Authors note/Disclaimer: I don't own WAs 3, it belongs to Media Vision/Sony/Not me.

If you can't figure out what this is a satire of, then you haven't been posting on this page for very long, have you? This'll probably get pulled down in the five minutes after The Man notices it's here, but I'm gonna post it anyway. Should we all start wearing swastikas and saluting? Heil FF.net admin? Sheesh.... (Can you tell I'm a bit annoyed?)

"Please Make The Appropriate Changes."

By Skylark Starflower

Started June 10th, 2004

Finished June 11th, 2004

It had been a few years since Virginia and her friends had saved Filgaia and a few changes had cropped up over time. Drifters had started to bring out the technological treasures they found in the old ruins and rebuilt them for everyday use. Computers had been one of these items. It had been unheard of for anyone to have a computer outside of the scientific community. Now, practically everyone had one. And it didn't take long for them to invent the Internet...

(Insert scene break here because asterisks are the DEVIL!)

Clive maneuvered the mouse across the mouse pad, the cursor on the screen following the movement to come to a rest over the icon he was looking for. He'd have to have a talk with Kaitlyn for calling the shortcut to the Internet 'boogersnack', but he'd leave it for now.

Double clicking, he connected. It had been only a couple weeks since he'd installed it and already he had several pages book marked for repeat visits. One of which was a site that had been opened for people to post their ideas, essays and other such information about why they thought Filgaia was in the state it was.

It was to this page that Clive was heading with his essay on all the information he'd discovered on his travels with Virginia and the others. He'd already opened an account and posted several other short articles after reading the terms of service.

But as he was about to upload the document, he noticed there had been an update made. Clicking on the link, he brought up the new information.

"We are no longer accepting submissions that are not double spaced," the new rule read, "if you have posted something previously that was not double spaced, please make the appropriate changes within the next week. Thank you."

It seemed like an odd request to Clive, but since it was fairly harmless, he made the changes and uploaded his new piece before logging off the page and allowing Kaitlyn to go play with her pets at GaiaPets Online.

(This would have been a visually appealing scene break if FF.net wasn't removing asterisks...)

It was two weeks later, and Clive had finished another piece for the site, a request of one of the readers he'd made friends with through the e-mail. He signed into his account to find there was yet another new rule added.

"We are no longer accepting submissions that start with the word 'the'. Please make the appropriate changes," it read.

Once again, it seemed an odd request, but since it didn't hurt much, Clive went ahead and made the appropriate changes and uploaded his file. Once he was finished, he logged off and proceeded to goof off and read web comics.

(Asterisks are evil, don'tchaknow?)

Time passed and Clive went out on more trips with Virginia and the others. While he was out, he continued to study the planet, especially now since it seemed to be growing green again without any kind of reason for it.

Most people didn't mind that the planet was revitalizing, but Clive still wrote another paper on his theories of why it would be so. Once the article was complete, he logged into his account to add it to the collection. But there had been another change to the rules since his last visit.

"We are no longer accepting documents containing the word 'as'. Please make the appropriate changes."

Clive was a little annoyed by this rather stupid request, but he conformed to the new rule and made the changes before uploading his piece. Once he was logged out, he gave the computer over to Catherine so she could look up new recipes to try.

(I just shake my head...)

A year had come and gone since Clive had started posting to this site, and several more stupid rules had been added or altered, but the last straw had come when they'd added their dumbest rule yet.

"We now reserve the right to edit material posted to this site as we see fit. We can make changes without permission or without notifying the original author. Punctuation such as asterisks, hyphens, colons, semi colons, periods, commas and exclamation points are no longer accepted."

Clive didn't know what kind of crack the people who ran the site were smoking, but after that, he had no more patience for it. It didn't matter to him anymore that the site was free, he pulled all his articles off the page and closed his account. Using the piles of gella he'd earned while out with his friends by using gella cards on certain monsters in the abyss, he bought some space on a web provider and set up his own page where people could post their papers as they pleased, without being governed by lame regulations.

The other site soon lost all its business and went offline as everyone started to move to Clive's new page. And Clive was the best webmaster they'd ever had.

(Bad asterisks, bad! Bad!)

The moral of this story is: People will respect rules when they aren't pulled straight out of your ass.

The end.