Disclaimer: A lot of these things probably don't actually bother me as much as it seems, but today every little thing has me on edge. Honestly, it's all the personal life things that have me legitimately pissed off, and it's just one of those things where once you're in a bad mood everything infuriates you. All that said, commencing rant now:
1. I'm still pissed in the lack of adequate notice given before old messages got deleted. Any other change that gets made, there are days and weeks... The server changeover had tons of advance notice and the only thing there was just that we wouldn't be able to log in for half the day. We weren't actually losing anything. But this? Jesus Christ. I'm not even sure it was 24 hours. I feel awful for anyone who logs in every other day. I log in every day and still missed it. Over hundreds of pages of messages gone from Senia-Richard, and Natalia-Tony. Some of them I'm really upset about losing. In the meantime, old one-offs, like the whopping seven messages exchanged back in April between Senia and a couple newbies as part of the mentor program took three days to disappear. Why not take those first? Obviously no one cared about those.
2. Whyyyyy is interacting such a pain in the ass? Give me some kind of setting where some relationships don't deteriorate. Or give kids a phone once they're five or something. There's no reason a parent-child relationship should decline while a parent is on tour. I haven't seen two of my nieces in a couple years now, but because of phones, facebook, and Skype, I have the same relationship with them that I do with the nephew that lives with me part-time. That's how life works. Interacting is so damn tedious. And since the "basis" of the game is supposed to be a music career, why should interacting take up so much time?
3. SQ. Seriously, has anyone ever figured this shit out? I'm tired of everything being vague. My "famous' characters only seem to get just over 40 and stop. The only reason they have aliases is because of good old exotic snacks, cigars, and elvis sandwiches. (Speaking of elvis sandwiches, if anyone is in the Cleveland OH area, you should stop by my friend's shop and get an elvis cupcake.) Anyway, despite my multiple characters in the music career, it's not my main motivation for being in this game, so SQ doesn't make that much of a difference to me - especially since no one can completely explain what impact it has either - but I'd still like to understand it. What makes Taryn's consistently about 5% over Senia's? Why did Richard's skyrocket from 0 to over 50 in just a few weeks after coming back to life, and always stay the highest in the group? Why did Natalia and Chelsea gain SQ so quickly while Astrid and Lana didn't, and why is Lana's currently the highest. I just want to understand this damn game, is that so much to ask?
4. Why are so many people so clique-y? As I've said, I fully understand the idea that there may be certain people you don't want to RP with, but I can't get my head around the opposite idea, that there are only certain people you will RP with? Then you end up in this almost incestuous circle. Doesn't it get boring? And how can you claim an "OOC does not equal IC" belief when your characters actively snub other characters? Even moreso when your characters turn apologetic after they (you) find out that the new characters are related to or closely associated with the characters controlled by people you do RP with.
5. I realize that there are no rules that say you have to stick to a face claim. But once you do, doesn't it just make sense to be consistent while you're using that? I don't mean you have to stick with it forever, but if you're using, say Taylor Swift as your face claim, and then use a picture of Beyonce as your character for something else while Swift is still your claim, it feels lazy. It does. And yes, I'm nitpicking, and I'm fully aware of that fact, but I don't care. In Madalynne's various modeling photos, I've always worked very hard to only use Zendaya photos. I resorted to photoshop once, when I just couldn't find the right one, but I'm a stickler for details and it's important to me to be consistent. Anyone can google a fucking picture that matches the assignment. In fact, I've seen assignments where it was obvious where all the pictures came from, and that's lazy to me. Again, I know it's a game and let's face it, no one should put any more effort into it than you would doing any RL project, but all the same, you don't have to take part in it. If you are going to take part, then you should make an effort. I feel like trying to make sure you're using the same face claim, or at least someone who resembles the claim, is a far more interesting part of the challenge. I dunno. That's just me.
6. Why the hell are people so goddamn weird? I'm still skeeved out (and this is like, three RL years later) by the random person who PMed Senia shortly after Richard died, asking to adopt the kids. In fact, I think he only wanted to adopt half of them. I don't remember the details, I only remember the question. WTF? Never did I, either IC or OOC, give any indication that any kids would be for adoption. Secondly, how the hell did you find me?
Like I said, I'm in shitty mood, so literally everything is pissing me off. For all I know, tomorrow these things won't bother me at all. But today...yes.