Fhaolan

There really wasn't an equivalent thing in Canada when I was in school (35-some years ago). Though there was a general aptitude test thing (not a military one), that was ridiculous. I vaguely remember getting 'helicopter pilot' out of that one.

I vaguely remember the last effort in this direction. I remember walking away from it because of how... weird the discussion got. People were *really* attached to the squirrel, for some reason. I'm curious as to the mechanism for locking the rank in place. I, personally, was thinking of leveraging the then-new Award system to do it, but didn't get around to figuring out *how* before I left staff. Awwww. No Fleur de Lis rank?

This may seem mean-spirited, but I honestly believe they should do nothing. G5 should be something completely different from G4. Basically, in my experience, all the big stable fandoms based on corporate-owned IP exist because the IP owner 'abandoned' the franchises. The fans saw something in them worthwhile, and stepped up to keep it alive. Discussions, theories, critique, and new content came from the fans, not from some board of directors with veto power. That fallow period where a corporation leaves an IP alone is pretty critical to the future of a fandom. It's when the fanbase gets the chance to become it's own thing, rather than just an extension of a marketing plan. The big problem is when these corporate IP owners come back and try to cash in on the existent fanbase. (Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc.) You don't just have 'Gatekeeper Fans' then, you have the IP owner acting as gatekeeper in order to turn profit: 'You can't be a true fan unless you own this series on Blu-ray!', 'Those novels aren't canon anymore, as they will conflict with our planned new series of movies!', etc. If fans get the idea that they are *dependent* on the corporate content, then no matter how big or popular the fandom is; it starts to wither and die. In my opinion, fandoms are healthier when the fans realize that 'official' corporate-produced content is really just fanwork with more money behind it. It's welcome as more 'grist for the mill', but it's not *needed* anymore.

Could it be Ammit? Or am I in the wrong mythological system?

I fully admit to abusing my-then-admin power for the Fleur emote. Heck, I drew the silly thing as well. And I use it. I think I'm the only one who does. Of course.

I think Silver Spoon is on there twice, @Creamtastic Jeric

Do board games/card games count? I gave a friend 'Unstable Unicorns' for Christmas, and we just played it. Was fun.

I have replacement parts already, so it wouldn't be that big of a leap to replace more parts.

Honestly I have difficulty finding that kind of stuff commercially as well. I end up building my own shelving to deal with it. In which case, you're looking at somewhere to get sheet plexiglass (acrylic plastic) cut to the size you want, and blocks or hard acrylic tubes to put under them to make risers. Then acrylic modelling cement to make them into more permanent 'shelves'. For custom cut-to-size stuff in the US, I recommend Tapp Plastics. You can tell them exactly the dimensions you want and they'll cut it for you, you just have to glue it together when it arrives. Now, if you're not in the US (which if I remember correctly, you aren't), I'm not sure who to recommend you to. But I'm told that in Europe there are actually *more* cut-to-size acrylic manufacturers than there are on this side of the pond. I just don't know their names off-hand.

Okay, I can see several things going on here that might all be the same issue, or may be me misinterpreting what the problem is. 1. When a post/comment/status update is merged with others, or hidden, or otherwise removed from circulation, the notification system isn't coping with it very well. It's either sending you to the first post in that thread, or just saying 'that post no longer exists'. I don't remember the exact circumstances that leads to either event. 2. Replying to a comment/status update is not quite as clean as it was before the last system update. It used to be you could reply to a status update right there, but now when you have to either click on the person's name, or on the 'x replies' link, which takes you to the person's commentary page and *then* you get the chance to reply to it. It's not exactly intuitively obvious where to click on the homepage's list of status updates to get to the point you can reply. And then it records you as having gone to the person's profile when all you wanted to do was reply to the status. 3. The notification system doesn't track which notifications you've done something about. It's all or nothing. You look at the main list, and it considers you entirely done right then and there. In all three cases, it's a problem with using commercial forum software. That's the way Invision built this thing, and MLPF is just one of many groups who purchased the rights to use it. MLPF doesn't have the ability to really force Invision to fix anything. Fixing it themselves is a serious hack, and is likely not high on the priority list. However, discussing it here means it might get *put* on the list in the first place.