Drew Linky
1st of October
For a time we figured that incoming bots would no longer be a problem. Makin raising the security level of the HSD meant that they were no longer able to message users, so we didn’t really have to do anything about them. With Pesterquest and other important things happening, though, he had lowered the security level so as not to discourage people new to Discord (the highest security level requires a verified phone number, which assuredly puts skittish people off).
We had hoped fervently that the bot waves would simply stop by this point, but the last several weeks have dashed those thoughts against a wall. As soon as the security level was lowered the reports of bot messages came trickling in again. I had personally grown despondent about this, because the idea of cleaning up all of the bots we had simply left unaccounted for was daunting. Last week though, I was taken by a fiery mood and discussed the problem with the other mods. We’re all thoroughly sick and tired of seeing bots clutter the join channel, and the reality of the matter is that it endangers our users.
In the course of an afternoon I single handedly banned 867 bot accounts going back to July (as an aside, I noticed that many of the accounts we had previously reported to Discord were in fact coming up as Deleted Users, although it’s difficult to cross reference accounts and make sure that Discord itself was responsible for this action). In addition, we talked about enacting a rotating schedule for volunteers to keep an eye on the join logs for bot accounts. There are a few mods like Shitler, Reti, and Wadapan who are on board with the idea, and their willingness to help out with this thankless task is extremely admirable.
Unfortunately, it feels like the bot accounts have become different somehow. I theorized that there was more than one botnet trying to get into the server a while back, and the patterns/characteristics of certain bots indicates that I was right: there are multiple groups of different bots trying to get into the server and harass our users. This isn’t that big of an issue normally, but I’m growing increasingly worried that there’s a new botnet which has been trained to stay online and gain a role color--both of which are features we use to distinguish real people. Regardless, there isn’t much we can do about this besides banning accounts which are obviously fake. Discord as a whole hasn’t been particularly helpful, so our hands are tied in the meantime.
We had come up with an idea to stop this before, which involved creating a verification channel to vet incoming users. It would have involved a simple passcode/agreement system to get in. Our problem with this was that we didn’t understand how bots find users to message them exactly--I figured initially that it would involve scraping the names off of the sidebar, which means as long as they’re visible then our users are vulnerable.
Qweq recently brought up a brilliant workaround to this idea, involving specific user settings that would hide the verification channel once someone gained the role to access the rest of the server. After working through the logistics of it, it seemed a perfect plan. Tmtmtl30 offered to create a bot that would accomplish the verification process, and we quickly got to work testing the system. After a bit I realized that everything necessarily depended on the idea that the bots can’t message people that aren’t visible on the sidebar, so I decided to contact DeltaPsi in order to validate our theory.
It was nice to work with Delta again; I hadn’t talked to her in a while, but even with the lengthy absence she was happy to help out. She’s more intimately familiar with bot development than Tmtm is (or any of us, for that matter) so she has access to a lot more of the toolkit and understands their limitations. After some testing, she confirmed our worst fear: bots are able to message people even in contexts where a human wouldn’t be able to see their username. This meant that our plan was, in effect, a complete waste of time.
Spiral and I discussed the issue briefly; along with others, we were both really looking forward to a potential end to any bot problem we might have. Physically keeping up with the massive waves of bot accounts is exhausting, and it’s always stressful to consider the risk to users in general. We assume that most of our users are smart enough not to click on a virus of some sort, but strictly speaking anything is possible.
This aside, the server has been experiencing some very troubling shifts in activity. I can only profess to know what’s happening on the Discord server and to some extent the subreddit; all other spheres of the fandom are outside of my scope entirely, but they’re nonetheless related. As it is, the Discord server has severely declined in activity over the last few months. September in particular has been an utter drag.
It bears stating that this is a relative assessment: I’m primarily worried about this from the perspective of someone who was around when it was more active. On a more objective basis, there’s still a hefty amount of activity for the server as a whole; most channels are actually retaining their own levels of activity. I predicted this would happen a long time ago, but it seems that the one being hit by far the hardest is altgen.
Altgen used to see over 5,000 messages on a daily basis with few exceptions, and often enough it would exceed that with room to spare. However, after getting moved to the bottom of the channel list, it’s lost a ton of steam--within the last few weeks it’s dipped down to under 500 messages a day, which is absolutely appalling. This all prompted me to ask a couple of questions: what do we want out of altgen? We envisioned it as a containment channel, did we want to keep that going or is this sort of gradual decline actually what we wanted out of it?
Valkyrie and Anervaria posited that we’re always going to need a containment channel to throw people into if they’re fucking things up too much, which I agree with. The channel declining is just a natural result of moving it out of sight and out of mind. Even more influential is a policy change enacted back in July: Makin mandated that altgen bans no longer exist, and that offenders will simply be banned from the entire server. This has a double effect of permanently removing people from the equation, as well as discouraging them from talking there in the first place.
With all of this in mind, altgen’s decline has been not only understandable, but practically inevitable. It would take a truly herculean effort to get it back to its former level of activity, but I’m not really sure anyone wants to accomplish that. From a statistical perspective it annoys me, but a lot of altgen’s contribution was mere spam and the lowest of low quality input. It’s arguable that we’re actually closer to a true representative example of how the server works without it, and it would be interesting to run a comparison based on removing the channel’s messages from the overall count.
All of this is not to say that altgen is the only place being affected by lowered activity, it’s simply the most dramatic example. The rest of the server has been marginally quieting down as well, but that’s been true ever since April 2017. The interesting point is whether or not this is true with the rest of the Homestuck fandom, and if so, to what extent. As a direct point of evidence against the idea that the rest of the fandom is also experiencing this downturn, the subreddit has actually been experiencing a slight increase in activity since about February of this year (the earliest point at which I was able to get statistical information for the subreddit).
However, Makin disputes this: he firmly believes that the entire fandom is experiencing this shrinkage, but that the subreddit is still experiencing some limited growth because of an influx of fans from Twitter. I’ve seen no explicit evidence confirming this idea and am inclined to disregard it, but a couple of things are worth pointing out here: first it would be difficult to get any sort of quantitative understanding of Homestuck Twitter because of its very nature. The platform prohibits the formation of any sort of centralized groups that one may observe, instead it’s rather fluid or even chaotic.
This gives rise to the second thing, which is that I feel the only metric--as bad as it is--that one could possibly use to determine a population shift is the behavior of so-called Big Name Fans. Without getting into too much detail, one might be able to keep track of where specific content is coming from, both in terms of who’s creating it and where it’s being posted. This runs into a few problems though, such as actually drafting a process that can reliably do this and produce information in the first place. Even more important is that this would be an undeniably creepy process, and it would be arguably unethical to keep track of people’s posting habits in this manner.
Returning to the main idea here, with the minor exception of the subreddit it does seem that the entire Homestuck fandom continues to shrink. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to be done about this; the overall problem is not that any of these places are explicitly bad (it’s most fair to say that they appeal to different people for specific reasons. It would be remiss of me to avoid saying that I personally, immensely dislike Twitter as a platform and think it’s an awful space for fandom activity), but that there is a marked decrease in new fans coming into the fandom. If I’ve said this once I’ve probably said it a hundred times: no matter what kind of community you are, you need a steady influx of new users or your base will become smaller.
What could be responsible for this gradual loss of size? After some consideration, the most likely explanation is source content. That is to say, as time goes by the fandom needs more work to subsist off of or else it’ll stagnate. Pesterquest coming out was a small gust of wind in the sails, so to speak, but I think it runs into a problem: who is the audience? Who exactly is Pesterquest targeted towards?
The simplest and most correct answer is that Pesterquest is targeted towards people who are already fans of Homestuck. The game and its story are still in their early stages, but the narrative already resembles that of the Hiveswap Friendsims to a great degree. Both games revolve around concepts and developments that would be utterly lost on people who have never read Homestuck before. In short, they are derivative works. There is nothing wrong with this by itself, but it becomes an issue when these are the main--realistically only--sources of substantial content coming out of What Pumpkin (P.S. Hiveswap celebrated the second anniversary of Act 1's release on the 14th of September. The community is disappointed that it's taking so long, but also trying its best to be understanding--there were a flurry of artposts dedicated to the topic which were variously supportive and wholesome, or at least just commemorative).
To bring all of this around, the problem is that the Friendsims and now Pesterquest are only enjoyable for or attractive to a really narrow audience. They require prior knowledge of something that was already kind of difficult to get into, which means they likely aren’t pulling new people into the fandom. Thus the problem: if the desire of the creators is to make something that existing fans will like, then they’re doing a pretty good job overall. If they want to do something like draw new people in--or, relatedly, make money--then this is not going to accomplish that goal.
Purposefully appealing to only a specific band of people will lead to obscurity. In some contexts this is both understandable and preferable: not every work can or even should be something that attracts everyone. However, the team working on Pesterquest, and especially whoever’s working on the Homestuck property as a whole, need to figure out how to draw in new people entirely to the fandom. Without that influx the fandom will continue to decline, and eventually things like Pesterquest won’t have an audience to begin with.
With all of this dreary stuff about the state of things, I do think it’s important to highlight that really cool and new things do come out of the fandom even now. Recently we’ve become increasingly aware of a fan project called Felt Mansion. Developed by a group from France and released about a month ago, this game is styled as a classic RPG and wrapped up development just back in August.
Overall, the game is an absolute beauty. It’s not perfect by any means, but the amount of care and love put into it is plainly evident. I’ve only started playing it within the last couple of days, but Makin finished it wholesale before announcing it to everyone on the server. He has done nothing short of sing its praises, which is remarkable--he typically has more negative than positive things to say about any given work, so the fact that he enjoys it so much is worthy of note.
After the announcement in question, more and more people have at least deigned to give it a try. The first part of it seems to be hard to get through, but after that a lot of people have been properly hooked. The game itself is chock full of little references to things both in the comic proper and fandom in-jokes--the attention to detail is nothing short of magnificent. It’s also important to note that the game has between ten to twenty hours of content, which is patently absurd for a fan project.
Indeed, this is doing a great job of tiding us over while waiting for more official content. The fourth episode of Pesterquest comes out tomorrow, which people are naturally excited for, but that content in particular is so little spread over such a long period of time. It’s good to have more than just that to go off of in the meantime--many, including myself, are hoping that this wonderful fan game inspires more people in the fandom to engage creatively and make their own things.
Relatedly, another neat fandom project to come out yesterday early in the morning is a fanzine led by yoitscro, entitled Pro8lematic Faves, in development since March 14th of this year. “Problematic faves” is a term originating from Tumblr referring to people (or in this case, characters from a story) who exhibit viewpoints or engage in behavior that is seen as bigoted, but are still widely celebrated by a large group of people. Thus, the focus of the zine is characters who cause problems but are still well-liked by a huge portion of the fandom.
The primary focus of the zine is art, which was contributed by over 50 different people. All of those involved appear rather talented--after pouring through the zine for a while, every single piece of work has clearly had a lot of time and care put into it, and some even come with commentary from the people who made them. As a bonus, there’s a short fanfic of sorts written by Aysha Farah involving a heavily fourth-wall-breaking discussion with one of the antagonists from the Epilogues.
Again, it’s important to pick out these sorts of things out of the fandom and celebrate them. I would feel that way even if the fandom wasn’t contracting, or even if it was expanding; one of the measures by which a property is judged is how much the fans love it and engage with it. Seeing works like Felt Mansion or Pro8lematic Faves is a good sign, although it’s hard not to miss the days where it felt like such things came out more often.
It’s my fond hope that, at some point, we may approach a balance: surely there must be a level of activity where everything feels new and exciting and one never runs out of stuff to look at, but without becoming overwhelming. After some time to consider it, the Homestuck fandom back at its most active between 2011-2013 was absolutely unwieldy and contained a fair share of undesirable people who did nothing but feed off of the mania. My bias is peaking through considering the time and conditions under which I started writing this document, but perhaps how things were (or at least felt) back in 2016 and 2017 would be ideal. Maybe someday we’ll see that again.
Nothing more for today.
24th of October
On the 11th of October, we were made aware through an Instagram post that Hussie dropped off three more toblerones in Taiwan. I discovered this information really quickly for once, so I made sure to inform Makin, who happens to be in the area for unknown reasons. He said that the chances of grabbing one would be unlikely, as the cache was somewhat far away from him, but that he would try.
I asked him to pick one up for me if he made it in time. As it happens, he was successful and did indeed get there on time. Graciously he picked one up for himself and “one for drew who desperately begged me to get him one,” as he said it. This was a very exciting opportunity and the fact that it worked out in our favor was rather miraculous. Over the next several days it only seemed to get weirder though.
On the 19th of October, Hussie dropped off 20 more toblerones in South Korea. A fan from the subreddit, /u/lasagnaphil, was the first to find the bag later at night, but before he could replace it he was ushered out of the park by a guard. This lead to confusion in the morning as other Korean fans came by, with some angry that the entire bag was already gone. Thankfully phil brought the bag back and offered up his own toblerone as an apology for the incident. At this point, Hussie made it clear that he’s granting wishes for all of these toblerones now, including the ones from Taiwan.
As an aside, my toblerone actually isn’t eligible for a wish because I didn’t pick it up myself. I later emailed Hussie about this: after some quick introspection I already felt bad that I had taken the opportunity to get some fandom memorabilia away from a local, but the wish on top made it feel like a true waste. I asked him if he would grant the wish if we deposited the toblerone bar somewhere else in the area and he said yes. Thus, Makin will drop the chocolate bar off somewhere in Asia at some point in November and we’ll probably turn it into a small event if possible.
Makin, on the other hand, did in fact receive a wish. Most of those we know about have been for relatively simple things, such as canonizing an idea in Homestuck proper (a la June Egbert), or including a fan character in official properties. Makin’s wish was not simple: he wants the MSPA forums back. He recognizes the unlikelihood of getting them back in a useable form, but he described that he would be fine with only getting the archives for them if they exist. He calculated that there are over 2,000,000 posts about fan works on the forums that were completely lost after they got hacked. Since making the wish he has not updated us on the results, but he has not said they were a failure either. If we’re really, really lucky, then perhaps he will be successful in his efforts.
To return to the original topic, the toblerone developments have been rather exciting for most. It’s become a question of “where will the next batch be found?” though it’s hard bordering on impossible to predict such things. The reason Hussie was traveling in Asia is not publicly known, and there’s little reason to believe that he’ll purposefully travel anywhere else soon. That having been said, something did happen on the evening of the 24th that caught us all by surprise.
The official Homestuck Twitter account posted a picture of a pen box in a place called Baldwin Park in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (where the live episode of Pgenpodcast I’m going to on the 26th will be located). This is a departure from the norm so far: we’ve exclusively found out about toblerone caches through Hussie’s Instagram account, and so far it hasn’t been just one bar in each place. The pen box is likely not big enough to contain even a single toblerone, and it was posted on the Homestuck Twitter, so naturally this sparked curiosity: what’s in the box?
METY, fellow mod on the subreddit, actually lives in Chapel Hill, and as soon as he heard about the post he set off to grab the pen box. In lieu of writing about the occasion myself, he actually took the time to write up the events of the meeting. The next several paragraphs will be his writing entirely, as enclosed in brackets.
{I was lucky enough to have my plans at the time the tweet made it to Discord unceremoniously cancelled, so I went back to my dorm room, checked Lit like usual, and saw the tweet announcing the pen box drop. Now, I spent the last few weeks hoping against hope that there'd be a toblerone at the Chapel Hill Pgenpod live show because that wasn't completely impossible. So I looked at the tweet, didn't recognize the sculpture, and almost gave up on the map because it wasn't aligned north/south but then I saw something that was in my town and lost my shit.
I knew immediately I had to go. This was my task. Something like this NEVER happens here in my suburban corner of the country, it's always in some big city. I'd waited my entire life since I was aware of them waiting for an ARG like this to happen near me-- and now I'm at an age where I can just randomly leave in the middle of the night to do something like this. This was my opportunity, and I, like everyone else at the time, was convinced it was a wish toblerone. This was IT. I'm doing it man. I'm making this hapen.
I called up my friend who has a car, and she soon picked me up (after I ran to a closer location so we could save even the slightest amount of time). However, about halfway through the (~10 minute) car ride I found out that someone else already got there, but all the toblerone drops had more than one prize and we thought the person who found it might still be there, so we kept going.
Nobody was there when we got there, though. I was kind of in denial and searched a ton of increasingly unlikely places, including the empty box they'd hid it in multiple times, but we just hung around and tried to contact the one who found it in hopes that they'd come back and show it to us.
After about 10 minutes of this, a group of four guys, including meems, from a school about 45 minutes away showed up. And Cro, the big name cosplayer and a guest at upcoming the pgenpod live show got there at about the same time. (I actually asked if she was Aysha at first because she introduced herself as someone in the show, and even though I know what Aysha looks like I didn't want to embarrass myself by not recognizing her, if it had been her.) Both of them had to come from a lot farther than I did, and as far as I can tell I would've made it there first if I heard about the tweet earlier. (GOD DAMN IT)
Cro was very talkative and nice, we talked about the live show and our presences on different Homestuck media platforms. When she first got there, we asked her if she had any advance knowledge about this, but she said she'd rushed over when she saw the tweet just like the rest of us.
I kept anxiously refreshing the Twitter of the one who found it but got nothing except that they drove back with it and would reveal it once they returned home. This only added to my disappointment because the absolute first thing I would've done if I got it (besides freak out) would have been to post it to the Discord. It was so exciting to have all these people count on me for something like this, it was a little like being the guy who found the E Bear.
But the impromptu meetup was still fun. More people kept arriving, and most of them who hadn't shown up by then were teens driven by their parents, and they'd roll down the window and we'd go "Looking for toblerones?" and "Nope, they're gone." It was actually kind of funny how often that happened, there were like 4 of them. Cro kept introducing herself to the teens and advertising the live show, so I did a lot of talking with the group of four.
It is just absolutely surreal to meet someone who knows about all this bullshit you know about because you spend too much time on a specific corner of the Internet, and ESPECIALLY when it's not because you told them about it. Meems put his hands on his head and gasped as if he was going NUT when I told him I'm meeting up with Drew, and later when I said that I'm on a CaNMT album. (His side of the story is also probably worth hearing from.) We threw around terms that my much less involved friend found crazy-- "Makin", "Dave's eyes, curiosity satisfied", "Vrasky" "What is your hottest Retcon take?" I've never even met someone in real life before who's read CaNWC, so it was just… insane. It was so fucking awesome even if I was still disappointed.
And so I was pretty happy as we all decided to leave. My friend ended up driving Cro back to her car with me and we talked about her meeting Aysha and Hussie, she described Hussie as "as soft-spoken as a gentlehorse" which is consistent with everything I've heard about what he's like in person. Oh and of course I talked to her about Vriska because duh. Cro says Kate mischaracterized her beliefs on Vriska and she doesn't actually hate her, and I just admitted to her that I still wish Vriska had stayed dead.
Cro came across as extremely nice and I'm looking forward to seeing her again at the live show. We dropped her off and my friend and I just hung out, and that's when the one who found it posted the letter. I got angry again about missing out on that, especially since they posted a bunch of Vriska stuff with their friends but mostly it was just knowing I was SO CLOSE.
This story isn't even over yet. I'm about to see all of these people again at the live show, almost certainly plus the people who actually got the pen box. Right now, though, I just can't believe any of this ever happened, and I know I'm never going to forget it.}
Clearly, the evening turned out well. It was a pleasant surprise that Meems is also in the area, and now all three of us (and a few others) will be getting food together before the Pgenpodcast episode starts--it’s an exciting occasion, and I look forward to it greatly.
The actual victor of the hunt is one NihilisticNips on Twitter, who posted the contents of the box shortly after returning to their home. It contains a high quality bar of beef bacon (or at least the wrapper) and a note signed by: Aysha U. Farah, the creator of Pgenpodcast Kate Mitchell, and a writer for the various Homestuck properties named Lalo Hunt. The note in its entirety says: “We represent a small faction of radicals who have seized control of the narrative. Inside this box is not the wish-fulfilling candy of an eboy. This is the salted meat of cold, hard canonicity.” This can be interpreted in a lot of ways, although with the significant meme date 10/25 coming up tomorrow, it can hardly be unimportant.
In true meme date fashion, there are whispers among the ranks that something big is going to happen tomorrow. There is no strong confirmation or denial from any WP officials at this point, which only seems to intensify the possibility. Common bets are that it will be an announcement for Hiveswap Act 2, although at this point it seems foolish to place hope in the notion. There are other possibilities, but nothing solidly founded. Time, as always, will tell what happens.
Not everyone is strictly happy about these developments, though. It’s important to note that several people, including such individuals as cookiefonster, Red, tmtm, MrNostalgic, and a slew of others, are disgruntled for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the general idea of passing Homestuck as a property off to other people (for example, Red states: “if u are making homestuck anything and u are not andrew i am sorry i dont want it”).
There is also ample concern over whether WP will actually release longform, substantial content again. If such content does come out, naysayers suspect that it won’t be good, or they describe that their interest has simply waned too much. Spiral commented: “i dont even care about act 2 anymore because i dont think i am going to particularly enjoy it / *assuming it comes out,” which just about encapsulates the less enthused members of the group.
One person in particular was significantly more upset about the ordeal. Misha was uncharacteristically cynical about all of this, saying in totality: “this is what homestuck is now.” When asked for clarification, he expressed sadness that the enormous story and fandom has dwindled to its current state. He’s particularly upset at the idea that the fandom now seems to consist of dozens (hundreds at most) of hardcore, ultra-dedicated fans, many of which are focused on gaining recognition for still being around.
A recognizable term for this idea is clout, which I first heard in connection with how Twitter’s platform works. Fans with more followers and recognition than others have more clout, which means that they effectively have more power and sway in the community. This is largely seen as a positive thing on Twitter and similar platforms like Tumblr, but it’s not seen as important on the Subreddit and Discord (if the notion is not in fact looked down upon by some).
In effect, Misha thinks that the fandom has been reduced to a small number of fierce fans who scramble for clout through any means possible, and that the physical prizes found in small ARGs like the Toblerones or the signed letter are simply the logical conclusion of this behavior. He finds this depressing compared to the vast, sprawling form that the fandom used to have back in its heyday, or even just a few years ago.
I can sympathize with this viewpoint, although I don’t really see where else the fandom could have gone. I’ve been saying literally since I started writing this document that Homestuck fans were doomed to fade away as time went by, and this sort of narrowing focus was inevitable without something to spur intense growth like we witnessed back in the early 2010s. I am not really saddened with what we’re doing now, but more that the state of things got to this condition in the first place.
It may still prove to be that this perception is inaccurate, which is a small piece of hope. Lurkers are still an important aspect of things in that they don’t post at all, which means they essentially take content in without giving anything back. There is a not-insignificant chance that the vast majority (as in, over 90% probably) of Homestuck fans do this, and are simply waiting for something truly big to happen before they bother to participate again. The alternative is that the only people left who care at all are, as I said before, the ultra-dedicated.
I sincerely hope that this is not the case. A few times when we heard of a toblerone being found, and especially with the pen box tonight, I was hoping that the fan who made the discovery would be someone completely unknown to our circle. Yet each time I have somehow been disappointed--the pen box even was found by a friend of Skyplayer’s. It feels like there is a solid set of 50-100 fans who are all at least tangentially aware of or related to each other. I desperately wish for new blood to be introduced to the fandom so as to keep things fresh and interesting.
Regardless, some of the old energy has necessarily seeped into things what with 10/25 coming up soon. Makin is preoccupied--extraordinarily busy even--such that he neglected to set up a community stream. I’ve gained enough experience that I decided to take up that mantle, and it will be the first time I’m handling the stream completely by myself. Such occasions are always fun, and I’m looking forward to what we can do with it. Coupled with the possibility of an official announcement tomorrow, things feel alright at the moment. If I were to offer any words to my friends in the community: these moments of positivity are precious, and it’s important that we hold on to them while we can.
Nothing more for today.
25th of October
Today has been far more interesting than any of us could have reasonably expected when we woke up. At 9 AM EST, there was a twitter post from Kate stating that there would be a “message” three hours later. With nothing left to do in the interim, everything proceeded as normal. The community stream was scheduled for 1 PM EST and to last about 6 hours, so as to accommodate those in European timezones, as well as American.
As we usually do we had a prestream starting about an hour and a half before the stream proper. Then, as promised the message was released: to complete shock, Homestuck 2 was announced, and the first update released. Stylized as Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon, the description states that the outline was written by Hussie, but the actual production of content is being guided entirely by a team of numerous individuals. It states that Hussie and Kate “initially led” the writing, but it is now being done by a team of people including Aysha U. Farah, Lalo Hunt, “fandom talents” including a Pip Dillistone and optimisticDuelist (all four as writers). Xamag is also on the project, heading the art team.
It bears repeating that this is far and beyond anything we could possibly have expected. The site was announced today officially and also included about 30 pages of content already. Reactions were severely mixed--as to be expected--but the surge in activity is nothing short of incredible. There have been dozens of posts on the subreddit and over 30,000 messages on the Discord server today, and with the way that the release schedule is planned (monthly, but with the possibility of more frequent content) there is hope that we’ll have plenty to talk about for ages to come.
It’s important to note that certain aspects of this have been heavily criticized by the Homestuck fandom on a near ubiquitous basis though. There is the ability to support the team creating Homestuck 2 through a Patreon account with four tiers: $2, $5, $20, and $100. The description for the $20 tier specifically mentions “side stories” and other material that won’t be available to non-backers, and this specific detail seems to be by far the most contentious thing to come out of today.
The actual quality of the comic has drawn mixed comments, with some praising the format (a mix of the more visual nature of Homestuck proper with some of the prose of the Epilogues, which are being labeled respectively as “panels” and “prattles”) and expressing thanks that there will in fact be a continuation of the story at all. Detractors have pointed out that there is some visual artifacting from improper scaling of objects in the panels, and that the prose is often longer than necessary (this is probably temporary, but time will tell).
Unfortunately, things got heated to the point of vitriol in various spots: someone on the subreddit created a post decrying Aysha’s involvement, describing it as a pyramid where she’s at the top at the expense of people underneath her, and especially the fandom at large. This was already disrespectful enough to warrant being removed, but then in the comments the original poster and another began spreading objective lies about Kate and their involvement in the Homestuck fandom.
There may be plenty of reasons to dislike Kate, although I can’t speak to the veracity of any of them myself, but spreading lies and being disrespectful to the point of inciting hatred is point blank unacceptable, and after some deliberation I banned them. Though I appreciate the return to activity, I forgot that there is a small, active portion of every fandom that somehow makes things miserable for everyone else.
Similarly though, Misha was so rankled with today’s proceedings that he practically exploded over it all, stating that the team in charge of things were “mocking, attacking, and depriving the audience of content.” His viewpoint was echoed (far less strongly, though) by members such as TartyTart. This all felt like an inappropriately strong condemnation bordering on bad faith, so I asked for some clarification. He is operating under the assumption that the production team is 100% aware of all of the criticisms levied against it, and claims that they are going so far as to actively ignore it.
A significant reason for Misha’s upset involves the Patreon paywall, which he is inordinately furious about. Otherwise, he has asserted that the tone with which the new team has taken over the property is agitating. He compares it to longstanding works such as comic books like Spiderman: “... I feel in any other franchise when the writer's baton is passed there's a certain degree of / respect and anticipation? / like ‘oh man I hope you guys can like what I make’ / here it's been replaced by a disinterest and passive aggressiveness that well / I can't even call defensive.” Personally I’ve noted this feeling in previous altercations with WP staff, but not today with the release of Homestuck 2. I’m not on any extreme side of this argument so I feel particularly unequipped to discuss this at length.
Upon further reflection, there are other, similar details that I could write down about this, but it doesn’t feel particularly wise or prudent to do so at this point in time. There are accusations being levied, but I can’t find any proof to substantiate or refute them, so I’m going to avoid including such things in this document. The overall point is, I had hoped that the rifts in the fandom might be healing as time went by, but clearly there is still a lot of room for anger between disparate parts. I’m annoyed that an occasion like this has been marred by such divisions, whether ancient or contemporary in nature.
It’s difficult to tell where this might go. Historically, the members of the fandom I’ve talked to have often complained about their criticisms and concerns going completely unrecognized by officials, which is a more than understandable problem. Conversely, members of the production team more than likely feel overwhelmed with the amount of people trying to provide feedback, to the point that they can’t hope to address it all even if they want to.
I can only hope that some sort of system is put in place where communication is easier to accomplish so that this intense divide can be healed in earnest as Homestuck 2 goes forward. To be sure, the fandom at large is not always reasonable or accurate in their assessment of things. However, when appropriate and legitimate criticisms are brought forth, there is an onus on the people in charge of the project to do their best to listen and address problems.
This aside, the rest of the day was still rather interesting. The community stream proceeded well (if a little derailed by the Homestuck 2 announcement), but another rather upsetting development showed up partway through the day. Someone noticed that all of the music albums on the Homestuck Bandcamp page was being rearranged, with significant alterations to the organization and removal of some content like album or song covers.
I’m not privy to the exact details of what’s going on, but I’ve been informed that this is extremely bad by Makin and a few others. Reorganization means that credits to the composers linked in a wide variety of places are now completely worthless, and no one is sure why this is being done in the first place (one possibility is that the music is being prepared to be put on Spotify). The production team for Homestuck 2 and WP made it clear that they were not responsible for the change, which means that Viz is entirely to blame.
This development, combined with the chronic inability to contact anyone at Viz with regards to Homestuck and an enormous host of problems with the website, has made people progressively more upset as time goes by. There is notably increasing anti-capitalist sentiment on the Homestuck Discord, some of it joking and some of it very genuine. Viz messing with things like this with no realistic oversight has only deepened those sentiments, and now people across the entire Homestuck fandom fear the fact that Homestuck as a property is now subject to the whims of corporate interests.
Though some of it was rather unfortunate, today was absolutely wild with activity; it was wind beneath my wings to experience it, although at this point it’s unclear how consistent or sustained the increase in activity will be. I’m disappointed that the fandom feels as fractured as ever, but there is nothing for it except to keep on suing for peace between people. Maybe someday this goal will even be realized--who knows what’s in store for us as time goes by?
Nothing more for today.
26thof October - Pgenpodcast Live Showing
As I’ve said would happen in recent entries, I attended a live recording of Perfectly Generic Podcast today. This introductory statement is way too simple to fully encapsulate today’s proceedings; it was a wild event from start to finish, and it reminded me of things that I did all the way back in 2013 and 2014 within the fandom, stuff I had all but forgotten.
In the introduction to this document I briefly state that I attended some meetups in real life with other Homestuck fans from my area back when I first started reading the comic, but I never described these meetups to any degree. There’s one event that stands out most in my mind, which the Pgenpodcast showing reminded me of: a simple outing to a park in the city nearest where I used to live back in college.
It’s rather cliche to say, but things felt simpler back then. There was a simple but potent magic to getting together with other people to celebrate the webcomic, which compared to the fandom nowadays, felt markedly less polarized or cynical. The meetup I have in mind was organized by someone who went by the handle of “Kc Nubs McShouty III,” a name lifted almost wholesale from Homestuck proper.
A group of about one or two dozen people showed up to the park in the afternoon. We didn’t do anything particularly exciting together, but rather we just cooked some food or shared snacks we brought with each other and talked about ourselves and the comic. To be honest it was a fairly pedestrian event in terms of the fandom’s level of activity back then. Yet, like I said, there was something magical to it. That afternoon was something I remembered fondly for a long time afterwards, specifically because of the connections I made with the people there.
Going to the podcast recording today was like blasting my brain with that feeling, which I had all but forgotten. It was something of a shock when I recognized the sensation, and the realization of what was going on was so exciting as to be almost physically agitating. In order to effectively convey this idea, I’ll write as complete an accounting of today’s events as I can (as a warning to easily bored readers: this will contain a lot of details that are almost certainly superfluous, but I feel obligated to be as thorough as possible in order to satisfy the curiosity of various people who weren’t present).
Before the show proper, I arrived in Chapel Hill at around 3:30 PM. METY, Meems, and I all had plans to get together, talk, and enjoy some food. After similarly meeting with Toast, Spiral, Tera, and Barry in California, I thought of something: meeting in real life with people I first met online has always been an invigorating and meaningful experience for me, ever since I started doing so nearly a decade ago. I decided that I want to commemorate such experiences with a gift to the people I happen to meet.
In highschool, thanks to a friend in my history class I learned how to knit. I haven’t developed that skill terribly much, but I have made countless scarves as gifts for people on various occasions. It’s a rather specific item, but they look nice and have utility. More importantly, it feels more meaningful to make something myself than to buy something, so scarves are usually my go-to when I want to show my appreciation for someone.
I made scarves for all of the people I met in California and shipped them out at the beginning of this week, as well as a small letter to each. Similarly, I made six scarves for people I would be meeting with today. The first person I encountered was METY, with whom I spoke for a solid hour. We were both rather taken with the fact that we had the opportunity to attend the show, and to meet with each other in real life, and we wondered exactly how the show would proceed as we were both unfamiliar with the format or its typical content.
Meems arrived soon after, and together with a couple of his friends, five of us went to get pizza before the show. I’ve mentioned before that meeting with people in real life like this is initially awkward, but this time it didn’t quite feel that way. There was too much excitement to worry much about how we spoke with each other, or if we were being embarrassing.
Half an hour before the show started we decided to go to the venue and find good seats. Aysha U. Farah, Kate, and Cro were all on stage already and setting up and speaking with members of the crowd. Meems, METY, and the others found seats in the front row, but I admit I was a little nervous; I always worry about imposing on other people or taking up their time, so initially I sat without going up to speak with the hosts. Appropriately, my silence was broken when Horse showed up.
Horse didn’t share my particular concerns, and he worked quickly. He asked if I was indeed Drew, and after I affirmed so, he sat down next to me and we small talked for a bit. After giving him his scarf, I also gave METY and Meems theirs. At this point, Horse claimed that Kate had actually confused us for each other, and asked him if he was me. I had no idea why Kate would be asking after me, but before I could figure out why, Horse got the attention of both Kate and Aysha, and pointed me out to them.
I was still immensely nervous at this point, but they were both more than welcoming. After introducing ourselves to each other, I decided to hand out the rest of the scarves. To specify, I had already asked Aysha if she would like one some time ago, which she was receptive to. I initially hadn’t planned to bring a scarf for Kate or Cro; I simply don’t know Cro, and there has been a decidedly tense history between Kate and various figures on the HSD and subreddit.
However, I felt like this was an important opportunity to share some good will. It feels weird and difficult to assess why things have been tense in the past, due both to the fact that I wasn’t personally around for whatever happened, and that it feels like old history in general. Regardless of any details from the past, the here and now are a different matter. This is also cliche to say, but sometimes a kind word or action can make a big difference. I feel like I already come from a plausibly neutral position (while still acknowledging that I’m necessarily biased), so I decided that I would make a scarf for Kate anyway.
I was vaguely apprehensive about this because I wasn’t sure how they would feel about a gift from someone who’s a relative stranger, but both Kate and Cro (as well as Aysha) seemed delighted when I gave them off. I’m extremely glad that my offerings were accepted and made them happy, and in retrospect I think this set the tone for when the show started.
I won’t go into details on the content of the show as a whole (once the episode is released I’ll edit this entry with a link to it for anyone who wants the full experience). As an overall appraisal, it was far more entertaining than I expected it would be. I would be lying if I said I was spellbound or that it appealed specifically to me as an individual, but all three of them are actually pretty good entertainers. I found myself laughing at their jokes, and what they had to say was entertaining and even quite interesting at times (for a bulleted list of major features of the show, see this post that METY made in the subreddit).
The second half hour of the show was a Q&A session, but directly prior to this Kate specifically mentioned me and the rest of the subreddit/Discord team and said that we were doing a great job taking care of our communities. This comment by itself already took me by surprise, but then she went on to say that at this point she “has no beef” with our sections of the fandom. This was immensely gratifying to hear, although after some consideration I’m not sure it’s quite that simple.
I take these statements as a good sign that all parties involved are at least trying to work towards "bridging gaps" and stopping hostilities between each other. I think that more conflicts in the future will be impossible to avoid simply because of how many people are involved, not to speak of opposing personalities and ideologies (a pertinent example may be found in the comments section of the thread METY made--there are some significant reservations from a lot of fandom members who seem particularly mistrustful of what’s going on, or are extremely skeptical). Hopefully with increased communication and interaction with each other, newly developing problems can be resolved quickly and in a more peaceable manner.
I’ve been keeping it quiet for the last couple of months because I wasn’t sure how appropriate it is to talk about it, but Aysha and Kate spoke of it during the show, so I feel like it’s fine to write about: Aysha has her own private server where a number of people from numerous parts of the fandom have been talking for several weeks now. Her personal friends were invited organically, and others of us gained access by willingly donating a few dollars to her Patreon in support.
During the show, Aysha said that her server has become something of a “demilitarized zone,” which is a rather apt description. Whenever chief members of each side have talked in any serious capacity it has been an extraordinarily tense process (Kate overtly described this during the show, mentioning how she and Makin argue with each other), but every single time I feel like the overall result is at least a mild decrease in hostilities. It may be that this process is what precipitated in Kate’s comments during the show, although it’s hard to say.
To be clear, I’m loath to describe anyone and anything in Aysha’s server with any significant detail. It’s private for a reason, and even if it weren’t for that, I don’t feel like I understand the people there or their history enough to say anything of importance. They deserve their privacy, and I will not say anything more of matters transpiring there without their explicit awareness and permission.
This all being said, I didn’t have much time after the show to rub elbows, but there were a number of fun interactions I feel are worth recording. I got to say hello to NihilisticNips, the recipient of the pen box at the nearby park (METY was polite but still reasonably salty after losing the prize to them). A very kind member of Aysha’s server, Wren, found me after the show and offered me a sticker of a character from Homestuck, which she was handing out to various people. I had the opportunity to speak with someone who used the subreddit a long time ago but has since stopped. It was very loud and I had a hard time hearing them (to the point that, regrettably, I didn’t quite catch their name), but it was nice to meet someone else and listen to what they had to say of their experiences.
Before we left the venue, I had an idea: signed Toblerones are Hussie’s thing, but I had a box of Sour Patch Kids I had purchased to eat on the lengthy ride home after the show. Struck with sudden inspiration, I asked Aysha, Kate, and Cro to all sign the box, which they graciously agreed to do. I’m pleased that I now have ostensibly the only relic in the Homestuck fandom quite like it. As she was signing it, Aysha made a comment to the effect that she and the other hosts were “the Sour Patch Kids.” It’s quite unlikely, but a small part of me hopes that the label sticks in some way--I found it rather funny.
After everyone--a considerable group of about three dozen people--left the venue, I needed to leave very quickly in order to make it home at a reasonable time. The crowd decided to make its way to the park where the pen box (or as someone called it, the Meat Spot) was placed on the 24th. This was in the direction of my car, so I got to spend a little more time talking with METY and Horse before I left.
METY and I, for our part, were utterly gobsmacked with how the day went. At one point I specifically described it as “insane,” to which Horse responded, “You think that’s insane? Watch this,” and without another word handed METY no less than $40. He steadfastly refused to take it back, but METY seemed uncomfortable keeping it for himself. I suggested that he give it to Meems, who was the one who paid for our food before the show. Unfortunately Meems had already left, and METY gave some of the money to NihilisticNips, which I found rather amusing given the circumstances.
In person, Horse seemed both more and less mellow than I expected. This could be explained by the fact that, as he claims, he was awake for over 30 hours by the time the show started. He didn’t do anything wild or crazy, at least not overtly, but there were small things that stuck out to me. At one point on our walk towards the park, he began to kick his feet against the pavement and seemed to do a little jig as he walked. METY and I wordlessly exchanged a glance at this, but of course it was completely inoffensive--it was just one of many strange things in the day.
To be honest, there are so many more details like this that happened today which I could describe, but what I’ve mentioned here is already a lot. Anymore would just bloat the entry, and would be kind of a distraction from the overall point: this was a very good event. At one point it felt like I had been transported directly back into 2013 and was at that meetup with Nubs McShouty III again. Obviously things are different now, but I was reminded of how it used to feel to be truly excited about what was going on.
I’ve often complained about the fandom shrinking, ever more as time goes by. I still hold that this is an important trend that should be counteracted if possible, but I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence in writing this if I didn’t look at the other hand. The Homestuck community is indeed smaller now than it used to be, but the spirit of it is very much still alive. It looks different now, but after today I think I’m more okay with that. Skeptics and cynics abound, but I have some hope that they can be brought around to enjoying Homestuck again.
I’m still going to push for getting more people involved and expanding the fandom’s size (an increasing audience is strictly necessary to make this a successful venture, at least in a financial sense), but I’m personally a bit more comfortable with the way things are going right now. There are a lot of people who are unhappy or mistrustful of the team in charge of Homestuck 2, which given the contentious history of the fandom is kind of understandable; Misha’s comments yesterday serve as a potent example of this mistrust, and it’s going to be a lengthy process for the production team to overcome (although, in accordance with the idea that you can’t please everyone, it’s difficult to say whether this will even be possible in some cases).
I think it’s important to emphasize that, while I’m very interested in maintaining peace between different parts of the fandom, I’m also supremely concerned with making sure that the audience feels heard, and that what they have to say is properly recognized by people in charge. While high profile members of the fandom interacting with each other is a good start, it would be completely inappropriate to forget users in general and how they fit into things. The least I and others can do is keep trying to reach out to people, and especially to keep the peace. With luck, I think that this could all turn out to be something truly wonderful.
Nothing more for today.
28thof October
There were conversations some days ago concerning the Homestuck wiki which have turned up again for various reasons today. Though I didn’t fully understand why at the time, people on the HSD talked for a long time about how we could make a new Homestuck wiki and how much work would be involved. The reasoning, I gathered, was that the article quality on the current wiki is pretty specious at times, and that it was significantly difficult to add new information or create new articles. However, I thought this was a passive problem: new discussions today revealed that it’s more serious.
According to various users, apparently a vast majority of admins responsible for upkeep on the Homestuck wiki have become totally inactive. It seems there is only one minor admin left named Blackhole, who is stubbornly refusing to allow the creation of new articles (or amendment of extant ones) that address content outside of Homestuck proper, such as the Epilogues or Homestuck 2. Combined with criticism aimed at the entire Fandom website (centered on horrible support and monopolistic tendencies, if I recall), people are openly discussing the options available to address these problems.
One such suggestion was to engage in wiki edit wars--or as someone else described them, “revisionist attacks.” Essentially, the plan would be to get as many people as possible to add new information to the wiki and essentially overwhelm the admin so that they aren’t able to remove everything. Personally this seems ill-advised, because wiki admins have the ability to do mass rollbacks with little effort involved. No matter how many edits or contributions are made to the wiki, returning it to a state from before the new edits would be trivial, and it would render the effort wasted.
The other suggestion, which as I said was already in discussion some days ago, is to create a new wiki. There are a number of options available for doing so, such as using Fandom again, another wiki generator, or making an independent website wholesale. These choices already entail some difference in how much effort would be required to pursue the project. However, the true difficulty is less in determining what platform should be used, and more in the fact that there’s simply so much information to be catalogued and organized.
Homestuck by itself, let alone considering all of the stuff associated with it, has a ridiculous amount of stuff involved. Merely creating pages for everything worthy of discussion and interpretation would be a herculean task, not to speak of actually filling those pages with accurate information. Enforcing quality standards on top of that makes it seem all the more daunting, to the point that it’s unclear if there’s anyone dedicated enough to make it happen.
Makin commented on this issue, saying that because of the sheer amount of work involved, he expects that it won’t actually be accomplished. If there are websites that get created (one such already having been made for Homestuck 2), then they won’t be populated appropriately and will essentially fail due to lack of upkeep. This is a rather grim portrait of the future, but one can always hope he’s wrong, as we often do when he makes such predictions.
More relevant to the HSD in particular, it turns out that Makin’s Toblerone wish did not work out. It seems that at some point while the forum pages were being transferred between servers, the data became corrupted. Some users such as Niklink and Kratospie suggested the possibility that the data is still recoverable if we were to consult a specialist, but there are a lot of factors involved and it could get way too expensive, way too quickly. From our current standpoint, it seems that the MSPA Forums are truly lost forever.
In a post Makin made on the subreddit to explain, he describes that “we only have 7k archived pages out of millions and millions regarding fanworks, fanventures and MSPA discussion.” It’s a pittance compared to what we used to have, and I can tell how much this failure distresses the people who were actually around for the forums. The only silver lining I can see in this is that it’s inspired some of us to be more conscious about archiving things and preventing data loss.
Makin had a backup wish in case this one failed, which was for a release of any official information about how a key aspect of Homestuck’s story works. This part of the story, a video game that kicks off the plot called SBURB, is outrageously complicated and the fandom in general has had countless questions about its various components and mechanics. Our interest in SBURB is based off of speculative power from years of wondering how exactly it impacts the story, and also for storycrafting/fanfic purposes.
Hussie seems to have agreed to this wish, but he stated that the person who would disseminate that information is not himself, but optimisticDuelist. Now a writer for Homestuck 2, oD is mildly infamous in the HSD for his treatment of various themes in Homestuck. Described by TartyTart as “BKEW but with even weirder takes,” he creates video essays that seek to explain certain ideas like gnostic themes and classpecting. However, a lot of his writing appears to be tenuous to us, like it’s reaching too hard to make a point that isn’t actually substantial.
With this in mind, hearing that oD would be responsible for explaining something as vast and complicated as SBURB was somewhat alarming. If I can go so far, I would describe it as nearly the worst case scenario for what we were hoping to see. It’s turned into a monkey’s paw situation, and after some deliberation, Makin decided to email Hussie again about it.
Makin was already considering this even before we learned oD would be handling SBURB: he describes that Hussie and others involved did everything they possibly could to get the forum servers back, to the point that even though it didn’t work out, he considers the wish fulfilled through effort alone and doesn’t want to foist more work upon them.
Further, Makin submitted some reasoning that relies on handing over Homestuck to the fans: he suggested that oD shouldn’t write the SBURB mechanics down because it would be “trading one tyrant for another,” with regard to canonicity and laying out details that don’t actually need to be explained. It’s not clear if this reasoning will go through or if the cat is out of the bag--whatever the case, I hope that things won’t be made worse through this interaction.
Nothing more for today.
31st of October
Hiveswap Act 2 received an announcement trailer today, which has been received fairly positively. Naturally, we’re excited to finally have some kind of confirmation that it’s still being actively worked on, and there seems to be substantial progress for it. As we were hoping, it seems that the connectivity with Friendsim is intact, and that characters from it will appear in the new installment of Hiveswap.
The excitement is palpable, with the usually quite inactive #hiveswap channel exploding with thousands of messages throughout the day. This announcement combined with Homestuck 2 and Pesterquest has actually really interested people, and it seems that things might finally be moving again in a significant way.
It would be unfair of me to say that there’s been no criticism, though. Most complaints surround the sheer amount of time it’s taken to get to this point. It took four years to get Hiveswap Act 1, which felt like an inexcusable length of time for what we got. A similar release trailer for Act 1 as what we got today was released one year before the game was actually published. If this trend holds true for Act 2, then it will have been over three years since Act 1 came out that we get the next chapter.
It’s understandable in light of deeper problems surrounding Hiveswap’s development over the years, but this is still rather vexing for most who have actually been around to experience all of the delays. I think it’s important to bear in mind that, when the developers were freshly beginning work on Act 2, they mentioned that they were retooling the system to hopefully make it easier to produce future episodes. The delay between Act 1 and Act 2 would make sense in light of that idea. We still don’t know for sure when Act 2 will come out since the trailer only says “put it on your wishlist,” but maybe it and especially subsequent acts will be released more quickly than Act 1 was.
A more salient point is that the developers also claimed they would be providing more updates as to progress on Hiveswap going forward. As near as I can tell, this promise was not kept; it makes it a lot harder to stay optimistic when you simply don’t know anything about what’s happening, so in that vein I sympathize completely.
Visually Act 2 seems to be more of the same, but with a different writing team (also being led by Aysha U. Farah) such that there is significant hope that it will be more accessible and of better quality than Act 1 was under Cohen. The verdict is still out and things aren’t perfect, but the fact that they’re moving at all is a relief. Being in a standstill and being unable to even see the way forward agitates people. I hope that we can steadily move towards a dynamic where things are more stable and positive.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
(No commentary for this month)