Drew Linky
1st of January
The first day of the year comes with a somewhat expected but no less important occurrence: #shitpost is officially gone, reabsorbed into #altgen. #shitpost wasn’t even being used properly so the decision is more pragmatic than anything else, but the effect that its mere presence had was pronounced. In the week since it was initially put up, #altgen regulars who fiercely opposed the return to shitposting behavior all left and formed their own splinter server. This server, and the people who use it, are called nu-altgen.
Nu-altgen is an extremely good example of the end-fate for all groups of people that begin to prize themselves over the intended purpose of a channel. This may seem hypocritical of us as denizens of mspa-lit, where we tend to take over the conversation no matter what, but I explain the difference in that mspa-lit doesn’t really have a specific purpose except for whatever Makin says it is. He has full license to kick us out when he wants to talk about something, but otherwise it’s anyone’s group. Altgen, however, had a distinct purpose that was being slowly but surely subverted as time went by, much to everyone else’s displeasure.
After nu-altgen left, there was a distinct and significant uptick in the amount of shitposting in #altgen. This suggests to me that there was in fact a demand for shitposting, but it was being effectively blocked by the people attempting to form a social circle. As such it seems as if this shift in policy, while tumultuous, was in fact the appropriate course of action. I’m biased and thus probably self-serving with this, but a win is a win, isn’t it? I’m sure any backblast from this will find its way to me eventually.
Nothing more for today.
2nd of January
Already some small level of activity is returning to us; a decent number of people were around and talking about all manner of things, and hb actually began anew this old topic that was once so prevalent that it warranted banning: Hunger Games posting.
Hunger Games posting is much what it sounds like; for those unfamiliar, The Hunger Games is a young adult fiction series. I’ll avoid describing it in any real detail because of a profound unfamiliarity with the actual story, but suffice to say that the plot involves a Battle Royale-type situation, with a group of children and teenagers all forced to battle each other to the death. Hunger Games posting involves the use of an external website or program to automatically sort people and have them go through a random series of events that would plausibly happen in The Hunger Games narrative.
For our purposes, this program takes names and profile pictures, and then randomly goes through everything else. For a while this was an immensely popular thing to do, given the nature of it involving numerous people of your choosing. This made it conducive as a group activity, where mods and regulars of a given place were typically put in, and rapid updates from the person who initiated the game are displayed. This can be great fun, but unfortunately it tends to get very spammy and then especially old when it’s been going on for too long.
These two factors led to it being abused heavily as a conversational topic, and then subsequently relegated to #altgen. This continued for some weeks without issue, but then it finally became spammed so frequently and so heavily that Tori felt it necessary to ban all Hunger Game posting, which effectively killed it months ago now.
Today, as I said, it appears to have made a return of sorts. Hb began posting a screenshot with mods and mspa-lit regulars all listed, and I expected it to be shut down in short order by Makin, who was present and active at the time. Instead, it gathered steam and soon nary a person was present who wasn’t involved in the Hunger Games. Every death and event was colored with a pronounced degree of response from us, some events eliciting fake outrage and genuine laughter. Even Makin was participating in his own way, a sign that something has picked up a significant amount of natural energy.
As these things go, the round ended and at that point there was a split in what people wanted to do next. Of course, there were a number of people who wanted to start a new round, but then the rest of us—mostly regulars, those who are familiar with the power that the Hunger Games has, said “no”; it’s pretty evident to us that allowing them to continue unchecked is a firm recipe for disaster, and it was fairly clear that hb was not going to be allowed to continue his Hunger Games in mspa-lit. Thus came to an end the brief return to an activity that satisfied many in the past.
Despite this burst of activity, there seems to be a significant lull in activity; this can even be seen in Makin’s shilling, inasmuch as the things he likes to shill are being slow with their updating schedules. It is admittedly a strange time of year—as it’s January, I imagine most people are getting ready to go back to school or have already commenced the new semester. I predict that as the month goes on and especially once we’re into February, activity will pick up more. I imagine it’ll hit a kind of peak near the end of February, which is when our server was created and thus is due for a good celebration.
As it is, I think part of the lull in activity is because of a lack of stuff to talk about. With content being slow to release, there is less material for us to actually discuss. With this in mind I feel as if the time for another Reckoning is approaching. I have absolutely no way to know this, and it may even just be wishful thinking on my part, but I earnestly feel as if another shake up of the entire server would lend itself well to some increased activity, at least for a few months. It would depend a lot on the exact nature of the disturbance, so I guess it’s premature to give that kind of prediction.
A side-note: I’ve decided to start going through and removing more personally oriented remarks, such as locations at the beginning of the journal, for privacy purposes. This may serve as an attempt to make the journal more acceptable to be released to people who ask instead of having it restricted. Time will tell.
Nothing more for today.
3rd of January
Not much to describe today. Actually wanted to briefly bring up something that happened yesterday: Makin has been stifling conversation again, which is a tactic that I have never agreed with. Between that and some real life stress, I think I lost my composure yesterday. Reviewing what happened and my responses to him make me feel at least a little shame for my actions recently. When things like this happen it brings me some significant disquiet: my unrest is affecting my ability to act objectively and responsibly in the course of my duties here, which only serves to add to my displeasure over the matter. I’m going to have to do some thinking over the next few days to see if I can bring myself back to stability.
Nothing more for today.
4th of January
There wasn’t much that happened today on the HSD in particular, but on the subreddit I was contacted by a user named yunojoy. They had described a project at the end of last year where they would be cataloging and describing the memetic trends of the subreddit throughout all of 2017, and today is when they decided to release their work as a video.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m very fond of such efforts, since they serve as a kind of reinforcement to attempts at archival; it’s just another way of preserving information. The video itself is interesting, and has a greater emphasis on trying to be funny than I would have put into it, but it still manages to be informative and the editing is fairly clean. In all, I think it’s a valuable addition to the knowledge being accumulated and have included it in appendix B under “Subreddit Memetic History”, subentry “2017”.
There’s been some positive reception towards it, and I hope that yunojoy will continue their endeavors in the future. Perhaps it can be an effort in installments, so that each month will be reviewed instead of the year in its totality. It’s hard to say what form the project may take for now, but I am very excited to see what it looks like in the future.
Nothing more for today.
5th of January
After securing final approval from Gankro, I released the article on the subreddit today. There’s been a pretty positive response to it so far; there are a startling number of people who claim they either know very little about Gankro already or in fact knew nothing about him at all. In light of this, I’m even happier that I decided to interview him.
It also reestablishes my sense of purpose for all of this—I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been suffering from some fatigue regarding these interviews, with how many I’ve been conducting and how many there are to sift through. However, with people saying they enjoy the material and being able to get out some decent exposure on these topics, it makes it feel worthwhile to pursue.
I hope that the Music Team interviews can be just as insightful for people. I wonder if there’s anything truly important or groundbreaking that I can help get out for people; my knowledge about Homestuck’s fandom and its history is far less complete than I would like it to be, but I hope that with time I can contribute to the overall information available in a significant way.
We’ll just have to see. Nothing more for today.
6th of January
Not much to talk about for today. Circumstances prevented me from keeping an eye on the server, although I did manage to find some time to think about how I’ve been feeling and acting on the HSD for the last few days. This is more affirmation for myself than any sort of concrete statement on the HSD, but I feel like I’m approaching some more solid inner peace regarding my position there.
It’s been almost a year since I started moderating on the HSD and it’s been a very strange time, all things considered. It feels impossible to recount all of the things that I’ve experienced and learned, although I have to laugh: the truth of the matter is that I don’t have to recount them, as I already did in this journal for the most part.
I began the year as someone with no influence or perspective on the Homestuck fandom. My exposure to it was purely through the HSD and even that experience was exceptionally limited, with only a couple months spent on the Discord before my modding. I knew basically nothing about the history of the fandom or anything in depth outside of the HSD, and I would definitely not call myself confident at the time.
Now, a year later, everything feels very different. I feel immeasurably more confident in my handling of most situations, and even circumstances I’m unfamiliar with are able to be dealt with in short order. My appreciation for the storied history of the fandom is, while still far from complete, certainly more in depth than it was a year ago now. I’ve had the most incredible opportunity to talk to and ask questions of people who I never expected I would be given the chance to talk to. The process is slow and ongoing, but I’m getting information out to people who otherwise would never have known about these things either.
I’m excited about all of this! I wonder what changes 2018 will bring, and if my efforts will continue to yield such results. I’m also excited to improve my writing for future articles, of which it appears the Music Team are first in order. There are so many people who, after the Gankro article, it is clear have no idea about the people who helped make Homestuck what it is; I’m eager to get the word out and see what comes of it.
In all, I think that I’ve successfully reinvigorated my sense of purpose with all of this. I need to work on maintaining a distinction between my personal problems and what I do for the HSD4, as well as this journal, but occasionally I guess it will be impossible to keep some leak over from happening. I’m only human, after all. But I can still take pride in what I’ve done, and prepare for what it is I want to do in the future. I want to keep improving things.
As for an ultimate goal with all of this, “why I’m bothering at all” so to speak, the idea of reestablishing ties with What Pumpkin is an unbelievably tantalizing idea. Is it feasible or even possible at this point? Who knows. There is a lot of research and talking with people that must occur before such a thing is even able to be assessed.
Further, would it even be to the ultimate benefit of the community? I’ve largely been working on the idea that it would be good to have ties with WP or even Hussie once more—what kind of community thrives off of divesting itself from the person responsible for its existence? Yet, without further insight on the matter it is impossible to say one way or the other. It may be that the best course of action is to remain out of contact with them, or at least not initiate official ties of any sort; I can imagine that tying oneself to a company would have deep and serious problems.
As I said, without more information it’s impossible to say for sure. I would like deeply to be able to help heal this incredible wound that many claim has been festering for years now. Assessing the root of the issue and whether it’s something that could or should be fixed are things that will take a long time.
I worry that it’s an inherently unsolvable problem, less because there are no solutions and more because the solutions are impractical. A large number of people close to the heart of the issue describe Makin as the problem, and that as long as he’s in charge of the HSD, no such reconciliation or healing may occur; I consider this to be a garbage answer, and the notion that Makin’s mere presence/behavior is the root cause of all of this disharmony is almost offensive. Yet, I can’t say whether they’re wrong or right1 at this point.
I’ll chase myself into circles all night with this line of thinking. Better to leave off here and consider the matter further. The point I’m trying to get across with this is: my determination to move forward and effect positive change has never been stronger, and I will do all in my power to make things improve if possible. Nothing more for today.
7th of January
Today was actually pretty decently active all throughout. Shortly after I woke up and checked in, Tipsy came to the chat with a personal issue affecting them in real life, which appears to be rather serious. I’ll avoid going into details for reasons of privacy, but I was half-afraid that the conversation would be thrown out by Makin due to “#social”.
My expectations were pleasantly subverted when Makin joined the rest of us in asking after Tipsy’s well-being, and trying better to understand the situation. It was, I believe, a tacit confirmation of an accusation I’ve tossed his way in the past, namely that he cares more about us than he pretends. After the many discouraging and even deprecating comments I’ve heard about him, both in the past and more recently, it is profoundly satisfying and touching to see him engaged this way.
If that wasn’t good enough, the actual discussion itself was both reassuring and constructive; Tipsy got some feedback from all of us on what can be done to improve the situation, and while Makin’s advice could almost certainly be construed to be harsh or unforgiving based on what lens you view it through, it was distinctly honest—probably the most direct and actually helpful advice that could have been offered. I feel that the ability of both Makin and Tipsy to discuss the issue back and forth without any issue is indicative of a level of maturity and respect that can be extrapolated to the rest of the chat, in a way. It is representative of the potential of the group that such a conversation can even occur, and the fact that I was able to witness it today gives me a lot of hope for the future of our group.
On the other hand, there was some drama today that was entirely pointless and dispiriting. It began innocently enough, and was actually quite fascinating: it was a repeat of the event that solidified my presence on the HSD over a year ago, where we had a number of regulars like CynicallyCritical and AradiaMegido come out of the woodwork and start talking here again. They tend to hang out in their own servers, but occasionally conditions may be just right (or they may even conspire) such that they all end up here once more, which leads to something humorously entitled “oldfag hour”. It should be noted that “oldfag” is another term from 4chan, much like “tripfagging” (I think a pattern is obvious here), and refers to people who were around in “the old days” of a given place, where the term old is dubious and fairly arbitrary in most cases.
Oldfag hour, while often lasting far longer than just one hour, is a time where people who used to be on the server come back and reminisce. This occurrence is typically fascinating to me, because it’s blunt-force exposure to all of the elements of something I’m not familiar with. It’s extremely effective at demonstrating the history of a place, and for some reason motivates me to get involved if it manages to display a pronounced sense of community.
At any rate, oldfag hour commenced and progressed much as I expected for a while, but then the old began to clash with the more recent. At one point, Aradia and Red were in mspa-lit and the former insulted the latter for no apparent reason. I assume that there is tainted history between the two, which would be understandable; I don’t know much about Aradia but Red has unfortunately conducted herself in less than amicable ways in the past. However, this kind of brazen nonsense is rather distasteful to me.
The conversation continued in this way for some time. I didn’t think it was too bad, personally speaking, but a lot of people (including hb) seemed fairly put off by it all. At some point Makin poked his head in and, predictably, decided it was time for a Za Warudo. While I’m typically not fond of freezing a channel, I think I was in agreeance on this occasion. It was fairly disappointing to witness the casual mudslinging.
The channel was frozen for somewhere around 20-30 minutes, Makin having tasked me with unfreezing it after that point. I utilized the opportunity to get on my own soapbox and express my dismay that people I respected had chosen to carry themselves in this way. In retrospect I’m sure that the speech was nothing more than a cheesy and ineffective diatribe, and indeed people were poking fun with emotes the entire time, but I still felt it was important to say. I really have come to expect better from the people who frequent mspa-lit, and it’s usually a sad day when the channel must be frozen. Petty squabbles are not what the channel is for, and I think after today I will be harder on people attempting to perpetrate that sort of crap.
In light of my optimistic comments yesterday, this sort of occurrence is kind of frustrating. Yet, it’s to be expected—not everything can be sunshine and daisies. I’ll just have to try harder and do better. And it wasn’t all bad, considering the discussion with Tipsy earlier. Today was a rather interesting run of the full gamut of expression we have here. If anything, it was a good reminder of what I need to look out for here. Hopefully with this knowledge I can move forward in a more constructive fashion.
Nothing more for today.
8th of January
Now in the second week of the new year, it feels as if things have returned to a level of “normal” that is difficult to explain. There’s an intuitive level of activity that feels correct or suitable for the channel, although there have been some interesting developments today that change the dynamic a little bit.
There seem to be a higher number of new people than usual who are dropping by. It’s not uncommon to see one or two people who are not regulars in mspa-lit—referred to as randos, short for “randoms”—but today I think I counted no less than five. It may just be that today is an outlier for this sort of activity, but maybe there is some development I’m unaware of that led to this. Whatever the case, I hope that some will stay. Having fresh blood in the mix is always good, as a group with no new people in it will begin to stagnate after a while. Difficult to say at this point what will come out of it though, if anything.
On the other hand, we have had the opposite happening today. In keeping with yesterday’s oldfag hour, we had another old-time regular come out of the woodwork and start talking again, named simply Meow. After some unspecified changes in the serve, she’s been trying to pop her head in every so often and get involved again.
I figured this was all a bit before my time, but she claims to recognize me from back near the end of 2016. I felt bad because I don’t recognize her at all2, but I guess that’s not strictly anything I can do about—I’ve always claimed my memory is terrible, as may be evidenced by the fact that I started writing this journal to begin with! Whatever the case, I hope that she finds herself welcome here and comes back more often. By all means she seems like an accepting and engaging individual to speak with.
The conversation of today was predominantly about the gradual decline of quality in Hussie’s writing. We spent a rather large amount of time talking about what “decline of quality” even meant in this context, and I’m not sure we ever actually came to a consensus on the matter. The reason for the decline happening, however, was fairly evident: Hiveswap, originally called the “Homestuck Adventure Game” back before the name Hiveswap was even a thing.
It was at the point when Hussie began trying to make the game that the comic started to decline. The evidence is incontrovertible: the introduction of the game is directly correlated to and explains the sharp decline of public activity from Hussie, and is more than likely the deciding factor in Homestuck’s essential decay.
Personally, I’m kind of amused and fascinated by the fact that we can talk about these same topics over and over again without tiring. We must have exhausted this conversation about “why Homestuck turned out badly” an incredible amount of times by now, and yet despite the literal months spent discussing it we are as fresh as ever. I wonder how long it can go on, and I find myself hoping that it may go on forever. There is a certain magic to it that is captivating to me, although I’m sure to many both inside and outside of our community it’s an aggravating phenomenon. Despite how often we’ve talked about it, there seems to be some new angle or nuance to the discussion that wasn’t present before. I wonder if it’s possible to approach an intimate understanding on this matter simply by dragging it through the dirt ad nauseum.
As it is, I think that there are two sides: those who are more or less comfortable with how Homestuck turned out, and those who are not. I side myself with the latter group of individuals, and Niklink provided an astute comment earlier that perfectly encapsulates how we feel about the developments of the last few years: “kinda pissed off that hussie gave so much for hiveswap only to essentially reduce his involvement with the final product as much as possible”. Hiveswap detracted from Homestuck in such a way that both products eventually deteriorated. There is hope that they may both be rescued, but in the meantime it is impossible to tell what will happen.
Despite the seemingly overwhelming negativity, I’m actually quite excited to see what happens to both properties. Hussie has been known to rescue seemingly ruined projects from the graveyard of Promising Stories That Were Spontaneously Ruined, based on a sample size of (as far as I know) exactly one: Problem Sleuth. Hiveswap has three more acts and then a companion set of acts for Hauntswitch, and then Homestuck definitively has some sort of epilogue coming out. Who’s to say that these things will not vindicate him? Edit from 1/17/18: this paragraph is apparently completely wrong, in that people around for the end of Problem Sleuth were pretty consistently happy with it across the board; the epilogue did not necessarily save it as it was still quality the entire time, and the insinuation that people were unhappy with it may in fact be an artifact of people who believe Hussie will save Homestuck at the last minute. Go figure.
Some may opt for cynicism but I like to err on the side of cautious optimism. Time will tell, of course. Nothing more for today.
9th of January
Tonight there was a rather tense moment that I may have involved myself with needlessly. The exact details are not important: suffice to say that Minish and WoC had a vicious but brief spat which mostly resolved itself, but through my pointless interference I think I may have had a small realization about the nature of my job here.
After the initial encounter, I tried to get both to apologize for their involvement. Minish, for his part, was willing to own up to his part in the development, which I was satisfied with. WoC naturally proved to be truculent to the nth degree, which was nothing short of aggravating. After trying and failing to get him to apologize for his part in exacerbating the situation, I decided to approach in a different manner. When I encounter someone who is completely unyielding, I often find it’s useful to simply talk with them for a while. This usually serves one or two purposes: it helps whoever I’m talking with understand where I’m coming from more, it helps me understand where they’re coming from, or sometimes both. In any of these cases, it is typically pretty helpful to create that bridge—I either help a person to realize they’ve been acting inappropriately and/or I learn something useful.
Talking with WoC accomplished the latter. Often with moderating the HSD it’s easy to fall into a pattern where not much is done over a large period of time, simply because there isn’t much to do; raids and problem users aren’t anywhere near as frequent as they used to be, by any means. When they do appear, it’s usually handled in an extremely short period of time since at least one of us is on and paying attention at any given time. This pattern lends itself to a sort of flippancy; one becomes used to handling issues without any sort of deep thought on the matter. Unfortunately this can bleed over into situations where a greater degree of consideration is required, should one desire the most ideal outcome (ideal in this case meaning “everyone benefits as much as possible”).
All of this is to say that it’s not hard to become stuck in a mental rut, and believe that we already have all the answers we need. We become complacent in our position of power, which is anathema to improving ourselves. Sometimes I feel like people wonder why I bother with this rigamarole, and honestly I’m not so sure myself on occasion.
It feels worthwhile mostly; there is a real sense of gratification with understanding and helping others. I try my best to accomplish these things because it feels like the right thing to do. Even after a rigorous and often grueling time helping others, it feels personally worthwhile to see their day improved, and to see them happier. In other cases where this cannot occur, instead there is usually some kind of lesson to be learned. Such was the case with WoC today.
It bears repeating that WoC is an extremely stubborn individual. He possesses characteristics that are personally annoying or even repugnant to me, but it is important to note that he is not immovable or deaf to reason; when given sufficient reason or cause to change, he will. For this I respect him greatly, and despite his qualities that bother me I enjoy speaking to him. Shitting around with him never fails to be a fun experience, but the other, more unfortunate side to this is that confronting him is enormously difficult.
After his spat with Minish, I felt compelled to talk with him about the matter in PMs. I knew right from the start that it would be difficult, and the ensuing discussion only served to make me feel that “difficult” was an understatement. Despite initial statements being rather heated and shitty on both sides, the tone of the conversation soon shifted into something more mellow. WoC has the interesting quality of being more or less cognizant of his biases. The exact extent of his awareness is difficult to gauge but it is certainly something to be considered; he has casually identified the tendencies he has that bother me the most, and just as casually dismissed them as part of his being. It speaks to a particular kind of mindfulness that he has, and which permeates his entire existence to some extent.
WoC’s philosophy is explicitly oriented towards the present. Disregarding the past and uncaring for the future, he states that his foremost goal is to perceive and act in the now. For him, it is only right and natural to see things as they immediately are and then respond appropriately. He does this to the best of his ability, and from what I can see it has served him well. I question whether such a philosophy would benefit him in the face of insurmountable odds, especially when failure has real and potentially terrible consequences, but that’s not really my place to speculate on. As it is, this mindset has—I believe—contributed heavily both to the positive and negative aspects of interacting with him.
As for the negative aspects, his “one-size-fits-all” policy for handling things has yielded a brutal directness. WoC recognizes his shortcomings, and he has no qualms in loudly identifying them in others. At this point, my appreciation for his method breaks down somewhat: he seems to fail to make a distinction between tasteful, constructive commentary and excessive force. Perhaps for him the latter is constructive, as he feels that people won’t listen without extreme intervention. Whatever the reason for his behavior, it has earned him the ire of many. Whether the complaints of others are legitimate or not undoubtedly depends on the exact scenario in question—I’m sure that some cases are deserved and others less so.
The nature of my discussion with him on this occasion was fairly predictable; he proved unyielding, and so instead of trying to convince him of anything I simply tried to understand. The reason that I have bothered to go on at length about this is because he helped me to remember that I can’t always win. I strive to help people as much as I possibly can, and in most situations I feel I can approach at least some kind of solution. However, there will always be people who, for one reason or another, are unapproachable or unable to be won over. Perhaps this means that I shouldn’t win in those cases. I feel this last point is particularly true with WoC—I mentioned that he is not completely immovable, and is amenable to changing his viewpoint if given sufficient reason. If he feels it unnecessary to change, does that mean that I lack sufficient cause to change him?
His incredible mindfulness appears to be a valuable trait, and it has reminded me that I must keep myself open to anything, even the idea of failure. I dislike the idea of being in a position that is unmanageable, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes two forces cannot be reconciled with each other. One of the primary takeaways that WoC and I left the conversation on was a rather suitable expression: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.” Thanks Picard.
Nothing more for today.
10th of January
Some rather interesting news came out today: What Pumpkin announced a contest. Every week with the release of new characters for Hiveswap, they will also take submissions for fancomics concerning characters that have already been released. They will select winners, wherein 3rd place is $25 for WP merchandise, 2nd place is $50, and 1st is $75. In addition, 1st prize winners will be automatically entered into a raffle3 for a chance to win putting their own fan character in the game.
Naturally, people are in a frenzy about this. For clarity’s sake, this is not an entirely unique event: Homestuck also had an opportunity for people to insert their own fan characters in the comic. The Kickstarter for Hiveswap included a $10,000 tier where you would be able to insert a character of your choice. The reward was carried out to completion for exactly one page, and then on the next the fan characters were killed off in a spectacular fashion.
Despite this harsh treatment, it set a sort of precedent: the general consensus is that having your fan character canonically appear in the comic carries an unofficial price tag of $10,000. Of course, Hiveswap is by no means on the same scale of popularity as Homestuck, so the inherent worth of this fan character being put in is drastically less. However, it’s still a very enticing reward; there is no shortage of people already planning on comics they want to make and maximize their chances of snagging the grand prize.
A couple of our own are notably pursuing this, being Tipsy and Griever. I’m quite excited for both of them: Tipsy’s art is famous throughout the fandom for it’s chalk-like impressions and her renderings of the characters is pretty enjoyable. She also used to enjoy (or perhaps still enjoys?) relatively great popularity on Tumblr, although I have no real basis for understanding the metric behind her popularity; Griever on the other hand is new blood, and while the popularity of his work is dubious at this point there is no doubt that the quality of it has increased in every measurable way—the writing and the art have both approached a level that it can firmly be said Griever sports his own recognizable style.
These two will of course be entering into the competition, as well as countless others within the HSD itself, amongst the subreddit and across the remaining vestiges of the fandom. There is a base line of excitement hovering in the air which will undoubtedly only grow as the weeks go by. And if one of our number should win, especially the grand prize, it will surely launch us to heights we have never seen before. I’m extremely excited to see what will come of this, and I wish everyone the best of luck with their work.
On a far more sober note, there was a petty disturbance in oc-hell today. It was literally unworthy of comment or complaint, but for one user contacting me saying that Nat was “being an asshole again”. It’s a running joke that I’m a father-figure for the HSD, especially in contexts where I have to actually act fatherly for whatever horrible reason. This matter was particularly egregious, in my opinion—it was just childish nonsense that shouldn’t have been complained about in the first place.
As it is, I didn’t want to let it go without talking to both of the people involved. I’m glad I didn’t realize they were acting out of line at any point. Crisis averted I suppose. Still, it’s immensely tiresome to be faced with incidents like this one, which by all means are completely unworthy of any attention. This is something that could have been resolved by itself but for someone not being able to handle the interactions of other people. Sometimes people are also very receptive and thankful when you help them, which is enough of an encouragement for me to find this worthwhile. After the fact I think both people were amenable enough to not repeat this idiotic mistake, but time will tell. My job is a lot nicer when it doesn’t also entail being a babysitter.
Nothing more for today.
12th of January
I wonder if I’ll ever get to talk to Hussie someday. I bet he’s really fucking weird to talk to—the only footage I’ve ever seen of him in public was kind of quiet, but it was at some sort of convention so I have no idea if that’s how he actually is. The only other video I’ve seen of him involves him trying to very badly impersonate Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders (edit as of 2/13/18, this video can be found here). The man wears pants with fucking Pepe the Frog all over them in public. Is this part of some persona or is that what he’s actually like?
There are a lot of people at WhatPumpkin that I have close to no awareness about, and I get kind of pissed at the idea that I don’t know anything about this subject. It’s irrational to feel this way and have these thoughts, but I can’t help but blame myself for the lack of knowledge. Was there more I could have done to involve myself? Why did I wait so long to get started talking to others in the community? How different would things be if I had tried to do all this earlier, even just a year or two? Would this journal even fucking exist, through whatever strange contrivances that the universe allows to happen and make things occur?
Does Hussie do all of this weird shit on purpose just to demonstrate how weird he is? Or is he genuinely that strange of a person? He has a ton of Star Trek: The New Generation edits on Youtube from years ago, which are all genuinely hilarious, but he doesn’t do things like that anymore. I wonder if he still creates things like art in his spare time, without letting anyone else know. If he does, does he enjoy it? Is he having an alright time with his life?
Is what I’m doing with all of this worth it? Who on earth is going to read this journal a year from now, and especially past that? Is it worth trying to preserve all of this esoteric nonsense? Why can’t I stop asking myself these idiotic questions? I guess I’m just stricken with an annoying case of existential angst tonight. I can’t stop being frustrated at nothing in particular, and everything about what it is I’m doing or feeling.
It’s inappropriate to put this here if I’m striving to create a document about the HSD or the Homestuck fandom in general, but my thoughts are important too. I also recognize that it may be weird for those who read this later, but what else am I to do? I feel as if this mood is strangely set upon me by the HSD itself, as something that I work too hard at. I’m driving myself nuts with this nonsense. I should take a break from the HSD tonight and clear my head; I’ve been trying too hard to stay on top of it, and—when it enters these conversational doldrums—forsaking the chance to relax by being too vigilant.
This entry is a fucking mess, I should probably just delete it. Yet, I also don’t think that I should. I’ll look back on this in the future and probably be upset that I bothered to write down all my thoughts in this way, but at this point in time they are an extension of my job here and I’m not willing to compromise the transparency of this record just so I can avoid the feeling of awkwardness later. This is a warning to myself and perhaps to others against investing too much thought in an online community that probably won’t matter in the future. I need rest, I can feel myself spiraling into madness at this rate. Too much thinking, not enough relaxing.
I’m sorry for this utterly crap entry, not everyone can be a winner I guess. Forget about it.
14th of January
The last few days have gone by rather peacefully. There has been plenty of activity, but none of it really worthy of note. It’s actually quite interesting; to have a period of relative peace is kind of strange when it’s the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate well into the journal—with nothing of note happening, there is nothing to write. I guess I can personally count that as a mixed blessing. As Olki remarked, “maybe it’s better that the hsd isn’t just a constant shithive of drama”. From a pragmatic perspective I agree, yet my fickle human heart wants stuff to write about. Perhaps I have imbued this journal with too much of my sense of purpose.
Ironically, my bringing this up today launched its own set of discourse, which was both a tad dismaying and satisfying in a perverse way. I have remarked often that I’m not comfortable or pleased with the journal being controlled in its distribution. The ultimate power to give it away still rests with me, and if I so chose I could publically release it. However, that would be neither respectable nor favorable: I would probably be demodded over it, which would restrict my ability to learn things and—most importantly—gut my ability to help others or improve things at all.
I was also reminded that some of the information in this journal is sensitive, perhaps more than I bargained for. I recently went through and removed as much information as I could that might prove invasive, but there is the non-zero chance that I may have missed something. It’s an aggravating reality that there are things in here that people may not want released.
This is especially true of S, who has greatly protested their inclusion in any form. However, I don’t know if I feel obligated to remove each and every inclusion of them in this document. To my awareness as of writing this, there is no information in this document that is not publically available already; their unwillingness to be included is because of the nature of the spin I can put on things, which is simultaneously an understandable position to take and also incredibly frustrating to hear.
The last thing I want to do is inconvenience or put off anyone with this document, but I strive already to make it as neutral an account as possible. Granted, there are many times within that I have taken the time to elaborate on my own personal feelings, but typically not against any one person in particular unless they are particularly deserving of praise or scorn. My appraisements are generalized and not extraordinarily specific except for a rare few occasions.
I guess all of this is to say that I have become confused as to the nature of this journal once more. I don’t wish to linger on this topic; as has been the case before, I’m sure some introspection and a night or two will make it seem like less of a big deal. I only feel it’s important to stress my desire to remain faithful in my representation of the HSD and the people there, without causing more stress than might be needed in any situation; while I may be describing things that are not inherently connected to us, the journal is still largely about how we are behaving and how these things affect us, or in some cases the fandom at large.
If I were a more arrogant individual I might say that we basically are the fandom at this point5, but I have never explicitly agreed with that sentiment (at the very least, not its wording). This is more my musing than anything else, but I have to wonder exactly how many people are out there who would still count themselves as explicit fans, and where those people are located so to speak. How many float nebulously on Tumblr, with no real organization or consensus among them? How many exist primarily on /co/, for all purposes now defunct as a medium for discussing the webcomic? How many don’t really belong to any one “faction” at all, much as I was for all those years? Conducting a census on this topic would be nothing short of impossible, but I would definitely be interested to see the numbers if at all possible.
Somewhat related to this, the nature of the discourse itself was at least vaguely centered around the nature of the HSD itself, and how it’s viewed by people in general. There are a few different camps, whose positions should be relatively easy to derive: there are some people—including some rather important figures from What Pumpkin and the Hiveswap development team—who absolutely loathe the HSD, a few of whom I was recently graced with the opportunity to meet in person and discuss the issue with (this is a complex issue that I may or may not be at liberty to elaborate on later); others are ambivalent or decidedly positive about the HSD; and then the last group are those who simply don’t care.
Tipsy comes to mind as particularly vocal about this last viewpoint: the exact context of the argument is a little difficult to describe, but she made the comment “nobody cares who is in the hsd” in reference to us talking about how people on the outside of our community view it. It has been known for some time now that What Pumpkin and others are generally very negative towards the HSD, specifically because of two things: Makin’s influence for some, and then in general how the HSD used to be during its initial few months of existence.
An aside, I just got done have a fairly protracted discussion with MrCheeze about whether it’s appropriate to go into extensive detail about these past events, because there is a huge amount of controversy surrounding them and the people involved do not want the conflict revisited for their own reasons. I have described my own philosophy on information seeking as “I want to know things unless they endanger people”, which I’ve always thought was a modestly reasonable definition. The conversation I had with MrCheeze tonight illustrated a vagueness to it though: what counts as “endangerment”? What is the extent of damage or distress that I’m willing to put someone through in order to gain information?
I don’t know much about the legal ramifications of a term like “endangerment” but the answer to that second question is almost certainly “none”, unless there is an extremely good reason for my interference. I have no idea what could constitute such a reason, but simply wanting to pry into matters of the past for no reason almost certainly does not count as one. I was going to describe the incident that coined the term “gremlining”, which I have defined previously, but after the discussion with MrCheeze I have elected not to; ironically it would be similarly invasive for me to go into any detail about it, and I don’t want to cause needless problems in the name of information seeking.
With all this in mind, suffice it to say that the early history of the HSD is mired in controversy. If other less sensitive examples crop up I will certainly explain them, but the overall point is that the HSD does not have a good reputation for a significant number of people. This has obviously led to an incredible degree of difficulty in trying to manage things when it comes to events that are not contained wholly in the HSD, among other things. Returning to the original point, because of all this there are people who actively despise the HSD, or at least the people who frequent it.
As far as I’m aware there is no one who is fiercely positive about the HSD’s existence. It may be self-serving to say so but I think I may be the most outspoken in this regard, which is fine if true; it may be perfectly valid to say that my enthusiasm and affection for it is out of the ordinary or even strange. Instead, a lot of people seem to have taken a lukewarm stance on the server, with many of them saying that it could use improvement in various areas.
These suggested improvements are often reduced to a number of things: a large variety of the suggestions are fairly frivolous in nature, such as the idea of including a #rules channel. The most substantive and dramatic one is typically “get rid of Makin”, which has become the focus of a lot of conversations centered on improving the server. There are people both inside the server who want him gone and then people outside of it who claim they would join and participate if he was no longer in charge. Hearing these sorts of sentiments actually bring me quite a bit of distress, because I mostly trust him and his ability to lead. I don’t trust in him without reservation of course, but the frequency of and detail that these complaints go into are pretty disconcerting. It forces me to wonder if there are patterns I’ve been missing, especially seeing as I have missed out on a lot of history or context that might prove helpful in understanding better.
No matter the accuracy of these comments, it also fails to account for something very important: Makin’s fairly responsible for the HSD’s relative success. Even if Makin himself is plagued with controversy, the fact of the matter is that his general efforts between it and the subreddit are what have led it to having the member count it boasts now (although I fully admit that I don’t know the exact extent to which his direct handling aided this, as opposed to a natural accumulation of people over time). Even if sufficient evidence was found to suggest that he should not be in charge, I wouldn’t in good conscience be able to call for his removal because it would probably hinder the server’s development in a significant way.
This is all extremely perplexing to consider. There is a fair amount of nuance to all of this, which I may not be qualified or even willing to handle. It’s more than likely that nothing will come out of any sort of insinuation or claim anyway, unless it is particularly earth-shattering/has a mountain of evidence to support it. Even then, would Makin respond to valid demands to step down at all?6 I don’t like considering this even as a hypothetical, it feels somewhat mutinous. I actually feel profoundly unhappy considering this outcome, so I don’t think I will discuss it any further in this entry.
Instead, I will say that I spent more time than usual hanging out in other servers today. The only one that strikes me as being particularly noteworthy is Nights’ personal server, by dint of having a large group of people who are also active in it. It should be noted that it is specifically not a splinter server, because it was not founded in opposition to any sort of policy shift on the HSD or any such nonsense; it is purely a server for personal amusement and for friends to commingle on.
At any rate, the experience was a fairly pleasant one. The HSD and especially mspa-lit is a fairly fast paced and open thing, as a public server with nearly 10,000 people on it. At any given time there’s a conversation going on somewhere, and it can start to feel a bit impersonal with all of the random people floating between channels and asserting themselves without preamble. In Nights’ server it’s a different experience, one that I think is a little more representative of the experience I had become familiar with in the Sydlexia IRC chatroom.
Back then, the size had been orders of magnitude smaller with about a dozen to two dozen people online at any given time at its heyday. Nights’ server is similar, and the reigning attitude is distinctly comfier since people are allowed to socialize over anything and everything. The HSD often feels stuffy because of what I’ve come to think of as conversational rigor mortis: namely that the topic being discussed is beaten into the ground until it begins to stiffen and die, until someone can think of something new to discuss and then the cycle begins anew. This is compounded with the fact that not every topic is encouraged; if Makin wants he can keep conversation from shifting to something else naturally, which artificially lengthens discussion time of a given topic and makes it feel unnatural.
All of this is to say that the HSD is a more rigid environment, and after taking the time to fraternize with people in Nights’ server I can see why people might prefer it there. Makin’s way of handling a room may be advantageous in some respects but the aims or goals of Nights’ chat are not necessarily the same. This is not even to speak of the behavioral differences between Nights and Makin, which no doubt contribute heavily to the way they moderate (being that Makin is controlling and Nights is fluid or unconcerned).
Ah well. I’ve never cared too much about the other servers available, but perhaps I will have to spend a little more time on them to destress from the overall situation that is the HSD, at least occasionally. Despite the lack of immediate concerns and drama, or perhaps because of it, I’ve been finding myself growing a little weary of the place. I’ve probably just been spending too much time there doing nothing of importance; even I have my limits of how much nothing I can do.
I was describing my desire to release the journal to more people, and brought up the idea to Makin that he could go through and strike out elements that he doesn’t want released to anyone in particular, which I felt was a decent compromise. He countered with something that was strikingly apropos: “you are thinking of putting me in charge of deciding which personal information should be publicly available and which should not / how dumb can you be”. I do take issue with some of this, in that only a very small portion of what I write is actually of a seriously personal nature, but even so Makin should probably not be the person I defer to on this matter.
Honestly, it feels as if there will be no way to solve this dilemma easily. I don’t want to resign myself to refusing people access, but unless I can hold the journal to a higher standard of privacy there really isn’t a tactful way to release it to people. At some point in the near future I will take more painstaking effort to go through and delete all information that (to me) appears overly sensitive, such as the general area people live in, their age, or any interpersonal relationships I may have commented on. Hopefully this doesn’t reduce the total length by much, but we’ll just have to see.
Speaking more generally on the server, I’m pleased to say that virtuNat was promoted to janitor of oc-hell. I was technically supposed to hand off ownership to them a while ago, but the place has been pretty self-regulating since its inception. It is good to have someone more official to point to when I look at the channel or problems happen there, and virtuNat has presented themselves as a fairly stable and reliable individual. I look forward to seeing how they handle themselves in the position.
Some conjecture, but something may be happening with MSPA7. The text in the last news post has disappeared, and although it’s not a clear indication of any upcoming potential events it is still exciting whenever something happens there. There is some chance that messing with the text means an update is forthcoming, which would be great to inject some energy into the community right now.
Because the chance is unclear at this point, there was a small bet made between Sora and Makin. Sora is ruthlessly optimistic about Hiveswap (moreand indeed, Homestuck as well), going so far as to say some pretty outlandish things in favor of it, such as promoting brand identity to a ridiculous level. As such, Sora expects some kind of newspost to come out in the next day or so, and has actually entered a bet with Makin to see if this will occur. Makin believes no such thing will happen, and the winner of the bet will receive $5 from the loser to go towards a charity of their choice.
Or, that would have been the bet, except that Makin said he “believes charity is a waste of money”, and so is unwilling to accept the terms. This assertion stunned me for a second, which felt far too broad: I understand many charities are simple fronts for scam artists, but have always maintained that many others are in fact reputable. Upon pressing him about this, Makin clarified that, rather than concerns about reputability, his distaste for the concept arises simply because he believes only one cause is worthy of charity: achieving the technological singularity8.
Such is Makin. Nothing more for today.
15th of January
Today was kind of unusual in a pleasant way. There were no major occurrences, but I’d like to point out an extremely in depth conversation we started having at one point about biology. It began with a flippant question from Makin about whether I could design a prion that would destroy the world, and then it somehow morphed into something that was actually conceptually significant.
We were joined by a variety of other people who all chimed in at various points, but I was relieved of the responsibility of explaining things to Makin by a user named Khauvinkh. Khau as I call him has been hanging around in the server for months now and is usually fairly quiet, but today he perked up at the sight of a topic about cellular and molecular biology. He asked if he could lead the conversation, itself an amusing request, but I yielded and let him have the floor. He then stunned me with an incredible command over the subject area of protein folding and complexity, something that I would only expect to see from someone who has either freshly taken a course on the material or who has attained a graduate degree in the field.
I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised, I have no reason to be: it’s not like Khau sold himself as someone with no specialized training, he simply doesn’t speak that often. Whatever the case, what ensued was a particularly satisfying conversation about a wide variety of scientific principles, and was kind of a breath of fresh air from the typical content of the channel (usually being more entertainment oriented). I was really pleased with the extent of it, although I think towards the end people were itching to get onto other topics that were less in depth (or less boring I guess). It’s understandably a far more esoteric set of discussions than the channel is used to, so it’s only fair that it gets brought up less than other topics.
The bet between Sora and Makin, if it can still be called that, is approaching zero-hour. It has been suggested by MrCheeze that in the interest of fairness the bet be extended by a day or two—I’m inclined to agree with this, as the chances that any newspost would come out were extremely low from the start. Sora never had a chance, so I think it’s admissible to give them some more time just to see what happens.
Despite the extremely low odds of it becoming a thing to begin with and my awareness of that probability, I find myself disappointed with the lack of news. I hate to admit it but any inkling that we may receive news manages to excite me, and I imagine others share this sentiment even if they claim not to It’s such a tantalizing prospect, and the complete lack of news for the majority of the time lends itself to a kind of deprivation. We are hungry for word of development, and unfortunately the slow drip of the Troll Call each week is not really enough to satisfy our cravings.
In a similar vein, there was an incident I failed to recount the other day. At one point James Roach tweeted something about Homestuck, a simple post that was a joke response to a post someone else had already made. I think people failed to check the context of the message, so it appeared exceedingly vague and mysterious to people looking at the time. This would be fine and is honestly not outside the normal range of experience with James, but Sora went and tweeted at James asking for clarification.
After the incident with Minish back before Hiveswap was released this was almost enough to send some of us into a panic: interacting with James Roach on twitter has been nothing short of disastrous, and with how Sora can behave at times I was very nervous about what I might find. However, I’m pleased to say that Sora was fairly tactful in their approach. James in turn was pretty amicable about explaining the context of his original post, so it feels as if the entire incident went swimmingly.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t know it based on the reaction of some of the people in the HSD. By all means this encounter was a positive one, but there were some pretty clear comments trying to push back on the tweet James made as being “irresponsible” or some such nonsense. I have to admit that I don’t really care too much about this conversation other than that it was an annoying set of circumstances and that some of the comments were themselves frustratingly cynical. I guess that’s just the nature of this place—being fickle is hardly an unusual circumstance here.
At the same time, it’s at least somewhat understandable: we’re so starved for news that there is an underlying tension because of how little we have to go off of. There isn’t even a lack of concrete information, we already know when Hiveswap: Act 2 is (supposed to be) coming out. However, there’s a significant lack of communication between us and WP or the Hiveswap team that the Troll Call is not really satisfying. I’ve gone on at length about this topic in the past, so I don’t feel the need to rehash it beyond this point.
This is a more unusual note, but I tried to do something today that I feel is a genuinely nice idea that I’ve had some limited success with in the past. I had never attempted to do this with the HSD before: occasionally I’ll be taken by a certain mood where I feel like making art. However, I don’t consider myself very good at art and I’m not particularly concerned with being good at it, but rather just want to involve myself in something creative or relaxing.
To this end I was inspired some time ago by a steamer on Vinesauce named Joel, who decided to emulate the Super Nintendo game Mario Paint and use it to follow along with a Bob Ross video, making the painting on display (note: Joel might not be the first person to do this, but he is the one I first witnessed doing it). In the past I have done this alone or tried to involve my real-life friends in the same activity, with varying levels of effectiveness.
I was taken by said mood earlier today and decided I would try involving people from the HSD and some related servers. I went around and posted an invite, and I was actually pleased with how many people joined. It wasn’t exactly a bonanza but about five people participated; after we were done we shared our art, and with the wide variety of art programs, skill levels, and even seriousness involved, there was a fascinating range of art that came about from one video. It only took about half an hour, and I think everyone had a very nice time.
I think it’s important to stress that this activity isn’t really intended to showcase talent; it’s not about being “good at art”, it’s more just celebrating art and enjoying the process of making something. I myself tend to make really crappy paintings with this (my brief foray into real oil painting with Bob Ross being utterly disastrous if one were to review it objectively), but I’m not really concerned with making good art; like I said earlier, it’s about enjoying the experience. I’m delighted that the spirit of this activity was sustained not only for myself, but for all the people who participated.
I’m going to float this idea again in the future, and if people are still receptive towards it or especially if more people decide to join in, I might have to do it more frequently. It would be very nice to have an engaging, therapeutic group activity where people come together just to enjoy themselves with no real pressure.
The last thing I’ll discuss for today is this conversation I had with Sea Hitler a short while ago. I’ve been keeping an eye on #general for a while (as is my job, I suppose), but it has been utterly boring. I typically don’t question this, but tonight it struck me as rather off. Sea Hitler asked me about the journal at some point, and I took the opportunity to open a dialog about him as to why #general has been so unremittingly slow or inactive lately9.
Sea Hitler echoed my concerns, but like me is unsure of the true cause for it. He surmised—probably correctly—that it’s due to a multitude of things, most probably that the regulars who sustained its activity have either moved on from the server or have gone to #altgen instead. Toast also states that it may have to do with it being the beginning of the spring semester, which would of course make sense.
Whatever the reason for it, I find it kind of disquieting. I may not use #general to the greatest extent, but it’s one of the first things that people see when they come into this community. If it’s dead, then I imagine there’s a much greater chance that they will abandon the place as dead and unworthy of trying to participate in. It does an enormous disservice to the server as a whole that its arguably front-line channel is inactive. Sea Hitler and I resolved to try and reinvigorate it.
To this end, Sea Hitler and I sent out a couple of feelers. There are still a few people talking in there regularly, most prominently in my mind being Erieolae and Angel. We confronted them and asked how long the chat has been dead like this, to which we received no real enticing answers. However, after posing this question people seemed to start coming out of the woodwork to talk a little bit more. Grape, an altgen regular named DasSad, and then even Anervaria started talking more, and then some rando I have no awareness of named Chasca joined in recently. Some time later, the discussion is still moving along at a more or less healthy place.
I’d be interested to see if this kind of easy galvanization is reproducible in the future. It may be that #general has a lot of potential energy that simply needs to be tapped into, and in the future we simply need to suggest topics which people will then sieze upon with little issue. This outcome is something I can stomach but is still unfortunate for a couple reasons, the greatest of which being that it requires a hands-on approach to the problem. It is little trouble to go and shitpost lightly in #general until people start talking, but being forced to do that on a regular basis would get kind of tiresome.
I can hope that the server in general (ha ha) will reenergize once the semester is in swing, or perhaps during the summer. I’m trying to pick up on the seasonal habits of this place, but with so little experience in the longterm sense it’s hard to really analyze these tendencies statistically. The Carbon bot we were going to use for that purpose has some technical problems that make it harder to use, but I’ll have to spend some time and analyze the trends when I have an opportunity.
Sometimes I really do wish for The Reckoning 2.0: Judgment Day10. It may be foolish of me to say, but I have little doubt that the intense chaos following it would shake up the server very nicely. It would at least be memorable, but Sea Hitler was expressing doubt that it may happen. The mods are—in my opinion—responsible and channel layout at this point are all fairly well-organized, such that there is no real need to perpetrate such an event again.
I maintain that it would be valuable as a way to inject some energy into the system, but perhaps the risk would be too great compared to the potential benefits. Now that I think about it, it’s entirely likely that I’m making some inappropriate assumptions of what may happen if another Reckoning were to occur: I’m sure it would piss off at least some people and lead to an exodus of sorts. Who am I to say, really? I wasn’t even around for the first one; until the second happens and I can witness the effects for myself, it is irresponsible of me to assume what the outcome could be.
The future seems murky, although not necessarily dangerous at this point. Stability being what it is, the event we have to look forward to next is the anniversary of the server. I wonder how it will be celebrated this year; last time there was some extremely nice art that Nights provided, and a couple of old traditions or channels were reinstated (as well as Daddy being temporarily unbanned for the day). Should be interesting to see what happens this year.
Nothing more for today.
16th of January
In light of the recent slowdown, I’ve decided to pursue some of the other research projects that have been mentioned to me in the past. Makin is most vocal about the forums, claiming that they are in most danger of being lost forever: “the forums are the only thing we may genuinely not get back / memories are all we have / get them before they fade”. While this sort of commentary does serve to make me a little more anxious, I don’t feel anymore inclined to really go after it in the meantime. I’ve already covered the subject extensively in a previous entry, and if I decide to revisit the topic it will be after I’ve covered a whole host of other things that I’ve been interested in.
To that end, I decided to ask around about a couple of branches of the Homestuck fandom that would be considered important: Pesterchum and Tumblr. The latter needs no preamble or explanation, except perhaps briefly once I actually begin to write about it. Pesterchum is by far the more esoteric set of communities, by dint of the fact that it is something that was featured in the actual comic before becoming a real thing.
Pesterchum in-comic is a chat platform much like IRC, where one can communicate individually with people or in group settings called memos. Every user’s handle in-comic is stylized in the manner of “firstnameSecondname”, and then abbreviated with the first letter of each name such that it would be “fS”. For a while this only existed in Homestuck, but then someone named ghostDunk actually went and created a program that utilized IRC nodes and faithfully recreated the chat program for people to use in real life.
I’m hesitant to go into much more detail on this for now; Olki has served as my primary source on it so far, but he pointed me in the direction of some people who might be able to give me more information, including ghostDunk himself. There appear to be a couple other influential figures named Midna and Zemedelphos, who both used the program a lot and were apparently fairly recognizable for anyone who used the program a lot. I’ve sent them requests for interviews, and hopefully I will hear back about them soon. If I don’t hear back from them I’ll go ahead and write a small article based on what Olki has provided me with, but it would really be optimal to have some more references on this topic. It could be extremely illuminating to hear what they have to say on the topic!
In a similar vein, I mentioned Tumblr. My point of reference for this in the HSD is Tipsy, who has graciously provided me a pretty in depth response. Makin casts some (joking) doubt about the veracity of her information, although all jokes aside there were definite points of contention between her information and that of others present.
At one point Tipsy tried to downplay the importance that Tumblr had on What Pumpkin and by extension Andrew Hussie, but Makin himself and Griever were both quick to set the record straight on this matter. The former commented: "WP checks tumblr, especially the tags for their [entire] fandom interaction", and the latter further remarked that “tumblr absolutely has the biggest influence on andrew and homestuck compared to like, reddit or the mspa forums.” There seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence to support this viewpoint, but I’ll go into more detail with this when I get the chance to write a proper article on the subject.
I dislike relying on single points of reference, so I asked Tipsy to point me in the direction of others who may be able to provide more information or corroborate what she’s already told me. Another user named Brooke pointed in the direction of a person named “Kylee Henkee”, apparently a massive influence on the Tumblr portion of the Homestuck fandom and who has been around for a long time. I have no idea if I’ll be able to get in contact with them, but there is another person who gave me the same advice. It’s worth a shot, if nothing else.
If worse comes to worst and I’m able to secure responses from none of the people I’ve mentioned, it will certainly be dispiriting, and I don’t know that I would be at liberty to try and write anything comprehensive on the subject. Certainly not anything resembling an article, but perhaps it would still be worthwhile to comment on the subject at length. If nothing else, I could write a combined article where I discuss each platform in brief. There is still a lot of potential here for information that people may be unaware of at this point.
I wonder if it’s worth writing a more formal article about the forums at this point. Given that they are actually gone in a sense, or otherwise obscured, it may certainly be that very few people who are typically “around” in the Homestuck fandom now are relatively uninformed on the matter. There is also a huge amount of desire to get them back, as they served as a centralized hub and easy point of access for fans to try and contact WP or get issues resolved.
Getting the forums restored may actually mitigate a large variety of issues; it serves as a great way for people to communicate and hype each other up over Homestuck and its affiliated projects. This would serve both the fans’ purposes and WP’s, as the latter would almost certainly see increased popularity and sales as a result. Perhaps it would behoove me to write about the forums if only for the goal of getting more people to talk about them, or to reinvigorate interest in them.
I was actually having a conversation with the same person who provided me responses about Tumblr besides Tipsy, a fellow named curiousTerminal, or Turbro. Turbro was markedly vehement about their displeasure with WP for failing to secure the forums’ existence; this vitriol was both surprising to me and then somewhat expected, as I’ve seen people echo the sentiment before (if in a decidedly less pointed fashion). This is a particular area of blindness for me, as I was never around to experience the forums for myself aside from one or two exceedingly brief forays into the system.
The amount of attachment that people display for it continues to catch me off guard, and with each conversation I have on the topic the true extent of the damage becomes more and more clear. While MSPFA arose as a hosting option for people wanting to make fanventures, there were already an incredible wealth of projects that were in progress on the forums that were suddenly wiped out when they were taken down. By some peoples estimates, there were potentially hundreds11 of fanventures that were lost when this occurred. I have no way of knowing how accurate that number is, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me given the number of people and especially the stretch of time involved.
It seems as if having the forums come back would be a mutually beneficial situation, so the fact that they have been left to rot is an extremely puzzling scenario. Makin comments on this in particular:
why wouldn't they bring them back
it makes no sense
they desperately need more money
and mspaf brings ad revenue, helps keep the obsessive merchandise-buying fans alive
it's no coincidence the fanbase dropped down a cliff after the forums exploded
The more I hear about it, the more I’m convinced that something should be done about it if at all possible. I guess it’s time to make an executive decision: it’s time to revisit the topic and interview more people if possible. I have no idea how effective it will be but it would be irresponsible of me not to at least try to bring some awareness of the issue to people.
On a similar note, I guess I wonder if it’s worthy of speaking about the subreddit. I don’t get the impression that it has a particularly noteworthy history, but I’m reminded of a discussion I had with MrCheeze some time back. He has been extremely vocal about the state of the subreddit as something that has more or less declined over time; this has been cited before but anyone who is interested in his general sentiments on the topic would do well to check the entry entitled “Subreddit Nostalgia/Reminiscing” in appendix B, by reddit user frig_darn. It’s difficult for me to say whether there is much to comment on because, again, I wasn’t around for it in the first place.
This sort of problem is becoming an increasingly annoying trend for me, where I’m strictly out of the loop on things simply because I wasn’t around for the event in question. Realistically I understand there’s nothing I can do about this because I’m not fucking omniscient, but nonetheless the frustration is almost palpable. Sometimes this knowledge gap is by design, where there is information that people don’t want to get spread around. In this case, I completely understand: the nature of some information is sensitive enough that it could adversely affect people, and I don’t want to be responsible for impacting anyone in a negative fashion.
The sort of information I mean when I describe my agitation is more along the lines of stuff that is mundane, but esoteric enough that no one really knows where to begin looking. It’s like trying to initiate a treasure hunt when no one really knows what the treasure looks like, despite everyone knowing it exists. However, I hope that as time goes by I can continue assimilating more knowledge and making it available to people.
This is a significant part of my sense of ethics: I feel as if the availability of information and especially transparency should always be emphasized when possible. I find it obtuse and destructive when people choose to keep secrets for whatever reason, and I feel as if the apparent need for secrecy in some areas would be mitigated by people simply being open and honest in the first place. Obviously there are exceptions to this, and I guess pragmatically there’s nothing that can really be done to overcome the need for discretion.
It’s times like these where I really begin to consider the nature of my position in the community. The release of the Gankro article kind of cemented the idea of my potential for me: no one else is really bothering to engage in this activity, and so barring any attempts I may not be familiar with I’m the only chance for preservation that this community really has in the long run. The forums being gone is a terrifying example of what could happen to the rest of us: without warning we may be forced to scatter and disappear someday.
Of course, the idea that this may happen to the HSD is a very sobering thought indeed, but there’s not much use in worrying about it until it happens (although I might start putting thought towards some kind of contingency). Rather, I guess it’s more important to focus on the here and now, and perhaps the bigger picture. The HSD is one small part of a greater whole, and achieving certain things like bringing the forums back would be like introducing layers of redundancy to try and mitigate the damage from sudden community destruction for any given reason.
In a broad sense, I guess this goal is clear: having as many points of attack as possible will ensure the survival of the community in some form even if something disastrous occurs. This is sort of the same principle as colonizing other worlds: even if Earth were destroyed by some cataclysmic event, having humanity in more than one place would massively increase the chances of our survival even in such dire conditions. So too would it be if we our community were able to be decentralized somehow.
Looking back at all that I’ve written, it makes me seem a bit paranoid I think. Hell, it makes me feel paranoid. I’m mostly calm in the last several weeks, but there is still an underlying tension in me that is terrified by the idea of the HSD breaking or otherwise failing in some horrid fashion. The experiences I’ve had and continue to have here shape me in a substantial fashion, and I’m happy beyond words that I’ve been able to settle into the role of someone who is influential, but most importantly actually helpful. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort here trying to improve things for people.
I guess I can be satisfied in the knowledge that, even should the HSD cease to exist someday, I will still have helped others throughout my tenure here. The physical evidence may disappear but it is still satisfactory that I will have done such things at all, at least in my own mind. I guess that seems conflicting with my desire—perhaps even compulsion—to document things totally and completely, but even I don’t have to remember something for it to have happened.
I guess I’ve entered into a contemplative state of mind with all of this. Usually this would run the risk of opening me up to some melancholic thinking, but tonight I believe I’m simply feeling reflective. In three days it will have been one year since I was modded. I guess I didn’t have any real expectations of myself at that point other than “help out”, in whatever form that help may have taken. This leads to a number of questions for myself, even ones that I just answered for myself. Did I succeed in my goal? Am I doing well enough as I am? Is there more that I could be doing? What is the ultimate purpose that I have in doing all of this shit?
This is getting dangerously close to that entry on the 12th. I both regret and don’t regret including that trash: as embarrassing as it may be, it is definitely helpful in reminding myself that I need to maintain some distance so that I don’t basically lose my mind over nothing. Maybe it’ll continue to serve as such, so that I avoid making the mistake in the future. Better than hiding your problems is confronting them and learning from them—I’m sure Toast and others would agree.
I guess I should try and leave it on a more positive note. I’ve noticed myself doing this every 50 pages, automatically gearing the language so that it’s more positive. While it may be cliché at this point to do so, I feel it’s also important. Just as the entry on the 12th of this month serves as a reminder to myself not to be too invested, I consider the last portion of each 50 pages as a treat to myself to remember why it is I’m bothering to do this in the first place.
It’s gratifying to think about all of the positive experiences I’ve had here; I may drive myself a little mad worrying about the fine details, but when I’m in more stable frames of mind 99% of the time, I think it’s very evident to myself that it’s worth pursuing all of this. It doesn’t come up often, but others echo my sentiments in this regard; that we can participate with each other and have such a nice time as a group is a very special thing, and it deserves a certain level of protection. Even the days where nothing of importance happen are valuable in their own way—they are a sign that we can enjoy each other just for the sake of enjoying each other, which may be the purest form of simple friendship I can imagine.
And on the more complex side, the deep friendships that have formed here are wonderful to witness. I speak not only of my own, but of the relationships I’ve seen pop up between people in other channels, other regulars, other servers that largely exist because of the HSD. It’s not even a unique occurrence for a community to have these derivations occur, but there is still a kind of magic to it. Much how every person I help is worth it on an individual level, every single positive outcome that is due to this server validates its existence, and makes me proud to have had the opportunity to participate in it and contribute to that outcome.
Even now I can feel that danger of investment fading; in its place, a simple gratitude for what has arisen here is forming. The HSD has its fair share of problems that need to be addressed, as does anything; it is far from perfect, and I would laugh at anyone who suggests otherwise. Yet, every shortcoming somehow contributes to the overall fabric of the place and can even accentuate its positive aspects. In a way, I find myself enamored with even the more problematic elements of the HSD, as they too are a fundamental part of the overall whole. This combination of terrible and wonderful is funny to me: it’s an effective microcosm of the human experience.12
I need to stop writing entries late at night, I’m starting to sound insane even to myself. Rather than being imminently concerned this time though, I guess I’m just amused. This is where my efforts have led me for whatever reason—life is strange and funny that way. I’m sure after a night’s rest I’ll be right as rain again, and the tone of these entries can resume something approaching normalcy. There are more interviews to be conducted, and information to be uncovered. Rather than scaling a mountain, this segment of 50 pages feels like organizing an expedition. The future has proven to be surmountable, but what will we find waiting for us there? Part of me dreads the process of finding out, but the other part is excited at the prospect of what might happen, and what we may see. The future is not necessarily bright as I have seen it before, but it is certainly full of potential.
Nothing more for today.
17th of January
As has been described previously, Makin is fond of trying to expose other people to various works of art and literature; this practice of advertising something to other people in a direct and purposeful fashion is called shilling. I’ve mentioned this practice often enough previously but never taken the time to rigidly define it. Furthermore, some time ago Makin created a page with a list of works that he has deemed essential: Makin’s List of Shills can be found in appendix B, under the entry of the same name.
Makin has been questioned about what sorts of works belong in the List of Shills, and while a comprehensive answer is yet to be provided, there are a couple running themes that have been identified. There is no single unifying theme that is true of every single work, but generally they are esoteric to the point of being unknown (given that his primary focus is fanfic, this is not exactly a difficult requirement to satisfy). Furthermore, there is commonly an element of “abusing the system”, where the characters involved find a way to manipulate the very rules or conditions they live under. Makin may choose to provide his own definitions, at which point I will update them here.
Makin’s latest shill includes a work that follows these principles, something called The Library Unpublished. I’ve yet to peruse this work myself, but Makin has become very taken with the work and wasted no time in introducing it to the rest of the group. As is customary, the current name of mspa-lit has been changed to #the-library-unpublished in order to raise further awareness of the story. As if that weren’t enough, however, Makin went a step further and managed to invite the author of this story onto the HSD for an impromptu AMA13.
These sorts of occasions are usually pretty exciting even if the person involved and their work are relatively unknown. I’m not sure what it is about an AMA that gets people interested when they don’t already care about the subject material. Perhaps there’s something alluring to subjecting someone else to tedious questions, like some kind of spectacle? Whatever the case, the creator of The Library Unpublished agreed to make an appearance and fielded questions from everyone in mspa-lit for an hour or so.
Vi_fi, as they’re called, was pretty amicable overall. Despite the no doubt overwhelming barrage of questions, many of which weren’t even related to their work at all, they seemed fairly collected and I think may have even enjoyed their time in the server. It’s always satisfying when such is the case; there is a distinct sort of energy that’s packed into events like these, and if all involved are able to harness it effectively then it becomes an absolute romp. There was also a healthy peppering of serious versus silly questions: too many serious questions and the AMA can get boring, but if it’s too silly then it can get kind of awkward or embarrassing.
In all, I would call the event a complete success, by whatever metric one may bestow upon such an occasion. Despite being a fan of Homestuck Vi_fi opted not to stick around in the HSD for any length of time, but I believe they left with the promise that future visits would almost certainly occur14. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that we look forward to seeing them again.
After the AMA I was alerted to the presence of an archive that is almost certainly invaluable to anyone seeking information about Hussie’s developmental style. There is a website called Formspring that Hussie used from approximately February of 2010 to August of 2011, where users anonymously submitted questions from which Hussie chose some to answer publically.
These answers range in nature from utterly silly to extremely in-depth and informative. Some of Hussie’s responses offer immense insight into the developmental process he used in creating Homestuck, both explicitly and implicitly. I haven’t read through the archive yet so I can’t say definitively, but it’s worth stating that the Formspring answers provide an incredible amount of perspective into the mind of Hussie.
Due to this very fact, it has become a bible of sorts for Homestuck purists or zealots, either or both of which could apply to a large number of people from the HSD. I was loosely aware of the Formspring responses but had never taken it upon myself to look into the matter too much for whatever reason. It was by complete chance that the topic came up today, where Makin or someone else asked me if I had ever gone through the Formspring archives. It would make sense given that I’ve started assembling this absolutely bloated document, with all of its ancillary material.
After replying in the negative, I was immediately alerted to the existence of not one, but TWO archives of Hussie’s works, one kept by Wheals and the other by a fellow named MrCheeze. Links to both are located in appendix C under “Archive of Related Works by Andrew Hussie”, with Wheals’ under “Formspring and Blogs” and MrCheeze under “Previous Works”, for anyone who may be interested in gleaning some sort of insight into Hussie’s creative process and general online persona.
On a completely different note, the 400th page of this journal was associated of course with the customary 50 page set release. The last set, pages 350-400, have felt kind of strange to write for reasons that are difficult to describe. I think I’ve been allowing myself to give in to the pressure of a “timely release”, where instead of maintaining the quality of writing and ensuring that all of the entries have definite substance I’ve tried to cram as much nonsense into a given page as I can so I can get it out to people sooner.
This is not only a disservice to people who are genuinely interested in reading this journal in the present day, but compromises the integrity of the entire effort and probably will make it less palatable as a resource for people who simply want to learn more about the fandom or read about the history of the HSD. I always ask for feedback on the journal when I distribute it, and although many people don’t bother to offer their insights into what may be improved or simply don’t care, I can usually count on Makin to give some feedback, or especially Toast.
Toast has often describing his fondness for this journal in the past, which is something that I deeply appreciate. As such, after Makin has given his input on the matter I like to see what Toast has to hear on the subject. As it is, he echoed some of my concerns about the journal, and provided a fresh perspective that I feel has helped reorient myself a little bit.
I started this journal because I was afraid of the possibility that the community may one day fall apart or be destroyed somehow, a natural doom for any group. With this in mind I wanted to preserve as much of the culture I’ve witnessed as possible in order to keep it from fading away completely someday. I feel as if there are two aspects to this: preserving the mechanics of the community and then its spirit.
Recording the mechanics of our community, so to speak, is a relatively simple affair that usually entails just transcribing the daily events of the place. This by itself can be interesting, but can very quickly become monotonous or otherwise unremarkable. Preserving the spirit of the community is an infinitely harder and more important task.
By “spirit” I suppose I mean the nature of our interactions as people, and this is what makes the HSD—or indeed any online community—such a fascinating and wonderful place to be in. It’s easy to settle into a routine or become familiar with your environment. Once this happens, you begin to miss a lot of details laced into the fabric of your everyday experiences.
The mannerisms of various people, the historical context that can taint a conversation in various ways, and a whole host of other factors are all responsible for creating a certain atmosphere and flavor to the HSD. Understanding small things like how Olki talks to others about music and is a general hipster or Red facetiously flirts with people whilst in the HSD all contributes to an overall knowledge of the structure of our social group, and it foments an appreciation for the extremely fine details of our community.
I guess my point with saying all of this is that I haven’t been keeping very good record of these base, more human-oriented interactions lately. There was a noticeable shift at one point where I began focusing a lot on the various end goals and products of the fandom. This is still assuredly important to understanding what we do on a day to day basis, but without an appreciation for why we might care in the first place, what reason is there to describe the happenings of the community at large?
I recently took it upon myself to remove all instances of personal information within the journal to make it more suitable for distribution, and I think I will largely abide by that decision; however, it would behoove me to continue trying to document the personalities and interactions of people on the HSD in particular instead of extending my focus to the fandom as a whole all the time. This will hopefully provide greater insight into why things play out the way they do here, or maybe even provide a reason for people reading this to care? It probably depends on who you are that reads this, who knows exactly.
With this musing out of the way, the last thing I’ll say in this entry is that the final response I was waiting for from the Music Team has been received. Assuming real life scheduling allows for it, I will begin assembling the Music Team article at some point in the near future. It’s impossible to say when it’ll be ready, but hopefully within the next couple of weeks. I’m also considering the nature of this journal to some extent, but that is a topic I will cover in a future entry.
Nothing more for today.
18th of January
It has often been the nature of discussions in mspa-lit that we discuss the worth of a given piece of work in as objective terms as we can possibly allow. This has led to the creation of and/or adherence to various ways that we can try to gauge a given piece of media. One of the more popular models we use to examine something is this phrase that Makin and some others are fond of repeating, being “style versus substance”.
It’s very easy to forget that the nature of these conversations, despite striving for objectivity, are ultimately piss-takes of concepts that most of us probably aren’t even qualified to define in the first place. For all of this, I end up getting frustrated when people drag out conversational tactics that try to undermine other schools of thought by nature. “Style versus substance” achieves this pretty consistently, where a work that only has lots of “substance” is typically seen as superior to a work that only has lots of “style”.
I myself was confused as to the nature of these concepts, and so a brief explanation may be warranted. I’m not sure if there are academic connotations to what we were discussing and we’re thus throwing around nonsense terms that don’t actually mean anything, but substance and style refer to two main ways that media may be consumed or interpreted. They’re much what they sound like, with substance concerning what a work is “about” so to speak. More complex works are said to be more substantial because they have a more nuanced and therefore interesting idea to present.
On the other hand, style is about how a work is presented, and often is used to accentuate the substance by making it stronger or softer in certain contexts. Style is about conveying the message of your work in a compelling and interesting way and works with no style are usually extremely boring or dry. Conversely, works with no substance are often seen as pointless or mundane, with no reason offered to actually examine them at length.
A good way of looking at this is through the lens of conventional art, such as the history of painting. An actual example we used today was Pablo Picasso’s Guernica: a Cubist painting made in response to the Spanish Civil War, it depicts several people in anguish and suffering due to the violence and horror of war. This message is the substance of the piece, and is the concept that Picasso was trying to get across to others.
The style of Guernica is arguably what makes the painting so powerful to others, however: Cubist art makes use of heavily warped or angular imagery, with subjects appearing to be seen from multiple perspectives at once, among other things. These visual techniques afford a sense of surreality and other emotion to a given piece, adding weight to it and making it resonate more strongly with people. This is the power of style.
I would explain further but it’s neither the purpose of this journal or something that I can pretend to understand in depth. It’s highly likely that I’ve misunderstood some of the features of the discussion, but such is the message that I took away from it. I had begun the conversation by asking the question of whether style can count as a type of substance if it’s done well enough. For some time myself, Tensei, and Putnam all talked about the nature of the issue, but then it rapidly ballooned into something else with around ten people all trying to inject their various opinions into it.
At some point this bloated mess of a conversation imploded, and a few people got stuck repeating literally the same points ad nauseum. Null, Gitaxian, and a fellow I hadn’t properly met yet called Spiral were all debating some nonsense about how anything, including art, can be fully reduced to numbers in an equation. Gitaxian was a firm proponent for this idea but Spiral at certain points seemed to get angry to the point of being insensate over the concept. After literally an hour of that crap, I pleaded with them to let it go and allow the conversation to die, which to my gratitude they did.
Even though it ended on relatively poor terms, I think the style versus substance debate is a pretty good example of the kind of discussion that can be had in this server. There was a general attempt at informing other people who might be confused on the topic, and it was a stepping stone to other conversations that could be greatly improved by the knowledge presented today. It also encouraged people to think critically, and expose themselves to other lines of thinking. There are of course people who are immovable in their opinions and people who are moved too easily, but overall the exchange of information is extremely nice to witness and especially to engage in personally.
However, it’s important to keep a topic from droning on forever; it’s detrimental to bringing up the conversation in the future, as when people become fatigued over a particular discussion they’re far less receptive to talking about it again (this is honestly why I would prefer to let discussions run their course in mspa-lit, but with Makin interrupting them all the time people will never get their fill, so it’s doomed to crop up again in the future.
Then again, I think I may actually prefer that. I speak in terms of letting conversations die naturally, but it is all too frequent an occurrence where the discussion is not allowed to die for whatever reason. This often leads to that conversational rigor mortis I described recently, and the net effect is arguably worse than if the conversation were to be interrupted before people satisfied themselves. I guess in a perverse way I owe it to Makin for keeping us from getting tired of talking about Dragonball or Pokemon, or other stuff he doesn’t care about.
There’s one last thing I’ll comment on for today, being one of the most foul encounters I’ve ever had while using Discord. Some fellow named Bauser was hanging out in mspa-lit and chatting people up, to all appearances behaving perfectly normally and not disturbing the peace. Somehow the discussion got on about ethical business practices between Apple and other tech companies like Microsoft or Google; this was a pretty typical discussion on the concept, with people forming sides and being cheeky about poking fun at each other without actually getting too upset.
At one point, however, MrNostalgic made an errant comment about how a statement Bauser made was “dumb”. This unleashed some unholy sort of fury lurking underneath the surface, because Bauser immediately set off and aggressively insulted Nostalgic. It was honestly kind of bizarre, rather than being immediately put-off I just assumed the guy needed to chill out and told him not to do it again. This prompted Bauser to tell me to go fuck myself, at which point I ceased being surprised and started being annoyed.
Unfortunately, annoyed was the kindest emotion I felt towards this guy for the rest of the evening. I banned him from mspa-lit and assumed that was the end of it, but then he began messaging me in PMs. Rather than the unbridled rage I was expecting, he seemed perfectly amicable; this juxtaposition in his behavior was somewhat concerning, but my curiosity was piqued so I attempted to interface with him for a big longer.
This was a mistake. I’m still unsure if the fellow was being sincere or simply baiting me, but it was an exercise in pointlessness: Bauser behaved in the most ruthlessly self-aggrandizing I have ever seen, with every statement being an explicit or thinly-veiled attempt to prop himself up as the rational authority of the conversation. There were some hollow attempts to praise me for my “critical-thinking skills” and he even tried to congratulate me for dealing with him--which was fairly perverse in its own way--but any good will that might have possibly been generated by this was swiftly dashed as he used it to justify his views further.
I won’t go into any explicit details, suffice to say that it was an infuriating encounter. My job as a mod makes it inadviseable to block people I find distasteful, because I may need to deal with them at some point and I can’t do that if I’m unable to interact with them. I have broken this principle exactly two times now, the first being for that user Ggrey and then now for Bauser. I simply can’t put up with the insufferable smugness; I don’t know why, but where most forms of unpleasantness I’m able to handle fairly well this one incident managed to make me feel incredibly upset. Definitely a low in my time here as mod I guess.
But, that’s not exactly something to worry too much about. Not every person you meet can be pleasant, it’s just a fact of life. I’m glad I was able to handle it without abusing my power at all; if there was anyone I would have banned just because I disliked them enough, it would have been Ggrey or Bauser. Hopefully no one somehow more foul than them manage to pop up here.
Nothing more for today.
21st of January
There has been nothing but increasing success for the Bob Ross sessions lately. I’m trying not to engage in them too frequently, as I’m sure burning people out is a real danger with this sort of activity. However, people seem to be completely receptive; I think that at the least it can be a weekly activity, maybe two sessions a week sometimes if people are interested enough. This last painting we did had over a dozen participants! Needless to say I’m extremely pleased about all of this.
I think that, with people’s permission, I will take the artwork and host it somewhere that it can be seen by others. I could probably host it on Imgur and then include an entry in the appendixes for it, or pin it in art-music. This would probably serve to get more people interested as well. However, I’m unsure that we could handle anymore people in the current set up we have. The streaming website we use for this purpose is a bit finicky and gets kind of unwieldy with too many people in it. I might have to look into a more stable program for this purpose in the near future.
Even Makin has agreed to participate, on one contingency. People who complete his shill list are allowed to recommend things for him to do and he will earnestly attempt to complete them as a sign of respect, which to me is kind of a neat idea (if a little haughty in some ways). Thus, he has agreed to participate if I finish the shill list.
I mean, I was already planning to do that anyway, so I’m not really bothered by this proposition. I accepted it without hesitation, at which I think he balked a tiny bit—he described the arrangement as “a horrible deal”15 for me, which made me laugh. Perhaps he was joking or didn’t expect me to say yes? Either way, I found the situation amusing. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with when the time comes; everyone who has participated so far has a different style, and it is fascinating to witness what vastly different results people can have for what is effectively the same painting.
The Bob Ross Painting Sessions, as I’ve come to call them, are not the only example of increasing group participation lately. It seems as if more people have been coming by and discussing things at length, which is always heartening. I’ve been trying to interface with more people and channels and get the ball rolling in places like #general, so that, instead of just having a high user count, we can have high rates of user participation as well. With every person who talks regularly comes more opportunities to grow as a community and learn something from each other. I’m quite happy with it so far.
I’ve also considered reviving Movie Night somehow, as people have been asking for it lately. If we can mete out movies more slowly and keep people from getting tired of them, then it might be another way to bring people closer together. WoC indirectly brought up the idea of doing MST3K movie nights—invariably one of the most superior programs for riffing on movies in a group setting—which would be very conducive to this idea.
This is not to say that I’m overly concerned with the notion; I’m trying to avoid investing too much of my time and energy into this, simply because it won’t always work out and I shouldn’t be bothered when it doesn’t. However, it does bring me great satisfaction to see so many people together. That having been said, something I am imminently concerned with is the recent disappearance of Carlarc. I’m not sure if he said something recently, but he hasn’t been around for a few days now and I’m beginning to grow worried about him. If he remains gone for a week then I think I’ll try to message him and see what’s up. Hopefully it’s nothing bad.
Nothing more for today.
22nd of January
Makin has been dropping some cryptic hints lately. Yesterday he made an errant comment: “as january dies, things are going to change”. Flippant or not, phrasing like that—especially coming from someone in an undeniable position of power—is going to draw some attention. It could mean potentially anything, given how unpredictable Makin is; I think he hinted at something like this before some months ago and it turned out to be completely innocuous, and he was cashing in on it for the meme.
On the other hand, it could be The Rapture. No way to tell at this point. It is worth noticing all of the things he drops that suggest something is coming though. For example, in #announcements he left an image of a quote by someone named Pascua, which says: “I may not be able to convince you that change is coming. But the thing about change is: it’s coming whether you are ready for it not.” Again, there is no telling if this is THE REAL DEAL or another meme16, and I’m going to err on the side of caution with my predictions.
That having been said, I do feel some stirrings of excitement at these hints. If Makin is playing another joke, then I have to give him props for making it as enjoyable as he does. Despite all my effort to remain unmoved, my curiosity is piqued. I can’t say if others feel the same, although I am absolutely not the only one who has noticed. Whatever it may be, we apparently won’t have to wait longer than the end of January to find out.
Nothing more for today.
24th of January
Altgen’s gradual return to shittification seems to be approaching a zenith of sorts. Speaking frankly I think I’m fine with this (as would be expected, since making altgen objectively worse was my expressly stated goal). It’s been gratfifying, personally, to see it slowly but surely be converted back to the way the older regulars are used to seeing it. For months now, “Don’t go to #altgen” has been seen as nothing more than a hollow meme, with no substance behind the ominous words.
Today, it feels as if the barest scrap of that sentiment has returned. It lacks the sheer and brutal intensity of yesteryear, but it has crossed the line from being merely a nuisance to something with distinct weight behind it and a true potential for chaos or disruption. I suppose it’s worth stating at this point that I don’t actually wish for such destruction to occur, but simply that having the threat hanging over your head makes things the smallest amount more exciting.
Such statements, funnily enough, relate to how I feel about Makin. I can’t speak for anyone but myself in this regard, but there is a distinct satisfaction with knowing that he’s in charge. The consequences of his actions have been a major pain in my ass on occasion, but it’s far more gratifying to have these controversies and the energy derived from them than to have nothing at all. This is assuming that those controversies are worthwhile and in fact not manufactured garbage. Such drama that exists for the sake of being dramatic is far more unpleasant than a problem that arises from more genuine circumstances.
I’ve been looking more into Pesterchum and Tumblr. Unfortunately the one other person I’ve been directed to ask about the Tumblr side of the fandom has been unresponsive, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. I might call off that particular explanation and give what I have; it may be that the Tumblr fandom is too decentralized to approach anything resembling a cohesive community. I’ll have to ask around and see if there’s even one or two more people I can ask about on the matter.
Pesterchum has been a completely different story. I’ve already completed interviews with one of the people Olki mentioned, and am currently in talks with the other, a person named Midna. The latter has been an unbelievable font of information, and by my reckoning we’re still not even halfway done with our discussions. I may have far more to write on this topic than I originally suspected, but I won’t go into further detail on that for now.
More concurrently with the server, Makin’s cryptic statements have only deepened over the last couple of days. With each instance of the behavior, the chance that this means the second reckoning is coming increases. For people who were around before, this has given itself to a sort of tense energy. Toast has personally commented on the matter: “hes doing the exact same patterns as he had been during the first one”. Perhaps the time really is nigh.
Toast has also mentioned being made nervous by this. I wasn’t around for the first reckoning so the conditions surrounding it are rather enigmatic to me, aside from the fact that it was incredibly tumultuous. It’s hard to imagine what it might turn out like now that things are—ostensibly—different from how they were before. I always assume that a reckoning will inject energy into the system, and this could be true. However, it’s impossible to divine the extent of what negative effects we may suffer because of it; that would depend on the exact nature of the disruptance.
Toast is, simply put, scared of losing his modship on the server, for some similar reasons that I would be: he’s fond of being helpful to people on the server, and he mentioned that he enjoys being a figure of prominence for others to look up to. These are both completely understandable to me, and I sympathize with his fear that by the time this is over that he will be left in the dust. Thinking about losing my modship and being unable to help at all does fill me with some dismay as well, but at the end of the day there isn’t much that can be done but to wait and see what happens.
I communicated that idea to Toast and I think it may have helped him? He seemed a little mollified afterwards if nothing else. I have no idea if anything I said to him was genuinely of use, but he says it was. If such is true, then I’m glad I was able to help him calm down about it. There really isn’t much we can do; even if we knew it was coming, Makin is essentially unstoppable in any of his designs or plans, so it wouldn’t do us much good to know about it anyway. The same could much be said about this entry, too; writing about it at length will do little good until something concrete has happened, so I will move on from here.
Nothing more for today.
25th of January
We had a discussion about Slate Star Codex today, which is a blog written by Scott Alexander. It’s largely concerned with a variety of scientific and social disciplines, especially viewed through the lens of rationality. It is an extremely common go-to in conversations with Makin, who has felt it appropriate to shill a post called “Meditations on Moloch”17 at least a few times every week for the last several months.
It may be evident even from my brief description, but this has served as the locus for some considerable annoyance for me. The part that bothers me most though, is that my frustration isn’t even founded in anything concrete. I have reasons and justifications for it, foremost among them being a simple irritation with seeing Makin advertise SSC like a religious text, but upon closer examination there is no real substantial reason for me to be frustrated with it. The articles are well written and by all means interesting, so why do I feel so disgruntled when I see it?
I tried hashing this out with Makin and Putnam after I realized that my feelings were essentially baseless. We didn’t really get anywhere unfortunately, and in the process I started behaving in a way that I perceived as rude. I felt bad about this afterwards—I try very hard to not lose my temper, especially over frivolous bullshit18 like Slate Star Codex. After my comments I wanted to apologize, especially to Putnam,19 so I decided to PM him about it.
Funnily enough, Putnam hadn’t construed literally any of my remarks as anything worthy of concern; he is used to terse and sometimes emotionally charged conversations, and he considered the statements I was worried about as “completely harmless”. I wanted to laugh at the difference in perspective: sometimes it’s easy to forget how wrongly I may read people. For a while I’ve assumed Putnam was uncomfortable with confrontation, despite the fact that every single interaction I’ve had with him suggests the complete opposite. I need to reevaluate my feelings and judgments of people, it seems.
In a similar vein as my outburst (if it can be called that), there was another incident with Minish today wherein he felt like he was being treated too harshly by others. Red and WoC have a similar propensity to make fun of other people because they both feel that it’s not a big deal. When they do this in tandem, it can be annoying to deal with for even the most thick-skinned of people; Minish, on the other hand, classically is not very resistant to being made fun of. One may predict how this ended up: Minish left the server, so I went into damage control mode.
On the one hand, I was talking with Minish to try and calm him down. This isn’t the first time that Minish has left in response to being treated in a way he perceives as unjust, and I feel like I’ve gotten better at approaching him. Red and WoC are a different matter: not only do I not have as much experience “handling” them in any capacity, but their very nature makes trying to deal with them a monumental undertaking in and of itself. I fully expected my assertions to fall flat or, even worse, be subject to simple mockery from them. Instead, they seemed pretty receptive to what I had to say, if somewhat reluctant to own up to it.
I’m not sure to what extent this was due to my conviction on the matter or them simply deciding to go along with what I said, but it was gratifying to have them listen to me for once. WoC ended up apologizing for being out of line, as did Red; Minish came back in short order and things progressed as normal for the rest of the evening. I take this as a sign that my confidence in my decision making and conversational skills are improving, although I still find myself overwhelmed or confused at various situations. Perhaps thes will continue to improve as time goes by.
Nothing more for today.
26th of January
Carlarc has been missing for over a week now. Myself and Phantos took notice, and others are starting to comment on it as well. There is some genuine concern surrounding his disappearance, but unless he physically returns there’s no way to know what’s going on20. It’s possible that he’s simply lost interest and decided to stop coming; if this is the case, then there really is nothing to be done. I hope that everything is alright.
We did end up discussing the topic for a while though; Tensei, LLF, Minish, and myself were all talking about it for a while, and despite the concern there were some jokes about it, which was all well and good. At some point LLF ended up making a joke about Carlarc being dead, which struck everyone present as pretty distasteful. Instead of escalating into a big deal like I thought it would, we were able to play off the comment and resume the discussion without too much of a disruptance. I was pretty heartened by this: all of the ribbing and the ability to avoid exacerbating arguments is a sign that we’re progressing as a group of friends, at least in my opinion. I feel it’s a good thing, sincerely.
Part of the ribbing is in talking about each others’ interests. Often enough people in our group will pursue various projects, and it’s fun to discuss what you’re doing with each other. This often leads to aforementioned ribbing, because the nature of someone’s work can be pretty silly to consider. This can sometimes lead to friction if people care very much about what they’re doing, but at the end of each discussion I think it ends well enough.
An example would be this very journal, which is admittedly a pretty eccentric venture. It’s elicited some comments from people who find it strange, which I think is perfectly valid (sometimes even funny). Then, there’s another project I’m working on that I’ve mentioned a few times recently in chat: it may be a bit esoteric to explain in full, so suffice to say I’m transcribing the videos of a Youtube comedy channel that I like. That project has definitely elicited comments from people remarking on how pointless and weird it is to be doing.
These comments don’t really bother me—rather, I find it pretty amusing to see peoples’ confusion with my efforts. Putnam did offer an alternative that I found particularly funny: he considers what I’m doing with the transcription project to be a complete waste of time, and instead says that he and I should stream playing video games together. This strikes me as an unconventional suggestion from him, and I was kind of taken back by it for no discernible reason. It’s honestly an interesting idea, one that I might have to take up with him one of these days.
On an unrelated note, for some reason we started having a discussion about the nature of 4chan and how it’s changed over the years. I reflected on the fact that, despite my attempt to explain it in a previous entry of this journal, I feel like I have utterly failed to properly convey the true spirit of the website and its community. The simple reality of the matter is that I’m not sure if that’s even possible, because so much of 4chan’s value or enjoyment comes from experiencing directly. No degree of explanation to an outsider can truly get the message across when it comes to certain principles or events. But then, isn’t that true of most things?
Instead of hashing this topic out again, I’ll comment instead on the idea that took up the brunt of our discussion on 4chan today. It is an important concept for the internet in general, known as The Eternal September. The Eternal September refers to a phenomenon predicated on the old-internet, from before it went public in the early 90’s. It’s honestly possible to write an entire paper on the subject (something that I literally did in my first year of college), but I’ll try to be brief in my descriptions.
Before 1993, internet was usually reserved for college students or academic and military organizations. At this point in time, there was a distinct brand of etiquette associated with using the internet: proper protocols were not only encouraged but expected. There were even designated classes for people to take so that they could become familiar with the culture and etiquette of the internet.
With this in mind, the “September” part of the phrase comes from the fact that every year in the fall, a new group of students would begin college and start using the internet, who were then completely unfamiliar with what to do or how to behave. This was usually seen as a difficult time for people who were already used to the internet, with new students usually acting out of line and generally mucking around.
Over the school year there was a consistent effort from everyone involved to try and indoctrinate new users and help them become acquainted to internet etiquette. This was typically successful, and by the end of the school year things would return to normal. In this way, while new problems and cultural elements would arise from the influx of students each September, the status quo was still largely maintained.
This all changed in 1993, when AOL sold internet access to the general public for the first time. There was absolutely no comparison between the introduction of new students versus the enormous swath of people who were then flooding the internet. There was absolutely no chance for the older users to try and stem the tide; in one fell swoop, their culture was destroyed and internet etiquette was changed forever. Thus, the term was coined by a fellow named Dave Fischer in 1994: “It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended.”
Outside of its origin, the term can be used to describe any instance where a massive influx of new users can destroy the existing structure and behavior of a given community. 4chan indeed underwent this process, the details of which I explained as thoroughly as I could for people who are unfamiliar with 4chan or its history. Makin chimed in at this point to say that he’s taken steps to prevent something similar from happening to mspa-lit, using #general as a kind of filter for new people so that only the good, quality users get through to us.
He also poked fun at me for all of this, saying I was young enough that I was part of the Eternal September, despite the way I was explaining the concept. All I can say is that he’s correct; whatever culture I didn’t miss, I’ve typically arrived too late to do anything besides distort the existing culture. This has gradually been less the case as I get older, and instead I’m able to witness those events in real time instead of causing them myself.
This brought up another point, being my role in the HSD and then more generally. I have missed a lot of history, something that I always feel regret over. However, people have begun to see me as a sort of “internet historian”, where not only am I exhaustively documenting the HSD—this extremely specific subset of an already niche community—but I’m trying to broaden the scope of knowledge at my disposal. Being able to speak authoritatively on the history of 4chan and the origin of an event like Eternal September are examples of this behavior.
It may be self-aggrandizing to say, but I kind of like the idea of building that sort of reputation for myself. I enjoy having as complete and refined a knowledge for myself as I can on all manner of things, and being able to transmit that knowledge to other people is really gratifying. This actually led me to consider my options with writing all of this, and whether I might restructure this journal.
The subject of this journal began with the HSD in particular and has slowly evolved in its scope and consideration of material, especially with the Homestuck fandom as a whole. It may be more appropriate to reorganize this document sometime. I’m not sure what form it may take, if this were to happen at all—it would depend on a lot of factors. More to consider for the future I guess.
Nothing more for today.
27th of January
There’s been a lot of business over the last few days, and in the confusion I’ve neglected to mention some pretty important developments. First is that Makin announced a Hiveswap: Act 2 giveaway, and on Sunday the 28th there will be a community stream. More details on that to follow. Of more immediate importance is that, at the time of writing, we’re less than 50 people from 10,000 members.
There is a very distinct degree of tension surrounding this fact, with people (including myself) making overt references to the overall user count. It would be this way even if it was only the usercount; 10,000 is an absolutely incredible number, when you consider the nature of this place and how old the material of interest is. There is a palpable degree of excitement around the idea that we have grown this large, and about 2,000 of those people are online at any given time.
However, this isn’t even the only thing in our minds. There is Makin’s event looming. He has not named it, only referring to it as “the main event” before the stream tomorrow. The way he has timed it suggests to me that he was specifically waiting for 10,000 users before doing either, yet another bizarre masterstroke in his administration. The exact nature of “the main event” has not been elaborated on, but there is little doubt in most people’s minds that it is the reckoning we have been waiting for.
Starting here I’m trying to write this in a more live sense, seeing as it has the possibility to be quite a tumultuous event. I don’t want to miss any important details by forgetting them afterwards. It’s currently 9:36 PM EST, and we’re hovering within ten users of 10,000. There are people talking excitedly, waiting for the final person to join.
At 9:49 PM EST, we’ve been told of a #general viewing party of sorts so that we can celebrate the 10,000th person. We’ve been hovering at 9,998 and 9,999, fluctuating steadily for a few minutes. And here, at exactly the turn of the hour, they’ve joined! The 10,000th person is a new account named “ayylmao”, and the very second they joined everyone present began spamming various memes to celebrate.
Another account joined putting us at 10,001, but it too is very new. These are likely alt accounts that were made for the purpose, and now shortly after they’ve both left, so we’re technically at 9,999 members again. I expect that the excitement and momentous occasion will draw more people so that it’s not really a big deal. Everyone is having a good time; the channel is a massive ball of frenetic chaos.
Shortly before the end of today, the only important thing left to say is that Nights rejoined and ended up being our new 10,000th person, which was hilarious and a very welcome development. I’m very pleased to see the community get this far, almost twice the size of what it was when I joined. There is the lingering doubt in my mind of how it will turn out now, with Makin initiating this main event he was speaking of. He’s not online right now as it’s too late, so he’ll likely initiate it when he wakes up. There’s no way to know what will happen, but I hope it turns out well enough. I’m worried for the mods, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Nothing more for today.
Today was more trying than I could have possibly imagined. I actually stayed up last night until about 5:30 AM EST, because I knew Makin would be back sometime in the early morning and I didn’t want to miss the beginning of whatever happened. True to form, Makin came on and—without saying a word—began changing things. He shortly made an announcement stating that The Rapture had officially begun.
At this point, things started to happen very quickly. I initially wanted to stay up as long as possible, but I have real life obligations to handle and I couldn’t afford it. I took some notes—eventually annotating with minutes when I remembered to do so—until I fell asleep, at which point Nights started taking notes for me (for which I am extremely grateful). I’ve included both of these sets of notes in appendix D under “The Rapture Notes”, with entries organized by author for anyone interested in a slightly more indepth examination of what happened, although I can’t promise that the details are too thorough or explanatory; it was a fairly hectic process, after all.
It began with Makin creating four channels: #general-alpha, #general-aleph, #general-a, and #general-1. After this he removed the mod and pseudo-mod roles from all current staff, so that the mod-related and archived channels were hidden away from us. Then, he began hiding the regular channels too. Finally, all that were left were the four general channels, where literally everyone in the server was now localized.
Once this had been accomplished, Makin began rearranging the channels seemingly at random. It was kind of amusing: at this point, no one was explicitly freaking out. There were a lot of people who were kind of annoyed at the disruption, but no one was in a panic or calling for alarm. Ifnar I think spoke for many people who were around the first time: “Drew, just so you know, this is pathetic and boring compared to the chaos of the first reckoning.” This shuffling of channels kept up for some time, and then he began altering them in various other ways as well.
Sometimes the number of channels would decrease from four to three, then to two, and then increase back to four, even five. Names were switched around a bit at various points, until finally we ended up with four #general channels that were identical in every way. It was at this point that I noticed each channel had spontaneously given rise to its own microculture of sorts. People were generally sticking to one channel, which each had a healthy smattering of regulars from all the various channels. The exception to this was one channel that seemed to have collected all of the altgen regulars, who would occasionally venture out into other channels to harass other users or see what was going on.
The exact reason that Makin was doing this was completely unknown to us, until about fifteen minutes to half an hour after he began he put up an announcement that said to “nominate a new #general pseudo in the right general channel!”. This meant that the order of the channels was important because our suggestions would only matter if they were made in the “correct channel”, although to my recollection there was no actual way to know which channel was “the right one”. It was easy enough to keep track of which channel was which using their ID numbers, but the actual nature of the channel, whether it was “the one we needed”, was impossible to determine.
After a bit of this, Makin created a poll between the candidates suggested in “the right channel”, whichever it may have been, asking people to choose between ost and the nominated virtuNat. In the end, people voted for virtuNat; ost left the server in frustration, and thus began another issue that I’ll comment on later. At this point, every channel was basically in pandemonium. One user named IQuick commented, “Everything is altgen right now”.
The other channel nominations proceeded in much the same fashion: people suggested mods, Makin refined the candidates and then let people vote between them. Sometimes he would automatically reinstate certain mods: I think this was done with myself and Wheals, and then he promoted Tensei to full mod based on the fact that he often can be found doing the job of other pseudos in their channels. Sea Hitler also retained his position, although that was decided by popular vote.
Rather than go into details, the changes in their entirety are as follows: ost, medixum, and LRS are fully demodded; Ngame is demoted to pseudo of the newly created “media channels” (#western-media, #eastern-media), which have replaced #anime and #cartoon-tv, and Anervaria has been demoted to voicechat janitor; Tensei and Nights are promoted to full mods of the server; those promoted to pseudos are Spiral (Homestuck/Hiveswap), deusAscendant (altgen), virtuNat (general and oc-hell), olki (hangout, which has replaced social); Wizard of Chaos (gaming of course), and a fellow named Rar.exe (art-music); those who retained their positions are myself, Wheals, Sea Hitler, Toast, Dingus, Difarem, and Ifnar; and finally there is a strange switch with Ceru, who is no longer a mod but has been given a completely unique position called Botmaster for his work on Aradiabot and the other bots on the server.
A couple of these changes are worthy of note. First, all of the demoddings are sad21, and while I knew it was coming it didn’t quite soften the fact that some of those people are no longer in a position to do things anymore. They are still prominent in my mind, but no longer have any actual power. Second, some of the choices for new pseudos are EXTREMELY questionable, the one that strikes me as off the most being Rar.exe (who I’ve mentally flagged for numerous reasons, most compelling of which including their inexperience, how little the entire mod team seems to know about them, and most importantly how nervous they seem to be about this whole affair). The pseudos that share a channel with already-existing pseudos, specifically Toast/spiral and Dingus/deusAscendant, are serving as understudies for those who already govern the channel.
Third, the reappearance of WoC as gaming pseudo is extremely heartening: he carried the position to the greatest extent possible, and I can think of no one quite so deserving as he. Last, Nights’ sudden modding took people completely by surprise, and despite my delight at finding him in such a position I also confess that I find the conditions surrounding this to be somewhat suspicious. Nights has been largely absent from the server for two months, so this move has been seen by a number of people as rather unfortunate or even outright negative. Makin’s own stated reason for modding Nights is nothing more than typical wacky zany behavior.
Now that these decisions have been made, dealing with the fallout from this restructuring has been absolutely disastrous and taken up an unbelievable amount of my time. I think I actually spent close to twelve hours talking with people to try and figure out what was going on and how they feel. The most prominent thing I dealt with today, which I mentioned earlier, was ost’s demodding.
Ost takes a large amount of pride in their work, and they were actually one of the mods that I had automatically decided I would defend and try to get reinstated during this process. I figured they were a shoe-in based on the work I’ve seen them do, and that the largest point against them was pronounced inactivity in their channel. Yet, I felt this was a non-issue22 in light of the fact that they kept a very tight eye on the proceedings of #general and ensured it was basically devoid of troublemaking. However, this did not prove enough for Makin, who apparently cited their relative inactivity as a reason for favoring virtuNat.
Thus began a long series of discussions over the course of the entire day wherein I alternated between talking with ost, talking with other people to figure out what actually happened, and then talking with others to see how they felt about it. Ost’s value in the community as a whole is such that this feels like a rather dumb move to me: while they were not very talkative, they still did a great job and are also prominent for other reasons than being a mod in the HSD, such as organizing CANMT. After being demodded, ost seemed to disappear completely from almost every server they were a part of; based on this upset I decided to talk with them.
Upset is clearly the word of choice here, where there is a distinct sense of anxiety and hopelessness for them over these circumstances. The other ex-pseudos, especially Anervaria, appear to be more or less at peace with their new position (or lack thereof), but ost is particularly frustrated because they feel like they were doing a good job. I’m inclined to agree, and spent an absolutely laborious day talking to the other mods and even some pseudos to see how they felt about ost.
My efforts suggest to me that the overarching attitude seems to be one of disquiet, yet there are hints of capitulation. Most of the mods don’t feel that the demodding was carried out appropriately even if it was deserved, on which point even some disagree. Some are resigned to Makin’s viewpoint on the matter, but they are at least willing to express their displeasure at this turn of events. All but two of the people I asked, including all of the moderators and pseudos still around from before the Rapture, are firmly on the side of reinstating ost.
In the interest of fairness to ost, I will be bringing this up to Makin and discussing alternatives to full demodding. For instance, it should be more than possible for ost to be a co-pseudo alongside virtuNat. The former is not active but a fully competent mod while the latter is very active with no modding experience. I feel as if the pairs’ complimentary features would be effective, but there’s no way to tell if Makin will go for this. Even if I gain the support of every mod and pseudo, I have doubts that we’ll be able to change his mind.
The other person who is deeply troubled by all of this is Ceru. I initially thought that the Botmaster role, being unique, was honestly a pretty neat development. However, Ceru feels utterly devastated by the sudden shift in responsibility and categorization of his involvement. After all was said and done I tried talking with him for a while and determined how he was feeling. He described feeling underappreciated for all the work he does on Aradiabot and was even contemplating leaving the server outright, which I am obviously concerned with keeping from happening. He tried to demonstrate the depth of his anguish in a very painstaking fashion—I was honestly kind of shocked just how badly he was offended by his title change.
I spent a good hour or so talking with him to calm him down and help him understand that we DO appreciate him, and that he shouldn’t feel less valuable as a result of the apparent demotion. I’m not sure how effective my conversation with him was, but I talked him down from leaving the server and he seemed more amicable afterwards; it is my sincerest hope that he will feel better about his position here soon. Failing that, I promised I would try to talk with Makin to see what can be done to improve the matter. Goodness knows how that will go.
Makin mentioned to me over the last couple of weeks that I “may not like” the Rapture. I had assumed by this that he meant, should I be demodded, that I would be extremely upset about it. In retrospect, that conclusion was too obvious, not to mention way too unlikely—after talking with numerous people it was apparently obvious to everyone but me that my being remodded was a foregone conclusion.
But no: what he meant was that I would be displeased with the overall results of the Rapture. While this is mildly true, where I’m upset to see some people go, I am increasingly incensed by the way in which Makin carried out this entire ordeal. The restructuring is one thing, with the results of it being more or less fine to me; the way in which he released people was nothing short of callous and rude. I’m going to look into this more tomorrow.
Nothing more for today.
29th of January
The hectic pace of yesterday continues. The giveaway ended today at 10 AM EST, but for a few hours preceding this there was some confusion surrounding the results. Five winners are meant to be chosen randomly, and we were planning on using Aradiabot to randomize the people who participated and spit them out. However, there was a pronounced degree of strife involved as Ceru’s program was unable to provide a result that was randomized.
As the deadline grew closer and then actually passed us by, there was a confrontation where Makin shouted at Ceru when Aradiabot was unable to give the numbers as expected. Wheals interceded with an alternative method while Ceru tried to figure out what was going on, and when Ceru managed to provide a correct result Makin said “I don’t trust the bot anymore”. At this, Ceru left the server.
I spent a little bit of time talking with him immediately after this happened, try and settle him down. Even despite the upset from yesterday thankfully it didn’t take very long, and he came back to work through the issues with Aradiabot. I’m not sure whether him coming back was due to my efforts or not, but I’m glad he came back nonetheless. Immediately after returning he began working on the problem, while Makin, Wheals, and a couple of the pseudos tried working it out in a different way. I think that this dedication speaks to Ceru’s reliability: even if he is immensely frustrated, it isn’t hard to speak with him and get him to cooperate with you as long as you’re kind to him.
The details of the process are honestly pretty technical and a bit too involved for me, but the short story is that they were eventually successful. Hilariously, Minish was one of the people chosen in the batch of random numbers; there was some debate as to whether or not to exclude him based on the fact that he used to be a mod, or because he is an extremely recognizable regular from mspa-lit.
I objected to this, because the entire reason the team was trying so hard to resolve the randomness issue was because you could demonstrably prove you were in fact being random in your selection using their methods. Further selecting against people because it might seem suspicious would completely defeat the purpose of validating the methodology in the first place, and for this reason Minish was chosen as a winner.
Or so it seemed. The other half to this anecdote is that Minish actually failed to complete all of the conditions required to be eligible for the prize, so despite all of our efforts and consternations with it, he wasn’t even able to win in the first place. This was a much-needed laugh in the face of all the seriousness lately, and I think even Minish himself managed to get some amusement out of it (although it’s worth mentioning that he tried to wriggle his way into winning after the fact).
Unfortunately, the levity did not last nearly as long as we might have liked. After the giveaway nonsense had all settled down and things seemed stable, I decided to posit my argument concerning ost based on the perception that they were doing a good enough job and were deeply upset by the loss in position. I did my utmost to make the argument as respectful as possible, but in the end it proved to be a pointless endeavor. With a terse “I don’t care”, Makin shut down my attempt to have ost reinstated and it was over.
At this point I have to admit that I felt utterly hopeless; an entire day’s worth of effort was wasted, dashed in one short sentence with no room for further discussion. At this thought I rapidly began to change from despondent to indignant to positively fuming. The sheer disrespect on display was nothing short of offensive and I was (and still am) tired of accepting that sort of nonsense from him. Normally I would have left it at the negative response but today I decided that wasn’t acceptable, and thus began another long series of criticism.
This was where a large brunt of the day was spent. The ensuing discussion was very broad and deep in many ways, and for all of that it was incredibly frustrating. I didn’t feel like dancing around anything so I tried my best to lay bare my opinions on what was going on and how I think of Makin’s behavior. It’s impossible to say whether anything I said actually got through to him at this point, but I feel as if there were certain things that may have made it through the dialog. Nights even said something about the way Makin was behaving, which prompted him to apologize to me for “bullying”. I found it mildly annoying that Makin largely refused to acknowledge my arguments while almost immediately acquiescing to Nights’, but any progress is good progress I guess.
The discussion in its entirety gave me some of the most direct and maybe meaningful insight I’ve had into his thought process, and now in the wake of the discussion I think I actually understand him a little better23 (edit as of 2/13/18: this is still false). The unfortunate flipside to this is that instead of being able to pretend all of his idiosyncrasies can be explained away as harmless jokes, there are now things that I know I cannot trust him with. Where before I was content to write off complaints as people being too serious or unable to handle themselves, it’s become clear that he is directly at fault for a signicant brand of unrest and anger among various people.
I don’t know that I want to go into many details about this, at least not right now. Besides the fact that it may be poor form to discuss in detail here, I’m honestly just insanely tired and don’t have the energy to write about it right now. Today was not as openly harsh as the Rapture itself, but the discussion I had with Makin lasted an absurd amount of time and I think I’m mostly burnt out for now.
The main conclusion I came to should suffice for this entry: during the conversation WoC made a point that, “youre disposable drew / in the end we are all disposable”, which Makin made no real attempt to refute. It’s a sobering realization in light of all the work and care that we put into the HSD: at the end of the day, he may do as he pleases and get rid of us at conceivably any time as he sees fit. This is functionally how the system is designed, but the ideal of it frustrates me to no end—it makes it feel like I can’t trust him or the things he says and does, and that at any time I might be gutted if I get in his way.
I don’t want to leave on such a terrible note, and so I will end on something that may warrant some positivity: Makin wasn’t completely impervious to criticism, as much as he may have dodged or ignored it. There were a couple of times where he said, “please do come to me if you have a problem with what I’m doing”, and he was at least willing to try and discuss things. It seemed as if it was hard for him to be serious, but I want to cling to at least some optimism that he can be reasoned with when it matters. To believe otherwise would be to abandon all hope for anything meaningful in this community’s future.
I’m exhausted and pretty drained over all of this. Nothing more for today.
30th of January
Ost has, at least for now, completely forsaken all Homestuck centric communities they were a part of before the Rapture. They have promised to stick around in a related server so they can still talk to people, but there is no desire from them to come back in the face of what they consider consummate disrespect. I’m keeping an eye on them to see how things work out in the future, but for now they are officially gone.
This loss has demonstrated to me that times are changing, and after looking around with some freshly opened eyes it’s apparent that the landscape is different from how it was half a year ago. In light of this I’ve decided it’s time to start examining some more regulars of the place, which I either have neglected to describe at length before now or recently joined us. It seems prudent to start with the new pseudo-moderators. Admittedly, I haven’t had much time to observe them and see what their posting habits are, but I can at least attempt to describe them in brief.
deusAscendant, or dA joined the server in early September of last year, just before the first act of Hiveswap was released. They almost immediately started talking in altgen (this was during the height of the NEO alt raids, so this behavior was highly suspicious at first). After getting past some initial tension, they became fairly well ensconced in the altgen community. After the Patreon was created, dA paid to have a channel about automotive engineering, entitled #mechanical. Their other interests include tabletop gaming, especially Dungeons and Dragons, and they’re interested in video games as well, although they barely ever speak in #gaming.
Personality wise they’re cut from a similar yet different cloth as the rest of the typical altgen folk. They of course delight in shitposting and is known for taking screenshots for all manner of humorous purposes, but they were also a member of the nu-altgen cabal that has since been ousted; rather than leave or dissociate like the rest of them, dA has stuck around and contributes just as much as he did before, trying to encourage and mess with others in equal measure. In all, they appear to be quite a dynamic fellow. As a reminder, they’re currently competing with Dingus to see who can be the better altgen pseudo, with the winner keeping the position.
Spiral is a long time lurker who only began talking in earnest a few months ago. Their own path throughout the last several years resembles my own, somewhat: they read Homestuck initially many years ago, although their involvement with the fandom was immediately more pronounced than my own. They ran a Tumblr blog for some time until taking a break for a couple of years. Then, after their interested was reinvigorated, they discovered the HSD through the subreddit about a year ago.
Spiral has a self-described tendency to become obsessed with particular topics and will ruthlessly assimilate as much information as they reasonably can once they have decided they are interested. In spite of this intense focus, Spiral appears to be a fairly relaxed and personable individual; after observing a number of their conversations with other people it seems Spiral, while being firm on topics where a definite right answer exists, is also perfectly understanding of others in less rigid contexts.
These are highly desirable qualities in a community leader, and I think it’s safe to say I’m optimistic to see how they carry out their duties here. Their passion for knowledge, especially of the webcomic itself, has greatly prepared them for modship over the #homestuck and #hiveswap channels alongside Toast (as with Dingus and dA, being a competition of sorts).
Spiral described the incident that inspired them to begin talking, mentioning that on a particularly terrible day they took the plunge and started to vent in #serious, a process they had personally witnessed numerous times before. Someone responded in kind, and Spiral describes that this positive encounter encouraged them to begin participating more often. They mention suffering from severe anxiety issues, among other things, and that being able to speak with other people in this community has been of great help to them. Stories like these reinforce my appreciation for what the HSD can be for others, and I’m glad that they’ve found a figurative home here like I did.
Rar.exe is, to my reckoning, probably the most unconventional of the new members of our team. Normally I wouldn’t focus on this detail, but Rar.exe has publically elaborated on a facet of personality that is important for clarity’s sake. Rar.exe is trans; this is hardly uncommon in our server. Common consensus in the LGBT community is that gender-neutral people are identified by the pronoun “they”, which is also true for many people on our server (it’s also acceptable if you’re simply unsure what someone’s gender is). However, Rar has very specifically expressed a preference for being called “it” or “its”.
I realize that it’s kind of unusual to begin its description with this particular detail, but it’s in keeping with a line of behavior that the mod team, including Makin, have been trying to pursue. The HSD has a reputation among some for being an inhospitable place, especially to more progressive mindsets. This particular belief has always struck me as nonsensical—by all meaningful assessments of the place we’re actually much closer to the more liberal side of the political spectrum than anything else. Concepts that are becoming more frequently discussed in the general public, like transgenderism, are not merely tolerated but fully accepted here by both the administration and the community at large.
The reason I bother to explain this at this point in time is that I feel Rar’s inclusion is an effective example of our leanings as a community. Trans people identifying by “them” or “they” is a concept that elicits absolutely no comment at this point, other than for clarification on what people prefer to be called. Rar is an extension of this principle, with “it” being far less common as a pronoun used by people to identify themselves. This was briefly the subject of attention because of how unconventional it is (“it” being typically considered a derogatory way of referring to people and especially trans people). However, Rar’s preferences are clear, and we’re content to acquiesce to what it wants. Many of us are still trying to grow used to the idea, but hopefully we can be as accommodating as possible.
As for Rar’s history, it joined almost exactly a year ago. It initially participated loosely in general and altgen for some time, as it “wanted to get a feel for the culture”. Eventually altgen proved to be too chaotic and offensive, so it moved to art-music in line with its own interests. Rar describes itself as being a stickler for rules, so it naturally began trying to mini-mod the channel, so much so that Anervaria and Rar joked about the latter usurping her position.
Upon the Rapture, Rar was completely blindsided by the idea of becoming a pseudo-mod. Tensei has apparently personally vouched for it becoming a mod, and it describes being incredibly flabbergasted by the sudden influx of people wishing congratulations or good luck upon receiving modship. There was apparently some pushback from various people, but despite this it accepted the position. It’s since become active in mspa-lit, switching between actively conversing and lurking on a regular basis, when it isn’t moderating #art-music. Rar seems nervous but not totally unprepared to accept its responsibility here, and especially after I confirmed with it that it wants to try the hardest it can to do a good job, I’m feeling a little better about the idea.
VirtuNat is the last person I’ll describe today. She has the advantage of actually being of some familiarity to me at this point, having been talking in mspa-lit regularly for some months now. She is decidedly impish, pursuing jokes that are strange in nature, although not unpleasant. Since before her modding, she has described herself as a “shrine maiden”24 for oc-hell; I mentioned that they were given de facto leadership of that channel some months ago when the original purchaser left, and especially after Makin made oc-hell a permanent server fixture because of how useful it was. With this, Nat was basically a shoe in for oc-hell modship from day one.
In keeping with the “shrine maiden” shtick, Nat has renamed the channel to oc-shrine. There are some conflicting qualities in her personality that make me curious how she’ll perform as a mod; on a few occasions I’ve received complaints about her openly mocking other people or otherwise. Usually the events in question are low key enough that I’m free to ignore it without much more than a brief word of reprimanding, which she is typically receptive of. However, she ended up getting into a spat with Olki this morning after being particular abrasive for no good reason—if this sort of behavior continues then it will merit something more stern than a brief talk. I don’t know why it should come to that, especially given the fact that she is typically accepting of criticism and recognizes when she’s gone too far; my conversation with her over Olki suggested that she actually was remorseful for being too vicious, and that she wants to do better in the future. Time will tell I suppose.
Funnily enough, Olki and Nat know each other from outside the server: many years ago they met on Pesterchum, and by chance reencountered each other on the HSD. It’s not really a particularly noteworthy anecdote aside from that, I just find it amusing that it turned out this way for them. It’s neat to consider how unlikely their paths crossing again was, and yet both of them are now pseudos here. I wonder how many other encounters like this have happened in the HSD?
I might begin to describe a number of other regulars that I haven’t at this point. There’s a stable assortment of people who talk in mspa-lit almost every day, and I think it’d be worthwhile to take the time to describe more people at this point; it’s been long enough since my original descriptions. More to follow on that later, though.
As for events of today, nothing too serious happened. At one point we began discussing our lifestyles and health, at which point I described my decidedly bizarre lifestyle. Without going into too many details, people present for the conversation became extremely concerned. At this point I started getting dogpiled by everyone involved in the conversation, which was intensely frustrating in a way. Even further, I mentioned that I read a particular webcomic called “Questionable Content” which isn’t viewed very favorably by most people in the HSD25, at which point they decided to dogpile me further.
A year ago I imagine I would be extremely put off by this behavior, but today it was just kind of amusing (although it was still a bit overwhelming at times). I think I’ve gotten a lot better at processing and handling the ribbing that comes with the territory of both moderating and this place in general. I’m pleased that so many of us here are willing to talk on such an open level; it really is quite a nice place we’ve got going on for ourselves here.
Nothing more for today.
31st of January
Nothing of terrible importance today: I’ll take the time to describe a couple of people, namely Goobatron and thunder413. Starting with the former, Goobatron or just Goob has been an interesting character. My interactions with them for the last several months have been nothing short of pleasant. However, a few weeks ago, Goob began acting in a way that I felt was uncharacteristically mean. I confronted them about this because I was worried they were upset by something, at which I was met only with confusion. Apparently Goob has literally always been a little crotchety in expressing themselves, so I’m not sure where I got the impression that they weren’t.
Goob’s disposition leans decidedly more negative, and to top it off they are extremely opinionated. There are a lot of things Goob has remarked on in a way that borders on the depressive, which I’m not sure if it’s a reflection of his underlying feelings or if he simply, wholly dislikes most things. Their tastes are also rather selective; we had a big discussion with him recently, more than once, about preferences between anime and manga for instance. Goob is the only person I’ve ever met to claim that they always prefer reading a manga to watching an anime. While not garnering any kind of ill will of course, this has definitely been branded “Unusual” and Goob has suffered plenty for his strangeness. There will undoubtedly be more of this in his future.
Thunder413 is in a completely different vein from Goob. Thunder ranks up there with some of the more unusual members of the server, with fairly obtuse posting patterns and being prone to a myriad of conversational difficulties or misunderstandings. This latter point is in no small part due to the fact that his primarily language is not English. We’ve had a few discussions about his language problems and how it may contribute to conversational difficulty, but it’s difficult to help him realize what he’s doing most of the time.
This tendency has actually caused him some extensive trouble; while he’s merely viewed as quirky on the HSD, thunder actually demonstrated this behavior in the server of another community member named luminantAegis (lumi), who also merits her own explanation.
Lumi became a figure of some prominence after performing an intense number of “song extensions”, meaning she took the original audio and made it sound longer for people who want to listen to it repeatedly. This feat doesn’t sound like very much, and in a way one would be correct to come to that conclusion. However, lumi’s performed so many of these extensions that the notion of “Homestuck music extended” is effectively synonymous with her. Aside from this she’s begun streaming Homestuck music as a kind of daily radio program, and as I mentioned has her own server (although I’m unsure if it’s a personally oriented server or if it holds a common theme).
I spoke with lumi for a while about thunder, and about her position in the fandom. She seems like a positively energetic person, with an abundance of dedication both to the source material and to the community at large. She feels as if the following is only continuing to grow somehow, and that emotionally—or speaking from a sense of maturity—the fandom is better than it’s ever been before, and she stated that she wants to create an organized environment to help keep new people feeling welcome.
Despite this reinforced optimism, she also isn’t too judgmental about people who feel negatively about the webcomic or the fandom: “if you're willing to nitpick details in story, it's obvious you're invested in it”. I was given the impression of a well-rounded person, although of course it’s impossible to understand someone after only one conversation. Yet, it was honestly refreshing to speak with lumi, and even if I never do so again I wish her the best in her endeavors.
That having all been said, my discussion with lumi focused a lot on thunder’s posting habits in her server. Thunder being the way he is, it’s very easy for him to fail to pick up on conversational nuance and subtext. He was actually banned from lumi’s server for repeated behavioral incidents, and knowing what I do about him I decided to ask lumi about it. The conversation, while not exactly leading to any new developments, was useful in helping me understand the situation.
I fear it will be impossible to reconcile lumi and thunder, but at the very least it served to improve their understanding of the situation and each other. The former is unwilling to undo the ban, but she understands that there is some difficulty in conveyance at play. Conversely, thunder made it explicitly clear that he accepts the ban and is deeply remorseful for any harm he might have caused. Sometimes it is difficult bordering on impossible to help him understand what’s going on or what he may be doing wrong, but he’s so servile that I almost can’t believe that he’s anything but sincere in his attempts.
I kind of hope that the situation may be revisited in the future, as it feels a bit unfortunate to leave it here. However, it will take time and perhaps a little more effort on thunder’s part in improving his communication skills. That having been said, I’m glad I’m getting the chance to continue my networking with various community members. In a way I hope that I can get the chance to talk with every important facet of the fandom and become familiar with the people involved. It’s a silly idea in its overall uselessness and difficulty, but it’s a concept that I enjoy immensely.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 https://bowman.bandcamp.com/track/wrong-or-right (also they're wrong I'm amazing)
2 She was a friend of Thellere, so she's from around the same saga. I wouldn't have called her a regular, though.
3 I don't think it's a raffle, I think WP will still handpick the TRUE WINNER......
4 I've literally never heard this before but it totally fits that Drew would fantasize about it
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MHusGl9BeM read in this tone of voice
6 if they existed, I would be aware of them and would have already stepped down
7 nothing ended up happening. Sad!
8 that was sarcasm, I just don't trust american charities in general
9 remember this for when a controversial thing happens later
10 https://i.imgur.com/iKJBFIp.png
11 at a random time in MSPAF's last year, there were 12,341 fanventure threads containing 1,378,310 posts (which beat mspa discussion posts overall, even combining with fan projects posts)
677,431 posts of roleplay
301,964 posts of creative works
someone like Drew or the person reading this can't understand just how much was lost
12 - neil degrasse tyson
13 I contacted them on the behalf of one of our users that happened to share the name of one of the main characters and felt they were based on him, the author chose to find and join the server after that of their own will, same with the AMA
14 they already came back once but I think Drew wasn't here
15 drew will regret thinking this was a good deal after he's playing the 4th route in Ever 17
16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dONxX9rifs why not both
17 http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ if you want to not be like drew when you grow up read this
18 Sad!
19 where's my apology binch
20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat>
21 !
22 dial back a couple of months where drew was complaining that #general couldn't be saved and that nothing was being done
23 he really doesn't
24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2K_8Ff41M
25 or anywhere