SPAT November 2018

Discussion of Delta Rune is still picking up steam, and there’s no way to tell if it will continue to keep up or if it’ll just settle down over the next few days. The 24 hour period where Toby Fox requested that no one share spoilers is over; a few of us in mod chat suggested that we disperse the spoilers channel so that people can talk about it in appropriate channels (Nights: “main stuff there is game discussion, fanart of it, and memes / which could all go in gaming/art channels/altgen respectively”).

I’m pleased that the hype around the game is still building up. I would be impressed but it’s honestly just what should be expected with a game like this. Something that a lot of people really like about Toby’s development style is that he includes so many things in the game simply because they were ideas that he thought were entertaining--this seems obvious, but it’s basically the exact opposite of what we typically call “pandering”. With a game that he clearly cares about beyond reason, it’s no surprise that he was able to make it so well.

I actually had an exchange with someone named Jade in the spoiler channel. They remarked: “this game will make my week / i swear to god / it rekindled a flame inside me”, with many people expressing similar viewpoints. I responded: “this is what it's like to have good content get released guys / this feeling is something to treasure.” It truly has been a long time since we’ve had reason to feel this way. Hiveswap Act 1 was like a small dose of this, because it’s clear that the developers cared a lot about that as well, but Toby managed to make both Undertale and Delta Rune feel so effortless.

Speaking of, Toby came out with a post on Twitlonger today that contained a lot of responses to questions he got on Twitter after the demo came out yesterday. It turns out that he pre-typed most of these questions a month in advance of the demo releasing, which was pretty interesting; he did also insert some new responses or comments based on how the game was received.

Honestly, the responses all feel somewhat melancholic. He seems to have a huge lack of confidence in his abilities, despite the success of Undertale previously and now with how people have responded to Delta Rune. He mentions that based on how progress for developing Delta Rune was before, it would take an impossible amount of time to complete the game by himself like he did with Undertale.

Thus, he wants to assemble a team to help him finish Delta Rune. He then expressed further doubt about forming and leading a team, with ultimately no way to tell how long it might take for the rest of the game to be finished. This is somewhat dismaying, but also completely understandable. It shouldn’t need to be said again based on what I’ve written just previously, but I think it’s safe to say that everyone here is just fine with waiting.

Toby cares a lot about this project--his answers in the Twitlong post make it exceedingly clear that he thinks about the story and things in Delta Rune constantly. That, combined with all of his previous work, gives us no doubt at all that he is going to make something truly great. We’ll be here in the meantime, almost certainly discussing what he’s done so far to death.

Indeed, we’ve already taken to calling this gap between the demo and the full game the 999 Year Hiatus based on one of his answers. What Griever said some nights ago about hiatus culture is already in effect, with bizarre connections being made between some of the content of the game. Tera literally took one of the face sprites in the game and isolated the mouth, rotated it, and compared it to the Greek character lambda to reference the ubiquitous Half-Life 3 meme.

I’m sure as time goes by, the insanity will only continue to grow. With that in mind, it’s wonderful that we all got to experience that spark of enjoyment once more. We may be completely batshit when we’ve got nothing to do but spin our wheels, but the intense passion we have when it comes to experiencing quality things together is indisputable. I’m glad I got to witness the fervor here in real time, and I eagerly await the next time we’ll see it too.

Nothing more for today.

3^rd of November

#undertale2-spoilers was slated for deletion today, but before going through with it Makin held an open poll to see whether users wanted it to remain or if they were fine with hiding it. The result wasn’t that surprising in retrospect, but the overwhelming majority voted to keep it as its own channel. Thus, #undertale2-spoilers was converted into #deltarune, and occupies its spot just below #gaming.

This was controversial of course, because that’s a lot of discussion that isn’t being fed into otherwise relevant channels. It would have been controversial the other way too--damned if you do and damned if you don’t, really. After some consideration I think this is for the best right now; discussion of the game is still in full swing (not as heavy as it was when it came out of course, but it still rivals or exceeds the other major channels). If it were dispersed, the related channels would get completely flooded or--even worse--the conversation would disappear from the server entirely.

Thus, it’s probably better to wait until the topic dies down a little first. Containment is better than completely drowning out other conversation, which is almost certainly what would happen with Deltarune. In fairness, I suspect that it won’t take too long: I predict that the channel will fall substantially in activity over the course of this month, and by the beginning of December it will be hidden. It would be different if it were a full-length game, but the demo is 3 hours long. No matter how many secrets may be densely packed into the game, it can’t sustain conversation the same way that a longer piece of media would.

For today’s drama, there was an exceptionally dumb fight between mspa-lit regulars and Makin, the first of its kind in at least several weeks I think. Putnam came back a couple days ago for Delta Rune discussion, saying as much after Makin accused him of not being able to stay away from mspa-lit. After Putnam stated this, Makin mspa-banned Putnam until he asks to be unbanned.

To be absolutely clear on the conditions surrounding this ban, Makin instated it so that Putnam “wouldn’t be tempted” to talk in mspa-lit, but as soon as Putnam asks to be unbanned Makin will do so. This means that the ban is essentially toothless: Putnam may come back as soon as he wants, and if he doesn’t want to come back¹ then it’s not actually an issue to begin with. From this, it’s pretty clear that the ban is more of a joke than anything else.

However, this did not quell an unbelievably huge response from a number of people in mspa-lit, including Gitaxian, MrNostalgic, hb, and Andrew. I’m usually against this sort of administrative display myself, but it was extremely clear from the start that this scenario isn’t actually a serious problem. I tried to indicate that their outrage was misplaced, but it only seemed to make them all angrier. Andrew in particular was beyond furious at the ban, excusing himself from the conversation so he could go calm down.

I was kind of bothered that they took it so harshly, so if nothing else I decided I would follow up on their concerns. As the conversation was winding down I DM’d Putnam asking whether or not he was actually bothered about being banned from mspa-lit. He woke up later that evening and said only: “not really.” This amused me a little bit, as it was weird to see people arguing so fiercely on behalf of someone who doesn’t actually care at all.

Then again, I can’t blame them for being concerned. If the situation was different it’s not unlikely I would have been on their side in the discussion. As it is though, this was so transparently not an issue that I can’t help but view it all as kind of silly; their efforts were basically a complete waste of their time. On the other hand, I really appreciate that they showed such concern for another person in the chat that they deemed defenseless, or treated unfairly. I hope that they’ll remember their passion for other people at a time when it’s actually needed.

On an unrelated note, I recently finished and released my Sydlexia article that I’ve been working on. For those who may be curious there’s a link at the beginning of this document (the Table of Contents also lists it for easy access). The reason I bring this up is twofold: after bringing it up there was a smattering of conversation in mspa-lit. Makin thought it was “entertaining”--I was surprised by this assessment and brought it up enough times that he started making fun of me for repeating it--and other people such as Dead Guy were similarly amused by some of the information therein.

The article led to some brief discussion about when various people present had joined the HSD, and what things were like back then on the server. Toast mentioned how different the place was when he first joined (“the first 3 months of this server were / unironically probably the best,” an assessment I take some issue with but can’t effectively dispute), and there was a significant bout of reminiscing between us all.

The second reason that I bring this up here is that it helped me to draw some comparisons between the Sydlexia community and the HSD. Such comparisons are a little difficult to make both because Sydlexia happened an increasing amount of time ago, and also because of just how different it was to what we have here. Yet, there are a few key differences in the structure of each community that I feel reveals some insight into how each place works.

The biggest differences I can identify are thus: the Sydlexia channel was hosted on IRC, which--while not exactly difficult--was far less accessible for the average internet user than joining a Discord server. Joining the HSD can be done without a proper account OR any sort of specialized client, which means it’s just a one or two click process. Secondly, Homestuck as a source material was magnitudes greater in popularity than Sydlexia ever was, conferring far greater niche status upon the latter. These two differences together functioned as a significant barrier of entry into the Sydlexia community, while the HSD is comparatively open.

What does this change about how each community works? First and foremost, it means that the average person who got as far as the IRC channel was already more dedicated to the group, by dint of knowing it existed at all and then especially by bothering to get there in the first place. This consequently led to a far smaller population size (this should be obvious, compare a community of roughly 50 people at maximum to a server with nearly 12,000 people on it). Between these two factors, the Sydlexia IRC was a far more stable place than we are.

This leads to a subtle but very important difference in how each community behaves. Over the last two years I’ve become increasingly aware of a systemic lack of loyalty in mspa-lit. People expend less effort to get here, and the pool of users who join is so large that the average tendency for actually caring about the place or each other is significantly lower. Even among some mspa-lit regulars there is a pervasive lackadaisical attitude: Toast and tmtmtl30 are among those who have openly stated they would stop using this place if another, more entertaining server² made itself known to them.

In a more general sense, this mentality has already manifested in a relatively high turnover rate for users: for an mspa-lit regular the average time someone stays here is between six months to a year, maybe more, and for the average user it’s less than six months (note: this isn’t empirical, it’s admittedly just an estimate. All things considered it’s probably not inaccurate though).

Further, it’s difficult to say that there is any solidly identifiable core of people in this server. The only person who I can comfortably say would remain here permanently is Makin himself, and even that is something I’m hesitant to state; there is absolutely no guarantee in my mind that he would not abandon this place if he managed to create a bigger and/or more interesting server. On the surface this appears natural, why wouldn’t one exchange the HSD for a better place?

However, this leads to what I mean when I invoke the word “loyalty”. It greatly confuses me when anyone floats the idea of leaving, because it shows a casual disregard for the relationships formed with other people here³. I can’t imagine how or why someone would talk here everyday without having formed significant friendships with at least some of the other people here (for example, Toast has quite endearingly called me “irreplaceable⁴”). In my eyes, leaving the server for another would be effectively removing those established relationships because they’re no longer convenient--in a word, it’s selfish.

Perhaps my idea of a community is simply more cohesive than what most other people here tend to think. I’m also not sure exactly how much the accessibility of this place alone contributes to that mentality; one must remember Makin’s influence in purposefully reducing opportunities to socially bond with each other, alongside a loose but pervasive paranoia against “hugboxes”. This undoubtedly plays a major role in how people view mspa-lit as well, making it frustrating or nearly impossible to try and form an attachment to it.

The core of the problem, from what I can see, is that there is no concept of “group identity” here. The few people who participate often enough to be considered a part of this group are systematically discouraged from pursuing that notion, leading to a significant decrease in willingness to stay. Based on what Makin desires--namely, a place free of emotional attachment--this is valid for the short term, but in the long run it just means that there is no safety net. Goodwill towards each other is often in short supply in mspa-lit, and as soon as it’s exhausted on petty drama there’s very little else to convince people to stay.

This lengthy explanation now past, I feel obligated to point out that the comparisons between the HSD and Sydlexia are not just cause for concern. Indeed, the reason I bother to discuss this so much is because the two share some positive aspects as well: Sydlexia undoubtedly displayed some incredible potential for social interaction and camaraderie, and the HSD as a whole--especially channels like #mspa-lit--also show this quality from time to time.

It may be rare to witness, but I wouldn’t have written such a long document over nothing. There are times in this server that show off some of that same magic that Sydlexia had so long ago. There have been a handful of golden days where everyone present was having an incredibly good time just talking and messing around each other. It’s easy to forget that the rest of the world exists when such days happen.

I suppose I’m in the wrong for worrying so much about this, really. It’s not fair of me to expect the exact same environment to spring up here as it did before; it’s probably quite selfish if I’m being honest. Yet, I can’t help but be a little nervous when I hear someone say they would have no qualms leaving for another place. Such ideas are unconscionable, although I guess that’s more of a me-problem than anything else. I would be less bothered by all of this if closer, stabilizing interaction wasn’t effectively forbidden.

In my time on the internet I’ve developed a general expectation for how long websites last. Bear in mind that the following assessments rely on a significant amount of activity per user: average communities don’t last for any great amount of time, usually dissipating in six months to a year if not shorter. More stable communities seem to run between one to three years, usually based around an appreciable nucleus that can sometimes last long after the bulk of the community is gone. Sydlexia is by far the longest cohesive community I’ve witnessed, with its identifiable rise and fall separated between nearly an entire decade of dense history.

With this having been said, I’m curious to see how the HSD performs. I wonder if it will last as long as Sydlexia; we’re already approaching the three year mark and somehow still rising in numbers. How long will true activity be sustained? With the promise of the Viz Homestuck books at the very least, perhaps it’s possible that we will persist for a while yet. Makin also claims that he has plans upon plans to keep this place going no matter the scenario that faces us.

Usually I would cast doubt on him, but with this particular topic I’m not sure if I want to find out if he actually means it or not. Rather than my usual dour cynicism with these thoughts, today I choose to remain optimistic about the future of our community. We’ve made it this far, who knows what may happen? If nothing else, I already have a very rich history to look back on with these people. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to associate with them, and I look forward to the time I get to spend with them in the future.

Nothing more for today.

4^th of November

Today was strange in a way that borders on the surreal. Biscuit was, of course, banned a number of days ago for inspiring a raid on the Undertale Discord. Since that occasion he has been pestering various mods and mspa-lit regulars to the point of obnoxiousness, swearing six ways to Sunday that he didn’t mean to cause such a problem. For once I wasn’t interested in hearing excuses and shot him down, but User5 messaged me about this a few nights ago.

After Biscuit was banned he didn’t really have anywhere to go but User5’s server and started hanging out there, variously participating and moaning about being banned from the HSD. Whether through pity or frustration with this behavior, User5 messaged me to ask whether Biscuit was “actually a bastard or just a dumbass”. I had already been reflecting on the matter, and was forced to conclude that Biscuit’s overall demeanor suggested he was simply a moron and not actually a shitty person.

An important bit of philosophy that User5 and I agree on is that bans shouldn’t be meted out just to get your way on something. Any reasonable person would also agree on this definition, but this means that banning someone just for being an ignorant fool is not appropriate--they actually have to display some level of malevolence to deserve getting the boot. While Biscuit’s actions were indefensibly in violation of the server rules, it is more than likely that he meant no harm with what he was doing.

Thus, after discussing the matter with User5, I rediscovered my moral scruples and decided to bring up the idea in the mod chat. No one was eager to discuss the matter, especially not me, but we have an obligation to be responsible with bans. Most other mods, Tera and Spiral for instance, were loathe to participate in the discussion and abstained. WoC was understandably against the idea, although he and Nights admitted that letting Biscuit back could be acceptable after an appropriate “time-out”.

Even those who had originally abstained thought this plan was reasonable enough, predicated on the idea that Biscuit was really just an idiot and not actually a shitty person. Tensei, on the other hand, had a far more interesting idea. I’m not sure what made him think of it, but he suggested something that almost came across as a complete joke at first: Biscuit could be unbanned in half a year to a year, or he could be unbanned immediately if he managed to convince Marsy to come back to the server.

As far as I recall, the reaction of the other mods to this was mostly sheer confusion. I was myself completely bewildered at the idea, but it was also entertaining to consider. None of the other mods actually spoke against the idea--Makin himself seemed to think it was funny and implicitly encouraged it--so I went ahead and made the offer. Biscuit was also confused and I felt my compunctions nagging at me when I told him the deal, but he agreed readily enough that I honestly forgot all about it over the next few days.

That is, until earlier today. Out of the blue, Biscuit messaged me saying that he had almost secured Marsy’s promise that he would come back on. To clarify somewhat, Marsy had been banned in January of 2017 for overtly racist remarks over one of the members of WP. He was unbanned one year later but simply never decided to return to the server, presumably having moved on. No attempts were made to actually fetch Marsy back, most present agreeing that it was probably a Very Bad Idea.

Thus, when Biscuit messaged me today, it was with mild shock that I realized he had accomplished the ridiculous task set out for him. I could barely keep the smile off my face as I shared a screenshot of him claiming success. A couple of pseudos present immediately bemoaned this development, but at this point the bargain was out of my hands. True to Biscuit’s word Marsy popped back into the server, nearly two years after he had been exiled. I honored the arrangement and unbanned Biscuit as well.

Biscuit’s return caused some unrest, with a strange mix of greetings and puzzlement as to why he was back in mspa-lit so soon. It wasn’t until a bit later that people saw Marsy; those of the old guard who understood the implications were rightly terrified. Most people didn’t really know why it mattered though. I guess things will change a lot over two years.

There wasn’t much to the reintroduction, thinking on it. Makin and a couple others mockingly-but-also-seriously told Marsy, “just try not to be racist this time.” He responded, “I guarantee you, I will be racist.” I don’t think anyone knew whether to treat that as a joke. We still aren’t sure whether or not it was a joke, because he only said a few other things before he stopped talking for the night. I guess either way we’ll see how long this lasts. Maybe we’ll all be surprised, but if I were a betting man I would be emptying my pockets on “not long.”

Biscuit, for his part, seems to have marginally improved in the week or so since he was initially banned. It is not the greatest improvement, although in retrospect I’m not sure how much User5’s place could have worked him over in just a few short days. To his credit he’s definitely avoiding being stupid on purpose, but he still has an overwhelming tendency to stick his foot so far into his mouth that he starts digesting it.

I guess this is something that will just take time. Biscuit is young still, younger perhaps than most people even on the HSD. I think I may be spoiled by the presence of people like Tera, who is still relatively young but already wields a certain perspicacity. Toast may be used as an example of someone who started off as a shithead and now isn’t quite a shithead anymore. There is hope for Biscuit yet even based solely off of others, and it’s just going to take time to see how he turns out. Hopefully it’s for the better.

On a different note entirely, Makin put out feelers regarding a potential Homestuck reread sometime next year. The last one was hosted about two years ago under Whatislostinthemines, shortly after the comic ended. There are many people in the community who have only read the comic once or twice, and whose memories of the story are beginning to fade.

Thus, there appears to be some significant interest. Makin commented: “people are REALLY hyped for this / I believe even groups unrelated to us might join in,” which would actually be quite exciting. I have to imagine that a reread would suffer from the same problems as any other community event, especially drop off in interest overtime. However, it might bring back a little interest in the source material. This is something we sorely need right now, with people becoming less able to even recall what happened at specific parts of the story.

With luck, we’ll be able to start huge and finish well enough. The reread is currently planned to be held at the start of next year, beginning in February, so that it will culminate with 4/13. If done properly, it could actually be quite successful in terms of turnout. Just thinking about all of the little moments in the story that people have forgotten is making me excited--it’ll be nice to rediscover these things with everyone and potentially start up some engaging conversations, old and new.

Nothing more for today.

5^th of November

We received some very sobering news. Yesterday morning, artist George Buzinkai, composer of many integral soundtracks for Homestuck, died yesterday morning.

Makin verified with another member of the Music Team, and today the collective fandom mourned her loss.

The music that Buzinkai was responsible for composing or arranging was used in pivotal spots, especially Doctor and Showtime. These tracks are lodged so firmly in general fandom consciousness that it’s nearly impossible to imagine the comic without them. In the thread linked above, many of the comments describe the impact that her music had to the point that her influence is unmistakable.

Speaking plainly, Buzinkai’s death comes as a complete shock. She could not be described as old, and the circumstances around her death have not been elaborated on (and probably won’t be, in the interest of privacy). Niklink commented succinctly: “I guess I never thought of Homestuck and its associated periphery as anything other than a young kid's game. Definitely not something where the people involved could pass away.” Other figures such as Bolin disappeared, either in infamy or with respect, but none had died so far as we knew.

In effect, this is something of a wakeup call for us. There was some discussion about the age of other figures, especially Hussie himself, who recently got into his 40’s. As the years go by, the potential for upset will grow ever greater with many important figures getting older. Obviously we hope that reports like this will remain infrequent, but the reality of the matter will no doubt linger in our minds for some time.

There is nothing I can really say to soften the matter; Buzinkai’s passing is greatly upsetting. Though, the outpouring of praise for her work and stature in the fandom was notable. There was no shortage of people coming forward to describe how her work has affected them. We have been reminded once again that nothing lasts forever, but we have also been reminded of what brought us together in the first place. To be sure, her legacy is something we won’t forget anytime soon⁵.

Rest in peace George Buzinkai. Nothing more for today.

8^th of November

The PDF of the new SBAHJ book was sent out today, but it is with a heavy heart that I say it was released to general disappointment. Makin, myself, Skyplayer, and an assortment of others discussed it at great length; within half an hour of its release we firmly settled on why exactly we felt so negatively about it.

The exact reasons why are many, but all of the explanations boil down to the idea that it simply doesn’t carry the spirit of the source material. SBAHJ’s original incarnation is such a precise blend of ironic shittiness and high-effort laziness that none of us are strictly surprised it wasn’t able to be replicated, but the new book is so drastically different in tone that it feels like Hussie must not actually have been involved at all. It’s as if the book was written by people who don’t actually understand what made the original comics so enjoyable.

Even after the initial discussion was done with, we spent a significant portion of the day collectively scratching our heads and wondering where on earth it could have all gone so wrong. The first half of the book actually seemed somewhat promising, but then the second half was irredeemably flat and boring. It would be unwise to describe a precise example, so instead I will try to briefly describe these problems in a general sense.

Great attention to detail was spent on the actual panels themselves; KC Green’s art has a quality to it that can approach physical discomfort, which is great for SBAHJ in a way. However, after a while the editing is simply nonexistent. There are so few instances of image artifacting to speak of, and the actual placement of panels or objects in the new book is so traditional that it’s practically indistinguishable from a regular bad comic. Griever made a comment when we were comparing the book to original SBAHJ strips: “it's a masterwork of ‘fuck wherever your eyes are looking at’”, whereas there is nothing to really forcibly draw your attention in the new story.

The problem is that many of the greatest parts of SBAHJ were made in the editing. The art itself is almost required to be lazy, such that KC Green’s efforts--while impressive in certain spots--were largely wasted. Further, Dril’s involvement with the writing may actually have worsened the overall quality of the book by making it more coherent. I recognize how bizarre such a statement is--not even to speak of calling coherency bad, Dril is not exactly known for this quality to begin with--but it remains that the overall product just did not achieve the mind-numbing sense of bafflement that SBAHJ is predicated on.

To clarify, none of this is to suggest that we wanted the book to fail. To the contrary, we are arguably the ones who wanted it to succeed the most. This is both because we are some of the only people left who cared enough to follow the book’s development in the first place, but even once it wrapped up development there seems to be no hype anywhere. There is barely any talk of the book on Tumblr or Twitter despite KC Green and Dril’s attachment; 4chan threads on the book seem to be dead on arrival. All of this suggests that we are possibly the only ones talking about the book to begin with⁶, and regardless of whether we thought it was good or bad that’s usually not a good sign.

To close on the subject of the new SBAHJ material, sometimes it feels as if we’re the only ones who truly care about the success of Hussie and his subsidiaries. Collectively we’ve received a lot of heckling for how we speak about What Pumpkin, but none of it has been out of malice or a desire to seem them fail. Just the opposite, really: we want to see these people succeed, and it’s always saddening when they don’t. Unfortunately, there’s only so much we can do, and there is certainly close to nothing we can do to actively help. We are thus relegated to watching the property fall into squalor or crash and burn outright. I’m not sure which is worse at this point.

Moving on to developments in the HSD specifically, so-called “hornyposting” has become a difficult, nebulous problem in #general, prompting discussion of a new rule to keep it from overtaking the channel too much. The idea of what hornyposting actually is has been of some debate, and coming to a consensus has proven immensely difficult so far. In keeping with altgen style I wanted to make it ambiguous so we could rule on a case-by-case basis, but a number of users and even Ifnar spoke out against this policy.

Thus, conversation continued for a couple of hours. A number of people weren’t happy with the idea of instituting any such rule to begin with: notably, an infamous altgen user named Krilo was vociferously against the idea and wasted no time saying so; they requested a ban after calling the server “progressively shittier”, and in turn I wasted no time obliging them. In retrospect, Krilo was probably the user most responsible for this behavior by bringing up fetishistic talk and inspiring others to follow suit--banning them alone probably mitigated the issue such that we might not have needed to instate the rule at all.

Then, users like AnionCation were remarkably hostile to cutting down on hornyposting because they associated the term with general flirting. While the flirtatiousness has also gotten out of hand, it’s not something that we’re really including under the umbrella; I tried to explain this to Anion but it failed to mollify them. Anion then touched on an older issue, claiming that the reason #general was abandoned for #hangout in the first place was because #general was moderated poorly.

This was a rare opportunity to use my information collecting, so I gladly explained why they were wrong: if we’re going by raw numbers, then statistics show that merging #hangout and #general was a good idea because the net rate of posting is significantly higher now. This explanation didn’t really help Anion feel better, and kept trying to insist that it was due to specifically poor decisions on how #general was moderated that made it unpalatable to people. I largely ignored this because it was clear Anion was more distraught over the new rule change and was using it as an opportunity to vent their spleen.

However, after the discussion as a whole I did agree that the new rule would need some specific details. Thus it was instated: “examples of hornyposting include: making overtly sexual statements, excessive fetishistic remarks, and ERPing.” Everyone present seemed to think this was a reasonable enough definition (Ifnar may have had some further reservations, I don’t quite remember), and I was thankful enough to call the discussion to a close without further issue. Hopefully this cursed talk about piss and feet will stop now.

Nothing more for today.

13^th of November

It’s been a slower week, although #general seems to be moving along at a rapid pace now. As far as people are concerned, the weirdness continues: Marsy left only a day or two after he rejoined, which was honestly to be expected. More importantly this leaves us unsure what to do with Biscuit. Ultimately he remains for now, because he did everything that was asked of him: it’s not his fault Marsy decided to leave again. However, after a week of annoying the everloving shit out of everyone in mspa-lit, he was “voted out” of the channel and now has a permanent ban from the channel.

This is not the best solution, or even a good one necessarily, but we’re really at a loss as to what else to do that wouldn’t likely be construed as unethical. Arguments for dismissing him based on his original offense feel somewhat hollow since we voluntarily let him back under specific conditions. Then again, we’re not strictly obligated to follow any actually consistent set of rules⁷. We typically avoid playing too fast and loose with the server’s inhabitants, but it would be far from the first time that we’ve made an exception. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say.

Besides Biscuit, a far more serious issue has cropped up anyway. Accusations, accompanied by numerous screenshots of evidence from numerous #oc-cosplay regulars, suggested that a heavily established altgen regular named Prism had been ERPing with minors in the past while themselves an adult. With the volume of evidence, it took minimal deliberation for the mod team to agree that Prism should be banned. The last thing we expected was that this would attract the attention of Maxmikester.

“Attention” may be putting it lightly; Max flew into an absolute rage when he learned that Prism had been banned from the HSD. It turns out that Prism and Max were in a server together where Max had been painstakingly trying to set up a fanadventure group for some months. With Prism banned they no longer felt motivated to pursue the project, which laid waste to Max’s plans. He managed to gain access to one of the screenshots used as evidence against Prism and immediately dismissed it as “an attempt to disrupt” his server.

Unfortunately, this outburst was not contained and he started ranting to me about the issue. After some time of this and discussing the development with the other mods, Makin gave me permission to ban Max for the sheer fury that he was aiming in my direction. After the damage was done, Max continued to demand an explanation for what was happening. I’m not sure why I bothered, but I continued to try and explain it to him for some time.

Miraculously, Max eventually understood the exact extent of the allegations against Prism. He apologized for his actions and asked if he would be let back. I abstained from the discussion because I was already responsible for Biscuit’s reentry, and I don’t really want to keep painting a target on myself with questionable decisions. As far as I can recall, the consensus was a little vague but Max has ultimately not been unbanned.

Max is really just the latest casualty in a pronounced string of bans and people leaving. This suggests that a fundamental shift in our culture is taking place⁸: with so many established people being tossed out or otherwise removing themselves, those remaining have no choice but to redefine how they interact with each other. The community as a whole now is nothing like it was a year ago, which in turn is nothing like the community when I joined two years ago⁹.

To be sure, a number of identifiable regulars remain but the overall demographics have changed so much that it’s hard to figure out what the server will look like culturally as we move forward. Rather than my typical brand of despair, I just feel kind of bemused and quiet about everything now. I don’t want to return to that feeling of pessimism (for obvious reasons, but also because Tensei, Tipsy, and others have started calling out my gloomy thinking), but the truth is that my previously bright outlook has been replaced with a rather muddled grey¹⁰. I hope that, as before, my concerns about what’s happening here prove to be unwarranted¹¹.

Nothing more for today¹² .

14^th of November

My frustration over user turnover has been steadily mounting, and I brought it up in chat today. This ignited a discussion as to whether or not significant turnover is actually happening as I describe; further, there was talk about whether such a pattern is even necessarily a bad thing. Mines and Toast both claim that it’s natural for communities such as ours to experience users coming and going, and that few people will actually feel any motivation to stay. Makin in turn decided to describe something he calls his water filter theory.

Without getting into the specifics, Makin feels like it’s appropriate and helpful to make the channel something of a grinder to new users. He cites the presence of people like Biscuit as evidence that not having an effective enough filter is a bad thing, further stating that in order to get quality regulars you need to be fine with not retaining the vast majority of newcomers. I rebutted this by saying that there needs to be a balance between quality and quantity: obviously having no filter at all will lead to a severe depression in conversational quality, but too much of a filter will choke the channel out and ultimately make it die due to not having enough participants.

These talking points have been described before; it’s not really necessary to explain them at length again. It is enough to say that we talked about the subject once more today. More important, in my mind, is that the conversation proceeded quite amicably; despite our opposing feelings on what should be prioritized, there was no obvious chicanery and the conversation managed to be lighthearted and entertaining for just about everyone involved. I take this as a sign that for all my bellyaching, the community is still pretty healthy.

A far more interesting bent occurred when lurkers were brought up. Without a doubt there are many users who simply watch the channel and never speak, for some reason or another. Miraculously, at the mention of lurkers one such person named Cruuk decided to speak up. They claimed to have been around since December of 2016, but a quick glance at their history reveals that they have basically never spoken in mspa-lit before.

We often joke at the expense of such lurkers, and having one decide to speak up during such a conversation felt almost weird. Cruuk themselves seemed to be a reasonable fellow, making me wonder why exactly they decide never to speak up. Perhaps they prefer to maintain a more detached position to what happens here? I never thought to ask while they were still talking, and now it feels almost as if it would be rude to do so--they went back to lurking not too long after the conversation stopped, and disturbing their peace feels like it would be an inconvenience.

Even discounting the fact that Cruuk was well-spoken enough, their brief participation helped to illustrate the point that there are in fact people wandering around here without ever talking. A less obvious detail this illuminates is that regulars may not truly disappear, it’s highly possible that some of them have simply stopped talking and started lurking instead.

Perhaps it’s just harder for them to enjoy talking as time goes by. There does seem to be a distinct process of stagnation going on, both through our source material becoming less relevant and with the community slowing down on a general level (so that I might mitigate claims of severe waffling on this issue, Makin himself pointed out this latter detail: “[the community has] a fine structure, it's just we're at the end of entropy¹³”). I wonder if it’s possible or even desirable to try and reignite everyone’s passion here; it would be nice to inspire everyone to talk more often, but to what end? Forcing conversation is arguably worse than letting it die out naturally, and so the internal struggle continues.

Aside from all this, we learned later in the day that Viz released an interview with Hussie. I haven’t listened to it myself yet, but of note people were in severe disbelief: the voice in the interview apparently sounds nothing like Hussie does in previous interviews. A few people a are looking into the issue currently, but the discrepancy may be explained by differences based on where and how the interviews have been recorded--the latest interview was likely in a controlled recording session whereas the interview most people are familiar with was at a loud convention. More details on that to follow as we figure them out.

Nothing more for today.

16^th of November

Interesting notes on the associations between a few people. Today Tensei and Makin were making jokes about bullying--both in that they were ironically bullying people and then making jokes about the act of bullying. This was pretty unremarkable by itself; the part that interested me was that it provoked a rather extreme response from both Tipsy and Roots during the course of the conversation.

They may have said it explicitly and I just don’t remember, but both of them have apparently had rather intense experiences with being bullied in the past. I can sympathize with this: being a victim of bullying, whether indiscriminate or targeted, makes it much harder to tolerate such behavior even when it’s clearly not actually malicious. I’m less inclined to be upset about it, but I certainly understand why one wouldn’t enjoy the topic.

Conversely, Makin and Tensei both seem just fine with this brand of humor. I’m sure it’s easy enough to gather from previous entries, but neither of them have any qualms messing around with others as long as it doesn’t actually carry ill-intent. Their casual teasing suggests a lack of experience as the object of such barbs--if I recall correctly, Tensei has outwardly mentioned that he was a bully, and never actually bullied himself. Then again, it’s highly possible they did go through this and it simply didn’t bother them as much, or they normalized it somehow. I can’t pretend to know or understand how their behavior works in this regard.

Causation and psychology aside, Tipsy and Roots--as well as some others--responded to these jokes in a severely negative fashion. This included some rather pointed statements from them that bordered on hostile; at one such remark, Roots literally told Tensei to fuck off, which garnered some chastisement from me. At this point I made an effort to break up the parade because it was clear people’s feelings were getting hurt, but I was still puzzled by the exchange as a whole.

Makin and Tensei’s habit of responding in trollish ways is hardly a secret, they are both quite open about how they engage with others. The important part is of course that there is no evil behind it, at least as far as I can tell. To them, perhaps this is simply normal social practice. If they were regular users it would be less problematic, but because they both exist in positions of authority over others it gets more complicated: ostensibly they should be trustworthy figures, but such behavior makes it implicitly difficult to trust them.

I may be overcomplicating it still; rather than typical socialization for them, perhaps it’s just a matter of boredom. The idea of consciously making users uncomfortable just because I find something funny leaves me utterly aghast, so I can’t really appreciate this if it’s true. I tend to avoid things unless I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won’t make anyone upset.

Yet, there is the intractable problem that a variety of users will get up in arms about completely worthless things. While I’m generally not as concerned about the side that openly tries to be noble, it would be remiss of me not to point out that tyranny through virtue exists as well: having to capitulate to paranoia or worrywarts is arguably just as great of harassment as being forced to endure taunting and petty hectoring.

I hate to get caught in the trap of centrism, both because it tends to be unhelpful ambivalence and because more extreme positions try to present themselves as being centrist to avoid criticism (I’ve had discussions with Toast like this plenty of times, actually; the location of our Overton windows can have infuriating discrepancies). Nonetheless, I am caught between two interpretations of how socializing should work and neither of them really work in all cases. This brings me to an unrelated but similar idea I’ve been mulling over lately.

In mspa-lit it feels like a disproportionate number of conversations involve making fun of various philosophical concepts. This may be related to numerous users watching The Good Place right now, a show that apparently deals heavily in such ideas--it feels like such discussion always been the case here, but perhaps I’m only thinking about it openly because of an unusually high amount of discourse on it at this moment.

It’s hard to say why I’m bothering to think about this at all, if I’m being honest. I suppose the original comment that sparked this line of thought was from Makin today: “this episode is shitting on effective altruists hard I love it.” This statement by itself was so weird to me that I couldn’t stop thinking about it for some hours. I don’t even know what exactly effective altruism is¹⁴, but there seems to be distaste or at least some sort of schadenfreude concerning the concept.

Realistically this is just a joke that warrants little to no attention, but on an almost subconscious level the judgment bothers me; I suppose it comes across as mean spirited or even bigoted. Of course, it would be unfair of me to insinuate that Makin is the only one to engage in this: almost everyone in mspa-lit and probably the HSD as a whole has professed to some sort of bias in their philosophical views. It’s just an inescapable feature of socializing.

Nothing more for today.

18^th of November

Today saw a rather bizarre change that I’m still trying to process the ramifications of (not because of their severity, but rather because there might not actually be that much of a difference now). In short, the NSFW server is no longer associated with the HSD and Ceru has been removed from the mod team completely.

The way this happened feels kind of asinine to me. The NSFW server has operated completely fine on its own for months now, but this morning Makin decided to visit and take stock, citing the idea that the server could be siphoning activity from the HSD. He quickly discovered that he had no permissions to check channels, which understandably frustrated him since he’s technically in charge of the Homesmut server as well.

He asked Ceru to give him perms, which Ceru did and then rescinded not but five minutes later. I woke up only a few minutes after this and quickly tried to figure out what was going on; I ended up acting as the intermediary because Ceru has historically been more comfortable talking to me than Makin directly.

Essentially, Makin directly accused Ceru of mutiny and suggested that he was too unstable to be trusted with the NSFW server, making the demand that the NSFW server’s ownership should be turned over to me instead. With this barrage in mind, I asked Ceru exactly why he had messed with Makin’s permissions in the first place. Ceru described that he was afraid of Makin deleting channels or banning users, claiming that Makin was too unpredictable to be trusted.

This led to some head scratching. While Ceru’s assessment was mostly correct, it stood to reason that Makin was still in charge of the NSFW server and therefore at liberty to do what he wants with it. Upon explaining this to Ceru, he responded that he had grown attached because he’s spent over a year cultivating the place into an active, healthy community. This made sense to me and I conveyed it back to the mod team on the HSD.

Makin positively flew off the handle at this insinuation, saying that “making a community had never been a priority” in the NSFW server, and thus the idea was completely pointless. Ceru, Ifnar, and myself were the only people who were even marginally interested in the formation of the server to begin with (besides MasterEmp of course), but none of us thought that implication had been clear. The NSFW server’s only stated function was to contain NSFW discussion, which doesn’t preclude the formation of a community.

Ifnar and I laboriously pointed out that this retroactive expectation was completely ridiculous, to the point that it seemed openly stupid: not only was it a post hoc demand, it was such an unrealistic idea that it easily demonstrated his lack of involvement. Failing to predict that Homesmut would develop some kind of group identity over time is indicative of someone being painfully out of touch with how people think or behave¹⁵.

Predictably, none of our explanations had much of an effect. Makin steamrolled our complaints wholesale¹⁶; he went on to say that Ceru’s policies over what content to allow on Homesmut were perilous, such as an ERP channel or nudes (while both of these can certainly be seen as distasteful, there are specific measures in place to prevent any liability on the part of the server). He demanded again that the server be handed over to me or anyone who would be “more responsible handling it”. After rolling my eyes at the transparent attempt to regain some control, I nevertheless started convincing Ceru to hand over the keys.

It’s honestly not hard to talk to Ceru; he’s a nice fellow if you speak to him gently enough. He doesn’t respond well to pressure, so with people like him it just takes time, patience, and a little active listening to make them feel better about what’s going on. There were plenty of valid reasons for maintaining the connection between the servers, not least of which was that Homesmut got most of its new users through the HSD. Though Ceru had quickly spiraled into defeatism upon being removed from the mod channel, it didn’t take much time to rationalize with him and bring him back out of his mood. Makin doesn’t understand or appreciate the value of this kind of thing, and as a result his diplomacy suffers greatly.

As an aside, it should be noted that he can in fact be diplomatic, but it usually requires great effort on his part. I’ve never seen him behave properly except for when there was something of great value on the line, such as our previous partnerships with We Love Fine. Yet, when it comes to matters such as the NSFW server, which he no doubt deems Too Trivial for him to be bothered with, his understanding and patience are nonexistent. If I had to guess, this will most likely be his ruination someday¹⁷ .

Returning to the topic at hand, I spent just a little time talking with Ceru and after figuring out what he wanted, I asked what he thought of handing over the server. He said that as long as I owned it and didn’t let anything too dramatic happen, he was fine with my owning the place. Negotiations were proceeding well enough; I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of reaching an understanding of both parties, although the discussion was quite heated in the mod channel.

Makin offhandedly mentioned something else about how Ceru couldn’t be trusted, citing an instance where Ceru once threatened to “delete a server using Aradiabot.” When I asked Ceru about this, he said that Aradiabot had literally never even been on the server in question (this exchange still puzzles me so much time later, I don’t even know how to begin unpacking the information). It was at this precise moment that Makin decided to say neither Ceru or Aradiabot would ever be allowed back onto the HSD.

Negotiations fell apart instantaneously. Ceru quickly went from agreeable to in shambles, frustrated and horrified that two years of his work on Aradiabot were essentially being thrown in the garbage. This quickly turned into unbridled anger, and despite my attempts to placate him it only grew worse. Tensei started speaking in the mod chat on the NSFW server, also attempting to calm Ceru down and convince him to transfer ownership. When I mentioned negotiations were falling apart Makin backpedaled and said that Aradiabot would still be allowed on the HSD “with no destructive permissions or screening abilities¹⁸ ”, but the damage was already done.

Ceru described that he was fed up with being treated like a second class citizen, which he blamed entirely on Makin’s¹⁹ hateful predisposition towards furries. After asking for input from the NSFW server mods--described by Tensei as a hugbox, maybe even appropriately--Ceru decided to formally cut ties with the HSD and turn Homesmut into its own distinct place. A year and a half of work has been undercut significantly, and now our primary bot developer has been completely removed from the scene.

The irony of all this is that Aradiabot is still on the HSD and is being used even as I write this. Ceru wanted me to make sure that, despite his being gone, that Aradiabot would still be of use to people in the HSD. While this was a little too saccharine even for me, it’s not as if my word on this subject matters at all--Makin is the only one with the ability to add or remove bots. Sometimes I’m really not sure why I bother trying at all in these situations; no matter what I do, the result seems to be negative or bizarre. I don’t even feel upset at what happened today, just a sort of mild confusion and annoyance.

Later in the day, I learned that pictures of the NSFW server discussion in modchat had been spread outside the server to some decidedly reprehensible individuals, namely recursiveSlacker; it’s practically incontrovertible that Ceru was the one behind this information leak, which means he was likely responsible for previous leaks as well. I can’t even defend Ceru retroactively at this point, which makes my efforts feel even more worthless than they already did²⁰ .

The frustration over all of this has built, and after Ceru’s departure especially it feels as if everything in the HSD is accompanied by a significant headache. Literally the night prior to all of this, I was planning on making a secret commission to an artist to depict the mod team in a sort of Christmas-themed artwork, because I was feeling grateful towards the team as a whole and wanted to show my appreciation for them.

Such an idea feels completely ill-advised to me right now, and I canceled the plans. At the moment I no longer feel like pursuing the commission, as it feels like it would be a completely disrespectful Christmas gift. I might consider something more poignant now that the situation has changed, but in general it’s difficult not to feel rather bitter. It might be better to just leave off completely; it will depend on how the rest of the year progresses.

Nothing more for today.

23^rd of November

Thanksgiving passed yesterday with little comment. The server was pretty slow because most people were presumably enjoying the holiday with their families, so I’m not surprised or dismayed really. On the other hand, today is Black Friday, which led to a small spout of conversation where we talked about the so-called casualties of the day: this was spurred on by a website called Black Friday Death Count, which true to its name serves to tally all incidences of injury or death caused directly by the commercial holiday.

There were some strikingly flippant comments about it all, with people such as WoC, Roots, and a couple others casually joking about the news of shootings and other violent incidents. They envisioned “games” where customers would kill each other off for marginal discounts on merchandise, which is honestly not far off from the truth anyway. Nonetheless, while I was not bothered so much by the discussion, Tera seemed rather put off.

To try and put it at ease and make the conversation less imminently disrespectful, I brought up the case of a 12 year old girl being injured in today’s Black Friday sales, mentioning that she was likely an innocent child who got dragged into a disgustingly opportunistic system by her parents. My faith in the group was rewarded, with WoC et al proving perfectly reasonable: they agreed that her involvement was obviously a sad thing that shouldn’t be joked about.

We all were also able to agree that shitty, cynical adults all in on the commercial event should be free game. Thus, the conversation went back to shitposting shortly afterwards. As it is I’m pretty grateful that they were amenable to a reprieve, no matter how brief. It’s probably yet another case of worrying too much on my part, but it seemed as if Tera was getting rather upset. I hope I was able to assuage its misgivings with the discussion, I feel bad when people get too uncomfortable with what’s happening in the chat.

Other than this exchange, I have to say that it’s felt fairly dull lately. It feels harder to maintain interest in what’s going on with the server, and my bringing this up elicited the usual round of teasing that I usually get from Tensei and Makin on the matter (recently when it looks like someone is even mildly annoyed, they’ve started saying “oh shit, they left the server” to try and make me nervous²¹ ). I compared the HSD to previous communities I’ve been a part of, and tried to reduce what I was saying to the general idea that “the HSD is a special place and should be treated as such.”

They laughed at me for saying that. I guess I should have seen it coming, as it’s the kind of stereotypically mushy thing I would say, but I admit I was a little hurt by the response and somewhat confused. The HSD really isn’t the kind of place you can just find every day, and their continual attempts to reduce it something less meaningful bothers me. It feels like they really undervalue the place, or at least refuse to see its potential.

It truly gets bad when the idea of leaving begins to flit across my mind every once in a while. It’s highly possible that I’m confusing simple boredom for a dissipating attachment; Makin’s comment about “end of entropy” a while ago rings especially true when it comes to these doldrums²² . It’s simply unhelped by their remarkably flippant attitudes, which I hate to admit is fairly demoralizing.

Makin and Tensei both seem to abjure the hell out of the idea of mspa-lit having any sort of group identity. I’m not sure if they’re denying that it has such a thing at this moment--a thought I could agree on with some consideration--or if they’re denying that group identity is valuable (which would be a truly striking display of individualism, to the point that it seems weird to me). If it’s the latter idea then I would be severely cross, but ultimately my displeasure would be futile. I can’t convince them to feel differently, and it’s probably not even advisable to try.

Their disagreement with me on this matter continues to be more confusing than disappointing; freely recognizing and associating with each other is what separates us from a bunch of strangers who have no real reason to talk with each other anymore²³. Why else would we still be here? This isn’t an anonymous imageboard; rather, our reputations and histories are fully on display and this naturally foments connections to each other. At every turn all I can ask is, what inspires them to think the way they do?

Contemplating over it too much is also likely fruitless. I’m holding onto the idea that this is just another brief period of malaise and not a terminal issue. Every lag period so far has been temporary, and it would be a disservice to all the people I claim to care about if I treated this one like “the end”. A lack of content has always been responsible for such lulls, rather than any real disharmony; thus, my consistent bleating about this issue is unneeded. There are still plenty of things to keep track and take stock of, which I will continue to do for some time regardless.

Speaking of which, another development on altgen policy occurred today. After much conference between myself, Shitler, Dingus, and Deus, we all agreed that cropped porn images may come back under more strict conditions: images that could be easily flagged as porn even without anything explicit (such as ahegao) would be pointless and disruptive. Thus, the images are allowed as long as they are indistinguishable from a regular reaction image.

At worst, no one will respond to this and cropped porn just won’t be used anyway. However, my hope is that this could inspire some more activity from users and that it may lead to some new reaction culture being created. The old cropped porn was predictable and painfully obvious, and maybe after some time people will be a little creative about what images they use. Then again, I’m sure that altgen will find a way to break even the most strongly worded rule, so we will have to wait and see what comes out of it.

Nothing more for today.

26^th of November

In a rather strange turn, there was a raid on the MSPA wiki today. A few users notified me and Shitler in DMs, and we quickly conferred about what to do. It was slow starting at first, but we managed to rally the people participating in #general at that moment to help us. The immediate plan was to try and revert pages back to normal, and failing that we would get a hold of the wiki moderators.

As normal users on the wiki we don’t really have any of the tools we need to identify which pages have been edited and to what extent--after about an hour of trying to figure things out, we went with the idea to contact the mods. Collectively we were able to secure methods of contact, and we left them a message. After that, there was nothing to do but hope it would get resolved.

Luckily, I’m writing this from the next day and know how the situation resolved itself: I was contacted in the morning by a mod I had reached out to called Light6. Light informed me that contacting them was the right idea, as there’s not much regular users can do besides short changes to content. Wiki admins have a revert button of sorts that makes restoring pages trivial, so an appeal to god in such cases is really all we need to do. Still, it was good to reach out to them; making contact with other parts of the fandom is always an odd experience, but refreshing and potentially useful. I wonder if I will ever talk to Light again.

Today we also happened to reach 12,000 members. This milestone has been stubbornly beyond our reach for a while, with an abysmal rate of user gain over the last several months. Nonetheless, we broke through the ceiling and Nights made a nice bit of art to celebrate. In some ways, it’s a tangible goal that I was looking forward to passing. It’s an indisputable sign that the server is growing, at least in one way. If Homestuck ever comes back, or if something even tangentially related occurs, then I expect this place will positively explode with activity.

Concerning individual people, there has been some friction with a user named Monte-Velle, who was recently banned from mspa-lit for being too sociable when Makin happened to be watching. I’m not too familiar with Monte and a few people have claimed they’re mean spirited to a fault, but previous interactions with them have always been friendly and peaceful enough for me.

The particular problem tonight involved the Patreon-associated #deltarune channel, which was given to Monte after the actual channel was shut down. At this point in time, the claims of Monte being rude seem more substantial; I’ve mostly chalked it up to being frustrated with the mspa-ban, but they’ve gone so far as to pick fights with people. Tonight, they had one such fight with user5 over the Deltarune channel.

The topic of the argument itself is exceedingly silly: directly prior to the main #deltarune channel being hidden, User5 or Monte pinged Makin for ownership of the new version. User5 claimed it had been him, and Monte was growing increasingly irate over the insinuation. They threatened ban him from the channel if he kept undercutting their authority. In a somewhat puzzling exchange, User5 asked me to check the archived channel for evidence as to who had actually pinged Makin.

After confirming that it was indeed User5 who had done the deed, I posted the screenshot in #deltarune and Monte mysteriously disappeared for the rest of the night. They had mentioned something about drinking; I hope that they’ll be alright, and I’m starting to think of ways to talk with them and calm them down. It’s been a while since I’ve done this for anyone, but maybe if I help them improve enough I can get their ban removed and restore their mood.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’m almost certain Makin won’t go for it. Not only does he not care enough in the first place, but the unstable mood and excessive rudeness towards people in general doesn’t really paint Monte in a favorable light. If I think about it further, I’m also kind of hesitant to begin this process in the first place: advocating for people has become undesirable after the situations with recursiveSlacker and Biscuit. Seems like sticking my neck out for people only ever gets me in trouble²⁴.

Nothing more for today.

29^th of November

#general’s culture seems to be developing more as time goes by. It’s far more socially oriented than before, with people like AnionCation specifically guiding chat in the direction of open, direct, and close interaction. However, the nature and behavior of #general seems to vary significantly depending on when certain key figures are present. Contrary to Anion’s direction, Godfiend (previously known as $trider) pushes lighthearted mockery not unlike #altgen or #mspa-lit. Thus, at different times of day #general can have markedly different culture in action.

Unrelated but pertinent: for some days now, Andrew has been posting a gachi edit he made that involves WoC and myself. At first I was more or less ambivalent about this drawing, but it has grown increasingly uncomfortable to see. WoC was made very uncomfortable about it from the start, and the tension finally broke into confrontation today.

The edit itself, which I will not post, involves WoC spanking me fiercely (just writing it out like this made me cover my eyes in shame, honestly²⁵). I’m not sure why we let it go on for as long as we did, but nonetheless we started furiously discussing it in the mod chat. There was some initial confusion about whether this was worse than WoC’s typical gachi posts and why, but the overall point was simple enough: posting unsolicited edits of real people, especially porn, is a weird and unwelcome thing to do.

After deliberating on it, I went to directly ask Andrew to stop posting the edit and explained that it made us uncomfortable. He was taken back by this: although he thanked me for being direct and open about the problem, he also went and complained to WoC for not bringing up the problem sooner. While we were content with a warning before, this perceived “victimblaming” made WoC thirsty for blood.

The confrontation with Andrew only worsened, who was furious at the lack of communication. WoC and I conferred some more, taking his reaction into account. We decided that giving him a temp ban was necessary: a warning first is important, but if it proves ineffective then more substantial punishment is in order. Andrew was thus banned from the HSD for one week. To my frustration, I somehow ended up with the task of explaining all of this to Andrew. I’m not sure how, since I wasn’t really the offended party--it may be that I was the only one able to physically talk to him, due to Discord’s friending system. Either way, the headache worsened as I explained our decision.

He was clearly distraught but at this point (near 3 AM or so), but I was way too tired to guide him through understanding it. After some more perfunctory statements I went to bed and let him stew. I hate confronting people in this manner, but after a point it becomes handholding and helps no one. Hopefully he’ll learn from this and we won’t have to deal with a similar problem in the future.

Nothing more for today.

Several People Are Typing