Drew Linky
2nd of February
About a week ago, Makin put up a video that he was working on to promote the reread. He asked for criticism from mspa-lit (or we simply volunteered it on our own) so that he could fine-tune the video. He actually grew somewhat frustrated with all the suggestions we had, it seemed to be a lot of work for him. To his credit, he persisted and actually implemented a hefty number of suggestions; I think all present were able to agree that it was a good trailer (with the exception of User5 and Tera, who suggested that the music for it was an ill choice).
Today is one week before the reread begins, and he has released the trailer publicly to start developing hype. It’s seen some very positive reception from the community, with the associated thread on Reddit garnering some good attention. I recently expressed that I want this 10th anniversary of the webcomic to be one of the best possible experiences for everyone involved, and it seems like this reread is going to be an excellent way to accomplish that; everyone who has commented on it so far seems rather excited, and with the idea of an epilogue dangling in front of us, we are being tantalized once more.
Tantalize, of course, being the operative word: there is little to no guarantee that anything will actually happen, as usual. Alongside my want I also described that I’m sick of waiting for official developments from Hussie, What Pumpkin, or Viz in this matter: I suggested that I would be willing to pay for small prizes that we could give out in raffles to increase excitement and user participation, although I think this idea was rejected. Whatever the case, I’m hoping that there will be a general invigoration--I want to see the fandom active and satisfied again.
To this effect, we were talking about the state of the fandom recently and how much it’s changed since the closure of the official forums. It has been reiterated multiple times by people like Spiral that it was unimaginably big: “imagine a forum whose magnitude is like multiple times as large as this servers backlog / full of fan content,” nearly all of which has been lost except the possibility of an archive somewhere.
It’s hard to imagine that in a way, considering the server has seen over 23 million messages since it was created, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised; the sheer difference in activity between then and now is staggering if one was around for it. Circling back to the original topic of this entry, it is my fond hope that the reread will re-establish some of that energy; a renaissance of sorts would do wonders for the community.
Nothing more for today.
4th of February
Advertisements for the newest Homestuck book have finally begun. Pictures of the commentary within are widespread, although there are some stirrings: the tone and content thereof have led some (including Makin) to fear that Hussie is no longer providing the commentary himself. The commentary has become long-winded descriptions of characters with comparatively less substance in them than the commentary found in the originally released books.
After some examination, we collectively decided that the wording and some of the vernacular in use suggests that it is actually Hussie, but we also agree that it feels like less effort has gone into these books. The commentary for the first was lifted directly from the original print release1, and new commentary started with Book 2 onwards; people are starting to notice the change in tone from what was already available and now.
This might explain some of the delays that have happened, such as the next book being pushed back an entire three months. It’s possible that the time table is being shifted because of Hussie being unable or unwilling to write commentary in a timely manner: if he is slow or otherwise hampering Viz’s efforts, they may deem the project unsuitable and drop the books entirely.
This would be devastating, because the precise thing we were looking forward to was new commentary. Reading Homestuck in physical book form is a singularly inferior activity to reading it online because of all of the web elements in play throughout the story; being unable to hear the music or watch the actual animation robs the experience of a lot of its weight. Almost all of us have been buying the books strictly to see Hussie’s insights/explanations on various facets of the comic.
If he is failing to put effort into this task or--goodness forbid--actually gets them taken out of production, it will severely aggravate everyone. So many things from later in the comic remain unexplained, and denying even the chance that we could learn more about why certain things were done or resolve certain plot threads would be intensely demoralizing. I’m fervently hoping that Hussie or whoever is responsible will ensure the continued release of the books, and I’m sure everyone else is hoping for that too.
Nothing more for today.
6th of February
A very positive development recently: a few of us noticed that Phantos has come back, possibly only a few days ago, but we’ve had only limited interaction with him. He was and is a very fondly regarded person here, but amid the mystery of why he left, I think we have largely been hesitant to reach out in case it’s annoying to him. We wonder extensively about why exactly he left of course, but ultimately I think we’ve decided not to bother him about it. That having been said, it does seem that a few mspa-lit regulars have gone into gen to say hi to him in an effort to make him feel more welcome. I’m glad to see him well.
Less positive than this, it has been a gradually apparent truth that the quality of conversation in mspa-lit has dropped, and now there is a small number of people who are determined to restore the integrity of the channel. Nights and Tensei are open advocates of getting people to go use other, more appropriate channels so that mspa-lit isn’t dragged down with generally useless or boring posts.
Andrew pointed out that, “Furry shit is often the progenitor of garbage hours,” a sentiment that has been increasing lately; it seems as if furry content has been increasing, and predictably the push back against that content has risen. I don’t like seeing active disparagement of furries personally, but it does seem that when the content gets posted, anyone else who’s involved with that sort of thing comes out of the woodwork to participate and exacerbates the issue. If this continues it will almost assuredly lead to a blanket ban of furry content, in mspa-lit if not the entire server.
A few others have suggested that channel quality is not actually decreasing and that it’s simply been quiet lately. This would certainly track with previous developments (as I’ve repeatedly worried about in the past) especially with games coming out that people have been playing, or school being back in session.
Surprisingly, Makin went against claims that the channel quality has been bad. The reason for this is less surprising though: he perceives that regulars have been discussing the shill list more often lately than ever before. In support of this idea, there does seem to be multiple people who have asked to be put on the leaderboard, although I’m struggling to remember exactly who at this point. I wonder if this trend will persist or of it’ll quiet down before long.
In less related news, today there was a brief but animated celebration of mspa-lit history: the pin compilation I made attracted some attention and a few choice examples from history were brought up, which everyone present enjoyed reminiscing over. Nights took this one step further and made a couple of comics to memorialize the interactions in question.
Nights’ drawing ability has been improving continuously for literal years, due probably to Oceanfalls, and seeing participants in the chat rendered so stylistically brought immense joy to everyone present. This led to Spiral, Tera, Nostalgic, Tori, and a host of others discussing the ramifications of a comic based around mspa-lit’s userbase. I would absolutely be lying if I said I haven’t imagined something like this myself, although I’m sure from this document’s existence it’s not hard to believe.
Some of the interactions we’ve had are wonderful to look back on, and it’s a relief to me that others think back on our ever-growing history as well. It makes me wonder again and again though, whether anyone but those of us who have participated will even give a thought to it. At some point this place will never be discussed again, and I wonder when exactly that will be, or under what conditions. It’s strange to think that our entire existence is encapsulated, and we simply don’t know where the latter end is yet.
Nothing more for today.
7th of February
There was a strange altercation between Tera and WoC a few days ago. WoC is fond of pinging Tera with various nonsensical memes in an attempt to poke fun, which are usually harmless enough. However, this time WoC pinged Tera with the following text: “ i have discovered your address via legal means online,” an excerpt from a recent 4chan post (which is itself admittedly funny). However, Tera, took very poorly to this, stating later that it was afraid before the joke was explained.
Ever since then there has been some high tension between the two. The friendship between Tera and WoC has never really been good, but this seems to have made matters so bad that Tera has forsaken all contact with WoC and blocked them. Tonight WoC self-admittedly got drunk and has been attempting to apologize to Tera through a combination of sincere and ironic gestures, which may be doing more harm than good.
The lack of a single, coherent message and the unsteady history between the two has contributed to a large degree of mistrust in Tera, and it refuses to forgive WoC for the offense. It has culminated tonight in WoC trying to maintain a working professional relationship and failing spectacularly. Witnessing their back and forth with seemingly no hope for a good resolution has made me very sad. WoC’s joke was decidedly in poor taste, but after explaining the joke, a few days to calm down, and this (albeit bizarre) set of apologies, I’m kind of regretful that it cannot let go of the prank.
This did lead to a surprisingly revealing conversation about how various people in mspa-lit perceives others. WoC explained in as much a straightforward manner as I’ve ever seen him that he does not typically trust others, especially in situations that involve inviting people into a particular fold. Tera and Minish reaffirmed with each other their widely progressive stances, especially in regard to things such as WoC’s tendency to employ the word “retard” (admittedly a problem that might have to be addressed at some point, depending on Discord TOS and popular perception of the issue).
All of this has come together in a way that makes me slightly fearful: it seems difficult to find a way to reconcile their personalities, if indeed that is even possible. I spent some time talking with Tera after the fact and while we did come to a better appreciation of each other--at least I hope--I did not seem to make much progress in bridging understanding between it and WoC. It may be that I’m engaging in a largely futile effort, as it seems I simply don’t have the social skills to coordinate the proper interactions.
I’m worried about what stuff like this will do to the mod team. There is nothing like a schism as of yet, but there does seem to be a growing divide between people like Spiral and Tera, and those like WoC and Nat. Ultimately I don’t even have any say in what happens, as Makin is the only one who can enact effective reprimands for mods. Given his tendency to foment chaos and drama this could turn out badly, but in matters of his mod team I think that he’s more restrained. We will simply have to see.
Nothing more for today.
8th of February
Viz announced on Twitter today that it’s launching its own Discord channel, including a link to said server. Although we weren’t sure how to react at first, out of curiosity a number of joined to see what the place looked like and how they were functioning. It quickly became apparent that the place is kind of a mess.
At first it wasn’t so bad, although Makin was cautioning us against joining. Some casual chatting happened, although there was a noticeable influx of Homestuck fans right off the bat. This increased in intensity for about half an hour, and then we noticed that users from splinter servers and people banned from the HSD in the past were arriving, such as Carborane and Smolmuffin.
As soon as this began to happen, the Viz server turned into a proverbial dumpster fire. It’s been a solid hour since I joined and the quality has been plummeting ever since. Trickster is “resisting the urge to heavily shitpost,” and Makin has threatened to ban anyone from the HSD who is caught shitposting or breaking Viz’s rules. We want to maintain a good relationship with Viz, and our users causing problems would certainly be detrimental.
Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like any of us ARE causing those problems. It’s understandably biased of me to think so, but it genuinely appears that identifiable regulars from the HSD have been very well behaved for the most part. On the other hand, the splinter/banned users and especially randoms no one recognizes have been turning the Viz server into a living hell. I honestly feel kind of sorry for the mods of that server now, considering how much shit they’re putting up with at the moment.
This has, however, been an interesting opportunity to study the behavior associated with large, uncontrolled fluxes of new users. Some interesting behaviors have manifested, including one person who seems to be requesting that the official Viz Media website be made available in a variety of countries, such as Mexico and South Korea. Others aren’t even pretending to be on topic, with one user literally talking about “vaping horse piss.” Most of it is just unfettered shit at this point, enough so that I’ve already lost interest.
Unfortunately, some casualties now exist: Canis, hb, and Tori all got banned from mspa-lit because they started spreading memes from the HSD like asking if people have read the shills list. Hb is rather upset about this, considering it an overreaction and without warning, but I’m not touching the ban with a ten foot pole. This is kind of an unprecedented situation and we don’t want to appear too lenient in case people start purposefully causing problems, but we unbanned them shortly after they stopped messing around.
Ultimately I think the Viz server will be lost in much of the chaos and excitement that is coming our way. The reread begins tomorrow, and by all indications it looks like it’s going to be very enjoyable. The Viz server opening up has been a weird and vaguely uncomfortable experience, but ultimately I don’t see it mattering too much; it will probably fade into obscurity in a couple of weeks or a month, if even that. I feel bad that negatively associated users from our own past are mucking about, but we have our own things to worry about.
Nothing more for today.
9th of February - Beginning of the Great Reread
Around noon EST or so, Makin finally made the reread channel publicly viewable. The room was swiftly populated, and animated discussion began even before the reread proper commenced; most of the talk was, I assume, wondering when it would actually begin2. Then at exactly 3 PM EST, Makin sent out and everyone ping announcing that the reread had officially begun.
The way the reread works is explained in that post, but for posterity: every day until 4/13, we will read a designated number of pages from the comic, taking into account the presence of flash pages and other factors that influence the amount of time it takes to read. The schedule has been set so that it’s unlikely anyone is left behind unless they simply drop the activity. After rereading the given section for the day, people are encouraged to talk with each other about it and describe things they noticed or liked in the current set.
Along with the reread channel on Discord, Makin put up a thread on Reddit for discussion there, accompanied by a host of questions meant to prompt readers to join in the conversation and share their thoughts.Writing this from so many hours later, I would say that it’s been a very successful start: over 100 people have posted in the thread and almost every post has something insightful to say about it. I think that this reread couldn’t have been better timed.
Some people are going above and beyond in their efforts to contribute: I noticed one /u/-Indubitably- posting a list of the music used in the current set of pages, describing the composer and where the music can be found. Some people, including Nights, are creating art to commemorate the occasion. The greatest number of additions are of course just text posts, but as I said before almost every single one has something interesting or funny to read.
Miraculously, it also seems that we have a sizeable amount of people who are just now reading the comic for the first time; I’m pleasantly surprised to discover that, so many years later, people are still discovering Homestuck and freshly reading it. This is arguably the best time for it, too; it may not come anywhere close to the feverish excitement and energy from when it came out initially, but this is indisputably a good time for the community. I hope that it will serve as a wonderful experience, both for newcomers and oldies alike.
An interesting piece of discussion from mspa-lit later in the day specifically: I wasn’t entirely sure before, but it seems that opinion on Cohen’s involvement with Hiveswap has irreversibly soured here. There was a more mixed opinion when he was still working on the property--I believe we were holding out on our judgment in hopes that he would be able to meet our expectations--but now that all is said and done, it seems there is absolutely no love for Cohen in our fold.
Part of that may be due to a gradually shifting userbase and behavior, but there are serious and sometimes scathing opinions of Cohen that wind their way into the conversation often enough that it feels worthy of note. Of the more common complaints is simply that he was not that great of a writer, certainly not enough to replace Hussie in the midst of a project that absolutely required the original author’s attention and effort. More acerbic comments suggest that Cohen inappropriately allowed his personal biases to negatively affect his work, especially in the design of characters and how they interacted with each other (details on this are complicated and more involved with specific lore than not, so I will not elaborate on this here3 ).
All of this makes me wonder why we keep messages from Cohen pinned in the server. It feels like with the categorically unpleasant nature of our association with him, we would see fit to remove such traces of our interactions. After some thought the most positive spin I can put on it is that it provides a layer of transparency, but Toast also helpfully explained that it gives something of a sense of “legitimacy.” I think I know what he means, but it sounds a little silly to be honest.
In fairness to Cohen, it’s not as if Hiveswap’s problems were solely his fault. As is important to remember, 1011686 pointed out: “there was a post rj made back in 2016 on 4chan, that the hiveswap team had run into a lot of difficulties that werent their fault, more than anyone knew.” With every piece of information that comes out or is known to us, it seems that Hiveswap was really just doomed from the start. Sometimes I doubt that even Hussie’s continued presence would have saved it; laying all of the blame at Cohen’s feet is simply incorrect.
I would cover more but it seems that mspa-lit has turned to discussing slurs again. These conversations can be interesting, but they are also largely circular and increasingly I get tired of seeing the same talking points brought out over and over again. The phrase “man with half the facts debates man with none of the facts” seems particularly apt at this point; at every bent in the conversation someone has a limited knowledge of the topic that probably does more to mislead than inform, while everyone else doesn’t know enough to contribute effectively. It’s a tiresome cycle so I think I’ll refrain from getting involved.
Nothing more for today.
13th of February
When I looked in mspa-lit in the middle of the day, something highly unusual was waiting for me: I noticed that a game of Truth or Dare had been in progress for some time. There are a couple of features that I want to highlight specifically about this, because it provides some insight into how the various people in the community kind of exist around each other.
Tensei and Nights start it with actually interesting/funny dares, specifically with Tensei daring to delete a gif of creatures from the movie Krampus that Nights finds terrifying. Nights followed up with a nice exchange:
Both rather innocuous dares, but they seemed somehow appropriate for each of the persons involved. Then, even though they kind of tangentially discussed the idea of Truth or Dare, they left it at that: Tensei said, “i dare us all to stop playing this dumb game,” and made it overtly clear that his starting the occasion was nothing but a brief joke.
A second group saw this example and wanted to participate themselves. From what I can see: Andrew, Minish, Griever, Qweq, Reniclas, and maybe a couple others like Cookie were all attempting to figure out the rules of the game and play it in this haphazard online fashion. This later interaction felt entirely different from when Nights and Tensei did it though, for a few reasons.
First, Nights and Tensei both appreciated that engaging in a game of Truth or Dare online with each other was an inherently strange or even dumb idea; it was apparent that they each understood they were engaging on an ironic level because the activity would not really be appropriate in a genuine context. In contrast, the second group of people to do this were engaging in the game seriously, and it took on a very different tone. That lack of self-awareness by itself managed to radically alter the feeling of the channel.
Second, while Nights and Tensei disposed of the joke after only a few minutes or so, everyone else seemed to keep it going for over half an hour, or even longer. I don’t know exactly how long it persisted but there seemed to be some fixation on it even past its expiration date. This isn’t exactly an unusual behavior--we are well known to fixate on topics for hours at a time if it strikes our fancy--but I believe this factor is important for understanding what exactly separates the more savvy users in the channel from those who are less adept at participating socially. There is a clear distinction between those who tend to move on from subjects in due time, and those who will try to keep it alive long after it should have faded away.
Another thing to comment on is an evolution in the way Gnawms gets treated here. It’s been increasing in severity for the last several weeks, but even before it was a common enough occurrence to bant around with him and mock him for his interests. Though I never really understood this, it seemed as if there was some kind of stability in this relationship: Gnawms was free to post whatever he wanted within reason, and he would endure some particularly direct jokes.
This has taken a turn for the worse since at least the start of the year. Though mockery was in ready supply, he only very rarely used to get banned for it. Now it seems that he’s banned multiple times a week, and frustratingly I find myself the only one who’s willing to talk to him about it. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been asked, “What did I get banned for this time?” since February started.
I’m afraid that this is will only get worse. I’m not sure if there was a purposeful decision to get rid of Gnawms or if this is a more subconscious shift, but at this rate Gnawms will probably just decide to stay away. Perhaps that is even a goal with this behavior: getting someone to leave instead of banning them outright affords a level of plausible deniability that the outcome is what one wants to happen. However, it is a disingenuous and malign behavior. If this sort of thing is happening more commonly, then it will need to be spoken out against; it is a terrible precedent to set for treating users one is not fond of.
Nothing more for today.
16th of February
There was a relatively disturbing development today after a particular topic came up strictly by chance. Makin and Phantos were all talking about web domains: this is a topic that comes up with vague regularity, especially of interest to Makin because it can be used to maximize exposure to the subreddit and Discord server if utilized efficiently. The discussion usually revolves around how expensive certain types of websites are as compared to their effectiveness, such as com versus io domains.
Today the conversation took a somewhat dark turn as Phantos revealed information about websites he’s purchased and is holding onto. There was a brief window where links were posted that had information to do with dealings between him and folks from the Vast Error team, but it seems that only a couple people managed to catch on in time to click on them, Makin being one.
What he saw was apparently discussions between Phantos and people working on Vast Error that disturbed him enough to say “this is honestly ban worthy,” even calling it petty and gremlin-like. Phantos explained that he had come back to the HSD in order to talk with people from Vast Error about whatever was in the correspondence, but no one from VE had been around to speak with so he decided to stay. Now that the secret is (sort of) out in the open, he said: “I didn't come here for support, and I didn't advertise anything. / and I regret little. / I'll see u on my alt,” and he promptly left the server.
This prompted a long string of bewildered queries into what exactly happened. I had been paying attention almost the entire time, reread the backlog, and I’m STILL not aware of all the facts--though if I knew everything I’m sure there are details I would be obligated not to write down here. The overall point is that the ambiguous revelations are in such stark contrast to the generally sweet perception of Phantos that most of us are extremely confused.
All of this suggests some really morally grey underpinnings, and the fact that we don’t know everything has basically turned it into a mystery. However, Makin quickly asked for the conversation to come to a close. A few of us including myself were disgruntled with the lack of information, but there was a big push from people including LLF, Niklink, and anyone else who picked up on the tone to move on: they have appropriately pointed out that this is not really our business, and we should not dwell on the topic too much.
In keeping with that idea, I won’t discuss the particulars of the matter anymore here, even if I do find out what happened. The overall point of the matter is that Phantos is gone, and I think all of us who were present are reevaluating what we thought of him in the past. It’s been a strange day and none of us are quite enthusiastic about this development: a few are largely ignorant of the implications of his behavior and what they mean for Phantos as a person, instead just lamenting his disappearance once again. Those of us who were paying attention are more wary.
Nothing more for today.
17th of February - LOFAM Album Release: Cosmic Caretakers
After an extended absence, LOFAM has finally released a new album: Cosmic Caretakers. It’s been in the works for nearly two years now, hittings some problems along the way it seems, but nonetheless exciting for it. A community stream is being held to celebrate its release as usual, the first in months. It seems to be a welcome sight: over 150 people are attending the stream, which is a very good reception for an album all things said and done.
After a brief discussion with Cait, Bambosh, and another member named power464646, it seems that this album took so long to release due to what are essentially administrative difficulties. The project, originally being named “Rubric of the Guardians,” suffered a false start, in part due to some intense pushback on the name. Other difficulties involve people dropping out of the project, leading to subsequent delays.
This latter problem may be attributed to a general decline in the fanmusic scene. There really are no other major groups besides LOFAM and CANMT; while the source material is now updating, CANMT has made no serious efforts at music in a while if memory serves (if memory is incorrect on this matter, I’m sure that it will be corrected in short order4). Homestuck itself has been done for nearly three years, so it really shouldn’t be surprising that this is the state of things.
Strictly speaking, the steadily declining interest makes it even more remarkable that an album like this could be released at all. There are a plethora of individual artists making their own music scattered about the place--themselves an interesting sort--but in the modern era of the Homestuck fandom it is nothing short of incredible that a group of this size and talent exists, and that it is still working to make albums like Cosmic Caretakers.
The album itself is a true return to form for LOFAM: they have their organizational issues as does any large group like this, but the quality of their work is unquestionable. Every soundtrack and every piece of art to go with it has proven enjoyable for a hefty number of viewers. Though I’m no expert at either music or art, it is hard for me not to appreciate the sheer effort and talent that has gone into the album.
Seeing this stream happen in real time has reminded me of how much I enjoyed them. I’ve never really been an effective part of LOFAM or CANMT, but their presence is a wonderful thing for the community. It’s wonderful to see just how excited people can get for them; a significant part of the fandom’s lifeblood can be found in these fan projects, and to see that huge projects like this are still in the works goes a long way to tide us over. If we’re lucky then even more people become inspired to do similar projects themselves. The more the merrier, as they say.
Nothing more for today.
20th of February
For almost the entire day, mspa-lit has fallen prey to an old brand of shenanigans given new form. On April Fool’s Day last year, a bot was fed with dialogue taken from mspa-lit and set loose in its own channel, essentially forming uncanny copies of users that all endlessly churned out Markov chains. After that, I figured we had had enough of bot-generated dialogue, but today seems to have harbored its return.
Recently, OpenAI claimed to have created a conversation bot that was so good it was too dangerous to be released. Instead, they just made an opensource version available that has a significant (someone threw out the figure 20-fold) decrease in ability to assimilate dialogue and form complex sentences. Even this markedly reduced bot has proven to be rather intimidating, though.
Predictably, the opensource version ended up in mspa-lit. I’m not sure who was responsible for starting it--I believe user5 had been sending multiple generated samples for several hours--but eventually it subsumed the channel and became the object of attention for basically the entire day. The general result was surprise and even some alarm at just how accurate the bot could be. It did exhibit some obvious mistakes, but this was the version that was significantly downgraded; a few of us surmised that the full program could be virtually indistinguishable from a real person, prompting a discussion about the problems that such a thing presents.
At some point in the night, Griever left the server. We noticed this pretty quickly and it sparked some confusion, and a few such as Nostalgic were even a little upset. There seemed to have been no warning; Griever had been chatting amiably as always when he left. There was some of the usual questions: should we contact him and make sure he’s okay? Does he even want to be bothered? The ensuing discussion was of grave concern for those of us familiar with him.
Griever has been talking with some of the people from Homestuck Twitter. There isn’t much of a relationship between the HSD and Homestuck Twitter, but as has been put forth in this document a number of times now, what little interaction there is typically broadcasts negatively. It is not a far-fetched conclusion that Griever was influenced to leave during his discussions with people from Twitter (indeed, he mentioned that this was a factor in his choice, although not the sole reason for his departure).
When I asked him in DMs, Griever mentioned that he feels exhausted by the place, and that the population cycles too quickly for him to get really comfortable or familiar with anyone. This was admittedly a little hurtful to hear; though I agree the userbase has a moderate turnover rate, mspa-lit has typically been more stable than the rest of the server. He went on to say that he feels there’s too much negativity here, especially around Homestuck itself.
I didn’t ask him to come back unless he felt like it. There’s no point in making someone endure generally undesirable conditions for the few parts they happen to like. Griever mentioned that there are indeed people from the HSD he’s fond of, but ultimately he wants to try hanging out somewhere else. I don’t think any of us can reasonably begrudge him that, though we will certainly miss his presence.
Later in the night the topic turned towards a couple of things that have been cropping up more and more in recent months. The first and certainly more contentious of the evening was a revisit of slurs, especially when--if ever--it’s appropriate to use them. There were two solid camps in this discussion, the first saying that it was okay to use them in academic, clinical arguments, and the second insisted that it was not okay to use them in any context.
The main proponents for the first side were myself and Spiral mostly. Tera was highly resistant to this idea,and Oda was adamant that it was inappropriate, claiming he would cite articles on the topic to that effect (he eventually did this in DMs, although it factored little into the actual conversation in mspa-lit). Minish was originally of Oda’s persuasion, but after some argumentation he switched over to my and Spiral’s side. The mere fact that we changed someone’s mind in either direction is somewhat remarkable.
When it comes to topics like this, it’s far more common for everyone to dig in and not change their positions at all, unless a clear and unambiguous bevy of evidence is present. I felt kind of bad for Oda, as eventually it turned into a small dogpile. At the end of the discussion I felt obligated to remind everyone involved that, in the greater scheme of things, we’re pretty much on the same side: none of us feels like slurs should be administered with reckless abandon, especially not in ways that are denigrating (even WoC and Tensei agree with this, even though they use such words occasionally. That particular disagreement is about whether a word qualifies as a slur, which I’m beginning to doubt we will ever reach a consensus on). It is worthwhile to remember that at least most of us are reasonable people, and we are simply trying to reach a particular granularity with how we understand and define these things.
Thankfully this topic gave way eventually, though ironically to something that had the potential for much greater upset. At that point though in the early hours of the morning, it was discussed at great length with I believe no japes or jokes whatsoever. The topic of what dysphoria is and what it means for someone to have it is usually met with intense debate or even mockery, but this time the only people involved were those genuinely interested in learning about it.
Though I’m hardly an expert on the matter, I and a few other people versed in the subject were able to provide some quality information to the other members present, such as Nights. There was a lot of confusion surrounding the topic, but with our combined expertise and experience we were able to clear up misconceptions and misunderstandings. In all, it was actually an incredibly productive hour.
To me, mspa-lit is at its best when everyone present is swapping knowledge and helping each other explore the meaning of a given topic. There is nothing to be celebrated more than the earnest exchange of information with each other, be it culture or academic knowledge or anything really. Certainly, there are few things I prize so much as these moments of depth in our community.
Nothing more for today.
21st of February
There was a small but substantial change to the organization of channels. Last night, Makin asked about the previous time we moved #altgen down in the channel list. A cursory glance at entries from around that time frame suggests that I didn’t describe the incident, so just to be sure I will do so now. Back either before I became a mod or right around that time in January 2017, #altgen was near the bottom of the channel list.
The motive behind this was to instill a buffer between #altgen and #general, which is the first channel people see when they join the server. Makin was afraid that the reputation of the HSD would suffer, so he thought it was prudent to keep it hidden from view at least a little bit (an even more worthy concern back then than it is now). Over the course of the rest of the year, individuals and groups from the channel gnashed their teeth and querulously submitted complaints. When the Patreon was formed, Makin put a tier at $100 per month that claimed he would move #altgen back up in the channel list.
Eventually for whatever reason--probably due both to public outcry and the Patreon reaching the aforementioned goal--Makin did end up moving #altgen to near the top of the list. This quelled the lamentations of its members. Last night though, he asked about this incident, suggesting he wanted to move it back down. After doing what I could to confirm what happened last time, today he did just that: #altgen is now back at the very bottom of the main public channel list.
It’s worth pointing out that the last time this happened, channel groups did not exist yet. Now that they do, there is a slight difference: Makin created the category “Shitposts” and moved both #altgen and #botspam into it at the bottom. This latter move was probably inspired by the outbreak of an incredible amount of shitposting in #botspam once #altgen was moved (the average messages sent per day in #botspam is 200 or less. On this particular day, it was nearly 5,000).
While this was going on, Makin spontaneously created a new #hangout channel. This was not the archived channel brought back to life, but a completely unique one.With this in mind, his next actions were obvious: after a few minutes he deleted the new channel. Immediately after this he claimed he had made the channel “just so I could delete it again.” Some were amused, but those who have been asking for #hangout back were not pleased in the slighest.
This led to some serious talk in the mod channel to see if reinstatement of #hangout with the new channel organization might hurt or help the situation. To be clear, #hangout being archived has been an absolute boon for #general’s activity, and indeed the rest of the server if I’m being optimistic; under no realistic circumstances do I want it to come back. But with #altgen in the position it is now, I think it mitigates some of the confusion about what those three channels are for. Even now, people get confused easily about what each of them is for. With #altgen firmly placed in the “Shitpost” category, I feel like this removes the bias towards #hangout and #altgen that occurred when they were closer together, and that they could coexist without draining activity from #general like before.
This was largely ignored. A factor both for and against #hangout’s reinstatement is that it would appease perpetual whiners like AnionCation, who seem to bring up #hangout’s archival at every single opportunity. I feel like it would be a petty thing to give back (and I am shamelessly curious about how the new channel arrangement would affect the statistics), ultimately harmless. Others like WoC were fiercely opposed to any course of action that conceded ground to such individuals.
Another argument in favor of bringing it back is as a way to prevent congestion in #general (most servers have two general discussion channels so that multiple conversations can happen without crowding). As it is, though, we tabled the discussion after a short while. None of us are exactly eager to bring the channel back, at least not right now. In the future it may become a more likely prospect, but for now it remains very unlikely.
Nothing more for today.
23rd of February
Yesterday there was an interesting discussion about whether the various channels of the server are drawing enough activity. Specifically, #writing is what sparked this conversation. A number of users were saddened by the fact that the channel is fairly underused, which reminded me about why I had started to keep statistics on the server in the first place.
When #writing was created, Makin asked for someone to keep track of its daily usage to see if it was doing okay numbers wise. I had already decided to start keeping more extensive statistics before #writing was created, but the point is I now have a considerable amount of information at my disposal concerning the server’s activity.
All of this was put to use in today’s discussion: not only did I lay out how #writing is performing, but I managed to provide some brief analysis of the rest of the server. I already wrote at length about 2018 and the server’s past in the Related Materials, but now that a month and then some has passed in the new year I felt it was a ripe opportunity to give people an idea of the server population and activity.
Something I specifically pointed out to everyone (perhaps in too great of detail) is that I’m curious to see what happens to #altgen in its new position. My suspicion is that it will gradually slow down; #altgen leeches off of activity in #general, and the decrease in their proximity means that a downturn simply can’t be avoided. At this point it’s not a 100% certain thing, but the only question in my mind is to what extent it will decrease in activity.
A problem we’ve been running into with increasing amounts of dissatisfaction is liveblogging, specifically with poor standards. Minish spurred today’s iteration of the topic by stating that he had reached a particular episode in whatever show he was watching. Initially that was the only thing he said, which prompted us to ask why he would bother mentioning it if he wasn’t going to explain.
Tensei and I were admittedly a little aggressive, but we prompted Minish to offer more details. This launched a considerable discussion about what standards we really should have for liveblogging. I remember some older debates we’ve had on this particular issue, and I made sure to announce the logical conclusion of those conversations: “liveblogging should always be accompanied with thoughts on the matter and reasoning for those thoughts; otherwise, don’t bring it up at all.” Somehow this was not a sufficient explanation for a few people present.
Gitaxian and LLF both fought with Tensei over this definition for a while while I watched. I was not particularly interested in getting involved, having been through this topic a number of times already. I must admit that an old habit of LLF’s has been coming out again recently: he tends to nitpick extremely trivial points of discussion, such as pursuing semantics. We’ve gotten better at calling him out on this behavior, but I can tell it annoys him whenever we do. Gitaxian is less bad about this, but he seems to possess some really atypical opinions on a wide variety of subjects.
Their cyclical arguments proved to be meaningless, anyway. Minish had accepted what Tensei and I told him in good faith, and he had long-since provided details on what he felt and why about his show. This was more than enough to mollify me, and so the rehashing of liveblogging question was more of an annoyance than anything. Sometimes I am extremely weary of how often we retread certain topics here, although I think it always bothers me more when it’s just two groups disagreeing with each other as some sort of knee jerk impulse.
The reread seems to have slowed down a little since it started, but it is still going strong all things considered. The commentary extension has been praised by many; even the little additions that Makin and us helpers have supplied are proving palatable to people. A significant part of the extension, which has been discussed a few times now, is Makin pointing out when pages of Homestuck used to have contributions from Bill Bolin.
As a quick reminder, Bill Bolin was a member of the music team who, in a manner of speaking, threw a tantrum after disagreement with Hussie, producing a long-winded rant that has spawned a number of standing community memes (I cannot remember the number of times “PROFESSIONALISM” has been said in chat, but it is almost certainly too many). After this legendary encounter, Hussie completely scrubbed the webcomic of all traces of Bolin’s work, except for one or two musical motifs in places; the songs that were removed have been replaced with other works.
This proved to be upsetting to fans of the comic that were around for the original music. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a dichotomy between old fans and those who only ever heard the new pieces, in terms of who prefers which. Generally speaking, those who were around before are fiercely defensive of the Bolin music, but those who came after are ambivalent on the matter or even prefer the new songs.
Makin predictably tried to turn this into a matter of taste, putting some fine hypocrisy on display. In his words, “people saying bolin being lost wasn't awful for the comic are just sour grapesing hard / or just nostalgiaing.” I have no doubt that he genuinely prefers the old music, but after listening to it myself it doesn’t sound as great as he makes it out to be; I would not hesitate to say he’s suffering from nostalgia as well.
That having been said, I’m sure it was different if one was actually around for it. Regardless of which version I or anyone else prefers, I think that the commentary extension making it possible to find and listen to the original music is a wonderful thing. It also leads one to question what might have been different about the comic if Bolin hadn’t completely lost his shit all over everything. We will never know at this point.
Nothing more for today.
26th of February
There were some discussions last night about the reaching impact of the reread: Toast and Makin both claim that they’ve seen various communities outside of the subreddit discussing the event. Toast claimed that he “saw some discussion of it on 4chan,” and Makin went on: “random discords, a lot of twitter users, some randos on tumblr / it's all positive / I'm glad we're carrying the fandom through these dark times.” Though there’s no real way to quantify how many people are involved, the fact that it’s been noted on so many different platforms is exciting.
I’ve also noted a pervasive increase in the amount of fan content that’s being made, as well as renewed interest in projects both complete and in progress. Nights’ art is a good example, with most of their posts easily receiving hundreds of retweets on Twitter and upvotes on the subreddit. Other artists such as Tipsy have commented that they want to get back into illustrations, which most of us agree is highly desirable; such people have variously contributed their own pieces in this relative frenzy.
On the HSD in particular we’ve been discussing and even playing Homestuck-centric games, like a couple of extensive mods for Minecraft. Just recently there was a post stickied on the subreddit about The Genesis Project, a Homestuck game which received a substantial update recently hoping to draw new players; like the Overseer Project, it is an ambitious and increasingly impressive rendering of the webcomic (though it is being developed at a very slow pace). Perhaps someday it will attract more significant attention.
I was watching #general and the other channels tonight and I saw an errant comment that struck me. It was kind of silly, but it referred to what we’re going through as “The Homestuck Renaissance.” There has been talk about such a thing before, especially when Hiveswap still seemed exciting. Yet, with all of the energy around now and all this content the community is coming up with, I must admit: it’s starting to actually feel like a renaissance.
Nothing more for today.
27th of February - Third Anniversary of the HSD
Today marks the completion of the third year since the server was created. It’s hard to believe the place has been around this long; even harder to believe is just how different it is now from way back then. I think it’s safe to say that the server is completely unrecognizable. It’s honestly hard to recognize from even just one year ago, let alone three.
In all, it was a rather muted day given the occasion. Not a lot really happened, although a thread on the subreddit and an announcement were made. To celebrate, Makin gave away random Steam keys for people to claim. Mostly, as I’m doing here, there was a lot of reflection on how long we’ve been around and what we’ve been through, or accomplished. For me, it was another opportunity for me to think about what this place will look like in another year, or several years.
The community nowadays feels completely different, especially with #hangout gone and the channels variously moved around. It becomes increasingly hard to remember what things looked like in the past; I don’t even recall when the channel category system was put in place, although I’m sure it was last year. Discord’s developers being attentive and active means that it is almost always turbulent in one way or another.
At this point I’m sure it’s just me trying to make more work for myself, but another project I want to pursue is assembling a record of the changes that have been made to the server’s structure over the years. Considering the lengthy list of archived channels (now almost forty in number somehow, goodness gracious), an exhaustive changelog would almost certainly be impossible, or at the very least mind numbing. It would be easier to implement such a thing starting from the creation of the Shitpost category, but before that it would probably just be a yearly snapshot or log of what people remember. Whatever happens, it will have to be dealt with later.
I find it interesting to think that the current mod team has been almost the exact same for over a year now, since the Rapture last year. There has been scattered talk, from Makin himself and otherwise, about when the next Reckoning might happen. As with last time, it seems evident to anyone who cares that it’s not really necessary at the moment. The server has no overarching organizational problems and is generally free of actual problems. Then again, if and when the next Reckoning happens it will likely be from the inscrutable exhortation of Makin’s soul rather than any real problem.
All of this is just food for the pensive, though. Today has been pretty relaxed and everyone feels at least mildly positive. Really, while it hasn’t been insanely active to the degree I would find more entertaining, things have generally been without severe incident or harm. It has been a good time for us in the last year, and there is the promise of more things to happen in the one coming up. Though it is more gentle than before, I still feel optimistic about the future. I hope that’s true for everyone else as well.
Nothing more for today.
28th of February
As I mentioned in a recent entry, the reread seems to be going well. Activity has approached a certain level of consistency which is pleasantly more than I expected. More expected was the fact that it has fostered substantially increased interest in Homestuck in the server, and indeed in the entire fandom.
Discussions about the webcomic are more rampant than ever in the dedicated reread channel and mspa-lit. These conversations are rife with people observing things that they somehow missed in previous reads--no one has been exempt from this, with almost everyone I can think of expressing some minute detail that escaped them before. Bits of dialogue that were skimmed over or forgotten are resurfacing, and in-jokes long since abandoned are cropping up again.
New content has appeared on the subreddit in what can be described as a relative flood; the quality is of course questionable in many cases--one shitpost in particular drawing more ire than usual from Homestuck Twitter. We were actually somewhat amused when we found out about this. Gitaxian noted, “That one definitely deserves to be purged from reality but probably not for the reasons it's being called out,” to which Makin responded, “it's just bad / I know I downvoted it.”
As might be expected from controversy at this point, the negative attention actually draws more people to us, which completely defeats the intentions of whoever tried to make a big deal out of it in the first place. The quantity of posts and how much attention they’re getting just seems greater than before the reread started. Despite our sort-of-not-really feud with Homestuck Twitter, they seem to be enjoying the reread themselves, as well as a multitude of smaller groups with no real affiliation. As I mentioned in a previous entry, this is being deemed a renaissance of sorts. It is indisputably a time for excitement.
Though, it should be pointed out that there are still those around who remember the forums in great detail, and sometimes I’m sure this all must be paltry to them. Makin and Niklink exhibited a very particular interaction today that I feel is worthy of recording mentioning. Niklink beat Makin to making a reference to people from the forums5, to which he responded:
By itself this is somewhat innocuous, but it invited some more details that I found rather interesting.
The latter statement is not quite true of course; Niklink immediately mentioned that there are a number of people from the forums who are still around: “then you look them up and they're working on acapella covers of things / shameful, really.” This by itself did not strike so much as what he said immediately after: “ don't remind me about the fucking forums / it's like how star wars fans would feel if they deleted the original theatrical release of episode 4,” a comparison that helped to underscore the scale of the impact that the forums’ disappearance had on the fandom.
With each interaction like this I witness, it makes it more clear to me just what I and others like myself have missed. I used to think that the difference between now and then could not be as great as people insist. Now I’m afraid all I can do is lament that I will most likely never see anything in this fandom quite like the forums, excepting a miracle of some sort.
Such things remind many of us of Viz’s part to play in everything. There was some hope in the beginning that their involvement would accompany some nice quality of life changes if nothing else; the transfer to the new website was an exciting development, but so much time later their promises to convert all of the flash pages over to HTML5 in order to preserve their functionality has gone unfulfilled.
Though not a promise on their part, there was similar hope that they might reestablish the MSPA forums; such a pivotal piece of the fandom was surely at the forefront of general requests to Viz when the transfer occurred. Yet, with each passing day it seems less and less likely that the forums will be restored. There is little room for positivity in this regard; so much potential has been wasted, and such a large piece of the fandom is likely gone forever.
In the end, all we can do is persist as we have been doing for literal years now. It’s strange to think that the comic has been done for nearly three years, and was started nearly a decade ago. I spin my wheels about this often, but it’s hard not to pontificate on the matter: how much more will the fandom change in the upcoming years? How long can we last, exactly? It gives me heart to think that people who chat regularly now have been around literally since before the comic began; the caveat, then, is it just means for them the clock has been ticking much longer than the rest of us.
The night continued on, and we eventually started describing other old internet places, such as a Flash game repository called Flashpoint (as well as a host of others, like Arcade Town). This conversational bent helped me come to the realization that: “everyone who frequents this place is like / a survivor of old to mid internet phenomena,” with significant portions of our time and nostalgia spent on websites that are either defunct or not even existent anymore.
I imagine that the nature of the webcomic we all read plays some part in that; I think it attracts a particular mindset, especially those that have used the internet habitually since they were young. It’s not really surprising to me that so many of us have this sort of strong, collective memory of old websites. It’s becoming increasingly hard to remember places from Web 1.0, but I’m sure that the early to mid 2000’s had a powerful formative effect on nearly every person here. It’s just one of the many common threads that one can find pervading the server.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 YEAH HIDE YOUR MISTAKE YOU COWARD
HERE'S THE TRUTH DREW WON'T TELL YOU: he originally was wrong about this
2 this was despite my posting the time literally everywhere
3 I will! Cohen describing a random character as "troll jewish" was hilariously meaningless and a little insulting, especially when we met the character in friendsim and the fact seemed to have been quietly retconned out after his exit. He's done worse stuff, but it's mostly along those lines. It's worth mentioning it's not just us, or even just the fandom, his reputation has fallen steadily overall.
4 :smugitisamystery:
5 this entire section is funnier when I tell you the joke was completely irrelevant to the forums, it was just about obscure music team members BurnedKirby and xerxes33, the forums only came up because of the music team thread there naturally had a lot of people who would get it. the fact drew just assumed it was Weird Forum Shit is really funny