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Post by Dashe on Aug 2, 2010 12:53:29 GMT -5
Chapter 21- Enter Cap'n Stupid
Once the team walked outside they noticed that someone was already hanging around in the welcome area.
"Well, hello, socially awkward teenage male with questionable typing skills." Dashe exclaimed with a smile to the new member who'd just joined.
"how did u no so mch bout me alrdyy?!?!" The new member balked, amazed.
"Just a hunch," Dashe shrugged, while Pharaoh grabbed a large load of new membership forms for the poor chump. The kid just didn't know what he was getting into.
The guy pulled out a water gun and started to shoot at the mods without stop. The three of them just stood there, staring at him like he was a total chatroom moron.
He kept peppering him with shots but they seemed invincible. No matter what they just wouldn't fall. They just got wet. After some time, Feldinaut finally said something.
"Just fill out these forms and make this as painless as possible, okay?"
"What forms!?" The guy said quizzically.
"Your membership forms. We need you to fill them out so you can get your registration and ID card. You can't enter the other boards without one."
"Darn." The guy said. He filled out the paperwork like a normal, law-abiding citizen, with the username Cap'n Stupid*
"What was that?" Dashe asked.
"That was the worst sentence structure I've seen in months." Pharaoh sighed. "We should probably keep an eye on that one."
"Yeah. As long as nobody leaves the forums and the entire staff doesn't fall apart at the seams between now and the time that guy learns to spell and read the rules, this shouldn't be terribly difficult to handle." Dashe exclaimed with a grin, exuding so much optimism her head started to glow like Scott Pilgrim's.
"You never know. He might not even be that much trouble, English aside." Feldinaut said.
"Babu." Added Pharaoh. Feldi and Dashe stared at him.
"What are you on?" Dashe asked.
Pharaoh said nothing, but raised a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew from the dark depths of his cargo pockets and grinned.
*Not his actual username. His real username was actually pretty forgettable in the grand scheme of things, and he hasn't even shown up at all since at least 2008.
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Post by Musashi on Aug 3, 2010 14:14:04 GMT -5
Haha, great as always. Those mods must be tough to stand up to such powerful blasts of water, y'know. Also loved the Scott Pilgrim reference.
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Post by Dashe on May 3, 2013 20:13:48 GMT -5
Oh, look. I remembered this existed again after talking to Dragge. It's been a swell two and a half years, sort of.
Chapter 22- Feldigate
Well the gang went through the first month of the Feldinaut administration without much trouble from Cap'n Stupid or anyone, really. Just business as usual.
By then Dashe had figured out that business as usual at MMLS never seemed to last very long.
One day she woke up to find a PM from fAB telling her to come to the common room for an emergency meeting. She didn't expect him to be back so soon, and it WAS a two-hour-old message, but an emergency meeting was an emergency meeting, and not at least trying to catch the tail end of it would probably hurt her chances of gaining any more power.
She was surprised to find fAB just sitting on the couch by himself with three sheets of paper stapled together. "Sorry I'm late," she said very quickly. "I wasn't expecting you to hold an emergency meeting without telling us about it in advance, since you were on hiatus...did you find yourself or something? Where is everybody?"
"That's what we're meeting about." fAB stated, handing Dashe the papers. "As of today, you're the only staff memeber left. Feldinaut sent me this resignation letter and she took off into the night. I guess Pharaoh was in on it because I haven't been able to reach him at all, and we all know Blyka stopped talking to people ages ago."
Dashe glanced down at the letter and read aloud from somewhere in the middle. "...I confess I haven't got much will to run forums anymore. I actually hate message boards. I have this terrible,uncontrollable fear whenever I go on a message board. When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares about them and they didn't even exist yet.
"My mother said I was a fool. She said the only way to cure it was to become a professional forum moderator for a small but cozy board dedicated to an obscure video game series, where nobody would ever be stupid enough to sign up...so I spent two ghastly years climbing the executive ladder at this dump. Can you imagine what it's like having to write up stupid people for stupid rule infractions for two years over a video game that hasn't had a sequel since 2000? I didn't want to be admin of Legends Station anyway. I wanted to be...a lumberjack!"
Dashe stopped reading and glanced over at fAB. "...Really?"
fAB nodded, clearly fazed by this turn of events. "It's all my fault!" He exclaimed a little too loudly for comfort "I should have NEVER mentioned that I lived in the woods out in the middle of nowhere in that last correspondence I sent her! Really, though, how was I supposed to know she'd been repressing her real feelings about forum administration this whole time? She was so good at it!"
Dashe continued reading, not quite sure she was believing what she saw. "Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! The giant redwood! The larch, the fir, the mighty scots pine! The smell of fresh-cut timber! The crash of mighty trees! With my trusty partner-in-crime Pharaohman by my side, we'd sing...sing...sing!"
She shook her head and chucked the letter onto the coffee table and handing fAB a can of Mountain Dew to calm him down. "I'm not sure I want to actually read the rest of this. Or imagine either of those guys singing. I've got a hunch I know how it's going to turn out anyway."
"I don't know if I can take anyone's words at face value anymore," fAB said. "Maybe I should just shut this whole place down..."
"NO!" Dashe exclaimed almost too abruptly, realizing all too late that she probably sounded really suspicious right then and there. "Uh, I mean, you don't look like you're in any condition to make a major decision right now! You should, uh, lay low and re-evaluate the situation in a few months."
"Yeah, I think I'll do that. Try not to let the place become a desolate wasteland while I resume my hiatus to do some more introspective thinking." fAB instructed. "I'll be busy thinking if you ever need me."
This situation looked quite dire, and Dashe had no idea if they'd overcome it. Unshockingly, they did, with minor scratches and several casualties, but that's a story for another time.
Oh, who am I kidding? That part IS in this story. Just later. Sorry for the spoilers.
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Post by Dashe on May 3, 2013 20:30:33 GMT -5
Chapter 23- Twenty-three Posts, No Answers
Before Dashe left, she grabbed a Cherry Coke and voraciously chugged it down. "Okay, let's get started." She said to herself as she headed out onto the streets.
By that time, the regulars had heard the basic gist of the situation and decided to shut down business for a day or so to pay respects to what was left of the Ban Happy Mod Squad.
It was alright for a couple of weeks, but then Cap'n Stupid reared his ugly head again and logged in. The first topic he spammed up with three consecutive posts was "Who were the coolest enemies Mega Man had to fight?"
"The reaverbots" The guy ended up saying in three different ways to three different people three times, at least two of which were under the minimum word count requirement.
The second topic he hit was "Why is Legends 1 so easy?"
"It's because of Megaman." he said five times. "He's the most powerful guy ever, like Dragge."
"Okaaaay." Dashe frowned. "Who the heck is Dragge? Must be from some lame anime..."
The next topic, "What is the purpose of the Legends series?" spawned a whopping TWENTY-THREE consecutive replies.
Dashe blinked. Too bad fAB was mentally checked out. She had to keep MMLS from falling into total chaos!
She had to catch this moron, but he was quick. It was like he was hopped up on Red Bull or Vault Hybrid Energy Drink! It seemed like every time she blinked he was halfway across the station spamming some other place up! What was a rookie mod to do?
CLIFFHANGER TIME! See you in about two years or so!
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Sybillian
Zakobon
Professional Lurker
Posts: 106
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Post by Sybillian on May 8, 2013 15:25:55 GMT -5
I wonder how I managed to miss this when I was just lurking. Huh.
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Post by Dashe on Sept 24, 2013 0:23:02 GMT -5
Chapter 24 - Dashe vs Cap'n Stupid
"Well, I'm not going to be able to ban this guy with my current powers," Dashe huffed and puffed, wasting her breath as she ran down the streets with her write-up pamphlet in hand. This guy was FAST. "I guess I'll radio for assistance."
She ducked into an alleyway and wrote up a plea for help, hoping to sound desperate enough that it'd either call fAB to action, or at least convince Blyka to prod fAB to action. Apparently the two of them actually communicated with each other. She sent the PM to the following people: fAB, Blyka, and Pharaohman, who despite vanishing from the staff lounge, hadn't nuked his account. Desperate times called for desperate measures indeed.
It wasn't even a second after the PMs had been sent that she received a reply. Much to her disappointment, it wasn't a response to her call for help. It was Pitch. He'd spotted Cap'n Stupid spamming up the Legends 2 forum, and apologized for backseat modding.
Wait, that was actually useful! "Alright, I'm there!" Dashe quickly wrote back as she ran to the pinpointed spot, where she saw Cap'n Stupid getting ready to ditch the bulletin board again.
"Cap'n Stupid!"
"OMG a mod im inisint i swer" the kid balked.
That trick wasn't going to work on Dashe the way it worked on...actually, that was hardly even a trick. If someone were appointed to moderate anything at all, and if they'd fallen for that one on the job, they'd have some serious explaining to do.
"Are you KIDDING? You've completely decimated most of the station!" Dashe shouted. "I don't even know if I can put it back together!"
"cya" Cap'n stupid said in one word as he ran off again, leaving Dashe to clean up a mess she had no idea how to even deal with.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 6, 2016 16:22:14 GMT -5
Looks like we got new users again, which means I'm going to inch ever closer to finishing this parody to end all historical fiction!
Chapter 25 - Lonely
Dashe ran up to the messy, cluttered bulletin board and hastily started taping and splicing Cap'n Stupid's posts so they looked at least mildly legible. It was a complete and utter mess, but that wasn't a problem for her. The problem was Cap'n Stupid.
"Man, there just isn't anyone on this entire board who can get through to this guy, is there?" Dashe's mod permissions were unfortunately a lot more limited than she could have realized. She could only fix his posts and yell at the kid until he shaped up and started noticing that what he was doing could eventually become a bannable offense, assuming he ever would.
Her sneakers pounded on the pavement as she raced from board to board through the early morning mist trying to look for evidence of his shoddy posting. This, she thought, was strategic because even though Cap'n Stupid was absurdly fast and overzealous, it wouldn't stay messy for too long.
When she got half-way through he stopped for a while. She picked up the pace yet again, cursing the other mods' names and shouting for help every once in a while, even though nobody who could help seemed to hear it.
In three hours she just couldn't keep chasing this guy anymore. He seemed to run entirely on caffeine and apparently had no need for sleep. The mist had cleared at least, so she could see better now and actually tail the idiot a little more easily, but that still didn't help that there wasn't anyone around with a banhammer who could really put this guy in his place.
As she ran back to the staff lounge to see if the others had left some kind of alternate means of discipline lying around, she thought to herself, "I feel we're about to gain something. I don't know what, but I know it's going to be something important."
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Post by Homunculus on Jul 6, 2016 18:44:49 GMT -5
Awesome, it's up at last! I'm serious about pestering you until you finish this, y'know. I need to know what happened to Cap'n Stupid, and how you consolidated your rise to power! Of course, I could just ask you, but that's no fun, when I could read this epic tale of adventure instead.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 7, 2016 21:08:39 GMT -5
Chapter 26- MMLS, The Forum of Death (Part 1)
The MMLS storage room was in the basement of the Staff Lounge. Dashe noticed something as she walked into the storage room. She noticed no cities or people.
Instead of people in cities, she noticed a bunch of boxes filled with various weapons. Dashe opened a box and wondered out loud why none of those weapons would be able to ban Cap'n Stupid when they could probably actually kill him instead.
"It's because none of those weapons is the Wheeban (TM) brand Banhammer." Dashe heard her question being answered by a really nerdy voice with a backwoodsy American accent, knowing it couldn't have been anyone other than a member of the staff.
She turned around and spotted the person right away. "fAB!!! What on Terra are you doing here!?"
"I'm the admin, remember?"
"But I thought you were off finding yourself and being emo and all that jazz!"
"Well, I was, but then I got bombarded by eight hundred thousand PMs and a couple of rogue e-mails from you, and, well, here I am." fAB explained. "Sorry about that, Dashe. I can't thank you enough for being the only one who's doing anything around here. With the rest of the staff gone, this place feels dead, but it isn't dead, and I have to do something about that."
"Uh, sure. I'm glad you've realized that. Less talking, more doing something about Cap'n Stupid, okay?"
"How touching. It's nice to know you care." fAB said sarcastically as he led the way outside.
Eventually, fAB caught up to Cap'n Stupid Dashe had tailed him the entire way just to see that little punk Cap'n Stupid get what was coming to him.
"y is u heer?" asked Cap'n Stupid when he realized he'd been cornered by staff.
"Why, to deal with you. You're lucky you got away with as much as you did." fAB said.
"im lucky?! your the 1 whos going to ban me" shouted Cap'n Stupid.
"Well, if you're not going to listen to the staff when they tell you that you've broken a rule..." fAB said, taking out his banhammer.
"You can't ban me!" yelled Cap'n Stupid.
"I never said that I was." fAB said.
"What?!" Dashe interjected suddenly. "I came here to see this loser get what he deserves after making me chase after him fixing his mistakes for three days!"
"Is it really worth the trouble to ban him, though?" fAB asked out loud, more to himself than to Dashe. "In my experience, a lot of the time banning people is a lot more trouble than it's worth." He turned to the perpetrator and added, "I'll let you off with a warning, Cap'n Stupid, but seriously, read the rules. If you keep breaking them, I'll have to actually ban you in the future. Got it?"
So in the end, Cap'n Stupid got off with a warning for his quattrevigenuple-post and the great rulebreaking spree of 2005. The problem was that it was a very boring warning that everyone, and by everyone I mean Dashe, knew would not make for interesting reading in the papers the next day.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 10, 2016 2:30:33 GMT -5
Chapter 27- MMLS, the Forum of Death (Part 2)
Dashe ran straight to fAB and gawked incredulously. She was incredibly surprised to see that Cap'n Stupid was still running around being annoying as ever, albeit this time acting within the scope of the official and incredibly comprehensive rules.
"fAB, did all of that Mountain Dew finally go to your head?" Dashe said.
"Listen, I know you were probably hoping I'd give him a good whack on the noggin with the Wheeban, but really, there isn't anything to do about it."
"But fA..." Dashe started.
"I am rethinking the entire structure of rules and mod action for the forums, which will very likely change the place. I feel like you're the only thing this place has got going for it right now, but I'm not taking anything for granted anymore, so I just want to check and make sure. Can I continue to count on you as a staffer here as things go through this unfortunate transformation?"
"Yeah, sure. Anything for the power rush." Dashe said. "I've only been a mod for a couple of months, though, and I really can't do it alone."
"I had plans for that as well. You've done well so far, at least with what you had, so I'm going to appoint some mini-mods to clean up all the little stuff like double-posts and short posts so you and I are freed up to deal with the more difficult cases. Something like four or five of them would work."
"Strength in numbers, huh?" Dashe considered. "Do we really have that many people here who can handle this?"
fAB thought for a moment. "Pitch would probably be really good at it."
"He would. He was a lot of help when we were tracking down Cap'n Stupid! I think Chiz would be a good addition, too. He seems smart."
fAB nodded. "And even though he's new, I like the way mltmlt22 posts. How about them, JMC_47, and TronBonne?"
"Do you really think JMC'll be able to handle this with MMLEx in development?" Dashe asked.
"He's prolific with his posts, I'll give him that." fAB said.
"True. Or we could ask AimMan.EXE instead. He seems cool."
"Okay, yeah, let's go with AimMan for now. He doesn't seem to have a project going on." fAB added.
They were about to send out the notifications, when all of a sudden, they overheard a group of forum members talking, and from the sound of things, it looked pretty intense.
"What the heck, Pitch just deleted his account!" yelled a teenaged boy whose username will be forever lost to time. "He broke a thousand posts and now all of them are gone because the place got too spammy!"
Shift, one of the newer members, pulled a lengthy note out of his pocket. "He left me with this goodbye note he wanted me to post to the forums. Any idea where the best spot to put it would be? I don't think the rules here cover this."
"First Feldi, now Pitch? Geez, this account-deletion thing is like an epidemic!" Dashe said as she and fAB watched Shift awkwardly post the letter up in Rules & Introductions.
Then the other MMLS members gathered around to read it and post their goodbyes. Everybody was distraught over all the departures. It really hit the group hard. They were so upset that even Dashe laid off on laying more groundwork for the hostile takeover. Was there really any point to taking over a forum if everyone who contributed just left in a jarring, dramatic fashion? And if so, who would be next?
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Fatman X. Jones
Cannam
The Definitive Fedora
Banished To Fort Asshole
Posts: 386
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Post by Fatman X. Jones on Jul 11, 2016 17:26:24 GMT -5
Wait, Dashe doing stuff? I'm surprised.
I keed, I keed. This is all pretty funny so far. Good luck on the rest of it! I'll be reading along!
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Post by Refractive Index on Nov 6, 2020 11:54:55 GMT -5
As much as this story is parody and comedically unreliable, this has actually been really helpful for some context about the forum, haha.
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