Drew Linky
20th of June
I’ve just returned from my vacation. Unlike previous excursions I actually was somewhat disconnected from the group this time, only able to participate in brief spurts in my downtime. The first thing I did when I came back was, naturally, to see what notes if any people might have written down in the time I was away.
I guess I should have expected it, but I was greeted with “nothing”, literally. After some independent research it doesn’t seem as if much happened, so this isn’t a terrible loss, but it’s mildly annoying to know that there will always be blank spots in this record whenever I’m physically gone. The only development of true importance I can list off the top of my head is that Rar now wishes to be referred to as Tera (short for Teratosapphic), which I will do from now on. As it is, there is one thing I encountered in the group while vacationing that I wanted to touch on briefly.
I have not yet taken the time to describe a phenomenon that is a source of some contention for us: there is an artistic style infamously referred to as “calarts”. The style’s name is taken directly from the contraction of “California Institute of Arts”, which purportedly is a university where many modern cartoonists and animators have been educated.
There’s a detectable visual pattern that has arisen in modern cartoons, especially noticeable in the way teeth and the shape of the head of various characters are drawn. This style arguably made its debut with the release of Adventure Time back in 2010, and examples of its spread can be seen in such shows as Gravity Falls and The Amazing World of Gumball.
The extent and severity of this pattern is hotly debated, with some positing that it’s not a problem (or even not as prevalent as suggested), and others saying that it’s nothing short of a menace. I’ll leave it to the independent reader to discover more about this particular issue and come to their own conclusions on it, but the crux of the matter is that whenever such elements appear there is no shortage of jeering to accompany it. This is true to the extent that it’s a ubiquitous meme in places like /co/ on 4chan, or indeed on the HSD itself.
Makin in particular has been particularly acerbic on the matter, or at the very least he is overly fond of making fun of calarts wherever it makes itself apparent. His grating, excessive manner of poking fun at things has made this issue one of the many in which he tends to antagonize people too much and too often; for a time while I was gone I felt as if I’d catch him making fun of it no matter when I happened to step in. There seemed to be an entire week where he simply couldn’t let go of the topic.
Thankfully since I’ve returned he seems to have stopped, which is nothing short of a blessing—he often fails to recognize when the horse he’s beating has died, which only serves to aggravate others all the more. It is a particular mercy to those who don’t mind the calarts style (although it should be noted that I can’t think of anyone who is particularly fond of the style, only those who despise it and those who are ambivalent towards it).
In keeping with the trend of Makin annoying people to metaphorical death, I am disappointed to say that my return is marked also with the departure of someone whom I once said was indispensable to our group. This loss was heralded by a political “discussion” concerning the Trump administration’s newfound practice of putting immigrants—illegal or otherwise—into what are essentially internment camps.
It goes without saying that many of us, such as myself, Putnam, and MrNostalgic, thought this was an extremely important and pertinent topic that merited a serious conversation. It also goes without saying that there were a few who were intensely, almost insanely dedicated to perturbing that conversation in any way possible. At first it was mere interruption, but then people like Toast and Makin were dead-set on injecting as much skepticism into the issue as possible.
Ordinarily this would be fine, but later it became apparent that neither of them were informed to the barest extent on what the actual issue is! The least critical complaint I can offer of this behavior is that it was utterly insulting. After explaining the issue to them at painstaking-length, neither of them offered much comment and the conversation simply petered out, but by that point the damage was already done. In addition to trivializing the issue, we were informed that Cait found the progression of the topic to be too much and that she had left.
There are a few things to consider with this. In defense of the people perpetrating these interruptions, Cait already hadn’t spoken regularly on the server since the beginning of May, so it’s hard to really identify much of a change in daily conversation this might bring aside from no changes at all. However, in the more ideal sense this is still an extremely poor loss of membership.
Cait is de facto in charge of LOFAM, and her recent interactions with Viz involving attaching music to their trailer further solidified her as a person of significance and impact; more importantly, she’s a good friend and speaks sensibly. Conversational quality is typically higher whenever she participates, so whatever her recent level of activity the future potential for discussions is automatically lower now that she’s gone.
Her presence will be sorely missed, even if I can only speak for myself. I remember a few months ago we were having a particularly engaging conversation in #music, where we were discussing chiptunes. I’m typically dispassionate in music to the point of being apathetic, but such is one of the very few genres that I’m capable of truly enjoying sometimes. At the time I was discussing it with Cait and Tera, even going so far as to show them examples of work I’ve done in the past but unfailingly considered mediocre at best.
Despite my lamentations they were both very supportive of my efforts. It was from this conversation that I decided I wanted to work on making more music someday—Tera and I occasionally joke about how I should write a ditty of sorts as a “theme song” for the HSD. In reality I would never presume to make something like that as there are far more talented musicians here than I, but I like to recall that discussion; it’s not often that I get to discuss such things with others, and the exchange with those two is something I will fondly remember for a long time.
As it is, Cait’s departure underscores a fundamental shift in the nature of our group as the last year has gone by. In less than 365 days there has been a rather significant change in which people exactly use mspa-lit on a regular basis, and I feel compelled to take at least a cursory glance to see what exactly has changed. It would be worthwhile to reflect on who has left our fold and who has joined it. This document has been exhausting to maintain but it will accomplish what I wanted: the past will not be forgotten.
Speaking honestly, I don’t want to leave on such a poor note though: it’s not as if Cait has completely evaporated from our general pocket of the internet. She resides peacefully on Night’s server, which is quickly becoming an oasis for people who don’t necessarily wish to remain active in the HSD (or remain there at all) but still enjoy the company of the people there, other examples being ost, Sozzay, Ivy, and Yazshu1, among a host of others.
One might feel compelled to ask, “what is the reason that all of these people left the HSD even though they all like each other so much?” To anyone who’s actually read this document, I’m sure the answer will be obvious.
Nothing more for today.
21st of June
It’s the first day of summer. The end of spring is associated with all of its usual effects, particularly the cessation of school for a few months (depending on where one lives) and thus a marginal increase in daily activity. For us though, the end of spring is far more pregnant with meaning than it might otherwise be.
Those who have been matriculated into our fold probably already know where this is going: spring was the advertised season for when Hiveswap: Act 2 was set to come out. It was pretty clear to us even a couple months ago that it wasn’t going to be released, but there was still some faint hope left that it would miraculously appear near spring’s end.
Alas, such was not the case. Now the ultimate fate of Hiveswap is—once again—completely up in the air, and people seem to be more dispirited than ever. There are still some who are ruthlessly optimistic about the work, but even those like Sora who were entirely too charitable are now noticeably pessimistic on the matter; there was a tweet that Hiveswap Act 1 and Friendsim episodes 1-3 will participate in the Steam Summer Sale, where the only response as of this writing is Sora sardonically asking “cool where’s act 2”.
This attitude is also somewhat visible on Tumblr, which is what got my attention. Members of the HSD being pissed off at some new development is hardly unusual, but the Tumblr side of the Homestuck fandom is renowned for its stalwart optimism. Makin also noticed these posts, remarking: “the tumblr replies are more negative than us somehow / if WP manages to drive away fucking tumblr / homestuck has no hope”. There is of course the usual sea of likes and reblogs, so it may just be us focusing overly much on the negative parts we do happen to see; regardless, seeing any kind of criticism on the matter in that kind of place is an eye opener for me.
Importantly, this seems to really underline a shift in public perception of What Pumpkin. Before, positivity tended to come from those who were comfortable with the faces of WP, those who had the greatest public presence and had no qualms with interacting with the fanbase: people like James Roach fell under this category. However, if one recalls a previous entry of mine, practically the entirety of WP was gutted after the Viz takeover and most of these public figures were summarily dismissed.
This opened up WP to a lot of questions for those who were fine with the way it operated before. Now that the “face” of WP is gone, there is nothing to prevent those people from more harshly analyzing WP’s actions as a company; there is no human buffer to stop people from becoming discontent with the way it’s handled, and especially with the lack of explanation as to what’s happening with Hiveswap. It’s safe to say that this is basically a death knell for future WP operations..
In my opinion, it’s certain that WP will slowly be allowed to deteriorate and become a focus for the ire of the fanbase at large, so that Viz will have a fresh start and escape the piercing gaze of the fandom’s past. Whether this will work out in the long run remains to be seen, but regardless that appears to be the current state of things.
On an unrelated note: I mentioned that no one took notes while I was gone and I was barely around, but one thing I remembered today was that Makin was constantly changing #altgen’s name to random nonsense, especially various memes. Eventually I had enough and put a stop to it, putting it back to the original name. He was upset at this, claiming I ruined his “social experiment2”, but left it unchanged again for some weeks. Today I noticed it’s been changed again to the “Joy” emoji, which is apropos enough in appearance for altgen that I feel fine with it.
Nothing more for today.
22nd of June
Today was hilariously disruptive, with most of us experiencing the short-lived but considerable tyranny of brapposting. For those of you unfamiliar with this, I’m sorry that I must ruin your innocent existence with a description of this utterly foul practice, which managed to take root in mspa-lit and thoroughly disgust us for a matter of hours.
Brapposting, or fartposting, refers explicitly to copypastas that were taken from a very specific cohort of fart fetishists, probably from the 4chan boards /fit/ or more likely /r9k/. In true 4chan form, after they began to associate more openly they started to devise some truly horrifying erotica, and brapposting is what came out. I’ll leave it to the reader to look for examples of this odious nonsense.
As is common of memes from 4chan, it made its way to the HSD eventually through people like WoC, Gnawms, and Toast. These three and Barry were all forcing it mercilessly in mspa-lit tonight, and it seemed impossible to make them stop. Finally, I had to ban them for the rest of the night. This is not completely unheard of, but banning four people together for more than five minutes is usually indicative of a more than minor disturbance. Usually forced memes aren’t quite so bad, but the subject material of this particular brand of copypasta is just completely unacceptable.
Before all of this though was a more generally lighthearted anecdote: Makin made a rare change to his profile picture, settling on a Bozo the Clown-esque figure with makeup in the style of Jared Leto’s Joker. Everyone immediately noticed and reacted with the expected amusement and bewilderment, turning the chat into a veritable fracas. Makin only said one thing of the event, however:
It’s not often that Makin changes his account in this manner, but whenever he does it’s often rather entertaining. It’s good to experience these moments of levity and silliness in the face of so much displeasure or tension between us.
Such tension appears to be more common in the last month or so, the exact reasons for which are difficult to touch upon. The lack of news on Hiveswap (or anything really) is certainly contributing to a general sense of malaise, and I fear that people are beginning to act out in an attempt to generate energy or activity of any kind.
Makin made a rather interesting observation in regards to the lack of news about Act 2, and no continued interaction from Viz on the 12th of June: “I think WP kind of dropped the ball where it came to communicating with viz / and viz genuinely doesn't know about meme numbers or how we look at promised release dates”. Despite the early promises of a more fruitful relationship between Viz and the community it appears that things are more of the same, if not a little worse at this point.
It’s only been a few months since the takeover happened so it’s a little early to call it, but people are unhappy or--even worse--completely unengaged. It’s miraculous that the HSD continues to gather more members despite the lack of active interest in Homestuck-related properties at this point, and all we can hope for is a development that sparks more intense interest than these exceedingly transient Friendsims, which are themselves of questionable quality already.
Perhaps due to this and additional, not as yet identified factors, there appears to be a gradual shift in our group dynamics. There are pointed examples of this such as Cait’s departure, as well as people like Phantos, Minish, and ost. Yet, there have been newcomers to either fill the void left by their loss or to create new and interesting patterns of social interaction here, such as tmtmtl and a fellow named 8iscuit44 who showed up as recently as the last couple of weeks.
I mentioned before that I want to do a comparison of the old and the new, one year ago versus how things appear now, and now that I’ve had some time back I can see that there is a definite change in how things feel on a basal level. This change is more obvious thanks to the time I spent away--the difference between when I left a month ago and now is palpable, and serves to emphasize these larger shifts in our group’s structure.
There’s a pronounced difference in how we all interact with each other. In particular I feel like there is a more casual acceptance between myself and the other people present, where before it was more tense (which may have something to do with the fact that I was relaxing for the last month, but nonetheless is a significant difference). I’d like to delve a little deeper into this development and see what other observations I might glean.
Nothing more for today.
23rd of June
I’ve commented in the past about the slow emergence of a new culture in the NSFW server; this is highly desirable and I will occasionally peek in to see what people are saying or doing, although on many of the occasions I’ve popped in it’s been inactive and I can’t get a good read of the place.
There doesn’t appear to be any overt instances of cohesive grouping, but rather there’s a general recognition of people who have been active and talking for a while. Certain figures are more notable than others due to this activity, although there is no established cliche--yet. Time may change this, but for now the closest thing I can see is a role that Cerulean made for “high quality posters” that distinguishes certain individuals for providing lots of content, but I have no idea how important this is in the eyes of people who actually frequent the server.
While no one appears to be close per se, I’m pleased to be able to say that everyone is usually polite and friendly there. It’s a rare occasion when there’s a problem user on the NSFW server, although that is probably owed to the average (read as claimed) age of users there as opposed to the HSD itself, and also the far lower usercount (near 600 as of this writing). This having been said, there has been a marginal increase in the number of weird, creepy, or generally undesirable individuals there.
In a perverse way, this is probably a good sign for the NSFW server. The chances that you’ll encounter gross or antagonistic individuals in any server rises asymptotically towards 100% with every new member you add. While the vast majority of users may be fine, the general trend is that roughly 90% of all people on a given server will be completely inactive, and the remaining percentage will be 9% quality users and 1% shitters.
With this in mind, the presence of active problem users can serve as a signal that the server population is reaching critical mass of some sort. Usually it requires a response on the part of the people in charge, whether this be to simply ban the people in question or the recruitment of more mods to squelch people as they begin to act out.
The exact nature of how the situation is dealt with will vary across all different levels of activity and server population, but the principle remains the same that the appearance of these isolated shitters indicates server growth of some kind. Indeed, it serves as a hallmark of diversification, and of gradually building interest. When I check the logs or look through during periods where I’m typically inactive, I see a much larger quantity of activity than I’d expect. Qualitatively the server has a long way to go, but it’s getting there all the same.
Something else I’m vaguely surprised by is the exact extent to which Cerulean is active on the NSFW server. He engages with it in a serious and forthright manner that is actually quite refreshing to witness. While Makin’s approach with the main server is typically hands-off (as he regards NSFW content as fairly sordid), Ceru has specifically involved himself in the NSFW server enough to actually engage with its users in a consistent and constructive manner. I also see Ifnar using it in this fashion.
I’ve mentioned that there is no real established “group” there yet, but I do end up recognizing users if they speak there often enough. This includes a fellow named Dylan, and some HSD regulars like Kreuz and Skyplayer poke their heads in on occasion as well. It seems as if these more active members are developing a “NSFW content competency”, where they’re able to determine if a work was done by one artist or another based on its style alone. This amuses me greatly.
Nothing more for today.
27th of June
There was a lot of discussion about Homestuck itself today. One might question why I bother mentioning this, as it would be common sense that a dedicated Homestuck server spends most of its time talking about Homestuck. As time goes by, this is less and less the case. It’s not that we don’t care about Homestuck less than we did before necessarily (although for some people this is absolutely the case); it’s more that we’ve already discussed it death, and then revived it, and discussed it to death again ad nauseum.
Occasionally some new bent of discussion will make itself apparent, which we are typically quick to seize upon and dissect as thoroughly as possible (such behavior is evident with the Friendsims, although they’re not quite gripping or substantial enough to sate us). It’s safe to say that this pattern is beginning to take its toll on us--I can feel our collective sanity slipping away from us, slowly but surely.
Most internet communities are not so obsessed with their source material as we are, definitely not to the degree that we are. Whereas most fandoms are doomed to dwindle and fade away as time goes by without input, we may simply be resigned to madness instead. WAVE jokes: “There will be Homestuck movies in 2030-40, mark my words”, and other, similar jesting is not uncommon. These comments are particularly common in those dry periods where there is absolutely no news available to us whatsoever.
Coincidentally, the latest such drought experienced a very brief reprieve today with the discovery that advertising for the second Homestuck book had officially started, which Makin takes as a good sign: “... the advertising period is starting / news post soon with hiveswap info is my guess”, although whether this will come to pass is anyone’s guess.
If Makin’s prediction is correct, then it will be a much needed breath of fresh air for us. We’ve been stagnating heavily with the utter lack of updates, news, or interaction of any sort from Viz et al. There is fear that the next news to come out will be of Hiveswap’s cancellation, which would invoke spectacular amounts of unrest in the fandom at large.
Indeed, if it has actually been cancelled I imagine this possibility would keep the company from announcing it officially at all. On the other hand, perhaps a stirred and angry fanbase would be better than one that has been allowed to sink into complete apathy. Whichever happens to be more optimal, I personally hope we get some word of anything soon.
Nothing more for today.
28th of June
There was an extensive conversation between myself, Putnam, Tensei, and a smattering of others about Elder Scrolls lore. This sort of discussion isn’t exactly common, but it’s also not rare; Putnam has an unbelievable proclivity for imbibing and retaining this information, of which there is an outrageous amount. We tease him about this on occasion, but without fail it simply spawns the very discussion we were mocking him for. We’ve since learned not to do this unless we earnestly want to invite the topic.
I make it sound unpleasant perhaps, but it’s actually somewhat refreshing. The lore of the Elder Scrolls games is so dense that it’s very difficult to run out of things to talk about, and the ideas themselves are interesting or cool enough so as to be engaging. I’m honestly surprised we don’t talk about it more often--I must admit that it’s very exhausting to discuss at length though.
WoC often joins us for these discussions as well, which falls under a weird category of “games and/or literature”, although since we’re not really talking about gameplay elements it usually fits more appropriately under mspa-lit’s purview. As it is, one or more of us are usually able to provide some insight into the matter for those less engaged, and Putnam is typically fit as acting scholar; he can steer conversations away from baseless conjecture or fact check people if something is disputed.
Once we’ve had our fill of these conversations though, it’s not uncommon for us to start taking the piss so to speak. Rather than actually asking questions, we end up favoring distractions or silly nonsense (“the pacific rim part was ironic”, I recall Tensei saying near the end of today’s discussion). Due to this or perhaps due to the general inscrutability of the topic (it is a very limited cadre of people who ever wish to talk about it extensively), it always manages to end on a pleasant enough note.
Unrelatedly important is an uptick in discussion about the person named simply “user5”. For a long while we were generally unsure whether they were a completely new person or if it was kill40000 come back from the dead. After I asked about this explicitly today, Gitaxian commented: “He specifically mocked me when I thought they were separate people / Spent like 5 minutes alternating accounts and PMing me”, and thus the mystery was solved.
User5 just like kill40000 before has been an utterly bizarre presence on the server. His habit of challenging people in all manner of video games has carried over from before, and he has even presented a game for others called “Hell’s New World”, which to all appearances is a bastardization of Unreal Tournament with graphics ripped straight from World of Warcraft.
Naturally, it was immediately popular with us. I haven’t played it myself, but people like Tensei were very quick to give it a shot, even describing it as being very fun. User5 said about the game: “when u install hells new world the point is to kill a bunch of ppl as much as u can and try to pwn”. So, really, that should give you a sufficient idea of what it’s about.
Nothing more for today.
30th of June
There was an update to Cool and New Web Comic today after a considerable hiatus lasting from basically the beginning of the year. It actually updated with a couple of panels while I was on vacation, on the 12th this month (as I’ve mentioned previously, a very important day for the fandom for narrative reasons).
The update is not very long, but it holds promise of what’s to come. It makes sense that it would come around this time, thanks to the fact that school is out for almost everyone in the USA right now. It’s likely that o has more freedom to release updates at this point, and with the increasing complexity of his updates it makes sense that they would require correspondingly greater time and work.
CANWC itself has suffered from a shift in opinion lately. It may have been contributed to by the significant length of the hiatus, but it feels like people have become more critical of it lately. I myself still enjoy much of it, but find it easier and easier to point to things in the more recent updates that I find to be unfortunate technical developments. Other people say the same, or--even more negatively--claim that CANWC never deserved the recognition it got in the first place. Others still simply fear that it will fail much like Homestuck did, unable to fulfill the promises it already laid out in earlier parts of the story.
Outside of this, there was a fascinating conversation I had with Makin and Tensei over a game called E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy and others like it. Such games apparently belong to a somewhat obscure classification, a genre known as “eurojank”. Eurojank refers to video games that are--as the name implies--typically produced in Europe. The -jank suffix refers to the fact that these games commonly emphasize gameplay over graphic design, such that the games will look unclean but have very nuanced or complex controls. E.Y.E. is just one such example of this, other examples cited include the first two Witcher games (less so the second), and one that Tensei is fond of recommending with the grandiose title Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
Aside from the conversation itself simply being interesting and informative, it was exemplary of a particular pattern I’ve noticed in Tensei and Makin talking together. I’ve gathered after a while that they have a somewhat similar sense of humor; they share a curious camaraderie where they invoke these seeming meme words, often with a point of origin in 4chan (the terms themselves may be perfectly legitimate, it’s just that I’ve only ever encountered them there).
An example of this is the word “kino”, which is German for “cinema”. It’s used on 4chan to refer to high quality content or art, especially in relation to TV shows or movies (Seinfeld would be labeled as kino, depending on who you’re talking to). Revlar and Putnam are also responsible for engaging in this behavior, with words such as “clowncore” to refer to material with clown motifs in it. Every time another such term is dragged out, it brings the conversation perilously close to being derailed because it all becomes rather silly.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 yeah how will we survive without all these valued regulars
2 why does drew keep misrepresenting my masterful use of irony