I care about mene very much. Unfortunately the past year has been difficult for me. Especially because my computer died and I couldn't pixel for about 6 months. I finally have a new one and I'm easing my way back in (although I am a music teacher and getting married in June so things have been a bit crazy). Let me assure you that my teammates in the staff forums all feel the same way.

I'm going to address some of your concerns if you don't mind :)

The angels and swords, if you would be able to see the old suggestion thread, were the TWO TOP suggested items. Even with the release of wings and swords through the ages, we still had people begging for more. Rest assured, we completely agree that wings and swords have been done a lot and are working on other projects for future CIs at the moment. This upcoming CI (which should be out in a few days) is completely different and I think is super fun. This one is completely wishie's brain child. Sometimes she comes up with these dynamite ideas and uses them :)

Regarding the auctioneer...this is a wonderful idea and it has been used in the past for random items....when we had a 100% pixel staff. With me being gone, Cora has been at full speed ahead on the event/commons side and wishie is the only CI pixelist. So there hasn't been the man power. This is MY fault. And I apologize for being gone and taking that medium away.

LONGCAT - despite being a mod - actually helps with the pixels :) Believe me. She has come to mine and Cora's rescue numerous times. She is having computer problems herself at the moment though and has been unavailable on that front. When we moved Cora over from a moderator to a full time pixel artist, we had mentioned LONG as well. But she is one of the oldest moderators on the site at this point and has that leadership that we find so valuable on that front. It was with that thought that we kept her at moderator and only took Cora over to pixels. However, when LONG has the time, she definitely helps out with pixels a lot :) She just has to balance the mod side with the pixels. (And actually several other staff members have stepped up from time to time as well. Jelly pixeled a few things, Belly has done some work, Chexala is helping for the upcoming event, Nephila is helping for the upcoming event as well, Iku (an old AA) used to do sketches for us that were extremely helpful, Iro (an old EC) used to do work from time to time as well, and Seito (an old EC) used to do work from time to time. )

I want to assure you that it is never our intention to take someone's idea. Believe me! It's always satisfying to see someone comment "OMG, I suggested a cat pose on the head and here it is!" :) We definitely don't want to take credit for someone else's idea.

I help man the user pixel forum when I'm more active. It's actually how I started pixeling. Jelly started the forum hoping to find wishie some help because she was literally the ONLY active pixel pixie a few years ago. I started practicing and Jelly and Xuvvie gave me tips and finally I was offered a volunteer position on staff. I gladly accepted because I want to see mene succeed. I don't get "paid" for my work...I do get a stipend of gold to spend because my mene time is spent pixeling instead of posting to earn gold. But rest assured that we ALL care for mene or we wouldn't be doing this. Earning "gold" is not the same as real money...and to spend as much time as we do on here creating and running the site, it might as well be a full time job at times.

When users create items and ping me, I do my best to give them tips in order to make sure the items are menewsha style pixels. There are many different styles of pixels and mene uses a pretty specific one. FOr example, gaia items use something called anti-aliasing and can use "masking" to make the avatar pose change shape with certain items. We don't use anti-aliasing in our style and don't have the coding ability to use masking. So in order to assure they fit the menewsha standards, I do give tips on how to get there. Several users take them in stride. For example, LONGCAT learned to pixel this way and is now helping us out from time to time. We have used MANY user pixels in the newbie shop (a few of mine are in there from before I was staff :D ) Unfortunately, several of these users have disappeared over time...some top candidates have stopped coming on mene because of their real life stuff. Xuvrette is very talented but I know she is crazy busy with work as well unfortunately :(

I wish I could give you more details of what we have planned for the future. But with me coming BACK on staff...the pixel party is starting to align again. And it should give some help in terms of what we can do event wise, auctioneer wise, wishie wise, etc. It wasn't my intention to disappear and cause chaos. Hopefully I can help make up for that with the work I am doing now. I hope this helps shed some light into what is going on this side of the pixel tracks. It's like a machine - with working parts, things can get done. But when one part is broken, every other part had to step up and help out which let things fall through the cracks. NOw that the part is fixed (me), it should start working again. It wasn't my intention to break your trust in us as a staff and a website and I hope that we can earn that trust back. :)

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