Drew Linky
3rd of July
SS413 went up yesterday and has been as successful as we hoped, if not more. The population at its greatest has been over 20, which exceeded what we had last time. I think it helps that the community in general is larger than it was before, both on the Discord and the subreddit. Because of this and better advertising perhaps, we’re getting a nice cabal of people in.
As might be expected there’s a hefty number of newcomers who have no idea what’s going on, but we have our robust individuals as well. Carlarc, Trickster, Tensei, Misha, Dap, and Putnam are all already adept at this game, and the latter two are the only ones who are afraid to absolutely thrash ass if the opportunity arises. Carlarc in particular is so strong with this game that he’s already been banned from any leadership roles such as captain, because he finds ways to make it an absolutely torturous experience for new players.
As it is, it’s wonderful to see the game come back. A few of the skills I picked up last time are still there, and it feels like it’s been easier to learn what to do and how this time around. It’s still rough dealing with experienced people, but Dap and Putnam are completely willing to share their expertise with anyone who asks (assuming it’s not an asinine question).
Putnam in particular deserves some significant praise for working to get the server up. I don’t know for sure but Makin has implied that he’s paying Putnam to get things working (not to mention being the primary admin this time around), and she has already dumped several hours into this project to make it happen. Makin has been no slouch either of course; between the two of them, it was only a matter of time before the server was functional.
That having been said, the server likely won’t be up for more than a month. Paying $720 is absolutely ridiculous, even just once. Twice would be a miracle, to the point that it would almost feel unethical using it. The Minecraft server is completely down at this point, and I’ve offered to bring the money I was using for that over for the SS13 server, assuming people keep using it. We’ll have to see how long its popularity endures.
Nothing more for today.
4th of July
American Independence Day being one of my favorite holidays, I was actually kind of unhappy today for personal reasons. The HSD proved to be a very good distraction for a couple of reasons. As is firm tradition at this point, WoC was given reign over his own channel (#usa-usa-usa) and a number of individuals--including most mods--changed their names to famous American figures such as past presidents.
Last year I feel that the channel received more attention than it did this time around. I feel as if there’s a significant lack of patriotism this year, which might be due to some of the political influences we’re witnessing in the states. It’s hard to dredge up much motivation for celebrating the country when most of the people involved don’t support its leaders. As WoC is fond of pointing out though, there’s a difference between governance and culture. It was good to express some joy for America despite all that’s happening.
More effective than this, though was that I ended up playing SS13 with people from the HSD for a vast majority of the day. This was quite effective at raising my spirits, and I came away with a heightened appreciation for everyone here. The game is a very good distraction from real life problems, with its own collection of increasingly bizarre problems. Its difficulty adds to this in some regard, as well; it’s satisfying to acquire a new skill and be able to figure out problems that arise.
There have been no shortage of humorous incidents in the game this time around, which I was looking forward to enormously. Indeed, I feel I’m even more prone to them this time around for whatever reason. The complexity of the interface and the sheer number of things you can do lends itself to this: while trying to conduct an appendectomy on Barry, I accidentally shoved two entire bedsheets up his ass. After the surgery was over I wordlessly retrieved them and we never acknowledged this in-game again.
Unfortunately, the game is not without its conflicts too. I mentioned that Carlarc has been banned from leadership positions because he’s prone to making the game hell for newcomers, and Misha has similarly been yelled at today for being too skilled, or “robust.” There was some confusion where it was implied Misha had been breaking in to the captain’s office every game to steal high quality equipment, which led to an altercation where someone got thrown in jail and the real captain was injured somehow.
Misha rebuffed by saying that he had only done it every once in a while as circumstances saw fit, which is fine for a game like SS13. Putnam is afraid of the server becoming unfriendly towards new players or people in general, and she doesn’t want these sorts of shenanigans to become commonplace. Misha grew aggravated and said that if the game was going to be reduced to an unfun pile of strict rules, he would no longer be playing.
We’re already at a shortage of actually good players, and losing one is not something I care for. I was extremely tired at this point and didn’t want to step in to defuse the situation, but Misha continues to prove himself reasonable: he said that threatening to quit was just a momentary vent, and that realistically he wasn’t going to stop. This sort of behavior is almost too gracious compared with some of what I’ve had to deal with over the last couple of years--it’s a huge relief when I don’t have to coddle people at all.
Nothing more for today.
5th of July
I forgot to comment on an issue yesterday: after a litany of problems, Makin finally pushed the whopper button and decided today that altgen bans no longer exist. Instead, if one gets banned from altgen, they are deemed unable to properly interact with anyone on the server. Depending on the nature of the offense, an altgen ban will instead be a temp ban from every channel or a complete full ban.
Makin had been mulling this over already near the end of June, and probably a few times before then even. I’m not sure what exactly spurred him to finally enact the idea, although it was probably the hundredth instance of talking about old altgen regulars who had been banned for various repulsive behaviors.
This decision coinciding with Independence Day was not lost on him (even going so far as to lampshade it in announcements: “ironic that this would happen on the international day of FREEDOM...........”). After the information went out though, I don’t think any of us paid it another thought--for myself, I almost immediately forgot about the decision in about five seconds. Today though, we may have already witnessed some of its effects.
As a small aside, I’m pleased to say that the server’s statistics continue to elude me even after nearly a year of tracking them on a daily basis. Why is this a good thing, one asks? Simply speaking, things are more interesting when you haven’t quite figured them out yet1. I’ve remarked a number of times about how certain trends suggest this or that, but at this point I doubt that any of my predictions have truly been accurate.
Following this, I haven’t really nailed down any sort of pattern for the activity of the main channels (or the smaller ones, for that matter). I thought that the three biggest channels were seeing diminished activity and spreading it out to others, but that proved to be a short-lived phenomenon. Instead, the numbers show that #general has become gradually more active for the last few weeks, surpassing 12,000 messages today.
Conversely, #altgen has been gradually decreasing in activity, falling below 1,000 messages today for the first time since the 24th of May 2017. This has been going on for a week now--too short for any sort of predictable trend, but too long to be random either. Returning to the original topic, one thing can be suggested: the new altgen ban policy will probably widen that gap even further.
Participating in altgen is now the equivalent of putting all of your eggs in one basket with a ton of holes in it. Normally a user must acquire three bans in separate channels in order to get banned from the server for minor offenses, but now it can be done with one only. This is a severe deterrent from hanging out in that particular channel, naturally; all of the would-be shitters are now hanging out in #general, the closest alternative to their typical environment that’s regularly active.
Reti and Wadapan indicated that the increase in activity today was also partially due to some insane levels of voice activity, so it’s inappropriate to paint this in a simple light. Realistically there was a confluence of factors at play. All of this, though, is to say that there are still surprises and things to be gleaned about how the server and its people work. However, I guess I should admit that there’s only so many ways to say these things before it becomes monotonous.
Nothing more for today.
6th of July
Today has been a little rough. First to comment on is that Kople was banned following an altercation involving Nat. As has been explained a number of times in the past, Nat is the subject of many complaints. There are numerous occasions where I have been approached by someone who is unhappy with how Nat conducts herself in the channels she moderates. I have been variously moved by these complaints: sometimes Nat genuinely deserves to be chastised for being too harsh with people, and other times it’s just an overreaction on the part of the user.
This occasion definitely falls under the latter category, if not worse. Kople has actually been something of a problem user for a long time, probably about as long as I’ve been around. He is something of a chronic troublemaker (including an extensive history of getting in people’s faces including mods, and even harassing other users on occasion). It has been tiresome dealing with him, but this incident proved to be the brick that broke the camel’s back.
After cross-referencing what happened between Valkyrie (the person Kople complained to first), Nat, and Kople himself, it was swiftly determined that Kople was manipulating his story to make Nat look far worse than she actually was. Some parts of his explanation were outright fabrications. This is the sort of thing that we are loathe to put up with, so we decided to drop the axe. It’s been a long time coming unfortunately, but Kople was banned for lying to mods to get one of us in trouble, on top of all of his previous issues.
Similarly but separately, Archiewhite was also banned. His offense was ostensibly lesser but was kind of bad in aggregate: he’s been spoiling WTC even though Tipsy and others are actively reading it and liveblogging it in chat. Normally this wouldn’t really be a problem, but Tipsy is almost clinically unable to stop herself from clicking on spoilers, so the consensus is that we can’t even hide our discussion when she’s around.
Instead, when new people are discussing WTC and especially Tipsy is around, we speak only in oblique references. Thankfully she’s almost caught up so this will no longer be a problem, but until that moment this has actually been a rather persistent issue. Kind of like Archie, tmtm was actually channel-banned for about three days because she was repeatedly teasing WTC spoilers in conjunction with crappy jokes. Makin didn’t cotton to this shit at all and canned her, after which it seems she’s finally learned her lesson.
Losing two historied regulars in one day is kind of intense, but both of these people were somewhat problematic. Archiewhite in particular was vociferously anti-Makin, to the point of near-fanaticism. Obviously I’m fine with speaking up against his more inane bullshit, but I don’t use misleading rhetoric or resort to ad hominem. Archie’s brand of opposition was pretty distasteful, and as much as it pains me to admit it, it’s probably for the best that he’s gone. Maybe he’ll come back given that what he did to get banned wasn’t all that bad, but we’ll see what happens.
For something completely different, I’ve been spending the last few weeks on a project to revamp this document and make it more accessible. I’m pleased to say that drewlinky.com is now up and running, and it’s designed in a much more palatable way than the Google document I’ve been using for over a year (although you know this already, since this particular instance of the page is in fact on the website. Hope you like the site!). The style specifically emulates the Discord interface (using dark mode so as to be easier on the eyes), and the Sydlexia portion has been rendered suitably as well. It was a lot of work, but hopefully this will further ensure the longevity of all of this information.
Nothing more for today.
25th of July
We’ve had a rather disturbing development that I feel must be touched upon. Close to the beginning of this document I described an individual named Twonks, who was banned after some unsavory behavior that I have trouble recalling at this point in time. There was a lot of emotional tantrums/manipulation going on, and it was determined that she should never be let back into the HSD. I found this a rather permanent and unfortunate sentence, but such is what it was.
As the last couple of years went by I would occasionally talk with Twonks about various things, not thinking much about the initial outburst that led to her removal from the community. Some of the things she said struck me as odd, but I didn’t talk to her often enough to put much thought into it. Then, today things changed with the release of a document curated by Red and Anervaria.
Said document contains incontrovertible evidence to the conclusion that Twonks has engaged sexually with people much younger than herself, especially in more private places like the Microscope server that I have described elsewhere in this document. This has been labeled as pedophilia due to a more or less consistent trend of this behavior even after Twonks became a legal adult. There has been a scramble to disassociate with her, and most who are even remotely involved have taken steps to disavow themselves of her presence.
After serious consideration I have elected not to link to the document in question, due to a lack of modern relevance to the HSD and especially what some could argue is overt hostility towards its subject. If my word is worth anything in this matter though, let it be said that the document was well-researched and certainly convincing. No one has posited any reasons or evidence to disbelieve its contents, and so we set about trying to figure out what, if anything, must be done about it.
The document describes various people who are sympathetic to Twonks. It may be more accurate/graceful to describe these people as merely misguided, and thus defensive. Among people for whom the document is taken as granted, this behavior is viewed as aberrant. The HSD staff is less imminently concerned about it except to ensure that our userbase is safe: we have a lot of minors and generally impressionable people, so even on mere threat of something like this we take it extremely seriously. Pedophiles are not to be trifled with, and we’re quick to remove them with extreme prejudice.
All of it is extremely upsetting. While I obviously agree it’s prudent to remove individuals who continue to excuse the actions of a child predator, turning the ordeal into a mockery is beyond my acceptance. I was messaged by TSmae, who apparently was unable to excise Twonks from her life after this information came out (edit as of 8/21/2020: TSmae wishes to make it known that she was operating under significant duress, including threats against her including suicide; given time and thought, she understands that her actions were inappropriate and she has put considerable effort into distancing herself from Twonks). For the rest in the mod team this was enough to warrant a ban (especially Makin, who was understandably--but uncharacteristically--angry about the excuse-making). However, it became something of a hot potato in dealing with TS, and I was specifically upset at taking the proceedings and turning it into a circus.
The rest of the details for this situation are basically unimportant. I don’t want to linger on it or overexplain; to be sure, I kind of want to put this drama behind us as fast as possible. It is important to record as a sort of follow-up to a member of the community from long ago, but it does not justify more comment than this. The situation has been thoroughly handled and with luck it will be the last we have to suffer of anything like this.
To change the topic, we had something interesting occur when a user named Alset came on to the server with a temporary new account. Alset, as a refresher, was the subject of a strange incident in #altgen when they were temporarily server banned and managed to incite a small riot around freeing them. The “free Alset” campaign was successful (whether through their action or by simply waiting out the timer, I don’t remember), and Alset was permitted back as a smallish figure of importance to the channel. All this time later, people remember the incident with fondness.
For some reason, in the mod team this incident made it so that Alset’s name causes us to think they were permanently banned, and that they’re trying to skirt it by coming back with an alt. We always have to remind ourselves what exactly happened, which has become something of a nuisance. However, this particular time was marked by a peculiarity: Alset’s new account was not able to speak in the server at all.
For anyone reading through this document, I don’t think I need to elaborate again on the bot attacks we’ve been suffering lately. Makin did change the server’s security settings so that users require a role or to verify their account by phone in order to talk or DM users sharing the server. We were under the impression that our color role system would make it possible for new users to gain a color and thus be allowed to talk with little issue.
After conferring with Alset on the matter for a little, we determined that this is not the case. No one without a verified account can click on the color roles in #welcome, and thus are unable to speak until they verify their Discord account by phone. This is obviously a problem because it depresses user retention, especially new ones who might have made an account specifically to join the HSD. I posited in the mod chat that we need to find an alternative system immediately.
WoC and I brought up a system that we’ve seen in place on other servers: we’ve both seen setups where the #welcome channel is the only one that people can talk in or see, and they must submit a bot command (such as “!agree”) which shows their acceptance of the rules or whatever terms the server has. The bot thus registers this command and gives them a simple user role that opens up the rest of the server to them. This all seemed like an efficient and effective way to get rid of the bot menace while still getting new people to be able to talk.
However, we realized that this wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem, being that bots would be allowed to talk and DM other users upon joining. Further, Makin shot the idea down: he suggests that the extra level of protection from requiring a phone is valuable. I fear that this might be preventing some newcomers from being able to participate, as we have some users (including Valkyrie apparently) who don’t even possess a phone. However, it’s hard to gauge exactly how widespread this might be. For now, a better system eludes us.
Nothing more for today.
29th of July
It’s 2:36 AM and for the last half hour or so we’ve been putting Moonjail through a conversational meatgrinder. For no real reason I brought up Game Grumps a while ago, which led to us all discussing Let’s Play channels in general, such as Super Best Friends Play, Oneyplays, Yogscast, and others. The reason I mention Moonjail in particular is because they professed some pretty unconventional views and turned themselves into a punching bag.
It started with the topic I mentioned, being Let’s Play channels. Most people present inherently understand the entertainment value of these: they are often called “friendship simulators,” where the attraction is just in listening to a few people talk with each other whilst playing a game. It’s also common for those like Makin or Tensei to mock people for enjoying them, but we variously ignore such remarks.
Moonjail didn’t seem to understand this idea though. They asked for clarification on why people like Let’s Play channels, insisting that there must be a larger reason why people enjoy such content. To their credit, they quickly backed off when they realized that there WAS no larger reason than the dynamic between the people on the show: “... if that's as deep as the reason for liking it goes, i guess i just don't like it, which is fine.” It’s refreshing to witness someone who’s able to process new information without too much issue, and it certainly proved a useful skill throughout the rest of the night.
The next topic to come up was about socialization, starting with the notion of sharing videos with other people, and wherein the idea of group chats came up. Moonjail again said something we all found rather weird, stating unequivocally: “>groupchat / these don't actually exist / i'm like 90% sure.” This was the beginning of the end, as everyone immediately snapped to attention. The shift was so abrupt that I think it was mildly shocking to everyone present--suddenly everyone was clowning on Moonjail without mercy, and this continued for quite some time.
This behavior actually became a little too extreme, speaking personally. Though I’m guilty of participating in it myself, now that it’s over and done with I think it’s safe to say that we were too abrasive. WoC in particular, with his usual flare, was trenchant on the matter: “none of your friends value you / i hate to break it to you,” which I found too acerbic. I called him out on this, although little else could be done about it realistically.
The conversation proceeded in this manner (albeit a little more mildly from most involved) for about 20 minutes, at which point Moonjail mentioned that they were genuinely upset at the idea that their social skills were so lacking. They seemed to be confused, which is only to be expected given the circumstances. I tried to spin the conversation into a positive thing: surely it was for the best that they understood these things now, as opposed to still being in the dark? I don’t know the extent to which this helped, but they did seem to return to their typical tone as the night went on.
I hope that Moonjail will take positive inspiration from all of this, as disconcerting as it might have been. Now, though, I can’t help but think of the rest of the HSD’s users: how many more of them are in a situation like this, where there’s a fairly common convention that they understand nothing about? In the age of the internet, it’s still surprisingly easy to separate yourself from the wider truth of a topic in favor of your own personal experience. It seems that there are plenty of difficulties left to untangle as per associating with others through this medium. Then again, I suppose this is just one specific incarnation of an issue that can happen in any part of society, not just the internet. Truly, growing up is hard. It’s hard and no one understands.
Nothing more for today.
30th of July
In the middle of the day, we received some interesting news from a Steam post: it seems that What Pumpkin has paired with another indie publisher named Fellow Traveler, splitting responsibilities of Hiveswap’s development. What Pumpkin will continue to develop the game proper, while Fellow Traveler will take on the more social aspects such as releasing newsposts.
We’re not exactly sure what to think of this development. As described in the post, Fellow Traveler has released some content that is actually liked by people, such as Orwell and Hacknet. That having been said, Fellow Traveler isn’t very well known to basically anyone; almost no one could remember the name until Hacknet was brought up.
We’re also wary of being tied to other parties, which is only understandable given history. Users Tomato-Sensei commented: “this is giving me bad vibes,” which Ephemerald followed up with: “the odder gentlemen.” Trust for other people handling any aspect of the property basically doesn’t exist, and I would go so far as to say that the lack of outburst is due more to apathy than anything else.
To this point, Misha was rather vocal: “nobody wants your trashfire of a game that took a decade to not be done for a niche community that is actively dwindling.” While his stance is far more aggressive, it still holds some truth for the rest of us. To many, this all seems to be too little, and certainly way too late. Our hesitance is not for lack of wanting new content though, we just can’t bring ourselves to be optimistic about it. After so much time of this nonsense, it’d actually be foolish to suspect Hiveswap Act 2 or whatever else will come out with no problems.
The announcement was associated with something that did manage to pique our interest: Fellow Traveler made its own Discord server and included the link in the newspost. It seems to be little more than a collection of channels dedicated to various games Fellow Traveler has published or made. There is a #homestuck channel there, which--due to their announcement--has been rapidly populated and is experiencing an absurd boom. Of note, there are already a variety of figures that have been banned from the HSD for a number of reasons. We’re not sure if we should warn the server's mods about such people, but it would probably be viewed as targeted so we’ll probably stay hands-off in this regard.
Another interesting note is that all Homestuck-related Steam products, namely Hiveswap Act 1 and the Friendsims, are now organized into a category on Steam called the “Homestuck Universe.” Looking at any of the properties like Hiveswap Act 1 or the Friendsims shows that it’s an official designation now. There are some conflicting things to take away from this: such information might have been exciting some time ago, but now attempts to create a “universe” where all of a publisher’s works take place is considered overdone; conversely, we’re stupid and the possibility of a wide array of new content is tantalizing to us.
Whatever actually ends up happening, today’s newspost brings a refreshing kernel of hope. It’s not often that we get news of any sort, and if this is to be believed then we’ll be receiving it more often as time goes by. After looking at the subreddit, there are some people who are bringing up some excellent points about Fellow Traveler’s quality as a group, suggesting that good things are waiting for us. I don’t think most of us necessarily trust them just yet, but as I’ve remarked often in the past, these developments are better than nothing.
Nothing more for today.
31st of July
I’m actually writing this entry way after the fact, but I was just informed about an event called SAHcon, or “Stuck At Home con.” This was an “online convention” run by a mix of people from Homestuck Twitter. This took place on June 22nd, and involved community members hosting panels online by streaming them for others to watch and comment on.
To be honest, I’m astonished that this all happened and I didn’t even hear about it once. I dimly remember Skyplayer saying she was hosting a panel at the time, but it was never overtly explained what or why. In fact, I remember joining that particular stream but wasn’t sure what it was about. Despite this, basically the entire HSD was rather quiet on the proceedings--Makin didn’t announce it or anything2. Anervaria mentions that they brought it up in #general a few times, but only to make fun of it apparently.
Looking at the event list, I’m not sure how I feel about it. The more I read, the less surprised I am that I didn’t know about it--these things all seem interesting enough, but they’re kind of disconnected from the HSD and its community for one reason or another. The only one that I would have loved to witness is Shadok’s Animation Panel, because his works are all a treat and he seems fun.
Conversely, there’s a panel literally called “Jax Does Homestuck: Gays and Girls” of which the description reads: “Jackie from Jax Does Homestuck discusses how everyone in Homestuck is gay and how absolutely fantastic all the girls are.” While I’m sure the actual content of the panel was interesting in its own right, this description would probably not have attracted a lot of people from here.
In short, learning about this so long after the fact is really weird. It feels like this should have been a bigger deal, even here, but I just wasn’t aware of it in the slightest. Interestingly, I was told by a friend that a few people on Twitter were angry that SAHcon hadn’t been mentioned in this document. This was rather bemusing; I’ve made it clear in three or four separate locations that if people think I’m missing information I should write about, they should contact me. Maybe I should try and spread that message a bit more.
There’s also some pronounced tension between various people who were involved with SAHcon and us, so I guess that doesn’t help in this particular instance.. It’s really cool that such an ambitious event was planned and held, but it’s unfortunate that there’s a rift in the fandom like this; I wonder what it might have been like if the brunt of the entire HSD had participated, instead of only a handful of people from here. If they have it again next year, maybe interest will grow.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 this is how he justifies studying biology to himself
2 I was worried of being accused of "raiding," AND THEN WE WERE ACCUSED ANYWAY