Drew Linky
1st of May
With two conversations of real note today, I’ll begin with the bad one. There was a huge problem with Minish earlier in the day. I wasn’t around for it myself, but when I had time to check in on the computer there were something like 30 messages from Minish trying to describe the situation to me. After reading them through I went and poked around as gently as I could in mspa-lit, although people were not shy in providing me answers.
Olki helpfully provided some context: it all started with “some conversation about an anti-shill server, which minish created (?as a joke?)”, which Minish confirmed later was indeed a joke. Rather than deescalating though, Makin demanded Minish to take down the links and destroy the server through PMs. Minish ended up PMing the server to a few more people, allegedly by accident, and Makin ended up all-banning him (different from a server ban; all-ban prevents you from talking in any channel, a server ban physically removes you from the server).
The situation escalated further because Minish started arguing about this treatment openly. Makin threatened to ban Minish if he didn’t stop arguing, which only prompted the latter to argue all the more fiercely. Makin thus kicked Minish, and thus it was that he contacted me trying to explain the situation and ask for help.
The situation did gradually defuse from there. Olki explains: “discourse about minish being banned kept up for a good while, someone made a joke about making being (((big makin))) and that sparked nazi discourse / which I shut down by boring everyone to death with magic the gathering”. Part of me regrets not being there, as I wonder if I would have been able to help keep tempers down. The other part of me is glad I wasn’t there, as this entire debacle sounds so pointlessly frustrating that just thinking about it makes me feel more tired.
The net effect is that Minish decided to leave. We fully expected him to come back later in the evening, which he did, but it’s an exceedingly unpleasant development whenever someone as dedicated as Minish feels driven out. Normally I would be more angry that this entire crappy situation happened, but instead I just feel kind of confused. The escalation of it all was so horribly unnecessary, and the emotions have run so high, that it isn’t even entertaining to discuss.
Now that that’s out of the way, the other conversation (which I found much more interesting) was brief, but concerned an aspect of the server’s history that I wasn’t personally familiar with. I vaguely remember it being brought up in the past, but there used to be a channel called #courtroom in this server.
#courtroom is a pretty simple idea in theory: if someone breaks a rule in a big way or is generally being a shit meister of some sort, then they get banned from every channel except #courtroom. There, only they and Makin are allowed to speak and there are “proceedings” where the defendant is expected to explain their actions adequately. If the reasoning isn’t sufficient for why they did whatever got them in trouble, they are punished with a ban or something arbitrary, which can often be pretty funny.
This practice can actually be found in some other servers: the Khonjin Discord Server actually had one up until a month or two ago, and the way in which trials would go with Connor acting as judge, jury, and executioner were often enough to whip people in the general chats on that server into a manic, hilarious frenzy.
As time goes by, however, the practice is less and less common. A quick perusal of the other servers I’m part of doesn’t reveal any active #courtroom channels (some servers may have one but in such cases they’re typically defunct, not having been used in some time). Makin got rid of our #courtroom as a result of a myriad of complaints. When asked about it, he simply said: “it was considered "bullying"”. In all fairness, it probably was.
From here, though, the discussion turned back to more somber topics. I don’t know what it is about this week, but there has been a lot of attention paid towards concepts that are somewhat morbid for us. A couple days ago it was about how internet communities in general fade away, and today there was more of the same. If anything, it was far more explicit than expected; overt mentions of the eventual death of our server are typically rare, and yet it was a pretty open discussion of the possibility.
People like myself understand that it is illogical and unreasonable to expect a place like this to continue indefinitely, but we also don’t take that as a reason to be comfortable with the idea of it dying. It is something to be avoided if possible, even though the overwhelming evidence of our rational minds1 suggests that to escape the eventuality is in fact impossible.
To make matters worse, Phantos left the server around the time this conversation was happening. None of us discussed it too openly, but this development is deeply saddening. I don’t think anyone knows why he left either--if Rar hadn’t mentioned it I imagine we would have been oblivious to the development for a while yet.
He had been spending gradually less time in mspa-lit for some weeks now, talking in other channels like #general, #hangout, and #western-media, but the development is exceptionally concerning. It appears that he left far before the fiasco between Minish and Makin, so that’s not involved in making him leave, but it only makes me wonder what might have been responsible. I do look forward to him coming back, but even if he doesn’t I just hope that he’s alright.
This topic did not sit well with people for obvious reasons. Red actually came in trying to dispel the depressing topic, chastising me for wallowing in melancholy. It was kind of aggravating to have the conversation broken up by force, but I have to admit that we probably needed to move on. The question lingers on as always, but we’ve successfully suppressed it.
At the very least, in terms of the HSD it’s been suppressed. Makin actually spoke up later in the evening and said: “I feel like the homestuck fanbase is truly dying now”. This confused some of us until he clarified that he didn’t mean we were actually dropping off in membership or activity, but rather that discussion about Homestuck itself was starting to wane. We felt obligated to laugh at him for this: I said that if the measure of the fandom’s health was in terms of how much the source material is discussed, then Homestuck has truly been dying for a long time now.
He then tried to paint his comment as an attempt at reverse psychology to get us to talk more about the comic, but I wonder what prompted the observation in the first place. More positively, this does illustrate the use of having other material to talk about than just Homestuck itself. The shills list may get made fun of, but there has been a gradual shift in focus towards other works like Worm and Worth the Candle.
I imagine that as time goes by these alternative works will only grow in popularity among us, and has been discussed in the past we may transition into being a different kind of server to cope with the change. I hesitate to predict we would change into anything significantly different--I imagine that at our base we would always have a focus on Hussie’s work, unless he mysteriously started to suck incredibly bad at whatever he’s currently doing--but who knows what the future holds? Maybe we’ll rebrand as a fanfic-centric Discord community one of these days. I can certainly imagine worse fates, although I have to wonder what our community would look like then.
Nothing more for today.
2nd of May
A little discourse today that fell outside the norm, but was honestly pretty entertaining. It started with Niklink bringing up the Avengers: Infinity War box office, which have already broken many records and is expected to continue that trend. He and I enjoy discussing stuff like that occasionally, but then through some weird nonsense the conversation shifted through a few topics. After going through James Cameron’s Avatar we landed on the topic of western movies based off of anime series.
This is understandably a pretty niche topic to cover. It was pushed forward as a question by Goobatron, who wanted to know if there were any such movies made in the west that were solely based off of anime. Anyone who’s a fan of such things could tell you about a plethora of movies that came out recently based on anime series, like the Ghost in the Shell movie from 2017 or the often-cursed Dragonball Evolution movie from 2009 (both of which came up as examples).
Goobatron was not satisfied with these answers, however; he claimed that we didn’t understand what we were asking for, which prompted the ire of many who were present. After requesting clarification, Goob specified that he explicitly wanted western movies that were based on anime originals, not anything based off of a manga. In conjunction with some previous incidents in related conversations involving this topic and Goob, it all melted together into this amazing explosion as people started to blast him for his pedantry.
Tensei in particular was quite incisive, more than I expected from him. He was extremely annoyed that we were now locked into what was effectively a semantic discussion:
its a dumb distinction … now we are talking about whether or not anime adaptation is the right name / even though you knew what i meant / this is one of the dumbest things to focus on and youre a conversation killer
Which was honestly so vicious a response that I couldn’t help but laugh. Other people were quick to leap on Goob as well, so many that I actually started to feel bad for him (Griever summing up the conversation: “goob stop being so pretentious about japanese comic books”).
In the end the conversation was rescued somewhat, although there was a perceptible lag compared to what it might have been before the sidetracking. There were some additional hiccups that implied Goob simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this area, which prompted many to start ignoring him although he claimed not to know why people were so upset.
The rest of the evening was consumed with sillier topics, but it feels like a pall has been cast over the chat a little bit. It may just be my own sensitivities, but the tone seems to be more subdued in general lately. I’m still mulling over what exactly is responsible, or if the feeling is even accurate. I’m hoping that this apprehension is misplaced, as it has often proven in the past. As always, time will tell what happens.
Nothing more for today.
3rd of May
Concern about Phantos has arisen once again, as more and more people become aware of his absence. There have been a number of people asking about him, and many of the same who ask will try to reach out to him and see what’s going on. This has been rather heartwarming to see, but it also serves as a substantial reminder of the fact that he’s gone. The more people who realize he’s not around anymore, the more real it feels.
More people learning about this turn of events has encouraged people to look into probable causes for it. Before long, a discussion kicked off concerning Makin’s handling of the server and mspa-lit in particular. It was a distinct opportunity for those unhappy with the state of things to voice their concerns. The old gripes were fielded once more: Makin uses mspa-lit as a personal playground; the way that he discourages conversation also keeps people from joining in; the place feels cliquey, et cetera. Unfortunately, the age old problem is still true as well: given that these things are true, what can even be done about it?
Then of course there are those who disagree that any such problems exist, or that they matter. Toast in particular is vocal on this issue, obstinately against the idea that Makin’s behavior constitutes a real problem (important to note that he doesn’t deny it happens, only that it isn’t something people should worry over). Whether this is accurate or not can be debated all day, but the reality of the matter is that it doesn’t matter how much it’s discussed--Makin is unlikely to budge on this issue no matter what people say.
Instead, I’m opting to focus on the more positive side of all this. It felt, even if only for a moment, that older regulars who have since stopped talking for the most part came back for this conversation and more besides. Tori has been talking more often lately, Red shows up every day for at least a bit. More unconventional figures like WoC showed up in mspa-lit as well; his distaste for the channel could not keep him from seizing on an opportunity to criticize it in the open, but to my pleasant surprise he lapsed into normal conversation with the rest of us.
There’s also a new cabal developing and stabilizing; another generation of newcomers is making themselves apparent through people like Jun, tmtm, Reti, Multivac, and Cher (a fellow who joined near the end of March or so). Seeing this new group arise does a lot to assuage my doubts from yesterday: change is the natural state of things, and the winds of change are carried on the backs of these new people.
I worry a lot about the landscape of the HSD shifting as time goes by, but it’s going to happen no matter how I feel about it. I’m forced to wonder, for what must be the umpteenth time, what this place will look like in the future. A year from now, who will still be here and who will have moved on? Usually such thoughts fill me with a soft dread, but now I’m more curious than anything. Maybe we’ll see mspa-lit shift into something more positive and welcoming in the future.
Such is as it was tonight, I think. Even with all the negative developments lately, we were able to forget our collective woes in carousing and reminiscing, something that I feel a lot of us needed. I can’t remember most of what it is we talked about now, but the exact content of the discussions is less the point than the feeling of it all. If I had to give an example, there’s a video taken from Gachi that Dingus edited to be about Makin and me. It never fails to get a laugh out of people present when it comes up in conversation.
It’s a rather ethereal experience when I think about it, but there’s a substantial feeling of satisfaction in spending an evening talking about everything and nothing in particular with my friends here. Even with the troubles of the real world nipping at our heels and drama galore to deal with in this virtual one, it’s gratifying to know we can come here and have a nice time anyway. When I’m older and the details of this place have faded from my mind, I’ll still remember the times that we got to share a pleasant and golden afternoon with each other.
Nothing more for today.
4th of May
It feels like things are slowing down a bit lately. I think I got spoiled by the first half of April, perhaps; so much stuff happened in such a short period of time, and like any other time that the pace gets out of control it’s always a tad rough trying to adjust to a more normalized rate of development.
Then again, it may in fact be the wrong time of year. We’re nearing the end of the academic year for most schools, which means that finals are approaching. Indeed, many people on the HSD have brought up tests and projects due as a reason for their lack of activity. Unlike the last time this happened, I don’t feel panicked; it’s starting to resemble a predictable pattern, so I don’t feel quite so alarmed about the decline in activity.
If anything, things have gotten a bit cozy--it’s slower, but that’s not always a bad thing. I’ve been watching a couple movies with people like Nik, Ifnar, Cloudaria, Null, and a couple others. Similarly, the trifecta of myself, Rar, and Putnam has gotten together again for a marathon of King of the Hill (for which Toast, Null, and MrNostalgic joined us later in the evening). I can see this turning into a sort of tradition if we continue to enjoy it enough as time goes by.
There was a stir in the afternoon with a post from a member from WP, but it’s since been deleted and I’ve decided against explaining it any further detail besides that (even including the author’s name would be bordering contentious)--it’s for the best if I just refrain from talking about it at any length whatsoever, so I’ll skip straight to the reactions from people. With protestations over being involved in the event in question, it seemed to me that Makin was kind of pissed off about the whole affair; people were eager to put it behind them and ignore the post’s existence, but he railed against it for some minutes despite their spoken desires to move on.
I wondered why he was bothering, and some were quick to offer their explanations: Putnam was especially critical of the development, using some rather choice words that I don’t necessarily feel like repeating here (I’m sure one can imagine well enough what was said). Makin said something that stuck to me though: “I don't want to… have [the person who wrote the post] slander my friends again”, which caught me by surprise a bit.
Makin isn’t a sentimental guy, and hearing him explicitly refer to us as his friends is kind of unusual. I can’t accept the reasoning he offered at face value because of his very nature and how he’s presented himself in the past, but I guess I’m a sucker for this sort of a thing. It would be way too easy for him to manipulate me now I think about it: all he’s gotta do is tempt me with these promises of camaraderie and fellowship. I should probably stop being so easy to influence with this nonsense, but all I can say is I’m happy to see him using such language.
My line of thought is only going to get increasingly weird from here on out, I can already tell. Nothing more for today.
15th of May
I think it’s time to take a break.
The quality of discussion and the general events surrounding mspa-lit (in particular, not necessarily the HSD as a whole) have been kind of stagnating. The last set of notes that I have is from the 5th and 6th of this month, both of which are kind of upsetting to mull over. In the interest of clarity I’ll explain to some degree but the details are fuzzy or otherwise unpleasant to recall.
On the 5th minor stuff involves reorganization of the channels yet again, so that #science was separate from #coding-math-tech. This was later reversed because it completely destroyed activity in both channels, so now we have #science-math and #coding-tech, and I earnestly hope it stays that way so I’m not forced to report on it yet again.
The exact nature of the discourse I mentioned on the 4th will remain purposefully unclarified; I don’t feel like getting complaints over it more than necessary. That having been said, the effects of it have been weird and uncomfortable at best. During the worst of the proceedings, four members of mspa-lit were all gone from the server: Putnam, Tipsy, Minish, and Griever. Phantos is still completely missing and no one knows what might have happened to him, and then in the last week Griever, Putnam, and Tipsy all came back. Minish might be gone for good, although we’ll have to see.
For those days when most of them were gone it was intensely distressing, so much so that I’m forced to wonder for the umpteenth time if I’m placing too much emphasis and importance on my interactions with people here. Unlike in the past when I was able to firmly conclude “no”, I think that I have to agree with my conscience. The upset I experienced as a result of seeing these people gone—whom I consider extremely good friends in a way—kind of underlined the idea that I need to take a step back and reevaluate my priorities.
This discourse lasted for a number of days, and notably on the 6th amidst a fury of complaints and people refusing to relinquish the topic Makin completely hid mspa-lit from everyone, saying he would bring it back once everyone “appreciated it like they should” or some such. The assortment of people online at the time crowded into #hangout as is tradition when these things happen, although we very quickly attracted the ire of channel regulars there like Red and Kreuz.
The furor actually grew so great that Olki placed a strict moratorium on “litcourse” as he called it, and mandated that we all move to a different channel. We eventually complied with much grousing, and ended up Jun’s patreon channel that he opened recently. It was originally meant for discussing K-pop but it was ironically named #notmspalit at the time, so it felt like a natural attractor for those of us who were currently deposed.
For a little while there was a noticeable progression of activity that felt distinctly like mspa-lit from some months ago, when things weren’t quite so contentious and had fallen into a regular routine. It was actually kind of astonishing to witness: a certain je ne sais quoi had managed to penetrate the conversation and make everything feel alright again, even if only for a moment. Then of course the rumblings of a couple dozen people all upset at the current state of affairs took over the channel.
Talk of what to do thoroughly dictated the topic for the next several hours. There were several different factions at the start all trying to figure out what was wrong at a basal level, and what needed to be done. No one seemed to be able to agree about what was the causal factor behind all of our unrest and unhappiness, and then two main camps emerged. Predictably, the dividing line was about whether it was Makin’s fault or not, and as a direct result of that thought process was what should be done about it.
Many people briefly floated the idea of making a splinter server, but that’s a categorically stupid idea so no one actually bothered. Revlar shouted a lot about not treating Makin as the enemy, which strictly speaking he’s not; this did not stop a wide range of people from referring to Makin as “the problem” and subsequently coming up with ideas that necessitated his removal from the equation (whether it be removing his position somehow or just removing him from group participation). All of these suggestions were nonsense and generally tiresome, so of course nothing was actually done or agreed upon.
Such is how the night progressed until Makin himself came back online. He read through the backlogs and didn’t really address the more serious conversation about his behavior in favor of making pointed jokes at all of the more brash and cringey statements made by the hotheads that were involved in the discussion. I remember witnessing this and growing distinctly more aggravated as the night went on; to his credit, when he was done fooling around Makin took a moment to try and talk with me in a more serious capacity, although it was well past 4 AM EST and I was in no state to talk.
All of that was a week ago and thinking about it now still manages to make me tired. I was extremely saddened by the (admittedly temporary) loss of people like Putnam, Tipsy, and Minish. Griever ended up coming back so soon and specified that his departure was not really due to any specific circumstances so it didn’t really matter. Putnam and Tipsy both explicitly specified that they left because of Makin’s behavior, but they’re back now so I can’t complain too much aside from the usual. Minish was banned for breaking rules and then subsequently unbanned, but he’s still gone because he wants to focus on his own projects and because he feels disrespected here.
Makin mentioned something about being forced to act aloof in order to avoid people hitting on him, of all things. Normally I would take this as another of his ill-timed jokes but given the nature of the discussion and some of the shit I’ve personally witnessed during my time here, this is actually somewhat understandable. People seem magnetized to his unyielding personality, which has contributed significantly to the claims that he has a cult of personality surrounding him. It’s a complicated issue (as are they all) and ultimately I have no idea what to say or do about it.
That’s honestly how I’ve felt about most of the events proceeding from this week. They’re not worthy of writing about because they’re so minor or uninteresting, or because they’re too unwieldy and complex. It’s contributed to an overall oppressive atmosphere when it comes up, and--returning to the original assertion of this entry--I think it’s just time to take a break from writing for a while.
I’ve been considering taking small chunks of time where I just write notes and then write bigger updates periodically throughout the month. This hasn’t been such a bad observational method for the last week--enough has happened that I feel there’s anything at all substantial to write about, which I felt like describing here before I take a break.
Cerulean’s Aradiabot is undergoing some extensive updates. Right now it’s on version 3, but he’s been manically working on version 4: a complete overhaul of the base system meant to optimize it for use in a large number of servers and to make it more streamlined in appearance. Makin has been hassling him to put new features in v3 to assist with various parts of the server, like a math notation function for #science-math so the nerds can all write more aesthetically appealing equations.
This has led to some butting of heads between them where Ceru is afraid that adding more functions to v3 will cause it to destabilize and crash, and wants to just add them to v4. Makin insists that the current functionality problems are due to the large number of servers Aradiabot is on currently (somewhere around 1,300). Whatever the cause, Aradiabot’s efficiency will increase here in the future, which some of us are looking forward to.
Now that summer vacation is beginning for a lot of people on the server, there’s more time available for people to hang out and they want things to do. It’s been in talks for a while, but because of this we finally went ahead and started up a Minecraft server for people. This has brought no shortage of grumbling because it’s seen as a kind of pestilent game; it attracts many people who are young, bordering on preteen, and as such has garnered a pretty mixed reputation on the internet. Yet, after the server being up for a few days now it appears to have been a good idea and we have two: a regular one and then an extensively modified one courtesy of WoC, which we’re both pretty happy about. There’s no telling how long it’ll last (I’d be surprised if it lasted more than a month at most), but such is the nature of these things.
In lieu of my writing, there are a few people who have volunteered or otherwise asked to write in my stead, like Soup and Rar. People’s desire to see these details preserved is heartwarming, and it kind of pains me that I don’t feel like continuing in light of all the requests for the weekly summary. Yet, it would do no good to keep up like I have been lately. Tipsy described it succinctly, saying there was no point in continuing to describe the minutiae if the details have nothing of value in them, and especially not when I’m so tired of writing them anyway.
I’ll start back up sometime in the future, although it’s hard to say when. Just depends on what happens I suppose. Nothing more for now.
Makin
1 don’t flatter yourself