Drew Linky
1st of November
Not much of note today. The only event that stands out was altgen getting a little unruly; this should not be surprising, but it’s important to remember that for some time they’ve been experiencing a significant decrease in utter shittiness, so this sort of outburst is—at the moment—somewhat uncharacteristic.
I didn’t get to witness this disturbance myself and I’m still not privy to what exactly the offending remarks or content were, but Tori described it as thus: “Altgen had gone into really bad topics to the point where I needed to tell them to drop it entirely three times, so on the fourth instead of saying if you keep it up I'm banning, I just third impact'd the channel for a little” (third impact being a direct reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion and yet another word for freezing the channel completely).
In light of the fact that altgen had been trying to improve their reputation over the last month or two, this development is interesting to me. I wonder what exactly catalyzed this extreme and sudden shift to their more popularly understood roots? I asked Tori if this behavior has been increasing in frequency or intensity lately, although she said it’s not very common. I wonder if there are newcomers that have upset the balance that was struck in the channel, or if people have gotten bored and are starting to lash out because of it.
Part of me also wonders if I’m partially to blame for this. On many occasions lately when I’ve been bored, I’ll go to altgen and explicitly shitpost to my heart’s content, and encourage others to do so as well. This is less in keeping with the newfound altgen crew, who have been emphasizing the community aspect more than the unmitigated fun side. It may be that my encouragement to shitpost wildly has been taken up by some—in short, it’s entirely likely that I’m being a bad role model.
This requires some more in depth examination and consideration. I may need to significantly tone down exactly how much I abuse my moderator position while in altgen. I already know that abusing the text to speech program is extremely bothersome to some people, so I’ve deliberately avoided it for some time now. I’m sure there are other such nuances to my behavior that may be disruptive (even if such disruption or instability are an inherent part of the place) and interfere with the delicate ecosystem.
More to consider for another time I guess. Nothing more for today.
2nd of November
A project I’ve neglected to mention is a rather ambitious undertaking detailed by Sora. They’ve been talking about going through Homestuck in its entirety and making comments on each page that would detail the exact time it went up, commentary that Andrew Hussie has made in his physical print books, and other details. The project is ambitious not only because of the considerable amount of commentary that exists, but also because a lot of that information is so difficult to find in the first place—there is no telling exactly how much Hussie has said about the various details of the comic as the years have gone by. With eight years of history so far, the amount of comments on a given panel or facet of the story may range from none to hundreds, or even thousands.
Organizing this activity as it is now would be a monumental undertaking, to be sure. Even more complicated is the fact that additional content is almost assured to be released in the future; it was announced some weeks ago that the entertainment company Viz Media will be releasing volumes of the entirety of Homestuck, complete with new commentary1 from Andrew Hussie on the development or details of the comic. This opens up an interesting line of thought that I’ll expound upon in a second; to finish this current thread, the project Sora is proposing—while certainly worthwhile—is unwieldy to me, principally because you would not only be searching for as much old information as possible, but as new information is created it must be catalogued as well. If I had more time I would absolutely be interested in engaging in this project, but as it is I’m not sure it’s even feasible to pursue. I’ll have to think about it for a while; I would be eager to see what Sora and others may turn up.
On a significant tangent, Viz Media releasing these volumes is an interesting development on its own; Homestuck’s nature as an online work, and especially its specific design as a webcomic with long sprawls of text and incorporation of different types of media, is not exactly conducive to a print book. Hussie already has three print volumes that have been available for years (themselves an immense source of commentary for various parts of Homestuck).
Viz will be remaking these volumes and then continuing, finishing the rest of the webcomic now that it’s effectively over, although it now begs a different question. The comic is essentially 100% complete, barring the presence of an epilogue. This final piece of the comic was promised to us long ago, in a now deleted newspost by Hussie himself. With the deletion of that post and the extraordinarily long period of time with no communication from him at all, as well as the presence of Hiveswap and untold numbers of other factors, we have no idea if the epilogue is still forthcoming or if it’s been abandoned. The Viz Media publications in the future will have to put that to rest: assuming the volumes sell well enough, they’ll be running through to the very end of the comic. At that point, an important question will have to be answered: will we receive the very end of the comic or will it be left as is forever?
The ramifications of this possibility are a lot to consider. Homestuck’s predecessor, Problem Sleuth, did receive an epilogue. To my understanding, Problem Sleuth’s end was initially not well received until Hussie developed an epilogue for it that effectively tied things together and made it more satisfying2. This is a tantalizing element of historicity for us, given that the end of Homestuck has been received so poorly. There is real hope that Hussie will be able to fill the gaps and heal our collective soul, so to speak. The Homestuck fandom in its entirety marches on, and though the subject has been hashed to death in the past it may not rest fully until the ending is properly consummate.
Nothing more for today.
3rd of November
Today was defined largely by a controversy in altgen that, for a time, appeared it might escalate into a full out war. The progression from start to finish was actually quite interesting; I was fully present for this issue so I feel at liberty to speak more conclusively about its nature than previous engagements.
The incident in its entirety didn’t even last for very long; from what I recall the ordeal lasted only half an hour at most. However, that half hour was turbulent enough to warrant extreme concern at one point or another. It officially began at 1:50 PM EST, when Tori asked in modchat whether the word “food” in altgen’s channel description could be changed to “furries”, a change that would make it seem that the channel is (jokingly) endorsing discussion of furry-related topics.
Tori’s request was, indeed, a joke—she explained that “furries moved into altgen weeks ago”, taking up residence and speaking on the topic frequently. She joked further that they had started a “communist furry nation in altgen”, at which point Makin chimed in saying that he would demod Tori if altgen became a furry haven. This harsh response naturally garnered the attention of other mods, especially Ifnar, who began launching a series of scathing, rhetorical questions in retaliation.
Things only began to escalate from there. Makin demanded that furries trying to override discussion be banned, which prompted even more of a response from us. The disproportionately targeted and unfair treatment of this type of people was alarming to us, and there was great confusion stemmed from the fact that Makin hadn’t clarified his stance at all (he would mete out his decisions in piecemeal and typically fail to elaborate further, a pattern that draws much ire in situations like this one). Despite all this, one of us went to altgen and broke the news.
Predictably, it was not received well. The confusion for them was even greater than it was for us, and mods floundered for a way to explain why this decision was going through. Members of altgen present at the time demanded to know what the reasoning for the rule was, how it would be implemented, what fell under the definition, etc. Unfortunately, almost none of us had those answers. I made a promise to go figure out conclusively what was happening so I could report back to altgen on the matter.
Unfortunately, my requests for more information were summarily ignored, and I began coming up with ways to improvise what should be said. I was getting ready to post the new and impromptu rule, but Makin came in to altgen and started joking around extensively with the local inhabitants. Nothing about the conversation resembled anything of even middling sanity, until finally people became fed up with the lack of cohesive information and demanded answers.
To this, Makin stated as plainly as possible that “furry discussion itself is not banned”, only that he wanted the channel to avoid becoming run by furries or dedicated to them. Without giving the appearance of anti-furry sentimentality, I more or less agree with this viewpoint. I feel as if this is an area of internet culture that must be witnessed thoroughly to be understood, and my experiences with dedicated furry communities have been rather mixed in terms of quality.
For those who may be unaware, “furry” is a loose term used to describe a subculture that is dedicated to the appreciation and artistic representation of anthropomorphic animals. The term has been around since about 1980, with drastically increased usage since the internet became publicly available in the 90’s. Today, furries congregate in a variety of different websites and even in real life at conventions dedicated to the topic. They end up catching a lot of attention and subsequent flak because of their passion for animals, which for some extends even into the realm of sexuality. Naturally, this sort of behavior gives rise to at least some level of persecution from people who view furries as an aberration.
The reason I’ve chosen to elucidate on this topic at all is because there is a higher than average proportion of furries within the Homestuck fandom, for reasons that are probably not worth exploring in detail here. As such, this new rule was immediately met with a considerable degree of hostility and disbelief; furries themselves and those who are sympathetic or otherwise supportive of them were, in a word, outraged. The confusion surrounding the actual nature of this new rule didn’t help either, where people were unsure of the exact extent of the punishment, what officially crossed the line of acceptability, and so on.
After some time of stoking the flames of discourse with his signature aplomb, Makin finally clarified in a succinct and serious enough fashion what was going on: furries themselves would not be banned, but he strongly discouraged the congregation of them, especially the formation of any sort of majority group. As I mentioned earlier, I’m more or less in agreeance with this: due to the passion and dedication furries tend to invest in this topic, they can become overwhelming and effectively dismantle whatever is currently going on if there are too many of them, or if they feel they can get away with it.
Personally I’m kind of ambivalent on this exact matter, but Makin feels it’s best to avoid letting that sort of dynamic shift occur in the first place, and I’m not one to disagree. I worry how this may feel for the furry members of our community, because assuredly many of them probably deal with issues on that front already. It feels uncomfortable and unethical to shift the blame on them for something innocuous, which I’m sure would lend even more to that generalized sense of persecution. My earnest hope is that this arrangement will not lead to any hurt feelings or animosity.
I wonder if it’s wise to limit the discussion on this anyhow. I’ve mentioned before that I feel as if the creation of too many channels is a bad thing, in that it fractures conversations and forces them to go elsewhere—as a result, the overall amount of discussion happening decreases. On the other end of the spectrum, however, having too much conversation in one place with no set categorization can lead to people being left out or otherwise unable to say what they want to. There’s a delicate balance to be struck with what kinds of conversation should be allowed, and where.
On the other hand, there are some conversations that definitely do not belong anywhere here. I received a report about someone saying some fairly disturbing things in #hiveswap, who’s been doing it for a while now. None of the people involved will be named for reasons of privacy, but the long and short of it was that the content of the messages dealt with pedophilia.
This server had a fairly unpleasant run in with this sort of content a number of months ago. I’ve mentioned in brief that we were suffering from a long series of raids involving child pornography, which Ngame and I collaborated on to get rid of thoroughly. For days, related accounts would join and spam these images in #general, leading to some rather stark changes in policy. At first, we decided to keep an extremely vigilant watch for any accounts that were suspicious. This proved to be an untenable method for dealing with the problem, so eventually we just restricted the ability to post images anywhere on the server. Thankfully the problem did stop, but all of us involved were fairly upset by the experience.
In light of this, it’s easier to understand why we’re exceptionally harsh towards people who display tasteless and even genuine support of this kind of material. The offending user in this scenario, thankfully, did not actually post anything that would merit a ban, but they were saying things about underaged characters that left people extremely concerned. Sometimes people joke about this, so it’s not prudent to completely ban them without warning; I ended up talking to this person in an effort to get them to stop.
When the subject is this kind of magnitude of seriousness, I give no quarter in dealing with the people involved: I made it absolutely, unremittingly clear that any further behavior of this sort would be punished swiftly and severely. I think the message got through—the offending user said nothing apart from a very serious apology and we moved on. There is hope that this person was simply misguidedly joking, or that they understand the severity of their actions.
I don’t really enjoy punishing people. I must do it when it’s deserved, of course, but it casts a pall over the place when someone has deliberately acted in such a way that they require being dealt with. It’s a much more rewarding experience to talk with them and try to help them understand why they need to stop or how to improve; a case that immediately comes to mind is Sky2o, whose improvement continues to be nothing short of miraculous. I always take the fondest pleasure in people who are able to recognize that they must improve themselves or their behavior, and then manage to do it!
Hopefully the future brings positive news in the case of this person I talked to today. Nothing more for this entry.
4th of November
I was inspired to write about a couple of things today completely by chance. Nothing of great importance happened, so I’ll take the time to explain these small topics instead.
First is the remarkable relationship between Makin and MrCheeze. For clarity’s sake, when I say it’s “remarkable” I mean that it’s remarkable just how bizarre3 it is. MrCheeze professes nothing less than utter animosity for Makin, while Makin appears to do everything in his power to increase that animosity. Their interactions are nothing short of flabbergasting sometimes: Makin attempting to verbally poke at MrCheeze in both obvious and subtle ways, MrCheeze responding more and more scathingly as the conversation goes on. At times the animosity is exceptionally clear and pointed, but at others it feels as if the two are performing some sort of elaborate ritual for courtship. It’s mesmerizing to watch, and can sometimes whip up the entire conversation into a frenzy.
I have no idea how to begin assessing this; I kind of want to ask MrCheeze how they found this place, and why they continue to put up with Makin if they detest him so much. Indeed, I’ve literally asked why MrCheeze stays here, since to all appearances it seems as if they hate the HSD and especially Makin. The only response I got was a noncommittal “I don’t know”, and I didn’t pursue the topic any further. I sometimes wonder if they thrive on the energy, negative though it may be. Regardless of why, their interactions are commonly recognized almost to the point of fame; no shortage of jokes surrounds the “black romance” of Makin and MrCheeze. I’m curious to see if any real breaking point exists, or if they’re content to do this forever.4
Another facet I’d like to touch on is the word “misguided”, which popped up in conversation a couple times today. This word is draped in esoteric circumstances here: back in February when Linkslittlefriend was still a mod and shortly after my own modding, he and I started having a series of semantic discussions that centered around the use of the word “misguided”. He felt I was using it in a way that was inappropriate and derogatory, an assessment that literally no one else participating in the conversation agreed with. In fact, a more in depth description of him might help here.
Linkslittlefriend (LLF) is of some infamy here. He's perfectly nice, he just has extremely odd opinions about a lot of things. He fails to see why we think his opinions are weird and subsequently thinks all of OUR opinions are weird, but he's easily outnumbered in every case. In fact, LLF used to be a mod here, as the pseudo for the #homestuck and #hiveswap channels (a job Toast now bears) and still is a moderator for the subreddit. He was demodded on HSD because of some weird tendencies to dispute every little decision the rest of the mod team made, which slowed progress and problem solving down to a crawl in a lot of cases. LLF will relentlessly engage in semantic arguments, much to the displeasure of almost everyone else involved; if you demonstrate effectively that his viewpoint on a given matter is wrong, he will find another angle to try and indicate that, despite your thorough dismantlement of his case, he is still correct. It's an extremely maddening tactic so most people just tend to avoid discussing things with him and prefer to make fun of him instead. He takes this in good stride, and I think in a way he's fine with his status. Despite the frustration of talking with him, LLF means well and we don't regret his presence. At least not that often.
The disagreement over “misguided” followed a very recognizable pattern: LLF frequently argued with people over semantics and the definitions of words. Even when he had been thoroughly proven wrong, he would doggedly pursue the topic. There was no other word for it but “ruthless”—his determination was legendary, or it would have been if it wasn’t singularly exhausting to deal with in these cases. As it is, the behavior has earned him a spot in our history; “misguided” has become a profound meme for us, often incorporating a buildup and then the word itself employed with style. It is a testament to LLF’s stubbornness—it is his apotheosis.
There are a ton of other instances like this: seemingly small, unimportant developments that we—for one reason or another—inexplicably get attached to and turn into in-jokes. It’s a rather significant component of the tapestry that makes up our community. Easily half, if not more, of our content is derived from our own interactions with each other. It’s a special kind of arrangement that leads to this, and the chemistry that makes this possible is a significant part of why I like it so much in the HSD.
As far as my enjoyment here is concerned, I’m pleased as punch to say that this last week has been definitively more active than the one before it. At this point I’ve accepted what the others were saying, in that my worries were rather unfounded; less than a matter of declining interest, the timing of events in everyone’s real lives may conspire to take up the time of all involved. Especially during this part of the year, it’ll be more noticeable with the advent of midterms or especially final exams for many of the users. It’s just the natural course of things: real life takes precedence over whatever may happen here.
As it is, when everyone is on and talking, the energy is palpable. Or perhaps even when there is less energy involved, it’s simply enjoyable to be speaking with others that are interested in the same topic as you. I recognize that these statements are simplistic in nature, but their core is important. Sometimes I think that the fundamental ideas of why I or anyone else might enjoy this place can be lost, and that they bear repeating—especially in light of those occasions where we seem to spend an entire week arguing about the same topic nonstop, and by the end everyone is thoroughly pissed off or upset. Sometimes it’s easy to forget why we all enjoy being here, but in the end I feel like we persevere well enough.
Of course, there are people who have physically left, which is its own category of troubling. Nights, for instance: I was talking to him on his own server earlier today, as Yaz had pinged me because he wanted to ask a question. After catching up for a bit I asked exactly why he had left the server, to which he said simply that he would like to come back eventually. He did say that the “HSD is stinky” though.
There is also a striking selection of people who find the Patreon to be distasteful at best. The Patreon was a fun concept at first, but quickly ballooned into something that irks people, and still does. It may be time to bring it down, especially because the primary goal of advertisement on MSPA is no longer possible. Makin uses the funds to pay for advertisement on MSPFA, a TF2 server and the SS13 server, but I would be surprised if those things account for the entirety of the funds. I wonder if he has any actual plans in mind for the aggregate of funds generated; the plan to hold him accountable through publishing the funds hasn’t even gone into effect at all, so it’s impossible to say whether he is or isn’t being above the table with it all. Part of me is nervous that any request for updates from him will be met negatively, which would open up a series of questions and considerations that I do not look forward to. I’ll have to bring this up in the modchat very soon, before malcontents have a chance to seize upon the mysterious funds as an argument for non-transparency.
A discussion was had recently about Makin’s nature on this server. This is far from the first time the topic has been breached, but Makin commented on it himself today. I usually find myself in the position of defending Makin when these conversations occur, because I generally prefer to believe in the goodness of everybody involved. I made the usual comments about Makin only joking or turning it into a ruse when he does the more controversial things he’s prone to. At some point Makin reviewed this and mentioned that he does these things specifically to foster that image of unpredictability. I’ve also commented on that particular aspect of his behavior at length, but at times I have to wonder what it means about him that he specifically goes for the action that he thinks people will expect the least.
I think about it sometimes, but then so too I believe I overthink it sometimes. Both naturally and then while writing this journal I make myself prey to the habit of overly considering things to the point of meaninglessness. Perhaps it would be best to let this topic be, at least until something more drastic or important happens worthy of comment. My droning on the topic with no substance will not provide any meaningful conclusion. It may also prove to be that I want more control over the fate of things here than I can realistically be afforded; I desire stability, but it is not always possible or even desirable for things to be stable. I am concerned that, if allowed to grow out of control, that behavior may eventually destroy the group we have, but perhaps I just worry too much.
The dichotomy is troubling. As I said, I’m going to cease talking about this until I have something more substantive to comment on. Even now I remember the promise I made to return to a more objective analysis of what’s happening, rather than to continue processing things in such an emotionally vulnerable fashion.
I have a lot of thinking to do. Nothing more for today.
5th of November
We have reached that time once more, where Makin and subsequent others have asked how this journal is progressing. I’m always at a loss when they do this; it’s pleasing to know others look forward to my writing and the information I have to impart, but it also feels like an additional burden of expectation. Nonetheless, I don’t begrudge them for this—it’s more amusing than anything else. However, I want to stress that I only include such events that I deem are important or significant enough. As I said to Makin earlier, would he prefer slower updates of 50 pages containing more interesting notes or rapid pace updates with nothing but crap in them?
This topic actually segued into another, which led to some rather interesting considerations. For some time now the scope of this journal has been slowly expanding: it began and still largely is an examination of the culture of the HSD in particular. I think it’s a good size for such observation, where there’s enough people that it’s always active but it’s not unwieldy or overly complicated (although it certainly seems that way at times). However, my time spent exploring the communities that are closely related to our own has been revealing. I mention occasionally the “tapestry” that makes up our collective culture, and the more I learn about these other facets of the Homestuck fandom, the more I realize how richly diverse and interconnected that tapestry really is. Some of these areas are less interconnected than others, but they all have common points of reference and origin.
In short, the HSD does not exist in a vacuum. It has intimate connections with other facets of the fandom, most obvious being the subreddit. It also provides access to CANMT and LOFAM, among other things. In light of all this, I’m struggling to ascertain whether I want to keep this journal HSD-centric or if I want to make that leap and dedicate it to an exploration of the Homestuck fandom in its entirety.
I feel as if the former would be by far the more accurate description of what I record here—even if I did deliberately say “I will examine the entirety of the fandom now”, my exposure to it is principally through here. In short, nothing would really change all that much. However, there are details I’m curious about that fall outside of the scope of the HSD itself. Would it be a betrayal of my intended goal here to pursue those pearls of knowledge, or would it ultimately not matter?
I find myself leaning more towards the latter. There’s nothing effectively stopping me from writing about whatever I happen to feel like. While the journal itself began—and ultimately will remain—as an exploration of the HSD in particular, as I said the culture of this place is finely intermeshed with many other distinct parts of the fandom. As such, it can only ever be helpful to describe something that’s even tangentially related.
One example of material I could search out involves the Music Team. It was suggested that I could go and seek interviews with members of the Music Team proper—perhaps starting with Tensei—and write on their history as well. The members of the Music Team are purportedly close with each other, at least to a limited degree, and it would be interesting to see why and how exactly they developed their camaraderie.
On the other end is the art team. Notice that Music Team is capitalized and art team is not; this is because, unlike the Music Team, the art team has not developed any sort of cohesive group mentality, and contributing artists tend to maintain some distance from others. The dichotomy between these two groups is fascinating, and I think it’d be worthwhile to figure out what exact circumstances conspired to lead to these outcomes.
This all having been said, I guess that’s my next project. There’s no telling when I’ll be able to begin, or even how I’ll go about it, but I’m excited to see if I can gain any useful information. The first step is of course to determine the best method of contact with various individuals, and I can ask around on the HSD for ways to contact certain members of the Music Team, or perhaps artists.
Important to note also is a rather cryptic set of warnings from Makin. He’s stated, in an unrelenting yet ambiguous fashion, that there are certain people I should avoid trying to talk to for reasons of personal safety. These kinds of statements are troubling, although they appear genuine and I greatly appreciate his attempts to protect me. However, they are also tantalizing; they whisper of a great secret laying underneath the surface, and I’m beyond curious as to what may be going on to promote such dire warnings. Makin has stated that he himself will never admit to what’s going on himself, and knowing him I have no doubt that he’s telling the truth in this matter. Thus, my only course of action is to forge ahead and try to figure out what the fuck he’s talking about on my own.
I am somewhat concerned as to what he could be talking about, because if the implications are as serious as he claims then I might not be at liberty to discuss them at all even if I do find out what he means. My intent with this document is not to ruin lives or careers, so if I find something that potentially threatens another person I’m going to have to omit it as I usually do. While I’m concerned with the ideal of journalistic integrity, I’m not exactly claiming to be Woodward & Bernstein.
A minor note of the discussion concerned the organization of this journal itself. Makin took time to explain to me the difference between an appendix and an annex today, the latter of which I had never heard of in a literary context before. While interesting, I failed to see the point of his bringing it up: the impression I got was that for matters of organization, having annexed literature is useful because it provides unfettered access to original documents that you didn’t write yourself. However, I’m already doing this: any and all documents that I am provided with I store along with the journal itself. The only potential way to improve access would be to create an appendix with the information directly attached to this document, at the end. I’m not sure if this would be altogether necessary or even desirable, but I’m going to play around with the organization a bit to see if the access to this ancillary information can be improved at all.
At any rate, as I said the way forward seems clear. It is time to seek more information in general, and if it’s to be found then it may go here in the future. I’m excited to see what I may uncover, and if it’s particularly interesting then maybe it’ll be preserved here instead of lost in the future. I’m beginning to more fully appreciate what I’m doing here, and I hope that my efforts will not go wasted. It would be a tremendous shame for all of the culture here to fall away in the future, even after my and others’ attempts to preserve it. Hopefully we can safeguard against that outcome.
Nothing more for today.
6th of November
I’ve been somewhat reflective today over something that Toast said to me in our discussion yesterday, about the nature of this journal. He described it as my effort to “describe the positive aspects of our community, and what makes it worthwhile to be part of”. My initial response to this was to deny it: this journal is, or at least was, simply an effort to document all events here, positive or not. However, there’s no denying that I take painstaking effort to describe all of the things I find valuable here. I guess I try my best to document all the bad occurrences as well, but the question remains of whether my focus is biased or not. And if it is biased, is it automatically a negative influence on this work?
As I’ve stated many times before, there’s a clear satisfaction and enjoyment I get out of being on the HSD and interacting with so many people. I’ve also detailed my involvement in previous communities, and how I dealt with them. At this point it seems fairly apparent that what Toast says has some merit. My narrative has shifted from a more objective account to one in favor of this community, a transition that I cannot genuinely lament.
The nature of Homestuck itself is in deep alignment with the story that has presented itself in the form of the HSD; both concern the activities of people who associate with each other online. While this is obviously an enormous simplification, the general principle still applies. I would be lying through my teeth if I said this parallel had thus far escaped me; I think about it all the time, in fact. It’s a fairly interesting bridge that has appeared between the thing we’ve all bonded over and ourselves. I’m sure to others in the community this connection is blindingly obvious and not even worthy of note, but I find myself entertained by the thought that we’ve fallen into the same sort of routine as the original comic.
When I get in these contemplative moods, I can’t help but wonder how exactly the community in its entirety will end up. I’ve gone on this line of thought at length before though, so I’ll spare the musings for now. There are more immediately relevant things to consider anyway.
Of note, today Cookiefonster gave out the first version of his own journal that he’s started working on, which may be found in appendix B under “Internet Communities and Homestuck: A Retrospective”. I don’t want to appear presumptuous, but he began this effort shortly after reading my own journal (he might have mentioned a direct link between those things but I can’t remember for sure at this point). Whether the connection exists or not, it’s quite exciting to see more people join in on this documentative effort; with every person who decides to record their observations, the greater the chance that pieces of this place will survive indefinitely. My ultimate concern is with longevity, and since the chances we’ll physically persist indefinitely are slim to none the next best option is to ensure the survival of our culture through writing. With every person who writes their own thoughts down, the more we can be understood once time has passed and we’re no longer around to convey the information ourselves.
Between this, wheals’ addition and Cait’s upcoming journal5, it seems that there is an increasing number of points of reference to work off of. I’m very pleased by this development, and I earnestly hope that more people decide it’s worth their time to speak their piece. Perhaps if enough people join in on this, I can collect the information and develop a further repository for information on the topic besides my own document.
All of this aside, another thing to note for today is the birthday of a person we know as Shadok. An artist, he has been around in the community for some time, although is not seen speaking in the HSD very commonly, if at all. He’s recognized for his contributions to the album art of several projects across CANMT, and even some for LOFAM. His most infamous work is the development of animation for what was originally an album by Toby Fox, entitled The Baby is You.
The Baby is You, often shortened to TBIY, is itself famous in the community because of its incredibly high meme density and bizarre, quasi-offensive subject material. It’s chock full of references that are still employed to this day, and at the time of its release caused quite a fuss on the forums. After some time of people quoting it nonstop and being a collective nuisance, all discussion of the album was banned from the forums.
The album itself was released in 2010, but all of the forum drama happened in 2015 or so. A while later, on April 13th of this year, Shadok released his animation for the piece. It became hugely popular, serving well as an accompaniment to the original audio. Shadok has a variety of other additions to the fandom, some of which have become popular in their own right. Most recently is an animation concerning one of the main characters from Hiveswap, a silly video known as Jude Harley Bizarrely, which even drew positive comment from James Roach. I think it’s safe to say that many look forward to what Shadok may make in the future.
An issue we came up against recently involves the use of mspa-lit to shill Makin’s preferred works of literature. This has almost always been its intended use, and in order to do this he utilizes the channel description. This is unfortunate because the channel description has a limit of 1000 characters, and it’s impossible for him to effectively shill all of the works he’s interested in. Finally, today he decided that it was time to do something that would mitigate this problem. To this end, Makin designed a graphic that effectively lists all of the works he’s interested in. This way, he can simply update the graphic in the future instead of omitting any of the things he wants people to read. This also opens up space for additional information in the channel description, as up until now it had all been used for shilling purposes. Who knows what he may decide to put there in the future now that the space has opened up?
This also provides an interesting look into the history what this channel has been dedicated to. Some of the works included have definitively not been the focus of the channel, such as a work called Dream Drive (which Makin claims is the most underrated story he’s ever seen). Among the works that we have been dedicated to are of course Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Worm, The Northern Caves, and its current dedicated shill “Worth the Candle”. I’ve included this graphic in the supplementary information, and alongside the rest of the information I have I’m figuring out how it could be transferred into this document for reasons of accessibility.
Some far more upsetting news today: Tori has officially declared that she no longer wants to be the pseudomod for altgen. I was initially confused by this, as it feels pretty out of place for what I’ve come to associate her with. However, she had this to say about it when I asked:
it's a massive and painful chore to have to check altgen these days, it was pretty bearable before server ads and the like where altgen got really really huge. and with that there's just a lot more than I'm capable of moderating. a lot of the time i dont really feel like i have time to myself cause if i so much as play starbound all day instead of playign staround while checking every five seconds, zoey has to steam message me because theyre starting a communist revoltion or there's been 20 neo alts banned
Clearly there is more to altgen’s latent development than I or anyone else gave it credit for. In fairness this isn’t altogether unexpected; I mentioned back when initially describing her that Tori seems to be haunted by her job in altgen, even if it seems that she is okay with it most of the time. The increased server load appears to have finally proven too much is all.
And really, when all is considered who could blame her? Altgen, even in its more “positive” states, is a lot to handle. It’s probably the most active channel on the HSD, and even if it weren’t it would still be an enormous responsibility to handle exact types of conversation that go on in there. As Tori said, with the server ads the activity of the channel has only seemed to go up, an impressive feat for a place that is already frenetic beyond reckoning.
No, as it is I don’t think anyone could really begrudge her for not wanting to put up with it, even under more normal circumstances. However, it’s to be noted that Tori has gone through these states before, where she wishes to abandon her post and be on her own for a bit. With this in mind, Makin has made a bargain: he will not demod Tori right now, but if she feels the same way in a week that she does today then she’ll be demodded. This seems like a fair enough proposition, and in the interim I don’t think she’ll be expected to deal with altgen in any serious capacity right now. Perhaps a short respite will help her to feel better, and she’ll reconsider.
In the event that she does not change her mind, however, it is important to use this week to figure out what we want to do. We have our janitors, but leaving altgen without a pseudomod is absolutely unconscionable. As such, our options are these: find a new pseudomod from the general populace, shift a current pseudomod into a different position, and promote one or both of the altgen janitors we currently have.
The first case will almost certainly not happen; I would sooner expect Makin to delete the channel entirely than accept anyone currently using it as a new pseudomod (and indeed, Makin has threatened—perhaps jokingly, perhaps not—to delete altgen completely if Tori does leave, which he does not think will happen). The second is more feasible; Anervaria has already stated willingness to do this, as art-music has calmed down substantially from what it used to be in months past. They no longer need two pseudomods, so it would make sense to transfer one from there to altgen. However, that option is difficult because Anervaria doesn’t really talk much in altgen. I imagine she would start doing so more often if she were to be stationed there, but the question of recognizability is important.
On that note, the last option available—to mod one of the janitors—seems to be an obvious solution. TS and Malice have both demonstrated thorough usefulness with handling altgen; both are fairly active in their duties, arguably more than Tori was (one of the motivating factors in her decision to tender her resignation). There are some differences in the activity of both: TS is extremely vigilant and has been informative when dealing with NEO alts or the like, but does not talk as much. Malice on the other hand does talk often and is extremely recognizable for most people on altgen, but she is decidedly less serious at any given time.
Perhaps the latter quality is the most significant. Altgen’s very nature forbids seriousness, and it may be worthwhile to have a mod that’s not strictly interested in viewing themselves with any kind of practical weight. Toast also brought up the recognizability factor, which Malice definitively has. At the same time, Sea Hitler has brought up the fact that people listen to TS, and that her words have weight behind them.
Honestly, the decision is a tough one. I’d personally opt to have both of them become mods; Toast agrees somewhat, saying “this is a time to experiment”. Whatever we decide, altgen is clearly not doing well right now. We must do something to improve how we’re handling it or we may experience some real difficulties in the future. I don’t particularly look forward to crashing a party, but altgen can’t be allowed to destabilize other elements of the server, and hopefully whatever happens we can find a way to bring it under more control.
The new mod conjecture is assuming that Tori does decide to leave, of course. It’s possible she won’t want to once the week has passed, in which case the idea of what to do is less clear. With new mods would come swift change, but if Tori returns then maybe things will go back to the way they were. However, her despondency has alerted us all to the reality that something is amiss in the channel. I have a feeling that, even if she should return, we will attempt to do something to make the channel less unwieldy.
None of us expect her to stay against her will and be miserable; it’s not worth it if we have to sacrifice our happiness to do our jobs. I think I can safely say that I speak for the rest of us when I say I hope that, whatever Tori does decide, she can be happier that way. Nothing more for today.
7th of November
I wanted to consider something that happened yesterday for a bit before I described it here. With the journal update forthcoming yesterday, naturally there was a lot of discussion about the history of the place and how it’s looked in the past, or how it may look in the future. At some point, MrCheeze spoke with me about it, saying they find it to be a shame that no one was around to record the earlier years of the fandom, even back in 2013 or so before the Gigapause.
I sympathize with this, and actually shared my lament that I never decided to go and associate with everyone at that point in time. I only just joined this community a year ago, and it took me over half of that time already just to come up with the idea of keeping this journal. How much history has been lost so far? How much is completely obscured now, with no one around willing to document it? I often find myself fantasizing about being able to go back and begin recording things in earnest, from the very beginning.
Alas, here we are now. I’m late to this game, but there’s nothing stopping me from pursuing this project now and for the foreseeable future. MrCheeze seemed perturbed by my willingness to do this, and as nearly as I can tell they were under the impression that I felt that our history wasn’t worth recording until now, the exact opposite of my actual stance. After I explained my position more thoroughly, and how I specifically wish I was around to record everything before, they seemed mollified for once. I’m reasonably certain that we see eye to eye on this particular topic now, which is heartening for some reason. I find it difficult to gain any ground with S, but perhaps they have a little more tolerance for my whims now?
Curious by this change in subject I asked them a bit more about their involvement with Homestuck. I was afraid they would be withdrawn on the topic, but immediately they said that they had gotten into it near the very beginning. They then went on to say that the very start of Homestuck was boring, and that they stuck around because some of the content on the forums that was parodying it (even within a week of its release!) was more entertaining than the source material. They didn’t elaborate further on their eventual migration to the subreddit.
Part of the reason this conversation precipitated in the first place was because of a post made on the subreddit yesterday by a fellow named frig_darn, in response to a post asking about an old regular. The style of the comment itself is a little too dramatic for my taste, but it’s a love letter to the older days of the subreddit; in it, frig_darn describes how various activities that everyone mindlessly pursued and enjoyed together have eroded as time goes by. The message has resonated with many, and the full transcript is included in the related materials. The full contents of this post may be found in Appendix C under the section “Subreddit Nostalgia/Reminiscing”.
If I had to summarize the pathos of the message, it is simply: “the community is dead, and our memory of it is fading”. MrCheeze further takes this to: “the community will never be as good as it used to be”. I’m personally ambivalent on this topic, as I feel it’s extremely presumptuous to say that we will never reach such glory days again. While I certainly agree that the community will never quite be like it was so long ago, I’m not exactly interested in emulating the exact energy and culture back then—I’m more concerned with the continuation of what we have now, and making that better as time goes by.
Where MrCheeze and I diverge is in their treatment of the present, and the future. They’re of the firm mind that things will never be as good as they were, but I and some others, notably Makin, believe they see the past through incredibly rose-tinted glasses. I certainly respect their opinions, but I don’t necessarily agree with them; while the past is meritorious for its own reasons, who’s to say what the future holds for us?
Another facet of this discussion was, indeed, about the future. I’ve described our current status as a sort of Silver Age, based on what I’ve heard of the past. However, Toast—with his added authority on the matter from actually being around back then—has stated that we may be on the cusp of a second Golden Age entirely. I assume this is based on the number of people we have, how much they’re talking, and the types of content we have to look forward to in the future, among some other factors. His prognosis is exciting, although I couldn’t begin to say how accurate it might be. I’m just happy that the future seems bright.
These metrics I’ve mentioned will actually be easier to track in the future as well. Makin decided to add another bot to the server called Carbon, which gives some raw data on any server it happens to be in. While it’s not as comprehensive as I would like (barring some functions I don’t know about), it still provides information about how many people are talking, how many messages have been sent in the last hour, and so on. I’m curious to see what information this bot provides to us in the future; it’ll help firmly establish patterns of activity, and we’ll get a better idea of some of the more nuanced aspects of our server population.
Also important for today is that play-ss13 has been removed. Makin has said that the activity was not great enough to sustain an entire channel, and #gaming itself is so inactive that the two could very well go together. As such, he merged SS13 discussion with #gaming.
This has made some people very upset. As was predicted, the typical sort of #gaming discussion has been absolutely washed away in the flood of SS13 discussion. The channel used to see about 500 messages per day, and is now experiencing many times that. I’m not sure exactly how to reconcile these things; keeping SS13 as its own thing contributes to server bloat and robs #gaming of additional activity, but now that it’s sequestered to #gaming it’s overcrowding all else. I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be done about this except to let the few regulars learn how to swim. I don’t think there’s any other way to effectively handle this, and it may be best for the channel denizens to learn how to deal with flavor of the month titles, which are already a common occurrence in the video game sphere.
Despite this resolution to the matter, I have to remark on something that has provided some significant personal ire: WoC has firmly stated that he’s not coming back. I’m beyond frustrated with his stubbornness; one would assume that acquiescing to his requests would be enough to convince him to come back, and yet he’s said he is staying away based on the threat of this happening again in the future. I guess it can’t be helped—WoC is as stubborn as they come, and I don’t have the wherewithal to harangue him into coming back. He can pout on his own, and perhaps he will change his mind later anyway.
On a more positive note, user Gitaxian has also formed their own document: “What is a quest?” It is dedicated to explaining what exactly a fanadventure/quest is, and some helpful examples. I hope that this reference will be useful for people confused as to the nature of these stories, and have included the full text in the related materials.
I’m optimistic for the future. Nothing more for today.
8th of November
Not a lot of news today, but it’s important to note an upcoming event. I mentioned that the 25th of October is a date of importance for us due to plot relevance in Homestuck; the 11th of November is also such a date. It’s not quite here, but to celebrate this occasion What Pumpkin is dedicating each day of this week to releasing new products related to Homestuck. On Monday it was a set of mugs, yesterday it was a set of calendars, and today they’ve made mystery boxes available. These have typically been pretty enticing deals, if a bit pricey; I would be compelled to buy my own if I had the chance.
There’s also supposed to be some interesting news from Cohen arriving soon. In a Tumblr ask last week, he mentioned that more news about Hiveswap: Act 2 was forthcoming sometime this week. We assumed that such news would be released today as per tradition; Wednesday is typically when news from What Pumpkin is released. As it is, no such news came out today; instead, it’s possible that it may come out on the 11th proper. We’ll have to wait and see—the best bet is news on a potential release date, which would of course be fantastic news. It could also be something else of course, but I don’t know what else it might be at this point. Some speculate more interviews, but there isn’t really any indication one way or the other what it could really be.
Nothing more for today.
10th of November
I’ve been reminded of, and given subsequent details on, a facet of the Homestuck fandom called “Homestuck General”, stylized as /hsg/. This stylization is due to where /hsg/ was located, namely 4chan. I’ve described some /co/ comics based on Homestuck in the past, and /co/ is actually the board where Homestuck General threads were officially held. In order to more fully describe the inner workings of /hsg/, it’s useful to understand the nature of the place it’s hosted in. To this end, I will describe the general history and behavior of 4chan in as brief a fashion as I can manage.
Anyone who’s familiar with 4chan will understand the sort of tone that this might set. For the uninitiated, 4chan is infamous among the major internet communities as a place of uncompromising, often graphic discussion of all manner of topics. It is separated into many distinct sections, called boards, each dedicated to one topic in general, such as movies, literature, video games, and a plethora of other specific interests.
The posting system relies on more or less complete anonymity: people are identified only as “Anonymous”. They are known singularly and collectively by this moniker, or among themselves as “anons”. While generally an unpopular idea, they can also decide to identify themselves; people can utilize a “trip code” that distinguishes them as a unique entity, preventing other people from using the same name and pretending to be the same person (a practice mockingly referred to as “tripfagging”). While useful for maintaining linear and sensible conversations with specific people or for protecting the validity of interaction with more famous figures (for example, in an interview with a celebrity), breaking anonymity is seen as annoying at best and offensive at worst.
The anonymous nature of interaction on 4chan lends itself to an extremely specific brand of culture that has become widely recognized since its inception. 4chan itself was launched on the 1st of October, 2003, and for years remained one of the more obscure internet communities; beginning of course with a very small population, the culture that arose there was extremely esoteric, even hostile to newcomers. This sort of barrier served to keep outside people from disturbing the ecosystem, often by mocking them in cruel and excessive fashions for not already being familiar with the existing humor or unlisted rules. This encouraged people to wait and watch before participating; being able to call yourself a regular was for those already savvy in being able to observe and pick up information without guidance.
This sort of exclusivity also gave rise to a culture that was hyperdedicated to itself. Anons who were already familiar with everything were also able to create new content and culture for themselves at an astounding pace: one quote I can recall said, “Not an hour would pass by without a dozen new memes, and if you were absent for a day you would almost certainly be completely lost upon returning.”
This sort of behavior led to an increasingly bizarre and unrecognizable culture to anyone on the outside, which also contributed to the apparent viciousness with which anons treated outsiders. As time passed, 4chan would increasingly be seen as one of the “dark corners of the internet”; the anonymity led to an absence of the fear of societal taboo, and people felt unrestricted in their ability to view or discuss any kind of material. Often this material would be shocking or disturbing nature, although it only served to be entertaining to people who regularly used the website. The behavior of users in general grew increasingly harsh, to the point that it was seen as an opposite to Tumblr in social terms (the latter being considered a very progressive and welcoming website). Visiting 4chan started to be seen in many circles as a sort of rite of passage, and its notoriety grew as time went on.
After some incidents that put a serious spotlight on 4chan (even so far as to where it was featured on national news in the United States), the number of people who went to the website absolutely exploded. Since then, the culture that can be found there is far less esoteric, and decidedly less engaging. The influx of new people led to a near complete destruction of the existing atmosphere, and while activity greatly accelerated the amount of unique or interesting content being generated dropped through the floor.
There is an immense amount of detail concerning this topic that I could go into, but this journal is not the place for it, although I might write a more comprehensive document about this in the future. Suffice to say, the most relevant aspects of this topic are the extremely specific set of culture, and especially the pace with which the culture was created. /hsg/ was no exception to these qualities, and for some in the Homestuck fandom the Homestuck General threads included some of the greatest moments of the fandom’s history.
After some consideration, there is little about /hsg/ I can tell about that isn’t intrinsically tied to progression of the comic and website themselves; a purposeful lack of individual identities is not conducive to a readily identifiable subculture. Indeed, on 4chan in general jokes reach the point of unrecognizablility outside of 4chan itself, but with /hsg/ this problem was less substantial. Rather than the content itself being impenetrable, it is the behavior of the people involved that is more of a problem: the /co/ comics I described previously—themselves the product of these /hsg/ threads—more often than not employ humor or subject material that is innately offensive to many others, and indeed have been the source of innumberable controversies.
Disregarding the controversial nature of the place, it was notable for its manic behavior. By itself, the people involved were already extremely engaged with the webcomic, and speculation raged rampant at every little thing in the story. This energy heightened to the point of a fever pitch during updates—reactions came in from potentially dozens to hundreds of people in real time, all with their own flavor of incredulity, disappointment, excitement, anger, or whatever emotion may have struck. Major updates, such as key flash animations, in turn led to responses on /hsg/ that were themselves an event to be witnessed.
It’s difficult to describe these threads with accuracy because I never personally participated in any; by the time I was engaged in the community, the comic was over and /hsg/ had been effectively terminated as /co/ no longer allowed them to exist in most cases. There are still occasionally threads that form which are dedicated to Homestuck, but none of them can be called /hsg/ because they are not officially sanctioned by the people in charge of /co/.
Even if they were, they don’t resemble the same thing at all as their historical predecessors. While the /hsg/ threads of old featured extensive, even constructive discussion (usually in the form of intense theorizing, sometimes to the point of insanity), rapid-fire humor, and a myriad of other proceedings, the threads of today are often lackluster. Whether this apparent decline in quality is simply in comparison or is objective, the threads now are simply not compelling or worth being part of.
Thankfully, there are many methods wherein material from the past has been preserved. A common practice of people using 4chan is to almost religiously capture images of events that are important or otherwise notable. This is known as “screencapping”, and it is employed frequently enough that there is an unbelievable amount of picture evidence of these threads and what happened in them.
If that wasn’t enough, there are entire websites dedicated to archiving threads on 4chan. It is possible to input a post number and find it, although the farther back in time you go the less likely it is that a given thread was archived. /hsg/ threads were organized in such a way that previous threads were linked to, and then at the conclusion of a given thread a link to the new thread was provided as well. In this way, it’s conceivable that one could trace the line of posts indefinitely. There are breaks in the lineage which make it more difficult, and not every post has been archived. Thus the record is far from complete, but it is still navigable enough that the intrepid might find information enough to sate their curiosities no matter how deeply it runs. The earliest such thread I could find, dating on the 4th of July, 2012, may be found here: https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/38386514/.
Unfortunately, the images which formed the bulk of reactions and were responsible for much of the humor are now mostly broken, so it is effectively impossible to experience the place as it was back then (edit as of 2/12/18: Makin gave me an archive of /hsg/ threads complete with images, can be found in appendix D under “Collection of /hsg/ Threads”). Even if it was, it’s arguable that just being there in time to witness key events is part of the experience; if one takes this to heart, it is understood that the culture is now lost.
Now that I am personally aware of this particular facet of the community, there are a couple of things that I’m curious to see. First and foremost, the potential epilogue to Homestuck may effectively provide the conditions that used to be so ubiquitous in these threads. On the day that the epilogue is released, if it should ever be, then I will absolutely seek out the accompanying thread on /co/. It may not be /hsg/, and it may not even be of /hsg/ quality, but it will probably be the closest I can get; I won’t allow myself to miss the opportunity to witness it.
The second occurrence that I’m interested in seeing is Hussie’s “next project”. It’s been said in the past that Homestuck was simply preparation for Hussie’s next work, despite the scale and scope of Homestuck itself. It is almost assured at this point that any work of Hussie’s to follow this will be something avidly followed by an incredible number of people; I have no doubt that, should such a thing appear, /co/ or whatever relevant board at the time will serve to host discussion about it as well.
Whatever the case is, I look forward to the future in this regard. I would love to see these threads play out in real time; the manic energy reminds me of TPP somewhat. As it is, nothing more for today.
11th of November
The appointed time has come. Today was, unlike the 25th of October, not accompanied by any sort of stream or community event, but in turn there was an extremely good set of news that came out from What Pumpkin. Hiveswap: Act Two has a schedule release of Spring 2018! The exact date is not known of course, but “Spring” typically brings orients itself around the 13th of April. It’s difficult to say with only as much information as we’ve been provided, but I’m sure we’ll receive some more news along the way that helps give us a better approximation.
In addition to the release date, there is a feature that will be replacing the Hiveswap Team interviews of old. Now on Wednesdays, WP will be releasing character portraits in segments called “Troll Calls”; every week two new characters’ identities will be revealed. Two were already revealed today, and there are a total of 36 that we will become familiar with. There is considerable question as to how they will be involved with the story—36 is entirely too many for all to have thorough roles, but there was talk that they will be eliminated quickly. It’s something of a running joke for minor characters to suffer a quick end in Homestuck, so perhaps this too will pass for Hiveswap characters.
More related to the server, there has been continuing tension with MrCheeze due to the Patreon. Most other complaints have completely fallen away at this point (not to suggest they don’t exist—I expect that most people have simply deemed it unworthy of further debate, considering how immovable Makin tends to be), but MrCheeze continues to be unyielding in their complaints.
Despite this sustained feud they had an amusing moment of amicability that seemed to defy the all too prevalent animosity I’ve come to expect from them. Today, before we had any news come out, they made a bet: MrCheeze was adamant that no such news post would be released, while Makin maintained that there would be. As such, they bet $20 on the outcome, contingent that Makin must be allowed to wager using Patreon money and that if MrCheeze loses they must pay up by contributing to the Patreon for one month.
As one can see, Makin was the winner. S, to his credit, did end up contributing to the Patreon as they said they would, but of course they have refused to have their name associated with it and demanded to have the “Patrons” role removed from them once given. With so much of this exchange flying in the face of what I usually see from them, it was highly entertaining to me. I’m not sure if anyone else found it as funny as I did, but nonetheless I found it noteworthy. Soon after however, Sora ended up going on an extremely bizarre tangent of their own, where they began discussing such topics as were suitable for #social or were simply inappropriate for the server in its entirety. Despite repeated warnings they persisted until an mspa-ban was imposed on them, and by the end of this particular debacle MrCheeze had left the server.
They do this often, but the strangeness of the situation undercut the humor of it all. I’m not sure what possessed Sora to act in the way they did, but whatever the reason the damage is done. Despite my coming to peace with the server’s eventual fate, I’m still disgruntled by people leaving (even if temporary!). Even further, despite all of his rabblerousing—or perhaps because of it even—it is good to have MrCheeze around. I hope they comes back soon, and I’m sure they will.
Speaking of the Patreon, there has been a rather interesting development regarding the status of MSPA advertisements. Makin is still banned from advertising the HSD on MSPA proper, but there is a seemingly random ad that’s appeared instead: it reads, “Become a Baby: surrender your adult form and become a baby while retaining all of your current knowledge!”
You might ask why I bother to bring this up. Historically, MSPA ads have consisted of some extremely bizarre content, ranging from occasionally inappropriate to truly surreal. MSPA seems to attract advertisements for teasingly adult material, and then a wide variety of other content that can simply be nonsensical all the way up to completely bewildering.
Even with this in mind, the “Become a Baby” ad is not particular noteworthy. Indeed, many of the advertisements witnessed on MSPA have been exponentially more remarkable than this one. The crux of interest regarding this advertisement lay in the fact that clicking on it redirects you to the invitation link for the Homestuck Discord Server.
This raises some questions, the most prominent being “why” and “who”. Why has this person raised such an ad in this form, and who exactly is responsible for it? As to the first, it’s possible the ad is a “The Baby is You” reference, although it’s hard to tell for sure. The issue of “who” is substantially more interesting, and also potentially concerning. Toast I believe was the first person to recognize that the advertisement did this—he even brought it up a day or two ago, but was largely ignored at the time. The issue only caught on today, and now it’s on the verge of becoming a controversy of its own.
S, before their untimely departure, lost no time in making accusations as to who was responsible. Their primary suspect was, naturally, Makin. This is not an altogether illogical deduction to make, except for the absence of any actual proof connecting him to this. The second person they accused was Wheals, which in my opinion is far less reasonable. The third person they mentioned was myself, which while still amusing managed to cross the line from purely humorous to vaguely insulting. It’s disconcerting that they felt the need and justification to toss out these completely baseless claims, especially in a context that is more or less harmless. S’s sense of morality is strong to the point that it is frustrating to deal with at times.
To add to this conspiracy, after the realization broke on the HSD that this was occurring, the ad began redirecting instead to Shadok’s TBIY video on Youtube. From this, it is immediately clear that whoever was responsible was in the Discord server, watching the conversation unfold in real time. As of now, the ad is actually completely gone from MSPA, and the discussion over it has already faded away.
The community may never find out who was behind the ad, and as such it could remain one of the weirder mysteries we’ve run across even if it is not a particularly big one. I wonder if the person responsible will reveal themselves eventually. Only time will tell.
I’m also pleased to say that I’ve begun contacting members of the Music Team for details regarding their time together. I’ve successfully reached out to Alexander Rosetti (also known as Albatross Soup), RJ Lake, Kali (who is also on the HSD as well), and of course Tensei. Albatross Soup and Kali have both provided their responses already, and the former has even given me a small list of other people to contact on this issue, which I will do before beginning to write anything. I want as many points of reference as possible before writing about the Music Team, especially considering how little is currently known about them. Once I cease getting responses I will consider the research complete, but until then I will continue asking as many people as possible for their input.
Nothing more for today.
13th of November
Apparently a previous description I had about Nights’ reason for leaving was inaccurate, and when he found out he requested I omit it. I have done so, but the damage was done and a rather strange brand of Nights-related discourse has popped up today. There has been some discussion of it that I’m pretty sure people have misconstrued into badmouthing, and that has only served to make things more confusing. Nights is a valued member of the community, and for some reason Makin is willing to go to great lengths6 (or at least great jokes) to get him back. Today these lengths included changing the server icon so that it has a dog with cinnamon roll imagery and icing layered on top of the original image, and soliciting reaction voting to “gain 720 fat huskies”.
Sometimes it strikes me just how esoteric our humor really is.
Eventually we did accumulate the requisite number of reactions with “Fat Husky”, which true to its name is an overweight husky breed dog. For some reason this dog became emblematic of Nights and his general demeanor/presence, and a long series of discussions and bargaining were carried out over the course of months to turn it into a server emote—a venture that was eventually successful.
With the reactions gathered, Nights briefly rejoined the server, posted his own singular Fat Husky and then left again. This bothered and intrigued me: why does he continue to stay away? For reasons both of curiosity and concern, I decided to see if I could ask him what’s going on, but he remains aloof. I can certainly appreciate this, and the last thing I want to do is appear unrelenting or accusatory in this sort of situation. I’m perturbed that he feels the need to stay away—at least for now—but at the same time it’s not my place to demand to know the details. I respect his wishes, and I’m heartened by the fact that he says there are some personal reasons involved for his possibly temporary departure, none of which concern the nature of people on the HSD (the organization of the server is itself another matter, but I won’t pretend to know his exact thoughts in this particular topic). Whatever the case may be, I hope that any remaining possible tension between people may be resolved soon.
In other news, Tori officially left the mod team today. We never did settle firmly on who would replace her, although it was assumed by at least a few that we would be modding one of the janitors in her stead. Makin predictably decided to go in a less predictable fashion and decided to “let altgen choose”. Of course, altgen itself doesn’t actually get to decide—we’re not exactly fond of putting monkeys in charge of the circus. Instead we’re taking a look to see who is most suitable during this hectic time.
The regulars of altgen even went so far as to make a strawpoll to decide who they wanted most. Of the four nominated, the one who seemed most apropos was Dingus. As soon as Makin set eyes on him it was essentially over, but we spent some time shitting around attempting to debate who would be most effective. After about fifteen seconds had passed Makin said we were “taking too long”, and went and made Dingus the new altgen pseudo mod.
This somewhat unilateral decision may have some adverse effects down the road, but for now it seems to have worked out well enough. Dingus is a well-respected member of the community actually being considered for the role of altgen pseudo once before on a separate occasion, and I have no qualms with his ascension in particular; rather I fear for how the janitors must feel. Part of our hesitancy rose from the fact that people were claiming they might not actually want to be pseudomods. While I realize now that if such were the case they could talk to us about it, it led to enough of us saying “let’s wait for a bit and see” that Makin seized the opportunity to instate the person of his choosing. Now I worry that TS and Molly may feel disregarded in some way, so at some point I believe I’ll talk to them about it to see what they think. I would hate to have them or anyone else become disillusioned over this.
More immediately upsetting to me was Tori’s inevitable departure from the team. It was, all things considered, an actually poignant affair in its own way. All present paid their respects (quite literally, using a meme actually referred to as “pay respects”). The last thing she said before leaving, for posterity’s sake, was: “soon we'll need a former altgen pseudo support group”. Upon her leaving, I felt a profound sense of upset. She’ll still be around in the server of course, but I’m going to genuinely miss her veiled and intensely surreal humor in the mod chat. The light digs and jabs and the earnestly quirky, unexpectedly hilarious commentary will be difficult to replace, if not outright impossible.
On the other hand, I’m pleased to say that Dingus may actually be able to fill those shoes. He’s been an altgen regular almost since the start, if not quite as active as others; his humor is less surreal and more precise; he speaks up less often from what I can see, but when he does the outcome is almost unanimously enjoyable. He also seems to garner the respect of altgen, so perhaps this will be the best outcome after all. Time will tell.
Unrelated to today’s events in particular, Toast gave me access to a document earlier that will be extremely useful: it is a comprehensive spreadsheet of all events concerning the development of Hiveswap, as organized by members of /co/. It is possible that some events are missing, but after a quick review the chronology appears to be thorough (edit as of 2/17/18: unfortunately the timeline had some fairly private information that is not appropriate for public display, and has thus been removed. It may be reintroduced with some edits to protect private information. More specific posts have now been introduced in its place, under “Timeline of Hiveswap’s Development” in appendix D).
Nothing more for today.
14th of November
Today was rather momentous in a way that I and many others had not foreseen: Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff updated. Furthermore, it actually updated twice. The gravity of this is not to be underestimated; Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff was last updated sometime in 2014, and it being so is arguably more of an occasion than Homestuck itself being updated (although not since the comic ended of course). With this in mind, one may understand better the events that unfolded in the next two or three hours.
I must admit to being a sham, as this update happened on the very cusp of the 15th and not the 14th, but the deep hours of the night are functionally the same as the previous day to me (and indeed, with time zones this issue becomes even more muddled). Nonetheless, the exact time the first update happened is unknown to us, but it was presumably just after midnight on the eastern sea board. The fact that anyone caught it is either predictable or a complete fluke, depending on who you ask—with SBAHJ updates not being very forthcoming, it’s not like anyone religiously checks that portion of MSPA. However, there are many of us still around and it’s not inconceivable that at any given time someone will be trawling around the archives, reading through them. Whatever the case, we were alerted to the presence of a new panel in short order, and thus the course of the rest of the evening was set.
First came the utter disbelief; the sentiment of: “An SBAHJ update? Really?” spread rapidly. The channel suddenly came to a dead halt for a precious few seconds as everyone present feverishly found their way to the website in whatever fashion was quickest for them. Everyone’s subsequent return coalesced into the conversational equivalent of a bomb, the effects of which are still being felt hours later. The first update took us completely by storm, not only because of how unexpected it was but because of the content itself.
I’ve described Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff on a prior occasion, but I feel I did not render the style of its content justice. Again I urge whoever reads this to seek SBAHJ out themselves to understand fully, but the idea is that SBAHJ is intentionally as shitty as possible. Every facet of its existence is designed to be as utterly horrible as it can be through a surreal combination of meticulous design and sheer laziness. The subject material, what the plot actually is, is nonlinear and nonsensical assuming one exists at any given time. There is no attempt to reconcile existence with meaning, although some would claim different.
Andrew Hussie made a comment on his Formspring back in 2011 about the relevance of SBAHJ to Homestuck as a whole. The comment in its entirety was thus:
SBaHJ is absolutely inseparable from HS, and has been almost from the start. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand HS very well. SBaHJ is like the mentally handicapped step brother of MSPA, requiring special attention, but no less cherished as a part of the family. It was originally intended as the chief source of in-house memes for dialogue, but this is ultimately a superficial purpose. Though it only has 20+ strips, it contains a pretty dense and internally consistent language of recurring symbols and typo-driven grammars, applicable as a rich sub-cognitive lexicon for highlighting elusive elements woven into the mythology of the story which tend to be shrouded in the unconscious.
All of this is to say that events in SBAHJ reflect things that will happen in Homestuck. While not always true in the strictest sense, there have been some definite events that were presaged by a SBAHJ update. In this way, speculation about SBAHJ extends beyond simple conjecture about the comic itself, but about what ramifications it may have on other material Hussie works on.
Important to understand is that SBAHJ comics generally range in content from the mildly perverse to the utterly obscene. For example, the very second comic involves one of the titular characters accidentally fucking his own mother as the other laughs at him. Each instance of this sort of content desensitizes us to the next, so that eventually it begins to feel normal. However, with the extended absence of any content, I feel as if that desensitization has fallen away. Thus, the content of the comic tonight was especially outrageous, and in its own way this contributed to the entertainment we derived from it. To be brief: a quasi-new character named Peaches the Dog was introduced, and in a stunningly short amount of time Hella Jeff ended up fellating this poor dog by accident.
Naturally, the night came unhinged as soon as this image was revealed to us.
A small but importante aside: in the later portion of SBAHJ the comics took on a decidedly less broken format, with images appearing uncharacteristically clear. Character outlines were more or less cohesive, image artifacting was almost nonexistent. In a comic where the entertainment lies in just how utterly distorted something is—a property that is referred to as being “baked”, “fried”, or an assortment of other names—having that element stripped away is kind of disturbing, and admittedly not as funny after a while. The punchline of each comic was less punchy and more of a gentle push which was its own flavor of amusing at first, but quickly grew less interesting. Finally with a multi-year hiatus, no more thought was given to it.
I bring this up due to an interestingly timed event occurred during this update. The incredible hype concerning its appearance remained largely vigorous for some time, but even the greatly unsettling image of canine penis being unwittingly swallowed was doomed to fade—inevitably some criticisms appeared about halfway through the hour. Most prominent concerned the lack of baked imagery: the characters and backgrounds were all more or less sterile in their presentation. This is not in keeping with the style we’ve come to expect from SBAHJ. For the span of about 20 minutes this was discussed, with some consideration towards why Hussie may not be using that style as prominently anymore.
As fate would have it, this conversation would prove to be most ironic. At about 12:50 AM EST, the second update came through. It was literally the same image posted a second time, but heavily baked. At this we were mollified and entertained once more. However, something deeper was at play: the comics are all one image collectively, so the resolution is rather high. In this way, we didn’t properly notice until someone saved the image and zoomed out: an image of Hussie’s face had been layered unceremoniously on top of the comic in its entirety.
Such is the nature of SBAHJ. Of course the conversation did fade away again, as it must. A number of people felt that, despite the intial excitement, the comic was not up to snuff with some of its earlier material. I can agree from a stylistic standpoint perhaps, but I feel as if the very nature of the comic precludes any sort of judgment, good or bad. Certainly people can have their opinions on whether they like it or not, and as many of us hate it as enjoy it I’m sure. However, as to whether the content is objectively good or bad, I’m not sure it can be said whether it falls into either of those categories. At the very least, I personally don’t have the capability to answer that question. I think it is detached from concepts of good and bad, existing in a strange artistic vacuum that defies the common conceptions of quality. When a given work literally relies on how bad it is to entertain others, how can one come to expect any sort of quality or consistency on the matter? The very idea of consistency seems anathema to SBAHJ, to my eyes if nothing else.
That’s enough of my musings on the topic. Nothing more for today.
15th of November
Not a lot to discuss today. There was some potential for issue earlier today: TS claimed that someone had access to a leak of Hiveswap material, specifically details and portraits of 33% of all the characters being revealed for the Troll Call. It wasn’t clear if revealing this information is allowed or not, so I asked in the modchat whether it would be alright, to which Makin firmly responded that it is NOT okay. Thus, we set about trying to quell the information from being spread around here. We definitely want to avoid undermining WP, and I imagine that allowing leaks to proliferate here directly would be a serious ethical violation in that vein.
Important to bear in mind is that we can only officially ban people from talking about it on this server proper, unfortunately they’re free to discuss it amongst themselves as they wish. Malice actually inquired about this, which gives me some pause. I feel like it’s a bit too blatant to ask about such things in the open, but at least she’s honest. Might need to reexamine how discrete she is about certain things however.
Nothing more for today.
16th of November
A rather interesting day. There was an even more interesting development continuing off of yesterday: there is a SBAHJ book in the works. This is the second of such books—the first came out a number of years ago, and exhibited all of the characteristics that have come to be associated with the comics themselves.
The first book was more or less a simple collection of the comics that Hussie had written up to that point, but a considerable number of extras were included. I bought a copy of this book for myself, and I can personally attest that it contained: a gigantic, plastic, stylized paper clip called the “paperclop”; a commemorative coin with one of four characters displayed on it, kept stationary in the book by scotch tape; a lenticular bookmark depicting a key scene from the first comic; a picture of “the author”, in the form of a person cosplaying the character that canonically writes SBAHJ; bits of commentary from the same, written in character; and a poorly constructed coupon to Subway for $500, “UNLESS YOU DON’T YELL LOUD ENOUGH”. There were also scratch and sniff stickers depicting corn chips that smelled like pizza, a heavily baked sticker of Tony Hawk, and a barcode that, were one to actually scan it, would ring up a bag of Doritos.
As if all this weren’t enough, the construction of the book itself even assists with the image of intentional shittiness: the front cover has a laminated coffee stain, and the back cover is embossed with numerous items including a marijuana leaf and the words “pRINTED on cANADA", among other things; the pages have been attached in such a way that you can frequently see the spine of the book, and the pages themselves have been attached upside down, sideways, and numbered such that they repeat numbers many times or skip them out of order.
Honestly, I could go on for hours about the immaculate shittiness that this book exemplifies. It is a product worth its own editorial, but in the interest of not harping too long on the subject I’ll move on. All of these reasons and more are why I look forward to a second book coming out, but the announcement was not without its own set of bad news. The second entry in this series will be released only if the project receives enough backing on Kickstarter, much like Hiveswap four years ago.
This did not hold well with many people, and I’m sure one can imagine why. The most obvious reason of course is that the previous Kickstarter, while immensely successful, suffered from interminable delays (to the effect that we’re still not through with the product even so many years down the road). There is understandably significant doubt that the finalized products or what have you will be shipped on time.
This concern is alleviated at least somewhat by the fact that the book has apparently already been finished, as in completely written out and illustrated. This is, however, another huge problem that people have with it. Hussie, with the business deal currently struck between him and Viz Media, should not require additional funds to complete this project. To many this feels tone deaf and perhaps even mocking, and there are some who already lament this book’s existence. I’m currently ambivalent one way or the other; it was brought up that the ability to push out the books will depend on how far they try to go with stretch goals, something that many feel contributed to the lengthy delays and issues concerning Hiveswap. If they can manage their extras well, then Hussie should be able to accomplish this in an adequate fashion. To that end, I will wait and see what sorts of rewards are associated with backing this project before I make a decision one way or the other.
This sort of crowdfunding talk inevitably segued into discourse over the Patreon, initiated and maintained almost solely by MrCheeze. This conversation has always been at least somewhat tiresome, but it has firmly crossed over into the territory of pointless and annoying. It has managed to garner the ire of more than just myself lately, and in a frustrated attempt to ascertain exactly what they want we tried to figure out what about this was bothering them. Unfortunately, MrCheeze keeps changing their answers in such a way that it’s almost impossible to fully understand what they’re trying to say. They use examples that don’t exist or are otherwise inappropriate, and then try to use abstract reasoning that doesn’t actually make any sense. The closest thing to a real answer we could get was that they felt the Patreon was so we could “destroy other Homestuck communities”. After demonstrating why this was ridiculous, I think MrCheeze disappeared or at least ceased posting as much. I’m not really sure what to make of them at times, but there isn’t much that can be done about it short of banning them. Of course, that is impermissible considering most or all of what they’re doing is simply disagreeing with us.
On an unrelated topic, I wanted to comment on a behavior that I’ve played witness to multiple times now, and even engaged in once or twice. Tonight there was an unbelievable number of people in the voicechat. We have multiple voice channels, but as it tends to happen everyone was clustered in only one channel. Furthermore, it was the one belonging to altgen. Over a certain threshold of people, it is generally expected that one or more of us go and monitor the voicechat, which consists of listening to them as long as they make use of the channel and banning or muting those in violation of its rules.
It is not typically a pleasant task, one that usually falls to Anervaria. I’m not sure how it is she puts up with that noise for so long—the voice channels may be in use for several hours before the conversation dies down and people leave. I don’t know if she simply tolerates it or somehow enjoys it on some perverse level, but classically she is the only one willing to deal with it for so long. That having been said, tonight the number of people involved was so great that not just Anervaria, but Dingus and Sea Hitler all decided to keep an eye on it together.
While not unheard of for multiple mods to be in the voice chat I wouldn’t exactly describe it as common, either. Circumstances requiring more than one mod are either extremely disturbing or have the potential to be so. With the voicechat it’s more just a matter of how much you’re willing to bear with, but we resolve to get rid of people who act like nuisances at the bare minimum. Considering then that the group of people involved were almost exclusively from altgen, the chances that people would be nuisances asymptotically reached 100%.
Thus, I decided to check out the voicechannel for myself, and maybe talk with people actively. Sometimes it’s good to do this and reestablish to them that you are indeed a real person, and you can get some fun out of it. There is however an incredible array of behaviors associated with using voice chats that were employed at full force sometimes, especially near the beginning. I won’t go through these behaviors exhaustively, as most of them rely on generating an intense amount of noise. While hardly surprising based on the medium itself, one might be surprised at the sheer range that can be reached using sound alone.
I did not stick around until the chat’s conclusion, as it is exhausting and it was already a late hour. Dingus, the poor soul, stayed up nearly until the end. It’s worth noting that this is a kind of loose rite of passage for the mod team: surviving a night in a heavily populated voice chat is something that most mods go through at least once, and usually gives them some fun stories to tell later should they so choose. It also affords Anervaria a night off every once in a while, which I’m sure she appreciates.
Nothing more for today.
17th of November
The SBAHJ kickstarter has gone up. As I said I would yesterday, I immediately scoped what choice rewards would be available, and the top tier at $125 includes the book itself, some shitty goodies such as fidget spinners, a signed bookpanel, and a bottle of BBQ sauce.
I have no idea why or how they conceived of BBQ sauce as an additional reward7, but I was unable to help myself. The projected delivery date is April 2018, and assuming they hold to that date I will be providing a comprehensive review of the book in some way.
An interesting side to the book coming out is the accompanying authors aside from Hussie, namely the webcomic artist KC Green and the surrealist internet funnyman known as “dril”. KC Green is the author of Gunshow Comics and has a variety of projects going on; his humor is well suited to SBAHJ and he has even contributed to the comics before, in the form of another project called Paradox Space (which I will describe another time). dril, on the other hand, is far more enigmatic and strange a character.
For those unaware dril has been around since almost the very start of Twitter, and became widely recognized for his oddly phrased, often complete non-sequitur posts. He is almost indispensable from the fabric of internet humor at this point, with many phrases or jokes he coined becoming so ridiculously common that many aren’t aware that he made them, or may use them without even knowing he exists. It’s important to keep in mind that dril’s identity went unknown for years, and many people have begun to suspect that he is nothing more than an extremely well maintained bot account of some sort.
The reason I elucidate this is that dril’s identity became an object of focus by complete accident back in September, by people on the Homestuck subreddit. Through some process not intimately familiar to me, they determined that he was a mystery writer on Hiveswap and managed to cross reference his name in the Hiveswap credits. While important to note that Dril’s identity has been publicly known for at least a few years, the spotlight is now on us because of Hiveswap and the SBAHJ book.
While not particularly bothersome in its own right, this event is nonetheless extremely strange and has the potential to cause problems. dril is such that he has a cult of personality surrounding him, and people may be upset that his identity has been revealed. I’m sure it won’t actually lead to any sort of significant problems other than people deriding the subreddit for its sleuthing skills, but Makin is nonetheless paranoid about it reflecting poorly on us.
He seemed genuinely distressed at the prospect, expressing some bewilderment at the idea that people thought he was okay with outing people’s personal information. While and others certainly know that he’s not okay with this, I felt compelled to chastise him: his capricious and purposefully confusing tactics contribute to people not knowing what he believes sometimes, and may even give him a particularly impish impression sometimes.
That having been said, I definitely don’t want this to injustly fall on him. He seems exceptionally worried about it, so I tried not to dig into him too much. It’s important to remember that the crazy guy on the other side of these exchanges is still just a guy after all8, and not even really that crazy. Sometimes people forget that, and it can lead to terrible things on both sides.
We’ll see how this situation may play out in the future. Part of me wants to believe that this is not a big deal at all, and I’m probably more or less right about that. On the other hand, who knows? People may put up enough of a stink for this to matter somehow, although I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it.
Nothing more for today.
18th of November
Not a lot for today. There was one important occurrence, which itself consisted of a collection of smaller events throughout the day that defined it. The long and short of it is that Discord is experiencing server outages again.
I wasn’t paying the closest attention to this event myself, but the effects were pretty clearly felt at times. Periodically people would be unable to send messages, and some became worried because the server seemed to disappear entirely. Entire conversations were halted or prematurely destroyed. This occurred numerous times throughout the evening, but eventually the problems settled down. At that point, the discussion inevitably turned to the server lag itself.
I have to imagine that some people simply weren’t around because the lag was too disruptive, but there were a few who stuck around despite all of the problems of the night. We talked for some time about the nature of these disturbances, but then mused about the eventual fate of the HSD if these problems were to continue. Carlarc and one or two others said that they were afraid of the server going down because they wouldn’t be able to keep in contact with everyone else from here, opinions which elevated my appreciation for them. This did remind me of another angle from which to consider our fate, however: rather than the server dying as time goes by from lack of interest, it may be that Discord itself ceases being a suitable platform for us to exist on.
We discussed this for a while, jokingly bringing up alternatives such as a 9000 member Skype group. We agreed that more than likely it’ll be such that a new platform exists at that point, which is honestly an exciting prospect to consider. I’ve grown very familiar with Discord, to the point that I’m reminded of mIRC. The degree of control offered by Discord isn’t quite as tight, but there is still a lot you can do with it. It’s interesting to consider that Discord will disappear someday, but there is plenty of precedent for it; I wonder what the next real-time chat client we adopt will be?
I think that the people gathered here, now, are tightly knit enough that they will seek to stay together in the future. It’s hard to say how many will try to stick together in the event that we must move, but at the very least such communities that have arisen in mspa-lit and altgen would try their best. I imagine that the exact result would depend on what the next chat platform, if any, looks like. IRC is a valid alternative up to a certain number of people, but anything above that can get unruly. As always, I can only wonder what the future may hold for us.
Aside from all this, another article about dril’s identity being revealed was posted. Neither of the websites that have posted about it thus far (to our knowledge) are particularly noteworthy, but there is already someone that posted on the subreddit about it. They were likely just a troll trying to bait us, but they denounced our existence based on dril being outed. Mostly an annoying affair, it does make me somewhat nervous that similar posts in the future will arise. Depending on the amount of people who get upset it may turn out to be an incredible problem for us in the future. As it is though, there’s very little we can do to mitigate the problem ahead of time—we can only hope that it doesn’t become as such.
Finally, there was an extremely unfortunate circumstance wherein Sora was trying to talk about something concerning religion. Sora has classically had difficulty with introducing topics to mspa-lit and has been banned from the channel a few times for being weirdly off topic or difficult to deal with. I’ve spoken with them before about this, and they resolved to be less obtuse with talking in the channel; I felt that they had been successful, but for reasons that I don’t understand Makin immediately mandated that Sora be mspa banned.
I was extremely perplexed by this; by all indications Sora was following the “rules” of the channel insofar as starting discussions is concerned. I think there was some misunderstanding involved and Makin simply jumped the gun. Whatever the case, Sora was upset by it and I tried to figure out what happened. A long story made short, I unbanned Sora and advocated against this kind of hasty decision making in the future.
I’m not sure what compelled him to do this, but it was distasteful in my eyes for two reasons: first of course being that it was unwarranted, and second that it was an egregious display of Makin’s power. He has the ability to make these unilateral decisions and there’s not much we can do about it except voice our dissent, with the hope that he’ll accept our viewpoint and reverse whatever decision he’s made. The fact that Makin holds ultimate authority over all of us is something that has given me pause in the past, not because I expect him to abuse it with reckless abandon but because it means there’s very little oversight we can provide in the case that something was to go wrong.
Makin can often be stubborn, and often the worst public displays involve him doing something wrong then subsequently refusing to own up to it. Instead he’ll do one of three things: recognize the mistake, but then claim it’s “the truth” or otherwise the correct outcome; refuse to acknowledge the mistake at all; or attempt to distract from the issue with something controversial, often unrelated to the discussion at hand. All three of these tactics are infuriating to be met with, because often these conversations are meant to be held in earnest. It’s often up for debate whether Makin himself is being serious at any given time, but it’s a typical enough occurrence that everyone will assume he’s being sincere the entire time and then it turns out he was joking. It may also be that he refuses to specify until he needs an out, and then claims the opposite of what people may have thought in order to save face.
As always with examining how or why Makin does things, it’s a frustrating exercise to pin down his patterns of engaging with other people. I’m still not even sure if he wishes to be this way on purpose, or whether he cares that it’s upsetting to others. It is such a laborious process to deal with that many who have left have cited it as the reason they’ve done so.
I wonder if there’s anything that can be done to mitigate this issue. Otherwise it’s not really worth discussing in this fashion; indeed, it may not even be worth discussing at all. While Makin’s tendencies in this regard are frustrating on a small scale, they also contribute to an overall greater amount of activity by way of controversy. Whether this is an acceptable tradeoff is up to the individual, but I’m content enough with it so far. It may be in the future that Makin commits some kind of horrendous fuck up that is absolutely unable to be avoided or dealt with in the aforementioned manner, and if such a day comes then I’m curious to see how he handles it.
Hopefully it will not be too destructive an event. Nothing more for today.
19th of November
Honestly, nothing of importance has really happened today. However, it’s the first day in a long time that I’ve had the chance to sit down and exhaustively talk to everyone throughout the day, and it has been a rather refreshing experience. The conversation has switched rapidly between a host of topics that are all as equally as pointless as the last, but still entertaining in their own individual fashions. I must admit that I’m extremely pleased with how the evening has gone.
Sometimes we even talked about nothing in particular, instead engaging in an increasingly stultiloquent series of dialogs that, if it were with anyone but the people I’ve come to know here, would be variously embarrassing or incomprehensible, or perhaps even both. Despite the inherent silliness of the evening it still felt meaningful to associate with them—I’m reminded of why it is exactly that I so heavily favored a community like this in the first place. In short, not everything has to be a federal fucking issue.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the heavy minutiae, and indeed such is what happens to me often. I wonder if I’ve dedicated myself too fiercely to this place; it may be time for me to take a step back and reappraise my position here. Yet, I don’t think I could bring myself to do so even if I wanted to. It may be a source of great pain to me in the future, but I genuinely care about this place and especially all the people who use it. Even now there are people I care about and others that I’m unfamiliar with, and they all serve only to make the discussion more exciting. The blend of old and new gives rise to this delightful conversational palate that is nothing short of supremely enjoyable.
Even as I speak, the conversation has entered a nonstop repeat of the same joke repeatedly. To anyone unfamiliar with the content we’ve discussed in the past, it must appear completely mad for us to converse in this way, and yet for us it all blends together in a perfectly hilarious fashion. I haven’t laughed this much at a simple conversation in months; it feels good to let go and allow the wave of nonsense to take me away from shore.
I wonder what exact conditions must manifest in order to make these sorts of conversations happen. They’re not exactly ubiquitous—there must be some sort of combination of factors that allow them to arise. Whatever they may be, I’m not privy to them. I think more than anything else, there has to be a good balance of people present. There must be those who are brash and willing to approach any topic, which is something that older members typically are more cautious about doing. Once the floodgates have been opened, however, the chat is usually awash in miscellaneous, often more inappropriate material for hours.
It’s also satisfying to note the diversity involved here. I say diversity not in a racial context, but in an ideological sense: the participants here range an impressive gamut, with a decent representation of most branches of politics or social thought. This naturally leads to some strife, but I am also pleased to be able to say that almost everyone involved is able to control their feelings on any given matter with a significant degree of success. There are a few occasions or people I can think of where this is not so, but the overwhelming majority is to my satisfaction. It’s rather heartening to know that civilized discussion may happen even in the face of parties that are often diametrically opposed to one another. Hell, they even get along with each other when the discussion isn’t about politics.
It’s difficult to describe exactly how I feel about all of this. I think I feel a profound sense of pride at seeing this group rise up in the way it has, with all of the various people involved as they are. I am happier than I can really say that I’ve been afforded the opportunity to talk with all of these wonderful individuals. More than I have in a long time, I feel emboldened about the future and I’m excited to see where we go from here. I fervently hope that only good things are to follow.
Nothing more for today.
21st of November
It’s been a slow few days. I don’t have much to talk about on the server itself, aside from #general being a bigger bunch of dipshits than is usual. Usually there’s good separation between gen and altgen as to what’s being discussed, but for some reason it feels like those positions have been switched: general is being used for an intense bout of shitposting while altgen is being fairly calm and cohesive in its discussions.
While an amusing role reversal it’s also annoying to have to step in and tell people to shape up. You’d think it would be easy to tell people to go to a more appropriate location, and yet the socialites normally hanging out in these places are unbelievably truculent. It always helps to arbitrarily ban a few people and strike the fear of moderation into their hearts, but I don’t have it in me for that today. Maybe I’ll delete altgen for a few minutes instead.
One interesting topic that came up today was a brief discussion of the nature of the internet and how it’s changed over time. Specifically, when it was becoming more popular in a public sphere the internet felt more like a Wild West situation, where things were hugely unknown and the potential for anything to happen was very real. This is in drastic contrast to now, where that potential still exists in some form but is largely diminished. Instead it feels like the corners of the internet are well defined, and while creativity still abounds it’s constrained by particular mediums now. It may just be looking through rose-tinted glasses, but it feels as if there is less “opportunity”, so to speak.
I mention all this because it feels as if that sentiment contributes to the atmosphere sometimes. If it were even five years ago, then I can’t help but feel as if there would always be something new or interesting to look at, no matter what time of year or day it is. There was always something different to be found if you looked hard enough. Perhaps I’m simply misguided and those hidden corners do still exist, or perhaps I’ve simply exhausted the store available for my particular palate. Whatever the case, it’s a little dispiriting to contemplate at times.
It’s also important to note that I feel as if this sort of gradual settlement of the internet has contributed heavily to communities like ours, which exist because of a common topic that we’re united in our appreciation of. Before, it seemed that communities could exist on their own merit, with people being able to generate enough content to satisfy themselves with it. They were self-sustaining for a time, but now communities above a certain size absolutely require input from the outside or else they’ll die off. Thus it is that the HSD has attached itself to Homestuck, and Hussie’s works in general.
Nothing more for today.
22nd of November
There’s an old event that I’ve neglected to speak about up to now, referred to simply as “caveposting”. The behavior is a carry over of 4chan “greentext stories”, which are descriptions of events or stories that are told in a detached first person narrative style through a series of short, concise sentences. Over the years they’ve become ubiquitous enough that many variations in style exist, and some are developed as an intentional parody. One type of this sort of behavior got popularized on the HSD in particular: the stories were told from the point of view of a cave man, and the HSD was conceptualized as a “cave” of sorts.
This led to the coining of many different in jokes, and for all of one day it absolutely took mspa-lit by storm. For the span of about seven or eight hours the regulars of the place, and especially in my memory involving Toast and Tensei, were creating their own caveposts about the HSD and the people in it. Notable examples include using “Makunga” to refer to Makin, or variations on “x-cave” to refer to the channels, such as “paint-cave” to refer to art-music. I could explain all of the various examples I remember at length but it would do a disservice to the original content; the way I describe it here would be the furthest thing from funny possible.
Instead, it’s worth noting the eventual fate of caveposting: Makin finally came online a number of hours after it was started, and upon seeing how it consumed the chat for hours permanently banned all caveposting from the channel. I can’t quite recall at this point the exact events of the evening, but he may even have frozen the channel over it for a few minutes. Suffice to say that his response caused quite a stir, and to this day there are still people who resist and cavepost when he’s asleep.
I would also like to give a brief update on the Music Team interviews, just for recordkeeping’s sake (although kept vague on purpose in order to avoid drawing attention to any one person in particular): most of the answers I’ll be utilizing are in, I have one more person who has definitely agreed to give them who is still ostensibly preparing their response. Otherwise I think I have everything I need, and once that last set of answers has been received I can start writing up an entry about it. There is some rather interesting material to talk about in it, so I’m excited.
Nothing more for today.
23rd of November
Today I was alerted to some intense drama that occurred on the LOFAM server. The events themselves appear to have been spread out over the last week or so, with things finally calming down. I’ll do my best to describe them briefly here, for reasons I’ll specify afterwards (edit as of 2/14/18: the contents of this section were deemed too private and unrelated to the HSD or the larger fandom, so it’s been removed to protect the privacy of the people involved).
The situation is upsetting for all involved; my own stake in this matter is complicated, but not deep: I simply wish for all involved to end up okay. I’ve spoken extensively with the people involved over the last couple of days about this, trying to understand their positions on the topic and help them to feel better or perhaps more forgiving of each other.
I did talk to Cait some, mostly to assess whether the people involved were fine and to offer my help if it could be of use. I’m not quite sure that there’s much to be done, but I couldn’t go without saying something about it if possible. Now I worry if my meddling goes too far in these cases; perhaps my interference in this system will alter it more substantially than I give myself credit for. The last thing I wish to do is cause more problems, and it’s entirely possible that I may destabilize a situation that was already improving on its own.
No matter; it’s too late for me to take back what I’ve said. In the process I did inquire what this meant for the journal segment that Cait’s been working on. She did mention that she considered abandoning it, but now that some time has passed she asserts that she wants to actually finish it. Further, she says that sometime in the near future it may9 be ready. These vagueries aren’t exactly assuaging, but it is definitely reassuring to know that she’s still interested in working on it. Once I receive her piece I can finally begin writing on that entry here as well. All in due time I suppose.
Nothing more for today.
24th of November
Today had the first discussion approaching proper discourse that we’ve experienced seemingly in months. The topic of note was the SBAHJ kickstarter, opinion of which has turned definitively negative. I feel as if my previous coverage of it does not highlight this adequately enough; perhaps it was a lack of observation on my own part or maybe opinion of it really did shift so aggressively southwards, but whatever the case the kickstarter for the second book is now being heavily reviled.
Tipsy spearheaded the discourse today, arriving in a fashion that can only be described as “primed and angry”. I expected it to be more controversial but a lot of people end up agreeing with her points as to why contributing to the Kickstarter is a bad idea, which surprised me—I had imagined that the reception was neutral, if not slightly positive.
As it is, the points they’ve brought up are more cohesive than I can be comfortable with. I’m heavily considering removing my contribution, or at least reducing it substantially. Most prominent of the complaints are Hussie’s business practices in general, which are too often unsavory at best and offensive at worst. Mismanagement of the Hiveswap kickstarter understandably has led to the most reluctance, and then it’s been directly stated that the Kickstarter is a form of preorder for the book, where they’re using it as a gauge for how many copies to print and distribute. On the surface this doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but for many it’s actually a particularly egregious offense.
I guess I shouldn’t represent this as being the only opinion: a fair few have ascribed to apathy on the topic, which is to be expected. Cait has said she doesn’t feel that strongly about it one way or the other, an understandable position. Others are even positive about it, much like I was (and would still like to be). I’m sure that the overall feeling will shift again once the Kickstarter is funded, again when it comes to a close, and then again when the book itself is released. Whether those shifts will be more positive or less are yet to be determined.
Moving on to more important events, something kind of upsetting happened in altgen (perish the thought). For some time now we’ve become used to assault from various people who constantly create alt accounts in order to circumvent their bans, most notable in my mind being NEO and of course Talons. It’s to the point that we couldn’t possibly keep track of the place at all times to root out every single one, and to this effect we’ve asked regulars of the place to keep track of things for us. In the course of their day, if an account joins that seems suspicious based on a number of behaviors that we’ve identified as being unique to each offender, they will alarm us and we will investigate further. This system has mostly been effective up, with few problems that are usually not worthy of comment. However, today such a problem occurred that escalated to unacceptable levels.
Normally when someone detects such an alt, they notify a moderator through private messages. This is preferable because it’s discreet, and if the accusation is false then no harm is done. However, some people try to turn callouts into a game, and it causes problems in public. With known alt accounts this is more or less fine, but it leads to bad habits if left unchecked. In this way, someone was called out inappropriately as being an alt of someone called Maylin, who was recently banned from altgen as a consistent problem user. Once the public callout was made, people derided this newcomer. As expected of someone who is accused wrongly in a new community, they felt genuinely harassed and deemed it necessary to leave.
I wasn’t around for this initial problem, nor was any mod I think. I and Sea Hitler heard about it through discourse in #serious afterwards, where someone was arguing on behalf of the newcomer that got edged out. I was initially dismissive of this because another altgen regular claimed there was evidence pointing towards the person actually being an alt account. After calling the conversation to a close, I went about my business for a little while until Ifnar called us out in the mod chat.
Usually Ifnar’s complaints are teasing or otherwise non-serious, but such was not the case at this time. He was distinctly pissed, and was very clear in his appraisal of the situation: his disappointment was second to none, and he felt we had shat all over our jobs as moderators by ignoring the plight of a person who was probably genuinely wronged in this scenario.
I was personally taken aback by the trenchant nature of Ifnar’s comments. He’s usually not one to offer such scathing input, so naturally I took his complaints seriously. To be sure, the “evidence” submitted by the altgen regular was scant at best and completely invalid at worst. I felt bad for shirking my duties here, and resolved to set the situation as right as I possibly could. To this end, I froze altgen for a little while and explained the situation at length to everyone involved. The process itself, known as witchhunting, has been a problem before, and is technically already a bannable offense. I just made sure to remind them of the perils of engaging in this activity, which I think most of them took to heart.
Unfortunately, these witchhunts are also symptomatic of another, related problem that we refer to as minimodding. I’ve touched on this subject before with Tainted Angel, who did it in general some time ago. However, a new generation of these people has arisen: in particular, one fellow we had to admonish for this activity was Nujaka Knight, who had started doing it in gen a while ago. Another person doing this was Zoey in altgen. Often enough these people are encouraged by their long history in these channels, which they feel gives them license to dictate how people should behave. We districtly discourage this because it takes authority away from the people we’ve officially given privileges to: the only people that should be dictating policy is us, so regular users asserting any kind of unfounded authority is a huge problem. Needless to say we tell them off when we notice this behavior.
Of course, it can be hard to distinguish between those who are trying to usurp authority and those who are simply trying to help. There have been a few occasions where we chided some who were genuinely just trying to discourage someone from breaking rules, usually a fairly disappointing event. It’s difficult to toe the line where you’re offering valid criticism or simply lashing out inappropriately, but Makin is fond of the “tough love” principle: if they can’t handle a simple mistake then they probably won’t be able to handle genuine criticism. I have my own reservations with this but that’s a story for another time.
The last thing I wanted to comment on for today is a rather silly occurrence, wherein someone called Ainara was discussed at length. Apparently they were someone very prominent on the subreddit, who gained recognition for her contributions. She checks up on the HSD every so often, but her opinion of the place is not high at all (hearing such always manages to make me feel a little worse, it’s very unfortunate). She became the topic of conversation through a negative post on Tumblr, apparently calling out Makin for something I can’t recall. The post itself was removed and Ainara herself came to talk on the server briefly, I assume in an attempt to clear up any confusion.
The entire time this conversation was happening I was thoroughly confused—it seemed as if everyone except for me knew what was going on. It was resolved in a timely manner and things went back to normal, but it was one of those instances that highlights just how little I actually know about the history of the fandom, at least in comparison to others who have actually been around for a substantial amount of time. I wish I had decided to start participating far before this. Maybe I would be a better historian if I had actually been around for many of the events I cover in this document.
Nothing more for today.
26th of November
Today has been pretty strange, especially in comparison to the big nothing that’s been going on for the last couple of days. It’s had its ups and downs, and I suppose I should start with something that’s more down than up. To be specific, MrCheeze left yet again, but this time in a slightly different condition than normal. Usually their absences are initiated after a conversation with someone that leaves them indignant. To be sure, this was also the case tonight; the difference lay in the fact that not just one person was arguing with them, but seemingly everyone present was.
I’ve talked at length about how MrCheeze picks fights with people on various topics, especially the Patreon lately. I’ve written this off as an eccentric trait of theirs in the past, and in the process I’ve failed to appreciate the widespread nature of their actions. As time has gone by it’s become more obvious that S’s behavior is not just taken for granted by most people, but is actually a legitimate source of frustration for many. After I started paying attention to this I noticed that people tend to describe them as nothing less than a “hate-dynamo”, someone who feeds off of negative energy in a way. Their opinions are somehow always pessimistic or exceedingly derogatory, or both. I’m not quite sure what drives them to speak in this way, and it’s disconcerting in its consistency.
At any rate, the incident that transpired today was one of the usual sort. I believe it stemmed from some SBAHJ Kickstarter discourse, in the process of which MrCheeze had taken some rather predictable jabs at the Patreon and at Makin’s ethical standing for running it, as well as insulting everyone who contributed to it. This was all typical behavior, and for some time now I’ve disregarded it almost on sight. I figured this was the case for everyone else as well, but then someone took a shot back, calling out S’s incessant complaints. This was followed by another, and then another. Before long it seemed as if everyone present was positively shitting on them for their constant whinging, something I will be the first to admit was cathartic to witness.
As expected, shortly after the dogpiling began MrCheeze left the server. While hardly surprising, I found myself wondering shortly thereafter what their eventual fate will be here. There are some types of people that, while not explicitly shitters and not bad people, are distinctly incompatible with the group in certain ways. Revlar comes to mind; while he contributed to the group significantly, he also had some quirks to his personality that made it explicitly difficult for many to interact with him in a way that wasn’t unpleasant. MrCheeze may prove to be such a person, as much as it pains me to admit. Their obstinance on the issue of the Patreon has driven people somewhere just short of mad at this point. I hope it won’t come down to an ousting, because there’s a lot of history with them and I value their insight on most matters. Emphasis on “most” I suppose.
In other news, Red came back to the server after a very lengthy retreat. I had been hesitant to bring up this idea up with her because I was afraid it would seem hamfisted and rude to ask, but she claimed that coming back had simply never entered her mind while she was away, but she was happy to come back. Thus, she has returned once more. Hopefully it stays that way, as many beside myself were also happy to receive her. There is a significant degree of camaraderie surrounding her, and I genuinely believe that she makes the place livelier.
She is not without her controversy, though. As a reminder, the last time she left was due to some poorly-timed and worded criticism towards her, in that the way she speaks to people can sometimes clutter a channel up or derail it. Shortly after her return this time, she had succeeded in drawing Makin’s ire by talking about “#social topics” incessantly. This has been an ongoing problem for the last few days apparently, with another incident transpiring on Friday and then again over the weekend.
I dare say that Makin’s aversion to topics that could be deemed #social seems to border on the pathological, with even the slightest mention of something personal being followed shortly by cries of “#social #social #social” or some such. He has threatened to and subsequently frozen the channel for people “socializing too much” in the past, which usually succeeds in pissing off everyone present. This in turn leads to further derailment of the channel in the form of people berating him for a variety of reasons, chief among them power-tripping and his responses to criticism on the topic are usually dismissive, ignoring the criticism entirely and focusing on the content of the original disturbance: “if it draws attention to the fact you're not an AI, it doesn't belong here”.
These sorts of statements are really puzzling to me, but at the same time not completely baseless. I think that Makin has been conditioned by a history of people growing so comfortable with each other that they decide to go and create their own groups together; splinter servers have been responsible for a not-insignificant amount of trouble, both in terms of reducing activity in the original location and in providing more opportunities to generate drama, which usually comes back to haunt us in some way.
Based on this and undoubtedly many other factors, Makin appears to have taken a fierce approach to keeping more splinters from forming (if that is indeed his goal with all of this). While I disapprove of his methods, I must confess that I understand the reasoning for them at least somewhat. There is a real need for balance when trying to manage a community, in that having a populace that is too interconnected with each other makes them lose focus of the original content that brought them together. On the other hand, the balance comes from the need for camaraderie to exist. Without amicable association, even if there is a common ground of understanding people aren’t going to want to associate with each other. I would even go so far as to say that they are inextricable qualities—it is almost certainly impossible for two people to talk about something they both like without developing a level of deeper appreciation for each other.
Sometimes it seems as if Makin is hellbent on having people associate with any of the human element to it, an endeavor that I would not hesitate to call foolish. But then, I don’t know if that actually is his goal. It may be misunderstanding on my (and others) part, but his overwhelmingly heavy-handed responses at time leave little to the imagination. As always when it comes to discussing Makin’s inclinations, who can say what his true intentions and desires are? All I wish to say on this topic is that the right mixture of dumb socialization and proper discussion is needed to foster a community properly; too much of one or the other may lead to ruin.
One of the topics that came up today was a figure in the community at large called BKEW, short for “bladekindEyewear”. For some context, the Homestuck fandom is well known for its tendency to conceive of theories in response to the most minor of details that get revealed to us. After every update there is no shortage of wild proposals about what the content of the latest panels may mean, or what their potential ramifications are. It is not difficult to imagine that almost every facet of the story was laboriously studied at one point or another by a person seeking higher meaning in it, often in ways that would appear quite mad to the casual observer10.
It is with this in mind that I wish to describe BKEW, who was infamous for some of the theories he crafted. The majority of the time, fan theories are loose and simply entertaining to imagine or speculate on further; where a theory became truly devious, and therein popular, was when it was tantalizingly solid in its construction. It’s unclear to me whether BKEW had a distinct talent for making these theories where people found them compelling enough to believe them wholesale, or if he simply stumbled on theory paydirt by accident a few times. I’m also unsure if there’s anyone else in the fandom that is recognized in this particular topic, but I don’t exactly feel at liberty to discuss them at great length. To do so would require talking about the actual theories they came up with, which is far more depth than I think is necessary for this journal. Perhaps I will cover that topic in the future, if I decide to increase the scope of this document much more.
This all aside, there was an event later in the night that was spontaneous and honestly quite enjoyable, although somewhat disturbing in origin. There was a decent spot of conversation already in progress, with a multitude of people participating. When such is happening I like to watch for a while and just soak in what people are saying; it’s a good buffer against the feeling that things are slow at other times. At one point a lag seemed to start, and I decided to zone out for a bit; in retrospect this was a terrible decision. There’s a fellow named soup_main that is a regular participant on the SS13 server who, for some godforsaken reason, decided to post a comment about looking up obese versions of characters from childhood cartoon shows.
This prompted a very swift and horrifying discussion change, wherein people began talking about various fetishes. This is not a unique occurrence, although when it does happen it tends to be a complete circus. Gnawms is usually blamed for such topics cropping up, a reputation that is more often deserved than not, but in this case he was completely blameless. At least until he started participating and managed to stir the place into a veritable frenzy alongside a few other choice users.
The resultant shitstorm was unlike anything I’ve seen in months. It was truly a rare occurrence in its intensity, with more people than I thought possible engaging in all manner of uncontrollable nonsense. The guiltiest of course consisted of those who served to stir the frenzy further, seeming to delight in the chaos of the evening. There was a considerable number of people who were simply lost, and it was they of this group that first requested the channel be frozen to halt the flow of terrible discussion. Eventually we caught the attention of some altgen regulars, who decided it was time to step in and pour their own gasoline onto this dumpster fire by utterly clogging the place with shitty memes.
After urging people to stop for all of ten minutes, with only worsening conditions as my pay-off, I decided it was time to freeze the place. I instituted a 5 minute Za Warudo, hoping that people would be a little more well behaved by the end of it. I know now that I was foolish to expect this of them, as evidenced by the fact that when I unfroze the channel the shitposting resumed with even greater intensity than when I started it.
I complain, but in a perverse way I really enjoyed the occasion. So many people were posting so manically, and a whole host of in-jokes were being utilized. At times like these you can’t help but feel the energy, and I greatly appreciated the absurdity that was on show. People quoting lyrics to songs in force, posting random images under threat of ban—wanton chaos in short. For a brief moment, it was possible to let go and enjoy the unmitigated carnage of a group of shitposters unleashed.
As these things go, however, it was soon time to stop. Things went back to normal, but I think that the channel’s mood was better off for the brief respite from seriousness. This goes back to what I was saying about allowing questionable behavior sometimes—it’s impossible to expect perfection from people and get it, they must be allowed to fraternize or engage in dumb shit on occasion in order to maximize efficiency of interaction. Or enjoyability, rather. Either way, while the event itself was frenetic and turbulent as hell, the end result was something far more enjoyable than I would have given it credit for. I think everyone regards such moments fondly, in their own way. Hopefully we may witness more of that in the future.
Nothing more for today.
27th of November
We got a rather incredible update pertaining to Hiveswap today. Andrew Hussie released a newspost midway through the day, wherein he described an “Extended Zodiac” in preparation for all of the new characters that will be featured in the game somehow.
For context, Homestuck has a number of characters who are identified through the regular zodiac, the astrological signs corresponding to the date of one’s birth, and each character associated with a sign was given personality traits somewhat related to horoscopes or astrological significance. The reasons for this are complicated and in depth, and I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say that it was a very popular part of the story, and these kinds of characters are an extremely big part of Hiveswap’s story.
With the multitude of characters that will be appearing, it was apparently decided that having an extended system was necessary. To this end, Hussie and Cohen (probably more the latter than the former) created a set of 288 symbols, dividing them among the 12 original Zodiac symbols and using each of the originals as a “sign class”. This sort of needless complexity is a hallmark of Homestuck, and indeed most of Hussie’s writings in general. The usage of the zodiac is also one of the reasons that Homestuck became so wildly popular for a while, with the admittedly less complicated and original system paving the way for this monster that we’ve been confronted with today.
As if the zodiac signs weren’t enough, there is another complicated system intimately associated with Homestuck, something called the class and aspect system, or classpects for short. I run the risk of overexplaining this system here, but in short as the name implies it consists of two titles put together, a class and aspect. The class concerns the intended role or function of a character, while the aspect describes certain features of their personality or powers. They are thus used to describe characters in a mythological fashion; this system became exceptionally popular and gave rise to a huge number of fan tests that could be used to derive a given readers classpect, often through a series of disreputable personality tests and the like.
The classpect system is insanely popular with almost anyone who reads Homestuck. There are few things that come to mind which can immediately be considered as important to the integrity of the fanbase as classpecting, itself an activity that at any given time can take up more than half of the conversation. It is understandable then that we reacted very energetically to the news that the Extended Zodiac would itself have the first “Officially Sanctioned” Aspect Test.
As a side note, it’s important to mention that, despite the inherent popularity of the classpect system, very little is actually known about them. Aspects already have some details revealed but classes have almost nothing available for explanation, and thus a significant reason for our excitement is not only being able to use the test results for fun but also because it provides important background information for us. However, that feature of it all is a tad more esoteric than is needed.
Returning to the main point, as soon as this news reached us the entire server was positively set ablaze with the topic. I think the initial conversation went on for no less than three hours, after which it seemed to peter out over time. However, as soon as Makin came back online later in the night the topic immediately resumed in full force, with people curious to see what results he would get.
The test that’s used to determine these things is hardly comprehensive, as it must be accessible—I assume—to people with short attention spans or little interest in this topic. The quality of the test itself is suspect, and many people have professed discontent with it in one form or another. That hasn’t stopped us from having a very entertaining time with it of course; people are taking their results in good stride, and with an exception or two I don’t think anyone has reacted poorly or anything. There was one person who threw an absolute shitfit because they received an answer they didn’t want, which was a disturbing but not altogether unexpected occurrence.
This brings me to the other hand of this entire affair, which is that while classpecting is very emblematic of the Homestuck fandom, it is also emblematic of what is often considered the worst part of the Homestuck fandom. Classpecting is singlehandedly one of the most infamous traits associated with us, mostly because of that period through 2011 and 2012 where the community was at its height in popularity. I tried not to pay attention to this at the time so I don’t quite know myself, but I think it was such that the Homestuck fandom was so popular and recognizeable in places that people grew to resent members of the community on sight, a behavior that was helped in no small part by the fact that a large majority of the fans were themselves annoying teenagers with no sense of respect or decorum. There are definitely good parts associated with the fandom at any given time, but that one particular feature is so prevalent and still recognized enough that people have a tendency to remember us with some distaste.
While most of us were chattering away on the topic rather animatedly for the brunt of the evening, there were of course the detractors that were less than pleased at this development, notably Niklink and—of course—MrCheeze. Now that I mention it, Niklink often voices his own dissent, but the key difference between him and MrCheeze is that Nik will never continue to harp on something past its expiration date. Today after receiving this news they were both lamenting the return of “the worst part of the fandom”, which—while probably an accurate assessment—was also a grim portent in contrast with the vast majority among us enjoying themselves. As it might be expected, this behavior did not curry them any favor. As usual, though, MrCheeze took it exceedingly far and succeeded in annoying the hell out of a lot of people, myself included.
This annoyance was compounded with the fact that, after some time of this and dealing with genuinely irate people, MrCheeze had the gall to say “wait, I just started to realize that people are actually getting angry”. They then explained that, while their feelings of dislike for this development are very real, they were playing up a significant portion of it. Goodness knows why they was bothering to do this; it manages to cast doubt on almost everything they’ve ever argued about, and it makes me wonder about their motivations.
Sometimes I entertain the thought that MrCheeze is an elaborate alt of Makin somehow, that the latter keeps around for the express purpose of generating discourse without directly appearing too controversial11. One might remember as well that MrCheeze left about one or two days ago, and already they’ve returned. This sort of leaving/rejoining behavior is becoming the rule with them, and it’s beginning to seriously erode any sort of semblance of integrity that they might have wanted to foster. Perhaps my views of them are growing too polarized, but this sort of nonsense strikes me wrongly.
To their credit, however, they did not leave this time when people began to dogpile them. I’m not sure what might go through their head; maybe now that they have verbally recognized that people don’t appreciate when they do this, they’ll slow their roll a little bit. I don’t have much faith in this happening, personally, but one can hope. It’s also interesting to note the difference in reception between their complaining and Nik’s. MrCheeze is often seen simply as a whiner, while Nik’s comments—despite being in a similar vein—are seen as funny or even insightful by most. I wonder if Nik simply has a better sense of humor, and knows when not to harp on a joke. This could potentially explain a few things actually.
At any rate, the night was more or less erratic in this way. I think the reception of the Extended Zodiac has been overwhelmingly positive, or at least it seemed that way here. I wonder what the response on Tumblr or with /hsg/ folk was, I didn’t get a chance to look. The subreddit has been pretty receptive as well; people are happy to have more information at their disposal, certainly, and the system provides a framework that is both positive and negative in various ways.
One such reason for it being positive is that it makes it easier for people to create “canonically accurate characters” for their fanventures. The corollary to this is that it takes creativity away from the people involved if they care too much, and kind of influences them to work within this framework if they want to appeal to purists. This also retroactively affects fanventures created before the release of the Extended Zodiac, although I assume most people won’t care too much about that. I do worry that people will feel obligated to go back and change their existing characters to fit into the mold, which would be a waste.
For as much as we might disagree with them, Nik and MrCheeze do bring up a cogent point. The intensity with which the fandom takes to fan tests like this is reminiscent of horoscopes. Honestly, the test itself is little more than a glorified Buzzfeed personality quiz. In this way the very nature of the test is kind of suspect, but I’m not terribly worried about it for a couple of reasons: first, even with actual horoscopes and fake, terrible personality tests there’s usually disclaimers that it’s not meant to be a truly predictive tool or anything. This doesn’t exactly deter some people from using it that way, which is hugely unfortunate, but there’s always going to be fools who misuse any given thing. While moral objectionists like MrCheeze will claim this sort of thing is evil for “taking advantage of dumb people”, I feel as if that’s unfair to people who understand these things are for fun only.
Speaking of “taking advantage”, I neglected to mention that a definitively more controversial element to all of this is that a significant swath (not all 288) of the symbols are being sold now as shirt designs on We Love Fine, which has now officially rebranded as For Fans By Fans (a name that has drawn ire from many for its generic nature). While not a terribly big deal in and of itself, the new merchandise has been far more polarizing one than the test, because it indicates that the tests primary function was to earn money.
To many it feels like this was a cheap way to introduce a topic that hits at the heart of Homestuck’s fan base, namely teenagers with the desire to individualize themselves somehow. Having so many symbols in this system that differentiates people so thoroughly leads to many people feeling as if their symbol is special, and leads to a greater chance that they will purchase the shirt, at least in theory. It’s worked well enough in the past with the limited designs that were available before now, I have no doubt that this will be the case here.
All of the negativity aside, it is difficult to ignore the fact that this has galvanized the fanbase somewhat. James Roach himself tweeted something along the lines of “Homestuck resurrection!”, and I think it’s safe to say that many people share this sentiment. There is a sheer difference in general energy between now and immediately prior to the news coming out. Excitement abounds, and there is magic in the air.
I suppose that’s enough on this topic; I’ve gone on about it for far longer than I thought I would. Nothing more for today.
28th of November
Not a lot happened today, but I feel it’s an opportune time to cover some details I failed to mention or discuss in previous entries. First, after the SBAHJ update so many nights ago, Makin created a new channel to go along #homestuck and #hiveswap, appropriately named #sbahj. I’m sure one can tell what it was about. As it is though, the channel was taken down earlier today, I presume due to lack of activity since the hype from the kickstarter has died down considerably.
Second of all, the server saw a pretty significant bump in people since Hussie’s newspost came out yesterday. While there’s usually a small trickle of people flowing in at all times nowadays, there’s been a far greater number of people visiting the subreddit, and subsequently a large increase in membership on the HSD. The last time I checked a few days ago, the server had about 9250 people, and at the time of writing we’re sitting at about 9350 instead. An increase of 100 people is quite impressive, and there’s no telling when the pace will slow down. There’s a possibility for more surprises from Hussie and WP in the near future, in which case we may see an even greater increase soon.
On another note, the Music Team interviews are going well. I mentioned that I wanted to prepare the entry yesterday, but Makin and a couple others came out of the woodwork with their own suggestions on people I should contact for more information. There is apparently a lot of hidden information sequestered away with the Music Team: Makin in particular was adamant that I ask about “the Music Team forums”, which are so obscure that I have literally never heard of their existence apart from him.
I’m curious to hear about them, assuming that the Music Team members are willing to divulge information about the topic. From just a preliminary standpoint it seems as if these forums are hidden knowledge, which makes me wonder if outside knowledge of it is somehow suppressed. In a similar vein, Makin’s access to esoteric knowledge like this continues to be of considerable fascination to me. Without going into too much detail yet, he has mentioned things to me that were altogether cryptic yet insightful. I must confess myself hopelessly curious as to the exact path of his history with the Homestuck fandom, and to what degree he’s managed to intermingle at the “higher levels” of it all, so to speak. At the same time I worry that I may be shining a spotlight on him that he is reluctant to have, and if it comes to be that such is the case then I will begin to omit details from this journal, at least until such a time that it is acceptable for me to write about them. As controversial as he is, I (mostly) trust him and his judgment, so long as I believe he is being honest.
While my utmost wish is for transparency and accuracy, since people read this on a frequent basis I must exercise caution around subjects that are potentially dangerous for the people involved. It feels somewhat silly to refer to online drama as “dangerous”, but it’s not inaccurate—peoples’ livelihoods could be at stake if the situation is severe enough. My last wish is to damage others’ futures or reputations; again, if it comes to be that my writing will do this then I will not include it here. I genuinely hope that every detail may eventually come to light, though.
Speaking of writing, there’s been an increasingly noticeable trend on the HSD over the last week that is of a decidedly positive bent. Given that the nature of mspa-lit is based around reading stories that Makin recommends a lot of the time, there’s a tendency to analyze the writing at great length. Between this and Griever’s Jojostuck, I feel as if there is some motivation to write our own stories. I was not immune to this, and I tried my hand at writing some fiction some days ago. While the product was less than good, it was still an earnest attempt that I felt like exposing to the rest of the group for critique. They were nothing short of brutally honest, and while I’m not exactly sold on my ability to write stories I think it was a genuinely worthwhile activity.
If it had been only myself, then I wouldn’t have found it worthy of mentioning. Instead, this has become something of note because more and more people have begun to write their own stories, it seems. Andrew is beginning to write a story, Oda is in the process of writing one and is actively seeking feedback, and Barry has expressed interesting in writing something, and numerous others have as well. It’s quite exciting in its own way, to see all of these people want to collaborate and assist each other in honing a craft that they otherwise might never have been interested in.
This kind of development is extremely important to me. I can’t properly express the joy it brings me to see everyone supporting each other in this way; what we might never have attempted on our own has suddenly become accessible because of everyone’s willingness to associate with and help each other. I think Toast was right when he described us as being on the cusp of another Golden Age; it truly feels as if this community is beginning to enter into a distinct period of glory. We will have our ups and downs as usual, but I can’t suppress this feeling of excitement at the idea of where we might find ourselves in the future. The strength of this place is more apparent every day, and I have never felt better about it than I do now. It is my sincerest hope that this feeling will only intensify as time goes by.
Nothing more for today, but plenty ahead. Here’s to the future.
30th of November
The Patreon experienced a sudden drop today. I guess this was expected because it’s the end of the month and people are going to be trimming what they spend on stuff like this, but the exact degree of the drop was unexpected. We went from around $600 to just under $250, which Makin was understandably upset about. This begs the question of what will happen to our SS13 server and others as time goes by. It’s unfortunate, but I honestly suspected something like this would happen; the Patreon is novel but there are a lot of complicated factors that go into making it self-sustaining, chief among them being a continuous supply of new people. With MSPA banning Makin’s ads, that cut off the vast majority of people we could have hoped to grab. MSPFA does help somewhat but it’s not the same flow by any means.
I suspect that this trend will only deepen as time goes by: less people will feel it’s worthwhile to contribute to the Patreon, and we just don’t have enough people to replace those who stop. I’m not sure if Makin will ever take it down, as it costs nothing to keep up and there’s the offchance that newcomers may find it and think it’s worthwhile anyway. We’ll just have to see.
Aside from this, we learned yesterday that Dril and KC Green would be doing an Ask Me Anything, or an AMA on Reddit at 2 PM this Friday, or tomorrow! They’re going to be answering questions about the new book and their involvement with it, as well as anything else they feel like answering at the time. We are very excited about this, and many have already begun preparing the questions they want to ask. I might ask one myself, but I’m not sure if there’s anything I have a burning desire to posit. I might just observe as best as I can—this sort of event is not to be taken lightly, it’s an extremely fun and engaging experience. We might even learn something important in the process, if someone asks the right question and it gets answered. KC and Dril are both funnymen, so it’s expected that the vast majority of their responses will be jokes or otherwise, but we might gain some pearls of wisdom on the side. More on that tomorrow as it happens.
Aside from this, some minor events on the server today: Minish made his own channel. I had no idea about this but apparently he is obsessed with the Christmas holiday, and he wanted to make a Christmas themed channel. He was messing around with it for a while, deciding what to settle on (asking me at one point whether it should be a channel themed around him if I recall, which made me laugh), but then eventually settled on it being Christmas themed like he had originally planned.
In addition, a recent Discord update led to some weird channel permission issues—like pinging everyone—that he, thankfully, did not abuse and actually worked with us to try and fix. He, Ngame, and I believe Wheals all worked on that for a while, and it was nice to see him cooperating so willfully on the matter. Ngame described it as “grey hat hacking”, which I found funny. The term is probably completely accurate and/or professionally applicable, but the terminology surrounding that aspect of computer science is just amusing to me for some reason.
Otherwise, another community thing worthy of comment is an album being made by WHATISLOSTINTHEMINES, designed as a sequel to the infamous vore album (entitled “YUM! The Vore Album”) that Mines also made some time ago. I don’t know what drives them to make stuff like this but the vore album is just what it sounds like—it was joke music centered around the concept of the fetish “vore”, which involves eating people. It’s more nuanced than that but I don’t think I need to go into anymore detail. That album also featured a full-length rap by ost, and at its release I believe it was deemed “the most cursed thing to ever be composed” by a number of people.
The next album Mines has in store is relatively tame but still strange on its own: they have simply called it the “feet album” so far, and I imagine it’s obvious what the subject material will be. It’s a work in progress and I say with serious hesitancy that people are looking forward to it. Realistically I’m sure people are looking forward to it, but in the same kind of bewildered fashion they looked forward to the vore album. We’ll just have to see.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 he apparently only updated a few sentences of commentary at the beginning of the books, the only new commentary is in the Intermission
2 this was incorrect, I think Drew explains it later though
3 read jojostuck http://mspfanventures.com/?s=13714&p=1
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Us7Mbc5crs
5 https://i.imgur.com/fawOo3j.png
6 the opposite of his height
7 rick and morty's szechuan sauce meme, google it kids
8 are you sure?
9 https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XyR-vskgDj0/hqdefault.jpg
10 Drew completely misses the irony here
11 ;)