MiseTings is a Magic: The Gathering humor site, dedicated to the production of parody Magic: The Gathering cards and humor articles related to that game. Recently, the main site has stagnated, as the webmaster, MB or Mike Bregoli , has been more than infrequent in updating it. The term "Mise", Magic lingo for an excellent card draw or lucky break, was ultimately immortalized in a card of the same name from the Magic expansion Unhinged.

History of MiseTings

Mise, Tings, Gas etc. began as MB (Mike Bregoli)'s blog, where he would post humor articles he and others had written. Readers (now referred to as Tingers ) would chat in the comments section for each article.

Then, the first set of discussion boards for MiseTings was created. During this time, many of the traditions of MiseTings's forums were created, such as the :west:, :wise:, :trey:, and :masked: emoticons, The Tree of Woe, MiseTings Survivor, and invisitext. This is sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of MiseTings - it is notable that many of the important Tingers from those days are now banned, never post on MiseTings, or only occasionally post, having forsaken the current set of forums due to their "level of stupidity". This is nothing special, and happens to any internet community, but, again like every internet community, MiseTings complains about it.

In May 2002, the second set of discussion boards (the one used today, albeit upgraded) was established. At the beginning, it was just like the old set of forums, but due to an article in Inquest showcasing parody cards from MiseTings and some other factors, a large influx of noobs came to the forums, greatly decreasing the net quality of posts, while increasing the quantity. During this time, members from pre-May 2002 began to leave.

The Unfucking Of The Stupid

In December 2003, Cade got fed up with the influx of n00bs. He then decided to do something about it: systematically delete every post from General Discussion from the last two or three months, with the assistance of Paladin en-Vec. After he did this, he posted a topic on General Discussion, titled "The stupid has been unfucked." After this, MB elected two new moderators from long-time members. There were brief complaints of mods acting unilaterally, but these passed soon once the two new moderators settled into their positions.

Since the Unfucking

The site has mostly abandoned its original purpose of Magic: the Gathering humour, since little to no new articles are written, and the few that do are put up with huge delays. The card gallery, too, has not been updated in ages. The frontpage has turned into a quaint piece of history, and most members of the community go directly to the forums.

Since the Unfucking, the forums have stabilized, mostly. The usual influx of members both new and old continues. The excessively annoying are banned, either directly or through the use of Survivor. Like all other forums that have abandoned their original purpose, the site is now just a place to hang out for regulars. It's stagnant, dull and rife with bandwagons.

Questions on the legality of parody cards

Since MiseTings had always been founded in a tradition of Magic humor and creating fake cards, projects by MiseTings members working on imitation or joke cards have been used in many situations to create proxies (fake cards for substitution as real ones) or forgeries, mostly with the intent of fooling the rumor mill at MTGnews.

Near the end of 2004, a forum member named Annorax was working on a project to create proxies for old, rare, and valuable cards. Since he was far from subtle about it, of course he attracted the attention of the Wizards of the Coast legal department. On receipt of a cease and desist email from the creators of the game, Annorax deleted his proxies, but also went so far as to remove all of his created cards from MiseTings, all support for a project he was working on with several members of the MiseTings community, and his card creation tool, a completely legal copy of Adobe Photoshop.

MiseTings was briefy affected by the sudden and confusing actions of a prominent photoshopper, and there was much concern among the paranoid who did not understand the only problem was that he was creating copies of actual cards, as to whether or not the Wizards legal department would choose to target other members of MiseTings for legal action. However, since there was never any connection to the MiseTings forum other than membership, and parody in its own right is protected by law, card creation continued at MiseTings after a brief period of uncertainty.

After continuing whine about the legal situation on the MiseTings forums, Annorax was temporarily banned with instructions to seek help for his worsening financial and apparently mental conditions from the forums on December 12, 2004. Annorax has returned to the forums since his ban expired.

The Suspension

On March 4, 2005, all four members of the moderation team were promoted to the level of Administrator, account creation was temporarily suspended, and a new draft of account creation and banning rules was announced to be under construction. In addition, a massive account purge of all accounts with fewer than five posts was enacted. The result of the suspension was a massive drop in the number of weekly bannings, a consequent disappearance of trolls and clueless new arrivals, and a stagnated Event Captions and Photoshoppery forum (since no clueless new arrivals were posting terrible creations, this is likely a good thing).

On April 4, account registration was reopened, under the condition that the applicant use an IP email address, that IP was checked, and there was a brief waiting period before account instatement.

The long-term impacts of this event on the MiseTings community have yet to be seen, but the most important immediate effect is a greater control of the users who will be allowed into MiseTings.

A short guide to MiseTings slang

• SVG (several spelling variations): Commonly accepted to mean either "so very good" or "savage", an expression of approval for something of high quality.
• Mise: From the expression "mise well" (pronounced as in "might as well"), mise covers several word forms, but generally means a lucky find, especially from one's deck while playing. Use on MiseTings is often just the single word for an excellent remark or discovery.
• Ting: A pithy insult. Short for 'beating'.
• Sarnath'd: A user named Sarnath had a remarkable ability for beating another poster, Gisgo, to the punch, and therefore the phrase "Sarnath'd" came to mean that one was beaten by Sarnath to posting. It does not apply to a first post as much as the expression of an idea.
• Annorax'd: The same Annorax discussed above was often criticized for giving parody cards poor ratings on technical values alone, simply because he did not understand the joke involved. The term "Annorax'd" came into being to roughly translate as "I don't get the joke".
• Banhammer: The mythical tool wielded by moderators, just a forum joke about how members get banned.
• Mod: Moderator, but on MiseTings one finds it used at times as God, for example, the expression "An act of Mod".
• tl;dr: Too long; didn't read. Used when someone makes a lengthy rant or rhetoric that does not stand, for the reader who remarks this, on its own merit. Often accompanied with other remarks that it was a "linguistic dreadnought".
• Big Red Letters: The use of size 7 red font at MiseTings is a more vehement form of using capital letters to "shout". Many times, a user will use Big Red Letters as they speak a denouncing "NO", other times image files with even bigger red letters are used in posting.

Users and Mods

Mods

MB: Mike Bregoli, the site founder and original administrator. MB has at times vanished from MiseTings for significant periods of time, but this has had little impact on the community, other than a lack of updates to the front page or articles.

Cade: One of MB's friends, Cade was the first moderator of MiseTings. Part of the forum lore is that Cade is known to have significant sexual prowess, including a penis in excess of eight yards, the ability to call upwards of eight whores to him by batting an eyelash, and the ability to go bald before the age of 40. Unfortunately for the ladies, he was recently engaged.

Paladin en-Vec: As close to MiseTings could get to a rags-to-riches or n00b-to-moderator story, PeV (a popular nickname for him) was made a moderator after repeated demand from users for the expansion of the mod staff. MB posted a poll, which PeV actually lost to Yawgatog, but PeV was installed as a moderator regardless. He has always used avatars of Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars.

blisterguy: One of the two moderators installed in that position after the Unfucking. blisterguy uses no capital letters in his very short posts, something that few members can pull off successfully and several have been banned for.

bekel: The second of two moderators installed post-Unfucking. bekel is unusual at Misetings for the simple reasons that she is in her mid-40s, is married, and has multiple children.

Note: As of March 4, 2005, all members of the moderation team have been promoted to administrators.

Of MiseTings's many users, here are some of the most notable:

Rahal: Rahal is perhaps the most persistent forum troll MiseTings has ever seen. Over several dozen incarnations, Rahal has refused to quit returning to MiseTings, despite the equally persistent bannings of the mod team. Although he was permitted to stay after his first band in several iterations, he has since been IP banned multiple times to no avail. Currently, any member making mention of Rahal, mimicing him, or otherwise encouraging his additional posting is subject to the wrath of the mod team.

Dantes: Except for very short periods of time, Dantes has always used some form of an Agent Smith avatar. A conservative and extremely good debator, when he feels like it.

Basilisk: One of the oldest of the old-school members, Basilisk is an excellent photoshopper and general clown.

Badguy: The original Ultimate Troll and the first user to 10,000 posts, Badguy was known at first for his Incredible Hulk avatars, and later for being the target of jokes about "Badguy's Mom". Was banned and unbanned repeatedly until he was finally permabanned in Feburary of 2004.

Arc: Hailed by some as the greatest at the art of flaming MiseTings has ever seen, Arc pioneered the use of posting Big Red Letters (see forum lingo). He has since renounced this habit, although to this day many other members mimic it.

Yawgatog: One of the photoshopping pioneers of MiseTings, Yawgatog is currently absent from the forums, although he can currently be found at MTGnews and the Wizards of the Coast community boards.

Annorax: Although Annorax was once the reigning kind of Photoshop at MiseTings, today he has retired from the art that won him recognition, following his quasi-legal follies (detailed above). Annorax's often abrasive personality and quick-to-judge nature have often gained him more animosity than admiration. His great contribution to MiseTings Photoshopping was through the .psd files that are usually key to creating quality shops.