this is the page where i used to display the cards i collected on the trading card game mystic cards. so what happened? well, let's just say that i couldn't take it anymore. i finally cracked. just as easy as i cracked under peer pressure to sign up, i cracked due to sheer anger and frustration to quit playing. why? i'll tell you why. since i'm not part of mystic cards anymore, i do not fear the consequences of publicly explaining. not to mention that i pay for this domain and webspace, so i can bloody-well say what i want.

it all started when my good friends that i've known for years, kley (a m.c. staff member) and jbeth (more commonly known as jessica), told me about their tcg addictions and wanted me to sign up for mystic cards. i knew about it since i actually do visit their sites and noticed that they were playing these games. it looked like a lot of work, actually. time i'd rather spend doing other things, in other words. but i'm a follower, as everyone knows, and i finally signed up. yes, kley and jbeth were happy.

i so didn't do it to be cool. i already know i am. my friends think it's fun, so i'll probably think it's fun, too. that was what i thought at the time.

i had problems right from the get-go. you know how you are supposed to get a card from your favourite show? well, i put down "jubei-chan", since jbeth had made a jubei-chan card set and submitted it before i signed up. i love jubei-chan. i mean...look at the layout for this page! it's of jiyu from jubei-chan!! it says in japanese "THE LOVELY EYEPATCH!!" even! needless to say, i really wanted to collect that set. the fact that no one had started collecting it (not even jbeth or kley) made me want to collect it, too.

i received my starter pack of cards. all random cards from shows i've never heard of. no jubei-chan. i emailed mystic about not receiving it. never got a reply. oh well, life goes on. i started collecting the JC cards anyway, not having a first card to start me off.

then there's the entire members list thing. i don't know who's fault that is, really. but it was freaking rediculous. after being a member for i don't know how long (a long time) i still wasn't being listed on the list of members. i emailed people about it, posted a message on the message board...i did not receive one single reply to anything. i finally got on the list when someone new became in charge of it, and i emailed her all about my troubles. thank goodness for that.

i remember emailing people (mostly just mystic) lots of times for various reasons and never getting a reply. yeah, yeah, yeah...people get busy, people have lives, inboxes get swamped. i know, i know. i know what it's like. i have a life (i work from six in the morning to two in the afternoon), my email gets tons of email sometimes, especially if i don't check it after a while...it's not an uncommon situation. but you know what else? i actually sit down and take the time to read and respond to, if necessary, all my messages. sometimes it takes up way more time than i want to, but it's the courteous thing to do. going and deleting messages (most likely en masse) is not the way you run a site. it's definitely not the way you run a site the size of mystic cards, that's for sure. it causes way more problems than it solves...which is why people are emailing staff members in the first place.

so if you're going to run something like this, you're going to have to suck it up and do your duty, or let someone else do it. if schools, governments, and workplaces ran the way mystic cards is run, we might as well just all commit suicide because that's a cruel and unusual way to treat people...to just ignore them when they need help.

"sorry, sally, but you can't get extra help from the professor today. he'd rather drink his coffee and read his newspaper. looks like you're just going to have to fail that exam. byebye."

so, yeah, i think i've made my point there. moving along...

i don't think the people running mystic cards have any common sense whatsoever. given, the majority of them are young, naïve, teen girls, but there are just too many stupid things going on to ignore...so one can't help but question if they have common sense. for example, the constantly changing layouts. what on earth is going on with that!? every two weeks, or so, you can expect a brand new layout for the entire site. well, not the entire site. some pages seem to be stuck on previous layouts (hello, people, haven't we heard of importing a seperate css file!?), and it's not surprising given the number of times the layout changes in a given span of time.

the bottom line to that, though, is how certain people (okay, mainly just mystic) never seems to have the time to do anything, but suddenly there's time to change the entire site's layout every two weeks. i don't see the point; changing the layout isn't making the site any better. all it's doing is taking up your time when you could be doing something more meaningful. things like updating the sections and games, answering email and message board posts, adding new cards, giving out starter sets, giving out other various things, working on the magazine, actually finishing the costume party!!!, and the list goes on and on. but, no, gotta change that layout. everyone will be happy once that's changed. forget that so-and-so never got payment for their card set they submitted. forget that such-and-such wants to become a member and doesn't want to wait a week to get their starter set.

doing this contradicts your complaints regarding not having any time. yeah, but it's fun to make layouts, right? you know what else is fun? working on creating better content, rather than how the site looks. obviously these people know how to make sites, so it's not like site has to look ugly. but, come on, there's no point in changing the layout like that. it's like shining an apple instead of spraying it for worms and nurturing it. unfortunately, the mystic cards apple is rotten on the inside, in my opinion. it may be fun to look at, and it may be fun to play with, but it's essentially no good.

there's also a really ugly sense of elitism going on, too. in defense of myself, the elitism i consider myself a part of regarding my sailormoon.org friends, the elitism going on in mystic cards is totally different. for example, when there were contests on sm.org, you didn't see the staff members' and webmasters' views and opinions of regular members affecting the outcome. i seriously suspect things like this goes on on m.c., and not just with contests. see, i'm just ferret. i'm just a lowly member who's never particularily sucked up and acted all "OMG MYSTIC KEWEL LAYOUTTTTTT!!!! ^_^" so i guess my emails didn't matter and were automatically deleted whenever i emailed to get help on anything, let alone win contests. maybe if i had sucked up to mystic like that i would have won a moment in time contest, or something.

it seems to me that the majority of the members on mystic cards are variations of these type of suckups. it's actually pretty rare for them to get sane, rational, mature members who don't violently claim bishies, who don't yuz bad gramer + speeling + poncutation, who don't mind waiting days on end for some little 12-year-old to trade you her RU14 for some dumb final fantasy card. it seems rare to find a m.c. member who has a high tolerance for people with these awful, awful attributes. it's those rational members that shouldn't be screwed over the way they are. but i guess screwing over everyone except mystic's friends is the way things want to be run around there.

i left because of all these things. thank goodness i had the freedom to just stop playing altogether at any time. but you may be wondering what caused me to snap for the final time...

i was trading some cards with kley, and she mentions in an email that mystic had decided to delete the JC set. the one set that i wanted to collect from the very beginning. i was two cards away from mastering it. i was beyond pissed. instead of freaking out in a rage, i decided to calmly give all my cards to kley and quit. i couldn't take the torture any longer. that was the last straw.

not to mention jbeth made the JC set. it's a great set, and i'm pissed that she'd delete anything that jbeth made. you just don't do that to my friends.

but it was fun, right? it's amazing i stayed around as long as i did, really, putting up with all that i did. it was fun. i can tell you right now that if i hadn't had experience previously with pixel girlziez going nuts over bishies, i probably wouldn't be able to tolerate it. not many 20-year-old guys can, i'm sure.

but tolerance has its limits, and i've reached mine.

i'm keeping my badge and card value up. the many hours of time that went into playing this game weren't for nothing. it was fun, only under ideal conditions (receiving good cards, winning good cards, trading with nice people). so i'm keeping those things up to show what i achieved.

so long mystic cards. it was fun, but not as much as it was irritating.

thus ends my little rant here. feel free to flame me. feel free to criticise. i'm not going to respond to you in a rage of anger. i'll probably just post your email up here and have a good laugh. because i can.

it's not like i care about what you think anyway.

and because you can't stop me, i am keeping the one card i truly loved: JC03. it's not like it matters if this set is supposedly deleted.