[VanimaEdhel]

I don't really know how deeply it got - whether it was really a clique or just a bunch of bitter people together. I do know that one of the reasons they abolished the old ratings system was that people were targeting one person, and having all their friends go after them too. If you did something particularly nice one day, for example, they'd go around raising your score everytime they saw it, no matter how juvenile your posting. Meanwhile, you could uncover some deep, meaningful truth regarding Tolkien (granted, that's an exaggeration), but if you, for example, unexpectedly (to them) killed their character off in a role-playing game because they had not been around for a good few months, they would have all their friends go around and lower your score. I don't know if things like that still happen here.

And then there was always a certain degree of discomfort between Oldies - of which I sort of became one - and the Newbies. Especially when a new movie would come out and we'd get that rash of Orlando-lovers and people professing their undying love for Legolas or Aragorn, things got a little tense. That seemed to happen more in the RP-ing rooms, to be honest, though. Every fangirl and her mother it seemed were wandering in there and making a beautiful, golden-haired elf shieldmaiden with blue eyes - named something like Lhunsilwenbainmorsuiladmenelaldardulincelinduialie lienwen - usurped from power (lovechild of Elrond and some hot elf lass), and having her wander off on a quest to win the heart of Legolas. Things got especially nasty then...I think there was even a time when you didn't have to get characters "okay"-ed by someone before you could play. It was actually mayhem quite a bit of the time.