I’m not much of a Wii fan, but I’m a complete sucker for steampunk and revisionings of fluffy cultural icons. I’m also a fangirl of Warren Spector’s take on emergent gameplay and game design in general. Thief – generating action by avoiding action? Deus Ex – building an action shooter you can beat without actually killing more than 3 lynchpin enemies (or even none, if you exploit a certain undocumented emergent feature)? Yeah, that’s impressive.

With that combo of concept and talent, ever since the rumors about of Epic Mickey started flying this summer, I’ve been going squee.

Now it’s official. So, y’know. Squee!

Teen princess tantrum? Not cute even when Betty Draper does it. And she's way sexier than you are.

So you make a WoW guild. You figure you’ll be reasonable and give teens a shot – you figure if they start making their own rules and invoke the mystic Drama-Llama, you can pull them aside, tell them this is unacceptable, and eventually they will either start behaving or get your boot in their ass. And it shouldn’t be a problem, since you’ll be screening them anyway.

But age limit 16-plus? If you try that, make sure all your mods or officers or whatever are on the same page about what’s kosher. Make sure your other membership is on board with the “no drama, no exceptions” policy. 16 means 2-4 whole years of the age bracket whose biggest problem is whether daddy will pay their WoW bill and if their new school will be hard – and because their lives are so simple, they have silly amounts of time to spend on convincing themselves it’s the exact opposite. Like the ghost told Betty in Mad Men: “You’re a housecat, baby. You’re highly valued, and don’t have a lot to do.”

The thing is, I like cats. They’re adaptable. I’ve never met a kitty that can’t be taught that it should piss in the litter box, not claw shit when it’s upset, and never ever jump on my keyboard demanding attention RIGHT NOW, because the possible destruction of work in progress will be met with loud noise and an immediate introduction to unassisted flight. Cats and teens, both are completely educable. They just need consistent rules.

The other thing my perfect next guild will not have is well-intentioned busybodies who listen to the upset teen kitty yowling when it doesn’t get it’s way – and then ride in on the whaambulance to tut on how naughty it is, making poor kitties cry like that. Seriously, if the kitty makes a pest of itself and then tries to claw my eyes out when I tell it no, it ain’t cruel to lock it up till it cools down and starts behaving again. Auntie Empathy is not helping by being all sympathetic and demonstrating that yes, in fact, all adult humans DO exist to make kitty’s existence comfier.

…in retrospect, I should have locked the kitty out, though, not walked out and left it loose in the house. If I want my guild back from that pair now, there will probably be violence – and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the smell out of the couch even then.

Anyone know how to remove unsolicited drama stains?