Corporate Takeover In Progress
I (Nix Marabana) currently have 4 brands in Second Life, kisetsu, Dreaming Thicket, #hashbang! and Maraschino. The decision has been made to group all of those brands under one umbrella “corporation”, Ashcan Consortia.
I want to reassure everyone that none of my current mainstores (kisetsu, Dreaming Thicket, Maraschino and #hashbang!) will be closing. They may move slightly and/or be under construction temporarily but at the very least the marketplace stores will remain open. I will also be moving towards doing full permissions meshes, scripts and scripted systems at the Ashcan Consortia core mainstore, along with continuing with occasional releases for the current brands.
This is partly an actual process of organizing things, and partly just me (Nix) having fun pretending to be corporate overlord to myself. After all, in the dystopia of 2020, who has more power than a corporation?
Ok, But What Does That Actually Mean?
There are a few things I’m going to do as part of this process. I don’t have a solid schedule for all of it yet, but hopefully it will all be finished early in 2021. Changes will include:
- The groups and subscribers for my current brands (kisetsu, Dreaming Thicket, Maraschino and #hashbang!) will be consolidated into one group and one subscriber. This means people will be removed from the groups so I can close them. Please don’t be alarmed when this happens.
- I will hold an event early in the new year with some gifts for joining the new group as well!
- The Multitudes region will be renamed Ashcan Consortia and remodeled to be less confusing and more focused.
- Ashcan Consortia core mainstore will open to sell fullperms mesh, scripts, b2b items and scripted systems.
- The warehouse that currently contains some of my very old creations located here: Anachron Warehouse will be closing at the end of December. If you want anything on sale there, now is your last chance to get it. A few clothing pieces may get re-released with expanded mesh body sizes, but most of it will probably be retired completely.
- I’ll be making some design changes for vendors, signs and logos for some of the brands.
- I may have more helpers joining my team in the near future, specifically when I finish scripted systems that require tech support.
- I will be creating a less terrible system for distributing my finished releases to bloggers (sorry for the current mess, bloggers).
- A website (this one!) will be created to contain updates, tutorials and terms of service and such for the new releases.
- Updates and communication may contain a bit of tongue-in-cheek corporate overlord-ness. That starts immediately.
But Why Though?
(This section is purely for the curious, all the important information about the coming changes is above.)
Hi, this is Nix, I’m still around. It’s been a helluva year, but you all know that.
I’m usually very private, but at risk of oversharing, I want to be honest about what I’m struggling with and why I’m doing what I’m doing with my SL shops.
Both my RL partner and I lost jobs to Covid 19 shutdowns/layoffs this spring. In the summer, my partner had a medical emergency (not Covid) that nearly killed him and has left him temporarily disabled and unable to work, but also unable to collect unemployment since he had already been laid off. We have been struggling (we are only still housed because family and friends helped us out), and on top of that I’ve been dealing with anxiety issues related to my partner’s medical issues and also having asthma myself during this pandemic. This has also led to some less than healthy self-medicating on my part. I’d like to say that the future is looking up now, but I’m not sure we’re through the hard part yet. We’ve been to the ER twice since his release from hospital, and I’m still working on my own issues.
So, yeah. 2020 has been rough. That’s not even counting everything else that’s been going on in the world, but you’re all dealing with that too, of course.
Because of all that, I’ve come to a conclusion that I should have figured out some time ago. I just don’t have the time and energy to make everything I want to make (or everything that everyone else wants me to make!). Attempting to do so is just scattering my energy so much that I end up with a hundred projects started and none of them finished. I’ve let folks down with promised updates/releases that have never arrived, and I feel really guilty about that. I need to rein in my ambitions and work on one thing at a time. I think putting everything in one virtual “place” will help that.
The event grind for SL creators is also a tough thing to keep up with at the best of times, let alone when you’re dealing with a bunch of other shit. The switch to working more on fullperms mesh and scripted systems is my attempt to create something that I can work on at a more steady and sustainable rate and release things when they are ready instead of squeezing them out for a deadline. It’s also an attempt to allow other people to create the custom items they want from my meshes, since I never ever have time to do custom work.
Finally, there’s just the administrative load of having 4 different groups and 4 different subscribers that just made it all feel overwhelming (even though Unyque was doing a lot of the work on the group updates part. Thank you Unyque!). There’s a lot of back end stuff with vendors and marketplace stores that I still need to figure out, but mostly I just want to simplify things for myself.
So that’s why I’m taking over my own brands with a fake corporation. Also just because it amuses me.
Phew, that was a wall of text.
If you made it this far, I commend your patience.
Thank you everyone for all the support you’ve given me over the years, and hopefully I will continue to make things that at least some of you will find useful or enjoyable.
~Nix