Drew Linky
5th of March
The situation with AnionCation in #general has reached a head. A plurality of mods have become upset with how she conducts herself, to the point that the last time she began stirring controversy we threatened to fully ban her for it if she does it again. That was a sufficient amount of time ago such that we had forgotten about the promise, but today served as a stark reminder of why we delivered it.
The last time this happened, AC was given a temporary #general ban and actually left the server while it was in effect. We hoped there wouldn’t be anymore altercations after this; her complaints were beginning to clutter the channel whenever she was online, and there were transparent attempts on her part to attract the support of other users in the channel (so-called “beta orbiters”). It all became rather difficult to keep track of and care about.
Speaking realistically, I haven’t put as much thought into how #general is managed for the last so many months. Between Spiral, Shitler, Nat, and Deus, there are more than enough eyes on the channel to keep it in line for most of the day. Spiral in particular has taken her position in #general very seriously though, and whenever AC begins stirring the pot it leads to some remarkable tension.
In keeping with my lack of attentiveness though, I’ve mostly been keeping myself uninvolved with the sort of drama that threads through the place. Various users and mods have complained about AC’s behavior, and though I remained kind of distant from it I could tell for a while that it was going to need to be dealt with. Today presented a different avenue for this to occur, though.
Spiral has been afraid that consistently bringing up the issue has afforded her some kind of bias. It served as a pretty stark reminder of my first year as a mod here, grappling with the same kind of thoughts. I was always afraid that what I was doing could be construed as some kind of conflict of interest, and I did my utmost to assist all parties. Seeing someone else go through this struggle has been like looking into a mirror, in a fashion.
After a few more complaints, I realized today that the problem with AnionCation was peaking once more and asked Spiral or anyone else who had opinions on the matter to voice them. Toast and I largely abstained from the process, being somewhat ambivalent ourselves, but four or five mods in total expressed their thoughts on the matter (“KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL,” WoC submitted in his usual fashion). Ifnar, apparently having met up with AC for New Year’s, did not expressly disapprove but was certainly not happy with the proceedings.
Spiral, being the representative mod on this issue, struggled to make a decision. She wasn’t sure if she was making the right decision by pursuing some sort of punishment; having been in her steps, I reassured her that she’s on the team for a reason and that we trust her judgment. In a way, it was nice to witness: Spiral managed to overcome her anxiety and exercised her authority, undoubtedly a small step forward in professional development.
From there, it was agreed that a #general ban was in order, especially given the thorough warning from the last time complaints arose. We were content to leave it at this, until it was brought up that AC had been publicly offering to send nude pictures to various people. This radically changed the nature of the conversation, although at first it didn’t really affect the decision: the change happened when Makin came online and noticed. In keeping with past encounters of a NSFW nature, the genban was converted to a full server ban without delay.
In effect, the AC problem has been closed forever. I’m sure that if I looked closer there was room to handle all of this in a different way; this situation’s end arrived somewhat abruptly, and I feel like there’s a chance it’ll lead to more problems in the future. In the meantime though, I think all of us are just a little too tired and busy to want to put up with it further. When you’ve been helping keep the HSD in line for so long, you feel less and less inclined to deal with the minutiae these situations throw at you. Still, I hope that nothing terribly disruptive erupts from this in the future.
Nothing more for today.
6th of March
There was an interesting conversation around noon today that I thought was worth mentioning. Makin started by posting some pretty inventive bait: he posted sheet music and asked if any of us could sight read it. A number of people like Interrobang were lost, but a few of us such as myself, Wadapan, and Reti figured out that it was the beginning to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” This is probably among the most creative ways we’ve been Rickrolled so far.
This predictably launched a discussion where people posted sheet music samples so that the rest of us could figure out what they were from. I ducked out of this before long, but a few of those presented were a little esoteric (Interrobang ended up posting “a jazz meme” where a Youtuber played a single common guitar sequence for 5 hours straight). Tensei posted a sample that turned out to be from Nyan Cat, which is what spurred the next topic of discussion.
After reacquainting ourselves with the actual video of Nyan Cat, we collectively realized that the meme will be eight years old in April. When you dissect the video, there really isn’t that much to talk about: it’s a catchy music loop overlayed on a short gif, and it plays in this fashion for over three and a half minutes. Yet despite this simplicity, Nyan Cat has been viewed hundreds of millions of times and is ubiquitously recognized as a feature of internet history.
This fostered an extensive discussion about the origin and existence of--by today’s standards--other old viral videos. Though it’s strictly only tangential to us, I felt there were many things that came up that are worth at least mentioning, so pardon if I spin my wheels for a while on this particular topic. Consider yourself warned: an unnecessarily long explanation follows that doesn’t strictly relate to the HSD in the here and now. Skip if you feel so inclined.
A significant example of older meme culture that comes to mind is the assorted MrWeebl content such as the primeval Badgers video (of which the original, to my astonishment, came out in 2003!) Slightly less ancient examples come in the form of Chocolate Rain and Charlie Bit My Finger (this having been seen nearly a billion times now), which are both around 12 years old at the time of writing.
Some of us found it rather strange to reflect on how the nature of internet humor has changed in the last two decades. Dap pointed out: “a lot of things were funny that aren't anymore / Like the original charlie the unicorn is weird to watch now,” and though a token few like Wadapan disagree with that particular notion, it generally holds true that they’re no longer enjoyable. Someone suggested that it was simply an effect of people growing older, although I suspect that the real explanation is somewhat more complex.
In order to figure out the truth, though, it requires one to answer two questions: the first is, would the same content released now perform as well as it did originally? and, would that reception be based more on the age of the viewer or was it because of how novel the content used to be? In the case of the latter question, I would argue that it’s dependent on both: something like Homestar Runner just wouldn’t be able to hold its own in the internet of today, regardless of who watches it.
Obviously I’m not an expert in these matters (I don’t even know of anyone who could reasonably claim themselves as such), but all of this 10 to 20 years old content is roughly traceable to stuff like YTMND, with low standards of production and exceedingly weird humor due to the relatively unworkable, new technology. At some point after 2010, though, there seemed to be a shift in broader internet culture.
I point to the Annoying Orange as one possible spot where this shift can be identified: the technology had improved enough to facilitate a new quality and brand of content, and to reach even the most impenetrable demographic. Simple brainworms like Nyan Cat were the product of a desire to create something fun and/or interesting with limited tools available. At some point though, we witnessed the rise of a sort of perverse material that I can only describe as clickbait. This is where the gradual gentrification of the internet began: it may not have started off as bad as it is now, but memes like the Annoying Orange laid the framework for where Youtube (and the broader internet) culture is in the modern day.
Looking back on all of this with the rest of mspa-lit has been an extremely weird experience: remembering things I hadn’t heard or thought of in several years was like recalling a hazy dream. It hardly made sense that we enjoyed it from our current perspectives, although Tensei correctly observed: “... its not that weird if youre in the middle of it / its basically like caveposting here.” His point is more than sensible: I wonder exactly how we’ll look back on everything we did in the HSD in ten years or so. Will it be with a sense of casual bewilderment or fond recollection? Perhaps both, if today’s conversation is any indication.
That having been said, this brief treatise has basically been outside the scope of the HSD, even if it extensively informs the baseline of our humor. When dealing with each other specifically, we tend to be a lot more self-referential than that; it’s only on rare occasions that we start extensively discussing viral videos in general. Naturally, we’re more inclined to talk about Homestuck memes and videos than more generally-associated internet culture.
As a small aside, something interesting we’ve noticed is that, no matter what Homestuck video we happen to link in chat, there is almost always a comment from Dingus on it. This has been proven with even the most obscure content: videos with only a handful of views share his presence, and it’s become just a little unnerving to notice. It’s impressive how far and deep the roots of this community can go; some members will very casually toss out how long they’ve been around, or we’ll stumble on some scrap of evidence thereof. It only serves to underscore the breadth and width of the fandom, at least back in its heyday.
Nothing more for today.
10th of March
We’ve come to a critical point in the Great Reread; we have hit almost the exact halfway point of Homestuck, both in terms of narrative and page count. The end of the fifth act is accompanied by a flash animation (two in fact) that is nearly 15 minutes long. Called “Cascade,” it is greater in quality and scope than any previous animations in the story, which is quite a feat given that most of them were already considered fantastic in their own right.
Makin has decided to put even more effort into this already prodigious event by hosting a brief community stream, to serve as a watching party for Cascade. Despite the short duration, there was a sizeable turnout of about 150 people at its height, and I’m reasonably assured that everyone had a wonderful time. For a solid hour before we began the flash animations, Makin set a number of old Homestuck fandom videos to play (as is tradition). Usually these are just the pre-show, so to speak, but this time I think people may have been paying more attention.
As far as this record is concerned, I’m conflicted as to how much of this to describe: the content in question is indisputably important as to the overall history of the fandom, as there are hundreds to possibly thousands of videos of content by fans alone that have contributed to our collective culture; however, by the same token these videos are naturally impermeable to anyone who is not strictly familiar with Homestuck, and thus I see little reason to describe them at length here.
Thankfully, I won’t really have to. Makin has been collecting content and information from the whole fandom, digging deep into places that might not have been touched in years. I believe he mentioned wanting to learn a new skill set, and has been pouring all of this information into an archive. From the few snapshots we’ve gotten so far, it looks like this could become one of the single biggest repositories for Homestuck knowledge in existence.
As a small reminder and aside, this document’s purpose has become broader in scope as time passes: principally I wanted and still want it to be accessible to people in general (at least to some extent), and of course the focus has mostly been one very specific, admittedly insular aspect of the fandom. Occasionally over the course of the last two years I have been inspired and occasionally forced to explain other facets of the fandom in tandem, but most of what I write is about our little group specifically, as a sort of microcosm of the Homestuck fandom--all of this is an effort to explain our workings to outsiders, people who may be completely unfamiliar with the nature of our community.
In contrast, what Makin’s putting together is intended more for people who are definitively fans: it is a collection and archive of raw sources for basically whatever fandom stuff he can find, such as fangames, cosplay tutorials, official art, and so on. While not only for Homestuck fans, it is certain that this information would be more useful for those who chance upon the comic some time in the future and (regrettably) at that point cannot get involved.
With luck, they will have access to or be able to find this resource Makin is putting together. If such is the case, then--while it will definitely not be the same as experiencing it in the moment--the spectre of the fandom can live on. Alongside our efforts is anyone else in the fandom who is collecting various pieces of information, such as the fellow on the subreddit who was collecting music. Between all of us I’m increasingly optimistic that the only substantial loss of the fandom will be the MSPA forums (as incredibly significant a loss though it may be).
This is also the latest development in what people have jokingly referred to as the “Makin redemption arc.” His reputation has been so thoroughly sullied for so long; many would argue that this is appropriate even to the current day, but the fandom at large has for one reason or another moved on from that history. I described this recently as well, but there are few people still active who could properly recite any of Makin’s past offenses; in the war of attrition, it seems that he was able to hold out the longest.
Regardless of long gone incidents, the effort Makin’s gone to recently has been striking. It hasn’t necessarily absolved him, but it explicitly showcases a side of him that counters less charitable perceptions. Outside of his dedication to the fandom, there was no real reason for him to organize the reread, or to maintain it as he does. There is just as little personal reason for him to assemble this archive. I’m sure one could still posit selfishness as his motive, that he’s doing it to ensure his status as an important figure of the fandom today. To that, all I can say is: he’s still doing the work that no one else is bothering to do.
Nothing more for today.
15th of March
Recently, LOFAM released a new album for the first time in a long while, and during that particular entry I commented that CANMT has been without their own music for a while. Coincidentally, CANMT was actually working on a new album and preparing it for release even as I was writing. Today, that album was released. It remains unnamed, but as usual a community stream was held to celebrate the occasion.
CANMT’s efforts have not gone to waste: as with the LOFAM album, the amount of talent and work that’s gone into the new album is completely evident. Everyone who watched--around 80 people or so--were significantly impressed by the quality. This is a little striking, considering the team’s origins as a literal joke.
Even better is that o, the author of Cool and New Web Comic, continues to use music from CANMT in his flashes. CANWC has truly returned to form over the last month; while updates are still less in frequency than they were before the intense hiatus, he has updated with enough regularity that excitement for the story is stirring again--especially in light of some recent developments that have people wondering what will happen next. It’s nice to see people engaged like this again.
My own excitement has been dampened somewhat by recent events, though. Nights contracted some sort of serious illness and was gone for about a week, but then he physically left the server on top of it. At first we weren’t sure if it was a side effect of his medication (which was making him overtly loopy) or if it was genuine, but further clarification, from him personally, indicates that it was intentional. He has accordingly become the latest in an increasing number of regulars who have suddenly left the server recently1 .
I’m always dismayed when people decide to leave, and with Nights in particular it’s really disheartening. This isn’t exactly new though: a chance glance at an entry from December of 2017 shows that this has happened before, and could probably happen again in the future. There’s no telling if Nights will be prompted to come back this time, but we seem to have run through cycles where he grows tired of the place and leaves for a while. It’s difficult in the meantime, but perhaps in the future we’ll see the entire cycle happen again.
Speaking broadly, it seems that mspa-lit has become a tad smaller. I was asked to do a comparison of the amount of conversation in mspa-lit, and after a brief analysis it seems that we’ve been talking about half as much as we did last year around this time. This trend does not hold for the server as a whole, which is about as active as it was last year, suggesting that mspa-lit in particular has been hit hard for some reason.
There are two perspectives to consider with this: a number of people are quick to blame Makin, whom I will agree is somewhat responsible. He has enacted policies that are clearly discriminatory towards newcomers, so his own position in this matter is impossible to ignore. I don’t think it’s the most important factor though: I think that it can be chalked up to there being less material for us to discuss.
I feel like there’s been less and less to write on as each day passes; I’ve already covered the basics and provided myriad examples of interaction in mspa-lit, and to a lesser extent the server as a whole. Thus, individual conversations aren’t very meaningful to record anymore. There are few if any fandom-wide events--the Great Reread being the only one that comes to mind. Andrew has described that he thinks the channel has entered into a period of quality over quantity, a sentiment that Makin highly agrees with.
To be clear, we still have a nice time talking with each other frequently, and I don’t want to enter another phase of doom and gloom. I am only trying to suggest that we are settling down somewhat. Something that bothers me immensely, though, is Makin’s flippant disregard for people who leave. His response the vast majority of the time is to say: “Who cares? Someone else will take their place.” This is said more often for places like #general than #mspa-lit, but it gives me pause whenever it comes up anyway. This sentiment will only be true up until it suddenly isn’t anymore.
Despite saying I didn’t want to enter another downcast episode, it seems I’ve done just that. I’m not going to waste energy or time exploring the possibilities of server death and signs that may lead to it; I’ve already accomplished that in a few entries from before. However, after a lot of thinking, I believe that this document has accomplished its purpose for now.
I will continue writing SPAT, but only for stuff that seems absolutely critical to record. In absence of any sort of official news (Hiveswap, another story coming out, etc) or absolutely major development in the community (another Reckoning or the Reread, for instance) I believe that it will be fine not to mention everything here. It makes me sad to say that, but I can’t and don’t really need to spin my wheels forever.
I’ve written enough about the community to give people a thorough idea of what’s happened here and what we were like. I will continue to write about major developments as they come, but generally speaking entries will probably be much more sparse than they have been up to this point. Rather than several entries a month, it will probably be closer to only one or two, if even that.
Perhaps in the future it will be worthwhile to simply provide discrete snapshots of the community, rather than have a continuous picture. Regardless, I’m tired and it will be good to give this document a rest. I will write in the current style until the end of the 10th anniversary, and then I might stop for a while. Part of me hopes fervently that it will only be a short break before I’m inspired to write again--to be honest, that’s what it all comes down to. If nothing else, I’ll just write whenever I feel like it.
Nothing more for today.
16th of March
We fell below 10,000 messages a day for the first time since August 20th, 2016. I’m very upset about this. Nothing else to be said on the matter2.
17th of March
Trickster messaged me asking to be banned for a period no less than three months, citing that he feels like he’s chasing some sort of weird “conversational high” and that his interactions have been more forced than not. I didn’t want to appear dismissive of him but he becomes incoherent when he gets tired. In his ramblings he mentioned that he feels like everything that happens and all the people here are fake, calling it “delusion.” That hurt me more than I would like to admit and I snapped at him to go to bed.
Following up on this from the next day now: Trickster, as I had hoped, realized he was speaking nonsense and abandoned his pretenses of leaving. I’m not sure why I’m still so bothered by it--one might expect I’d gotten used to this sort of thing by now. No matter how I try to rationalize it, though, the feeling gets worse each time someone floats the idea of leaving.
It doesn’t help that the departures tend to happen in groups: Nights, Mines, and Trickster all left (threatened to leave in Trickster’s case) in the span of a week. The latter two have come back, so that’s something to be thankful for. Still, people leaving or the implication thereof, combined with the recent downturn of activity (even with the reread in full swing), means I’m not exactly feeling great.
Nothing more for today.
19th of March
I recently took stock of mspa-lit and decided to do a little investigating of who I thought could feasibly count as a regular. We’ve had this discussion in the past, but the general consensus each time has been that keeping track of that sort of thing is way too difficult, or even potentially offensive. Reasonably speaking, each definition one might come up with for who counts as a regular would be arbitrary, and thus ultimately meaningless. Still, my curiosity prevailed and I decided to stick with a definition, arbitrary or not.
The deciding factor for whether or not I would consider someone in the first place was a very simple litmus test: if I see someone in the chat, is their name familiar to me? If yes, then I put it on a list. After keeping track of the chat for a few days like this, I had over 50 names to work with (and since then, I’ve noticed nearly a dozen more that were similarly familiar but that I didn’t track).
After acquiring these names, the analysis was simple: the Discord search function allowed me to search for messages from people in a given channel for a set period of time, and I went per person per month in mspa-lit. I didn’t bother doing this for all of the server’s history of course, but just for January and February of this year. This led to some results that were genuinely interesting to me.
The distribution of messages across people in mspa-lit was generally more widespread than I expected. I thought I would see a localization of ten to fifteen people who have the bulk of messages, such as myself or Makin, and then everyone else would have only a few hundred. There were indeed the assortment of about 5 people with over 5,000 messages in the channel per month, but there were actually around thirty people each month with over 1,000 messages in the channel, and several with over 2,000-3,000.
This suggests a much bigger base of people than I realistically expected. There are a few heavy hitters like tmtm and Minish, but everyone else is not insubstantial in their contributions. This brief foray into the subject has been rather illuminating, although it’s still largely unfeasible (and completely unnecessary) to track this sort of thing. Turning user activity into a leaderboard is probably not a good idea.
To tie this into recent events, people leaving has stressed me out considerably but has also opened up some interesting dynamic shifts in the channel. The presence of various people has a pronounced effect on the tone and progression of a conversation: one of the most noticeable change in the last few weeks is that Gnawms being mspa-banned has reduced discussion about furries or furry-adjacent material to almost nothing3 (a rather unambiguous connection, I’m afraid to say). In general though, there seems to be some serious differences in how topics play out based on who’s participating at a given time.
Tonight the discussion has been about making more fan content: Spiral--to my recollection--is not usually a heavy participant in mspa-lit, but she brought up the idea of a fanfic regarding the end of Homestuck. This would normally fall flat, but it seems just the right mix of people--Andrew, tmtm, Solarsail, hb, CyclopsCaveman to name a few--has made it so the concept was taken and ran with. It’s rare that this happens anymore, but there seemed to be real, substantial interest in the idea Spiral was putting forth. For a time, methods to accomplish this task were discussed at length. If different people had been present, it’s entirely likely that the same discussion would have died prematurely.
With the absence or departure of particular users, it seems that people who would ordinarily just lurk have been emboldened to speak up and express their ideas--it’s possible that there simply wasn’t enough room to fit everyone, so to speak. Cuil has been talking more often lately, and members who show up sporadically have been a little more consistent in their presence in the last few weeks.
This has been a puzzling trend that I don’t understand too well--it would be ill-advised for me to assume too much about how or why people are inspired to talk at certain times over others. I have been presenting this as related to the departure of certain regulars, but more likely it’s just that various circumstances in their personal lives keep them busy or away from the HSD at certain times. At this point I’m just exploring the possibility of atypical combinations of regulars, such as they may be considered.
To try and inject some order back into this entry, all of this reminds me of something that I’ve already commented on a few entries ago. Makin says infrequently about losing people: “There will always be someone to take the place of a person who leaves.” I’m paraphrasing--the way he actually says it is surpasses rudeness4 --but recent events hint to me that this assessment is somewhat correct.
Yet, I would be hesitant to rely on it: I also said that this is only true up to a certain point, and I strongly maintain that idea (treating users as disposable is a sickening practice, and I won’t be convinced otherwise). I don’t know where the breaking point is, but I’m not eager to learn that particular information; the brand of logic in question is perilous in emergencies, and could easily ruin everything if applied wrongly. I have to believe that Makin understands this--he’s not stupid, despite his intermittent foolishness. If things truly become dire then I’m sure he has some sort of contingency in place. I could be wrong, but hopefully I won’t have to find out.
Nothing more for today.
29th of March
There have been stirrings on Homestuck Twitter: V is doing an impromptu AMA right now. Most of it seems to relate to that overall sphere of the fandom, which is to be expected--there seems to be something of a barrier between the subreddit and the HSD, and the Twitter crowd. However, she tossed some shade at us and the subreddit in the proceedings.
One question especially unnerved me, asking: “who is worse, Makin or Roach?” To V’s credit she provided a very diplomatic answer, saying Roach is “a good adult with a job” and not mentioning Makin at all. I’ve seen similar questions or random Twitter posts bashing Tensei, and this sort of mockery nearly makes me see red each time I encounter it. As many complaints as I do have about Makin and Tensei, seeing complete strangers insinuate awful, untrue shit about them makes my blood boil.
That specific sentiment aside, these proceedings just seem kind of a strange: there seems to be a casual disparagement towards the fandom (which may or not may not just be irony, it’s hard to tell) but I don’t know if I can be totally against it: even this ambiguous contempt is better than the absolute nothing we’ve been getting for the last couple years. Coupled with other things, all of the right signs are coming into play. It seems as if we might actually see something good or entertaining on the anniversary.
The volume of information that V posted was actually substantial; we were able to use it to confirm many things, not least of which that Hiveswap is still in development. Makin made a post on the subreddit covering all of the important information as of today. That pervasive air of excitement seems to be returning even if only a little bit. No one is sure what’s coming, but for the first time in a while real hope seems to be rearing its head.
Nothing more for today.
31st of March
The April Fool’s Day prank began early, about 4 PM EST. We jumped the gun, admittedly: we were relying on DeltaPsi to use her bot and rename everyone in the server to a Homestuck-appropriate handle. We expected this to go quickly, but it actually ended up taking about six hours. Makin thought on his feet, thankfully, and while that was happening in the background his first action was to start hiding channels in order of increasing activity until nothing but altgen was left.
The initial reaction was complete confusion, with some inevitably realizing this was April Fool’s Day come early. Finally, Makin moved freshly created channels (#incipisphere, #earth-c, #the-meteor, #alternia, #dreambubbles) to the fore and made them visible; the mods all adopted canon character handles from Homestuck, and were the only ones allowed to talk in these new channels at first. As more and more people were given their new names, we manually sorted them into the new channels using a custom role.
This annoyed people as one would expect, but a vast majority of those present seemed to be enjoying it. There was a spontaneous rise of different “factions” of people who were playing along, and interacting with us mods as canon characters. These factions wanted to do different things with or to the canon characters, such as playing at violence or peace. A few people took it too far and started DMing us mods, but it was largely inoffensive behavior all around.
There was comment from those less amused by all of this that it had grown old quickly. Tmtm and one other described it as “a ten minute joke that went on for too long,” a viewpoint I can completely understand. For our part, some of the more seasoned roleplayers such as Tera and Spiral (and Tipsy, who we had taken on as a volunteer for one character she was basically fated as) were able to fit completely in with little problem, exercising their expertise with great flourish. For others like myself, Makin, and Shitler, it was a tad more frustrating due to our lack of roleplay experience.
The hours went on, and we could feel the excitement dying down a little. Then Makin enacted his coup de grace: once most of the names were changed, at about 8:30 PM EST, he pinged everyone and allowed them unrestricted access to all of the RP channels except #incipisphere (which was tacitly reserved for canon character interactions). What has followed since is nothing short of complete chaos.
An unintended side effect of the channels being closed earlier was that the voicechats became a sort of refuge for those participating, and they immediately filled to the brim. I believe there’s a default 100 person limit for any voice chat on Discord, but the amount of people participating was so high that it spilled over from the general voice channel into all the others. I’m not sure, but at one point it looked like all four channels were completely full with people, which is something that has legitimately never happened before. Though the number dwindled some, it wasn’t by much: the voice channels have been chock full of users for basically the entire day without pause.
As the night went on, the loose interaction between the “canon characters” and the rest of the server began to take on a sort of question and answer format. The regular server members would ping a certain mod and ask a question befitting of the corresponding character. Again, the mods most use to roleplay were able to take to this with remarkable aplomb. I mostly found it vaguely agitating and uncomfortable (mostly due to how far some users were taking the experience), although it was fun to respond a few times if a nice joke presented itself.
In all, it seems that this year’s prank is already rather successful. I feel that by beginning so early we might have played our hand a bit too much; I’m especially fearful at the sort of crowd this will encourage, with all of the roleplay elements. I imagine there will be a shortlived but substantial call for a permanent #roleplay channel now, although Toast’s antics when such happened before probably preclude the possibility. This isn’t very serious, to be sure, it’s rather just a prediction on my part.
Overall I’m quite happy with the effect. I think Makin is too; he barely participated in the roleplay, but he’s no doubt enjoyed moving things around, making the day interesting and mysterious at the start. Speaking holistically I’m pleased with two things: that the usercount did not drop, even with the unmitigated horseshit we’ve been up to AND an @everyone ping; and that the interest we generated this year seems to have been much greater than it was for last year’s prank.
I’m not sure what happened but last year’s April Fool’s Day was quite milquetoast. This year’s prank has been incredibly entertaining, in spite of the few people who are deeply annoyed at the proceedings. It’s nice to conduct these things every once in a while and remember that we still have the power to give people a good time; April is usually a busy month for us between this event and the comic’s anniversary, and I’m happy to say it looks like that will be the case once again this year.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 I'm sure anyone reading this document can remember the last 20 times Drew said this. As you will see soon, the pattern of everyone coming back STILL holds up, but he will never learn.
2 I do have something to say though: DRAMA QUEEN.
3 THANK FUCKING GOD
4 the margins of this page are too narrow to contain my rap opera epic about this subject -- makin’s additional comment here is “add footnote,” i assume in order for him to have space to compose said rap opera epic. i have graciously disallowed this