance). I knew this would take time, effort and so many tears. So I fought tooth and nail with my family to bring awareness to the LARP. I spent all my free time developing the game, while still being in school. It was hard but I loved the game and wanted it to grow.
Once out of school I gave up all of my time to develop different things, keep the plots running and getting people things they needed to improve the atmosphere of the game. I took a lot onto myself. I would spend days updating peoples character, only to have them bitch at me latter that it was wrong, even though it wasn’t since they forgot to follow the correct rules and I caught them on it. Yet despite all the crap I got and all the sleepless nights I spent trying to improve the game it wasn’t enough. Players would threaten to leave because my parents were being unfair or handled a situation incorrectly, treating the game like a back yard game instead of business that he had developed into, and so I stepped up once again, now acting as buffer between the managers of the game and the players. You know smoothing out ruffled feathers and bring forth logic in an illogical world.
It really wore on me, but I continued and then last year my dad decided he wasn’t to step back after hearing that the players didn’t really like how he was handling them. Now him stepping down would have meant that the game would have been disband. I couldn’t let that happen. I loved the game despite all its many flaws. So once against I stepped up, basically becoming the CEO of the game. I had high hopes for the games. Since I spoke with the players all the time I knew what needed to be fixed and how to fix it to where it kept things fair and made every one content.
But as I started to fix everything my father comes in and puts his foot down, not liking the changes that I was making. Of course I fought against him, telling him that he stepped down so didn’t have any say any more. He resorted back with. “I’m the founder and anything that is game changing must be approved by me still”. At this point I should have quit, I know that, but I didn’t want to. So I accept it and tried my hardest to fix things while appeasing my father, who I though had the same through process as I did and wanted to see the game progress. I quickly learned that the things I knew would fix problems we had would not be accepted so I had to find other band aids that were defiantly not what the players wanted and because my father had stepped down I was the face of the company so I was the one who was bitched at when things were changed.
I’m a pretty strong person I think and I never back down when someone got into my face and never bent on the rules, making the players realise these were now in place and there was no changing it until the next update. Most players accepted this, but some didn’t, so they would go to my father, a bitch at him. Instead of holding his ground of ideals that took months to develop he caved and took back the ruling, saying that he never approved of them to begin with, though I had gone over the rules several times with him and have several different methods to show that they were in fact approved and mainly developed by him. Very few believed me so I became the “bad” guy and well it broke me.
I became so pressured that my Anxiety, which I had successfully handled since I was twelve, spiked. At first I didn’t realizes what it was, since it was so strange and I wasn’t use to have such strong attacks. They were normal small ones that lasted a few minutes and I could talk my self out of. These attacks though were random, appearing from nowhere and I became so terrified I would start crying, shaking have problems breathing and I could never talk my self out of them, I just had to wait them out, which could take hours. Finally I was able to convince myself to go to the hospital during a day long attack to hopefully get something to tide me over until I could get to my doctor.
Thanks to my loving husband I was able to gain the confidence to step down from the game so I could work on my anxiety coping. I promised that one day I would be back on the management team, but for now I just wanted to be a player because I couldn’t handle the stress. It was accepted, a few people were upset and wanted to quit, but didn’t because they knew I would still be there. I should probably mention that the reason more than half the players still go to the game is because I’m there. There’s just a small group of people that hate me because I wouldn’t let them get away with things my father does. Anyways things were looking up for me.
My attacks became less frequent, just as strong when I got them, but they didn’t happen every day. I felt excited to go back to the game to play and started doing things I hadn’t realized I had stopped doing. Such as crafting thing, painting and writing stories. I was happy, but apparently that is allowed.
Today there was a Pink Party in my town. Pretty much everyone dresses up in pink and socializes or something….My mother thought it would be a great place to advertise for the game so she asked who wanted to go. About four other girls’ side they would, me included. However I’m not a pink person, so that meant I would have to make or buy something pink that was fantasy based. However I worked every day leading up to today so I didn’t have time to make the outfit so I decided not to go. A week ago one of the girls side she couldn’t make it because of family obligations. The other two girls, well they got called into to work. So what does my mother do?
She bitches at my dad about how were still a small back yard LARP because no one will ever put the effort into bettering the game and getting the name out there. REALLY! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDING ME! WHAT DID I JUST SPEND THE LAST NINE YEARS OF MY LIFE DOING.
You would think that would be the real kickers, but it’s not. My father decided he was going to make a post on the FB page for the management team. Saying “Today is a prime example why we remain the small yard sized larp. When it comes time outside of the event to do some recruiting/raise awareness of our larp; people just don't show or back out. Also the reason I can never promote anything big for SR, only things I know (Mothers Name) and I can cover. Think it's time to pull the plug after this season.”
ARE YOU KIDDING ME! I HAVE SPENT MORE TIME, EFFOT AND MONEY THEN MY PARENTS EVER DID INTO THIS GAME. I SHATTERED MYSELF TO THE POINT THAT I’M NOT SURE I’LL EVEN BE OKAY AGAIN! AND YOU UP AND DECIDE THAT YOU WANT TO END THE GAME THAT HAD BEEN HAVING AN AMAZING START BECAUSE OF ONE STUPID LAST MINTUE ADVERTISMENT STUNT THAT ONLY FIVE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE GONE TO!
I was and still am shaking so much and want to throw a tantrum, I want to scream and strangle my father for this crap! How can you deem this to be a good thing to post to even say! How can he consider up as back yard LARP when we get around 65 players an event where last year we had maybe 30 and we are still growing because I get questions daily about the game and from people who will be at the next event. I love this game, I love the people and it had done a lot for me, but this…this just breaks my heart and makes me believe that I should have been stronger, that I should have never broken so that way I could prevent this from happening. And I know I should think that, that I shouldn’t put that much on my shoulders, I couldn’t predict this happening and I can’t always be strong, somethings have to break so that way it can come back stronger. I know all this, but I can’t stop the panic, the anger that I’m feeling about this and if I talked to anyone of my friends (who all LARP with me) it would only make things worse because rumors would start to spread and then there would be no hope for the game…..I just…UGH! I HATE THIS SO MUCH!
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Originally Posted by Kalani
I just thought I'd let you all know that I quit my summer job at camp in Iowa. I just couldn't do it anymore. They advertised it as the best summer of your life. Yeah right . All I asked for was not to be put on one to one care with a specific camper who is too strong for me to redirect, he grabbed a dog and nearly crushed it to death yesterday and i couldn't stop him because he is so strong, I didn't ask for a shower longer than 3mins or a proper bed that wasn't in the same room as 42 other girls. I'm so exhausted, I arrived in Iowa at 11:30 on the 31st of May and woke up at four, I went to work at 7 and went to bed that night at 11 since then I've had to get up at 6 and I still have jet lag 2 weeks later. We worked 15 hours a day and got paid a dollar an hour. I honestly didn't go for the money, I agreed to the pay before I left home but I didn't know then that the days would be 15 hours or that I wouldn't get any food on the weekends, Friday night no dinner, no meals Saturday and no breakfast on Sunday or Monday I get that Saturday is our day off but it's fracking ridiculous. Sorry to rant a little but I just wanted to tell you I'm heading to Jacksonville for a few days before flying home. I hope you guys have a better summer than I have so far 
would it be possible to re-start the group, under a different name but still essentially the same, and manage it yourself? Then your dad wouldn't be able to claim any ownership.
think about that! I have been super caring, always! 
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