Drew Linky
7th of January 2026
My decision to explain the Slur Accords late last year proved somewhat prescient: at least once every day there’s someone who asks whether a given term is still permissible per the Slur Accords, even though they were never really intended to be taken as definitive restrictions or permissions. Nonetheless, after seeing this occur for months on end, the current mod team initiated a small discussion on it, especially Lyra and Soc. They pointed out the other issue I mentioned as well, being the use of slurs in people’s nicknames. They seemed to have the same viewpoint I do, which is that while not really a moral wrong, it’s still unsavory and gives the place a bad image.
After a few comments that were going nowhere fast, I made a suggestion that–whatever it was they wanted to see in #general–they needed to come up with a cohesive statement and pin it, for clarity and visibility. I feel like the advice was fine, although the end result was maybe a bit hasty:
It has come to our attention that there has been some confusion over the past few months regarding slur usage, so just to clear things up:
- The slur accords are officially no longer in effect.
No more slurs in nicknames, we are still a Discord partner and as such we need to project a decent image.
I call this hasty because longtime users instantly pointed out that the latter point sounds remarkably close to an ancient reference to Max Mikester, which I have somehow neglected to describe in this document at any point. The phrase “CONDUCT UNBECOMING” was exceedingly popular for years, used for mocking people who made any earnest appeal which had no higher basis than “we need to keep up our appearance as a server so that people can’t accuse us of unbecoming conduct.”
It’s still the predilection of most older users to simply not care about how we appear to others, although this attitude has been diluted over the years. I believe Soc is newer and may be forgiven for not recognizing it when they put up the pin, but people such as Enn immediately latched onto it and made fun of them. WoC eventually appeared and also mocked it, eventually replacing it with his own message: “dont put slurs in ur username or i kill you thank.” He has always been more fond of the direct approach, which in my opinion only works as well as it does for him because he has a king’s own arrogance. Still, I have to recognize his results.
Nothing more for today.
11th of January 2026
I feel like talking about the server’s numbers today, it’s been a while since I’ve described them in this journal and the situation has changed rather dramatically in the last couple years. I used to endure some ribbing from people about being overly worried over server activity, and though the sense of worry isn’t quite as sharp it’s still a bit concerning.
The HSD’s activity has been on a slow but general decline ever since the COVID pandemic caused it to resurge, we were seeing daily message counts in the 10,000-20,000 range back then but in 2025 it fell to a bit below 10,000 per day on average, often enough poking over that figure. However, the HSOD’s creation marked a significant change: their total activity is insane, and at least some of that is directly from draining #altgen and #homosuck because they have a more shitposting friendly atmosphere (I believe so, anyway. I don’t routinely check to see what it’s like). The #mspa-forums were also siphoned rather drastically, and so after the initial bump from the news in August our activity has fallen much closer to 5,000 messages a day, often below that figure.
Like I said, this doesn’t inspire the same feelings of dread or anxiety that used to plague me whenever I described this overall trend. I’m much older now and often have real life responsibilities that keep me from talking in #mspa-lit even when I have something I’d like to be discussing, or I’m simply too focused on a video game. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still feel some trepidation looking at the numbers for my resident channel specifically: we are now in the low-to-mid hundreds of messages per day (today’s recorded number was 174, below even the slothful #coding-tech) which is a rather precipitous fall from how it used to be even just in the first half of 2025.
I suspect that, being on average older, a lot of the rest of the channel’s denizens have fallen prey to the same increase in responsibility that I have. I wouldn’t be surprised if the state of the world politically is also kind of a damper, it certainly occupies a lot of my thoughts and puts me in a mood unfit for conversation. It may just be general drift though, at the end of the day I’m still unsure what forces compel people to talk in any given online chat. I know people are at least looking consistently–the odd funny message still gets plenty of reaction, it just doesn’t seem to promote discussion.
Something akin to this phenomenon was described in #general recently: Faeby described that it feels like people don’t treat it as a real time chat: “someone else… put it really well in that its been being treated like a twitter feed,” saying that no one is actually trying to actively talk to each other and opting to drop messages and leave it at that. The term “hug boxing” was brought up as well, though I’m not sure how true that is or what impact it’s having.
Without knowing the exact reasons why this is happening I have no effective solutions to propose. However, I do have suggestions I’m going to bring up with Makin about restructuring the server. The current layout is geared far more towards a place that’s still got tens of thousands of messages to worry about, segmenting discussion so no one place is overwhelmed, and even a couple of forums for people to generate their own threads whenever they want instead of centralizing discussion.
Rather, to an extent we now resemble the Sydlexia Discord: one or two people there have continuously requested more channels of increasingly granular purpose, even going so far as to divide discussion about media into several channels such as #book-club, #tabletop-games, #music, #tv-and-movies. Mind you that this isn’t a bad strategy in and of itself, but the Sydlexia server only has 78 members on it as of the time of writing. It’s a spread of roughly 4 people per channel, diluting an already extremely low amount of activity. The end result is executive dysfunction: I don’t know that I want to talk anywhere because it’s overwhelming to look at the server list, and I don’t feel as if my words are really being seen anyway.
With all this in mind, my suggestion is pretty simply going to be that we should reduce the number of channels we have in the server. The #gaming and #media forums are convenient for compartmentalizing discussion but what’s the point if hardly anyone is using other channels like #mspa-lit in the first place? It’s nice to have the topics of a given channel neatly defined, but in my opinion the numbers just do not justify it. The only channel with activity similar to pre-HSOD levels is #general, and for the last so many weeks it’s responsible for anywhere from a quarter to two-thirds of all activity for the day.
The other thing I’m mulling over is that the current mod team is lacking something. I can’t say what it is for sure, but there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that is causing things to feel off, although I may be influenced by a recent discussion in #general complaining about the team being unpleasant. We’ve had plenty of people who are a bit too aggressive, people who lack experience1, people without drive. I’m definitely unsure how to fix this though, it’s an extension of the same problem we’ve had for years: finding new people to be mods is a terribly difficult task.
I don’t want to harp on this too much though. Instead, to cap off the day on a more pleasant note I’ll briefly describe someone who’s been around since 2022 named Dabu. An Arab inhabitant of #general who often flits to other channels, he and I don’t share a lot of the same taste in media as far as I can tell, but he has a generally delightful demeanor no matter what he’s talking about. I believe English isn’t his first language; shamefully, for a while this led me to assume that he’s somewhat simple-minded, but that impression was belied by his natural curiosity. I see him talking and asking about movies or TV shows often enough, and if he can interface with media in a language other than his own that makes him more capable than most as far as I’m concerned. Additionally, he has a tendency to keep the #world-politics thread updated on various goings-on in the Arab world, especially with major events such as the recent unrest in Iran. These things together lead me to believe that he’s actually shrewd, and simply selective about what he decides to say.
I have literally never seen anyone complain about Dabu, and if they did I think I would feel defensive of him on principle just because he’s so nice. The other night we talked about Star Trek a little bit and he was asking about our opinions on the show’s quality between Berman or Kurtzman as series producers. After speaking in the HSD for almost a decade now I kind of take certain opinions for granted, but his transparent curiosity was a good reminder not to assume everyone knows about these things or share the same opinions. I appreciate him and I look forward to seeing what else he discovers while talking here.
Finally, something I consider rather important: I have finally cleaned up and reorganized the statistical spreadsheets for the HSD and the subreddit so that I felt more comfortable publishing them for general use. They can be found here in Appendix D, and will be updated on a biyearly basis.
Nothing more for today.
22nd of January 2026
I mentioned on the 11th earlier this month about activity slowing down, and that I had some suggestions for Makin for restructuring the server. After some thinking he didn’t agree with my ideas about removing forums, which is understandable, but he did humor me with a little restructuring of the existing channels. Typically, #general is located above #altgen but as we’ve done a couple times in the past, he moved #altgen above it to potentially catch more shitty younger users before they enter #general. This is being done with the expectation that improving channel quality will also give people more reason to talk.
On the first couple of days when Makin switched the channels there was some confusion from other mods like Starfang and WoC believing the move was in error and correcting it on their own initiative. After clarifying the matter to them, there was some light pushback from Starfang and itsy8itsy, who referred to it as a “science experiment.” This was also accompanied by one of them, probably WoC, renaming the channels to increasingly ludicrous combinations of the words “alt” and “gen.” The examples I bothered to write down were “#altaltgen” nearer to the start of the shenanigans, and then finally ending up at “#altsuperpreantegen” and “#postsubaltaltgen.” As to which was which, I don’t really think it matters.
Writing a couple of weeks after the fact, this might be having an effect. With my limited tools of analysis (and unwillingness to pay more attention than I already am) it’s impossible to tell what causal factors are actually responsible, but the activity of the server does seem to be increasing. It could simply be a delayed return to normal after the holidays, and the effect is not overly pronounced by any means. However, I’ll gladly take any improvement we can get.
Nothing more for today.
27th of January 2026
People have been asking for the last so many months about opening up a new community server for Terraria, and Makin obliged them today. It’s the only real long-running competitor to Minecraft we have, as far as “stuff people on the HSD want to play” goes. Team Fortress 2 also counts but has been featured far less than either Minecraft or Terraria, for reasons that I’m either unaware of or for no real reason at all.
As far as I understand, the pattern with Terraria is: the developer claims that they are releasing the definitive last update of the game for all time, and then about six months to a year later they announce another update that they were inspired to do for some reason. This makes for an interesting if unpredictable release cycle where the updates usually have at least a little substantive content. Makin has directly contrasted this with Minecraft, whose content updates are often somewhat disappointing because they’re mostly cosmetic in nature (Makin has gone so far as to say he won’t endorse a new Minecraft server if we put it up, which I am actually planning to do based on a request from RadioactiveUmbra).
But that’s besides the point. Terraria is the focus for the next couple of weeks, and this time around there are some strict rules to make the experience more enjoyable: only new characters are allowed. The logic here is that character saves can be transferred between world saves meaning if the character was used to beat the game previously then it will already have end-game equipment, if that makes any sense to people who haven’t played the game; the server is only open for several hours at a time instead of 24/7. The game is prone to rushing where people who are skilled at it may complete objectives rather quickly, which leads to severe problems with leaving other players behind; finally, the use of the word “pillweef” was banned “with extreme prejudice.”
This last one is an old reference to the MSPA Forums, apparently. Based on what little context I can bother to find, the forum mods didn’t like it when users insulted characters from Homestuck or other stories and would ban them for it (I’m not sure if this was ever stipulated as an actual forum rule or if it was just blatant mod abuse). As a workaround, members ended up using random, silly words like the aforementioned “pillweef2,” which are clearly not actual insults even if they sound similar. I sadly missed out on the forum experience so I have no real comment, though I often wonder what other bizarre nonsense was happening there.
As to the Terraria server: by the time of writing on the 5th of February, it seems to have been beaten handily and Makin led everyone on a “victory lap” in something called a “dual dungeons seed.” I largely was unable to play based on a real life circumstance that demanded much of my attention. Terraria isn’t my favorite game to rush playing on account of its general complexity, but I’m sure we’ll give it another go in a few years and will do my utmost to attend then.
Nothing more for today.
9th of February 2026
Starfang has been getting yelled at continuously by people for making what #general regulars and others consider somewhat questionable bans. SoC, Sung, and a couple other mods were talking about this publicly and opened a discussion on moderator quality for the server lately, which is not exactly a new subject–there are some people like Yark who are exceptionally verbal about the fact they feel the mod team does a poor job, or will at least point out specific cases they feel don’t make the cut.
However, the breach of privacy from the modchat is rather atypical. Nothing’s been said about it since the conversation in #general occurred, so it may be done for now. I fully expect it to crop back up: there’s been a recurring problem where Alice or someone else will institute a ban for a week or longer, and then someone like anas or spines will reduce the sentence unilaterally because they think it was too much. This has caused some serious problems of cohesion, and honestly I’m not sure if the mod team will last too long at this rate3. They’ve got to iron out the wrinkles or else it’s going to lead to another reckoning in record time.
I don’t have much else to say on that for now: instead I want to describe a newer user who’s been hanging around for the last several weeks. “Moodyblues,” who goes by the Homestuck character name “dave” like so many others, seems to be a chill and talented individual. I comment talented because just tonight they took the opportunity to share some works of tattoo art they’ve done which look very clean. This led to a larger discussion on tattoos members of the chat have acquired, and somehow I think it led into a larger conversation on adult life, and especially marriage.
I’ve been having a rough time in real life and the discussion reminded me of how any of us who have been around in the server for a while are all significantly older now. The fact that there’s at least three married couples running around, two with children, is a stark change from the fact that I joined the server when I was still in college. We’re all so much older now, it feels strange to look back and see this span of our lives stretching so far. I can’t even perceive myself as the same person who started writing this document, and the relationships I’ve built with the people here are both deeper and more complex than I ever expected initially. I find myself grateful for those relationships, both good and bad. I hope they can endure for a long time yet.
Nothing more for today.
18th of February 2026 - The HSD is Taken Down
At about 1:30 PM EST, we were chatting lightly in mspa-lit when Makin shared a notification he got from Discord. The screencap said that “Homestuck,” our server, had committed copyright infringement. We mused on what it could be about–immediate suggestions were the banner art, in the back of my mind I was thinking of the weekend streams–but after five minutes the entire server disappeared.
As of 30 minutes later, the entire server is still completely gone. I’ve talked with a few people independently about it, including Tensei and Alice. Some other servers I’m in with HSD people are talking about it, like Michael Bowman’s server “Bowmantown,” WoC’s private server, and a more esoteric one I don’t look at often called “Sandwich Research Center” which Enn just pinged me from. I even have a small emote server that was loosely themed around Dragon Ball Z which I barely use anymore that had a smattering of people from the HSD in it. As we figure out literally anything we’re sharing information with each other, trying to piece the matter together. Makin posted this thread on the subreddit not too long after the server evaporated. For posterity, in case the post is changed or disappears later:
I got three emails in a row saying my server "Homestuck" broke community guidelines for copyright infringement, and suddenly the server disappeared, even for me.
I think this is a troll taking advantage of an automated system, though, probably not even Hussie. I don't have any information, but I've contacted Partner support (I've been in good standing and in communications with them over the last seven or so years) and hopefully they can fix it.
I strongly doubt it got deleted for good, but I'll let you know if it is. This will be updated ASAP.
Based on the sheer rapidity of the reports, Tarty agrees that it was probably “some sort of discord report nuke.” Lyra was just fighting viciously with some shitter in #general last night or the night before whose name was Lavender. This Lavender went so far as to change her entire Discord profile and center it around calling Lyra stuff like “bitch ass skank,” which she took humorously and changed her own name to match. It’s highly unlikely this specific person decided to mass report the server and get it taken down, but the possibility is somewhat funny.
As the day has gone on, that small emote server has drastically changed: I’ve renamed it the “Temporary HSD Refuge” as it has been supplanted by more HSD people. It has ballooned from less than 20 people who got invited randomly over the years to currently 109 people including myself and Makin, all of them people who we recognized and invited through word of mouth. It actually helped to dispel some of the dread I was experiencing to see everyone come in and keep chatting energetically, sharing anecdotes from the HSD which may now be a lot of lost media. There was even some joking from Lyra: “this is why splinter servers rock because i get to talk to you guys in your full concentrated glory and dont have to interact with stupid 15 year olds every thirty minutes.” It has admittedly been refreshing not to have to deal with randoms trying to talk and making the space uncomfortable4.
Speaking at the end of the day, no news is forthcoming and my hopes for the HSD being restored are waning steadily. Alice and a few others have commented that there’s no real reason Discord should actually keep the HSD deleted, but Misha has the opposite opinion: he used to be part of the Discord server for a Youtube channel belonging to a guy called Lord Mandalore. Apparently that server experienced a similar problem to what we suspect, where it was mass reported by someone with a grudge. Misha describes that the Mandalore server “never came back5” since Discord is “picky about reports,” so we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up.
I have thus turned my thoughts toward other avenues, and have created a channel called #the-laboratory (which we actually changed to #the-labradory in keeping with the spirit of Fat Husky) whose purpose is to identify firm alternatives to Discord. My thinking is that even if the HSD is restored, there’s nothing stopping it from getting nuked again, and it would be advantageous to have something of a storm shelter to retreat to readily. I am primarily interested in alternatives which are self-hosted in order to avoid getting destroyed by the hosting service for TOS or other violations, and if it’s just a backup then it would probably benefit from being a closed space where only vetted users can enter once they’ve proven they’re not psychopaths.
I’m very lucky that I was available to quickly convert the emote server over into a more pliable Refuge and get invites out to people, but I would rather have something that’s strictly purpose-built as a robust backup. I’m actually kicking myself for not taking the initiative and getting something like that set up in the past, but we all kind of ignored the possibility of this happening for years. Even something as simple as an IRC channel where the information is readily available would have lessened the confusion of trying to get people in one spot.
Nonetheless, the current layout after some trial and error is: #announcements, #general (with a thread where I asked people to post emotes from the HSD so I can archive them), #shitposting, #bot-commands (with the temporary carl-bot, while I assume Makin doesn’t want to add Arquius to the temporary server), #the-labradory, #nu-mspa-lit, and the General voice chat. Makin, lupoCani, and I are Sheriffs while MrNostalgic, Cello, spines are server Deputies. I couldn’t tell you why I decided to call us that instead of admins and mods, I think it just made me laugh a little bit when I was making the roles.
As for a main space, I’m actually not sure what the plan is anymore. If Makin gets the HSD back then it all becomes very obvious: that space will continue to grow, and the backup can be instituted over time with less anxiety. If we don’t get the main server back then the road is very murky. Will he try to create a new space for Homestuck discussion on Discord? He’s already said that most other platforms don’t appeal to him for various reasons: they’re either of poorer quality, don’t have the capacity to attract people, or their userbase is unsavory (interestingly, he specifically mentioned that decentralized services are filled with criminals).
Without more information on the status of the HSD, I think that pursuing another space just for the oldheads is at least something to do, and I even feel it’s appropriate. It has correctly been pointed out by a few people that you need a topic or a draw in order to keep people flowing in or the space will die, so this can’t remain the Main Place so to speak. Even so, I was heartened to see people using the singular voice chat for a while today; Bolas decided to stream the last episode of The Sopranos to commemorate the HSD going down (which I yelled at him for considering the possibility of copyright infringement stemming from streaming stuff). A few of them were drinking together actually, with Canis fully passing out on call and just hanging around for something like four and a half hours. It may sound strange but that’s the kind of thing I remember enjoying in the HSD way back when, and I remain cautiously optimistic that something can be salvaged from this whole debacle.
I will end today by making a full list of all people (excluding myself) who bothered to join the Refuge, to commemorate the fact that we felt so much like speaking to each other. In alphabetical order:
ActivelyAnonymous#5079
Albe
Alice Bowman
anas?
anomalyNominally
BeeesWith3Es
Bolas
Bruhmeister
Caledfwlch
cameron
caniac76
canislupusaqua
casenvy
carlarc
Celeste
Cello
Chelvs
chloe
cookiefonster
coolGhoul
CyclopsCaveman
Dabu/Ryan
deLux
demetersPursuit
deus armatus
Dingus
eightball
electra.rose
faeby
fungus
GarReaper
GeorgeMacaa
harpyhour
hats
hb
helena
HypnoticOcelot
Ifnar
interrobang
itsy8itsy
jebbjabroni
jerryconquest
John Keel
Juli
kaliwete
Kanishka
Kidpen
Khalilah Circle
konipas
Kratospie
Kreuz
lime
Livina
lupoCani
lyranea
Makin
moodyblues
moonjail
MrNostalgic
Misha
Neth
Nero
Niklink
Nujaka Knight
OsseousArcanist
Pax Probliscum
Pinwheel.enjoyer
polygonalconstruct
PsuedoCrow
Putnam
Reti
Ricky Slugface
sacrosapphic
Shoda7846
Skye
Snoiper
SoC
spines
Starfang Predinova
Sung
tarty
tay
Tensei
Teratosapphic
terminalTermagant
Tetrahedron
the.enemy
thebadnut
tmtmtl30
TomatoSensei
Torimaesua
Tyzuigi
velikiy
virtuNat
Wadapan6
Wyatt224
wheals
yark
Zentoyo
zuup
(Strictly speaking, some people such as Kosh have been in my emote server for years already and not everyone spoke today. But, it was still nice to see their names on the list. Others like WoC have declined to join for various reasons, probably to see what happens with the HSD itself or just lack of interest.)
I don’t know what will come of all this, but if nothing else it means a lot that these people decided to congregate in the wake of such a hugely negative change. I’ve got some archives of the Homestuck Discord’s chat history that I’ll try to assemble and I’ll hope for the best about the return of the HSD, but the future looks very uncertain either way.
Addendum from the 22nd of February: I wasn't going to actually include it originally, but Reddit user Bananabanana700 wanted me to inform the future that they are 'special.' I will let the reader fill in the gaps on what that means.
Nothing more for today.
19th of February 2026
There has been no further news from Discord on the status of the HSD. Makin shared the screenshot of what he’s looking at:
Which one might guess is completely unhelpful. The limited research people did suggests that “limited access to servers” means that Makin can’t join servers or create them, but clearly he was able to join mine without issue. Until Discord provides more information, we are stumbling around totally in the dark.
In the meantime, the Refuge has grown somewhat. It hasn’t been such a huge influx as it was yesterday, but there’s more people and the activity is bonkers for such a small group of people. Today was literally three or four times as active as the HSD was on average with one quarter of one percent of the total number of users. Obviously that will fall off over time, but a few people have used the term “the cream of the crop,” and I can’t say I’m displeased with the current userbase.
In order to regiment things slightly more, I disabled all existing invites because people were using the original to invite friends I had no awareness of like Bruhmeister. Instead, I created another thread from #general called “Newcomer Council” where people are encouraged to nominate people and we can introduce more regulars in a somewhat orderly fashion7. This has the unfortunate effect of rendering the server a fully gated splinter, but this is ideally a temporary situation and won’t matter in another week at most.
This system, for now, seems to have made the environment more harmonious. Few people were seriously nominated that we decided no on; the most controversial pick thus far was actually Synga, who various people expressed concern about due to his temperamentality during confrontation. I initially decided to table the matter until we know more about what’s going on with the HSD itself, but afterwards Synga DM’d me on the matter. Despite obviously being hurt by the decision, his response to my explanation was rather measured and sounded genuinely contrite, so I elected to include him anyway. It’s worked out so far.
I’m weighing making more channels because of the sheer activity, though I’m struggling against the impulse of shoring up the place like it’ll be a permanent replacement. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to structure things more anyway, but there’s a niggling doubt in the back of my mind that says it will prove necessary in the end. Hopefully we can continue to pick up more regulars and keep up the spirit. Current considerations are repurposing the shitposting channel (it is largely going unused) into something else, maybe an on-topic channel? I also kind of want a second #general for overflow, because the discussion goes very quick at times, though that might just be what lit serves for. We probably could use a #serious channel if only for discussion of politics, which plenty of us care about. I’ve made a poll to gauge interest, though things will likely settle down and it won’t be needed anyway.
Finishing the day with another round of joinees:
Aiden
Angel
Ashley Sage
Cher
Civ
DefaultFormat
F1sk the person
greater james8
harper
homer
Kaisheng21
inkysquidmat
Linkslittlefriend
Magistrate
Marquise
Mistelle
Nobody9
rabbitPoster
RadioactiveUmbra
Remy
sein
Synga
TIPSY
With nothing to really back it up, I figure we have upwards of 90% of the people who were talking most when the HSD went down. We now sit at a grand total of 133 people at the time of writing. Of those, rabbitPoster is someone I’ve not described before but true to their name mostly pops in a few times a day to post a picture of a rabbit. A beloved user despite, or perhaps because of, their simplicity. Their presence offers a strange sense of normalcy that people really appreciate.
I was reminded also of an interaction we had today: the Newcomer Council (being renamed the Admissions Council for more accuracy) has been alight with suggestions since we got here. At one point the subreddit mod Harry Hinderson was brought up, and MrNostalgic had a suggestion.
For context, one of the subreddit mods is MoreEpicThanYou747, a former name for the community member Livina. I thus present the conversation unabridged:
Hoping everything turns out alright. Nothing more for today.
21st of February 2026
Small entry: no news yet. People still feel comfortable enough as a whole, the poll I put up indicated interest in a #media channel which feels somewhat appropriate, and I have thus added one. In defiance of the possibility that we were struck down for the weekend streams, we decided to watch some more stuff in the Cytube channel today (though, I note we stuck with stuff less likely to draw copyright ire), including two episodes of Jeopardy! and the famous Ugandan movie “Who Killed Captain Alex?” which proved to be both more incomprehensible and funnier than I thought possible. At the end of this, there was a string of movie titles from Uganda, though one at the end, just the titles themselves being displayed in total silence. One of the last titles just said “EBOLA” and this caught me off guard and made me laugh so hard I actually had tears coming out of my eyes.
Otherwise, with the sad admission we've lost one or two people in the last couple days, some more joinees for a grand total of 150 members:
1011686
CaptainArchmage
chickenmuncher42
Daniel111111222222
devoid_of_voltz
Harry Hinderson
Irene
Khauvinkh
kittenchilly
Lang oh. Stah
loneandlevel
mixi
MrCheeze
nekodrill
Photino1
stoneflower
sw3aterCS
theSardonyx
vR (RyuubBloke)
Nothing more for today.
23rd of February 2026
There was a personally upsetting discussion a few of us had in the Admissions Council this afternoon: we’re still fumbling our way through the process of introducing new people, and I’m trying to balance the requests for more admissions from various angles. Skye in particular has voiced displeasure that a lot of members from #homosuck or the #homestuck category channel aren’t represented in the pool of people in the Refuge, for instance.
For my part, I’m wishy washy and am unsure where to draw the line on this matter. Ideally I’d like to cast as wide a net as possible without bringing in anyone who is going to throw a fit or disturb the peace. At times it does feel as if the place is somewhat chaotic, but no one has put forth what feels like a Serious Complaint about how things are being run. After all, the circumstances of our gathering here are very fresh and it’s intended to be a temporary solution.
However, things escalated in quick fashion after someone mentioned Spines had already left. Enn also described that the server “is a mess” and “as it stands is worthless,” and then he left too, saying he might rejoin if this happens to turn into the main server. That makes four I’m personally aware of to have left: Mixi, Yark, Spines, and now Enn.
After contacting him in private and discussing the matter a bit, he made cogent points, including that we just don’t have a channel that pertains to his interests, considering that he’s very concerned with producing and sharing art. Chief among the problems he listed was that lupoCani had made an interim stream role but then made it opt-out instead of opt-in, so everyone would get pinged at least once on a mandatory basis for streams. It’s easy to recognize this is clearly a bad idea, and I wasn’t quick to have it fixed (in my defense, I was somewhat preoccupied all weekend and didn’t really see what was going on). This isn’t even to speak of the danger of having ANY streams of copyrighted material when we’re still unsure why exactly the HSD went down. Something I was completely unaware of is that in smaller servers like this one, there’s a pronounced risk that one person committing TOS violations can get everyone’s accounts suspended, as opposed to just the owner or whoever is responsible for the violation.
This put me in a rather sour mood and stirred memories from when I was the owner/administrator of the HSD itself six years ago. The truth of the matter is that especially after the incident with Yark, I have strictly not wanted to be a moderator. I feel like I don’t have the sense of conclusive judgment that’s needed, and I’m too eager to please everyone I can. I described later in the day that I’m “rather happy” I could make the server available while we figure out what’s going on, but I was given a very stark reminder of how stressful I find being in charge.
The conflicting opinions on what to do or how to administrate the place are dismaying. Mixi I don’t really know and Yark’s opinions I just take with a grain of salt anymore, but I trust Spines and Enn to be capable and have good opinions. That they both decided to leave woke me up to the fact that I need to clean the server up and make it better organized, and do some serious searching on how it needs to be handled. This opens the door for more disquieting thoughts, unfortunately.
I’ve done this enough times now that I better understand my own lack of willpower in forcing constraints on other people. I don’t enjoy having to make firm decisions and pissing people off even if for valid or sensible reasons. Despite my efforts not to worry too much, I can’t deny that I’m emotionally vulnerable to criticism, often to a perilous degree. Enn leaving and the ensuing rumination on how things might be going wrong with the server actually gave me a slight stomachache10. It sounds pathetic but that’s just the kind of person I am, I guess.
Strictly speaking if we’re lucky then it won’t even matter within a couple of days, but it’d be far more prudent to prepare for the worst and try to bolster the place in case it becomes our permanent residence. If that does come to pass I am not holding onto the place myself; I’ll give it to Makin immediately, assuming he doesn’t have other more significant plans.
Thankfully, when I was describing my misgivings in #general later, a bunch of people including moonjail, tensei, and Lyra kindly told me not to take it too seriously; this place has not been around for too long and was/is not intended to be the new center of activity. Keeping the opinions of the disgruntled in mind is important but in so doing it’s easy to lose perspective. I’m just going to continue to make what improvements come to mind and hopefully it all shakes out in the end.
To that end, I’ve created a #homestuck-stuff channel because lots of people clearly wanted to talk or at least shitpost about Homestuck–it was honestly deserved anyway. To help with it I’ve deputized Skye and Khalilah, the latter of whom won the position in a rock paper scissors contest with Sung. My thinking on this stuff is that it can just be changed if it proves not to be working, but maybe Enn and Spines had a good point about this server being a mess. Perhaps I should determine the next staff member by throwing darts at a board.
I’m also revamping the color role system with lupoCani; I actually had all of the data for our old color roles through my CSS file on SPAT, so we just need to make a functioning react system. Once that’s done, I’m going to make an announcement letting people know about the improved choices (and also letting them know that streams are fully cancelled except for strictly public domain material. Someone mentioned Buster Keaton, perhaps we’ll do that). I think I’ll also try to expand the mod team to include more people and then open up invitations more. I hesitate to make the server fully open because part of the enjoyment has been that not any Joe Schmoe can wander in, but we won’t have that luxury if the HSD is permanently gone.
Joinees since last writing for a total of 156:
goose
Harvest
kitty_catastrophe
lichtbogen
scoundrellyFeline
slotheros
Slowline
zen_arcade
Nothing more for today.
24th of February 2026
A somewhat concerning update today from Discord, per Makin:
Thanks for your patience and for providing the server ID. I’m [...] from Discord Support, and I’ll be handling your ticket.
Sorry for the confusion here! The only ways that a server would disappear from your server list are 1) if you left the server or got kicked/banned, or 2) if the server itself was deleted, either by the owner or because it was in violation of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.
I just wanted to let you know that I'll be escalating this ticket to a team member to look into further. I genuinely apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime and will keep you updated here as soon as I hear back!
Let me know if you have any other questions at any time!
He comments: “let's pray it's casual wording for a soft delete,” though it feels the chances for restoration just plummeted11. Suffice it to say, no one is pleased.
In that vein, the stress which permeates the last entry continued into today a bit, although it reached a tipping point. There are quite a few people in the Refuge who I did not invite and would never have invited myself. This is fine as long as they can chill out and participate comfortably, without making anyone else comfortable, but there are definitely some who do not fit that category.
One in particular that was a centerpiece of discussion today was someone called Poltergeist. I was unaware of their reputation before now but in retrospect I should have realized something was amiss; several times, at least five or six times that I saw myself, people saw their name and said something along the lines of “that’s the person who posted armpit art.” That I did nothing at that point really just means I’m to blame, in the end.
Anyway, the #general chat in the Refuge was getting rather fast with a lot of what I’ll call “highschool-posting,” I guess. This is something that wouldn’t even bear comment in the HSD itself, it was a fact of life that there were tons of younger people in there and they would post trite nonsense that the average person above the age of 25 cares about, or jokes which are simply not funny to anyone but themselves.
I may be getting overly judgmental as an overcorrection to not handling this sooner, but I digress. The highschool-posting was rather aggressive, lots of stuff that really should have been in #shitposting and it wouldn’t have been an issue at all–that’s why I made the channel, to accommodate such people. After about 45 minutes of this B3es messaged me in private and asked if he could set up a role to start segregating these individuals and settle things down, to which I obliged. The employment of this role was accompanied by a post in announcements:
Attention Bajoran workers.
There has been a discrepancy in the volume between certain varieties of users in the server.
As this space is much smaller than the HSD, that difference in volume has caused a great deal of consternation.
To rectify this, certain members will be given the altgenner role and escorted to the enclosure of shitposting, connected with the homestuck channel.
If you feel inappropriately given the role, that is very tough luck and I sympathize.
If you feel you need more company in the enclosure and would like to volunteer your friends, reach out to any deputy or sheriff.
Accompanied by this image:
Those of you familiar with the franchise may recognize the character Gul Dukat. Without going overly into detail, the joke is that in one episode he laid a bunch of hidden messages in the titular Deep Space 9 of increasingly implausible specificity, on the chance that a worker rebellion broke out. I don’t know if there’s a specific name for this kind of joke but when employed skillfully it’s always a good time.
Anyway, after this was posted the discussion in #general continued a bit more until Poltergeist’s history in the HSD was brought up. OsseusArcanist brought up an image Poltergeist had made where a Homestuck character is drinking a thick white substance out of a bowl. This was supposed to resemble a popular enough meme where a kitten has dunked its entire face into a bowl of something resembling oatmeal, but I will be perfectly frank: in this instance the Homestuck version just looked like semen. Matters escalated when Poltergeist themselves posted an image of an anime girl with an xray of their head containing a rabbit.
In this latter case I have to admit that I was just mistaken: I could have sworn up and down that this was an edit of a porn image that I associate with the term “cumbrain,” but I had Dingus investigate and the image was perfectly authentic (on Gelbooru, anyway, which as an image repository has its own mixed reputation). By the time we got to that part, I had already segregated Poltergeist and forced them into #shitposting.
This led to something of a revolt in its own right. Technically SoC was the first to be hit with the role, although that was mostly a joke which he managed to find funny. Poltergeist and Nekodrill followed after, though Poltergeist started kicking up an absolute fuss over being separated over what they insisted was perfectly innocent, and that it was an artifact of history they were being judged for. They pinged Makin and lupoCani as the other people I have in charge in order to get them to do something about it, but Makin simply went to ban them. It’s unclear if Poltergeist left or the ban went through first, but in effect the fight was already in progress.
SoC also began arguing ardently on their behalf and was distinctly offended about how the situation went down, eventually leaving himself. I think something in me snapped at this point and I finally had an epiphany about what it is exactly that I want out of the Refuge. If anything, “Temporary HSD Refuge” is not a strictly accurate title for the group anymore, because I am not fine with the having unrestricted access to the place for just anyone who was on the HSD. I mentioned in the last entry that I am distinctly uncomfortable with the notion of being put in charge of a common space; the temporary server is in effect my fucking house12 that I was foolish enough to let several dozen people into so they could get out of a storm.
So, invites to the server are totally closed for the moment. I’m not opposed to getting more people in there if they want and they’re proven fine individuals13, but the rapid re-tooling of the server ended up allowing way more people in there than I expected. I am not fine with trying to cater to as many people as possible, I definitely don’t want to try and community build. Whoever’s in there now can stay if they’re able to relax and participate in a socially responsible manner, but it’s not a democracy god dammit.
For some time after all this, Skye complained intermittently in the now defunct Admissions Council about how they felt horrible that this place was not in fact a refuge for all HSD people and instead more of a collection of my friends14. On one level I sympathize, but on the other I’ve reached my limit trying to placate people who want the server to be more in alignment with their desires. They are free to leave if they’re so perturbed by it, I didn’t want this on my hands. It’s immensely disappointing that fighting has broken out at a paltry 150 people. I now understand more clearly why Enn and Spines thought the place was a mess. It’s not really an effective address to their complaints, but at minimum I should consider changing the name to something more personal.
With invites totally closed for now, no more lists of joinees. On the more positive side, lupoCani did get the role react system to work and we fully restored the original color system available on the HSD. He has accordingly been removed from the list of admins and is now just a backup techie for the bot in case we need assistance. I somewhat expect the server to properly calm down at this point, but I was in denial when I thought we were in the clear before. If we’re lucky enough, none of it will matter within a week.
Nothing more for today.
25th of February 2026
A very odd day. It started off with a distinct note of apprehension: as of 1:45 PM EST, it has now been one full week since the HSD went down. Given the notice Makin, we were awaiting the possibility of an update with great trepidation. Unfortunately, there was exactly nothing. The time came and went and there was no update. His automatic appeals are still rejected, he’s still “banned” somehow, and the server is not back up.
At this point, we’re forced to conclude that the only resolution we’re going to get is through that ticket he managed to get escalated. Even if it does get resolved in a somewhat timely manner, there is absolutely no indication so far whether the deletion is permanent or not. The mood at this unfolding was somewhat morose, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that the future feels less certain than ever.
This did open up a conversation on that exact thing: Makin specifically mentioned that the idea of remaking the server felt “daunting.” I can hardly blame him, though I’m not even sure starting from scratch is feasible. The HSOD existing is a completely different beast from the competing places from back in the day like the Hiveswap Discord. For my own part, I mentioned that I felt like the HSD was on its last legs to an extent anyway. I don’t think this was necessarily through any fault of its own, but Homestuck as an entire property feels like it’s gone through an extensive period of rot.
To be specific, Homestuck is now and has been collapsing under its own weight after more time being finished than it took to make, with Hiveswap and Homestuck 2 being completely mediocre, indulgent spinoff projects with no end in sight or real steersmen at the helm. Add to this property runners who are allergic to meaningfully interacting with their userbase or tolerating criticism, and the situation is rather dire. Speaking honestly, this sort of explosion could have come at any time.
On that note I was actually referred to a video that was posted on Twitter or X by an account remarkably similar to the longtime callout profile HSCommWatch (it may even be run by the same guy, we have no idea). The video was posted some hours after the HSD went down last week, which suggests a lot of things right off the bat, mostly that it uses recycled screenshots collected over several years because they didn’t have the ability to actually collect any real evidence. In fact, in saying that I’m convinced it’s the same person as HSCommWatch because no one else would have so pathetic an axe to grind.
I don’t feel like saving the actual video or describing it in detail because it’s poorly made, antagonistic rubbish. I had typed out a whole thing describing it but after reviewing it further and what I wrote, I am just not going to bother. Suffice it to say that whoever owns the account in question needs to find something better to do with their time. I thought that it was unknown to us but I was apparently very late, and most people deservedly called me out with the recycle emoji for my blunder.
Anyway, the rest of the conversation was a bit more constructive. Makin is considering what exactly to do for the future, though that’s a pretty big question. He brought up the idea of using his own blog on Record Crash since he has something of an audience. Going back to what I said about Homestuck as a property, I don’t think it’s really feasible to try and start over with that (though we do still have the subreddit with 100,000 subscribers on it, so it’s not impossible to try. The real problem with that would be whether Discord considers it community ban evasion).
Difficulties aside, I’ve really enjoyed having the more private server up. There have been some oldheads and newer people alike in there who have been nice to chat with and make sure we don’t lose contact. I recognize that it’s not an effective permanent solution because people will eventually drop off and become less active. Granted that was a risk even with the full HSD, but I do think a “main” public server is prudent just to have some kind of influx of people. Or maybe I’m overthinking this and we can just survive indefinitely off of gradually filtering decent people into the server. Maybe it’ll all explode in another week, who knows.
I prefaced this entry by saying it was a weird day; while overall it was much smoother than the start of the week, there was one incident that was genuinely shocking. While at work, I suddenly got direct messaged by four or five people in a panic telling me that I needed to remove Kosh. I cannot overstate the seriousness of this: over a frivolous argument in a different server, Kosh reported someone who is also present in the Refuge to ICE. There have been plenty of people like Synga or Alice who disliked him, whether casually or personally. I don’t think that literally any of them or the rest of us saw him committing such a gross violation.
I don’t want to get too into it aside from to say that he has been effectively eliminated from every common space I can think of. He is either so ignorant that he doesn’t understand the danger he put our friend in, or he is actually vindictive enough to try and get them deported or killed. If it were five or six years ago this would have sent me into enough of a rage to expunge him from this document entirely. Instead there will only be a few minor edits in select spots. The last I will ever say on him: wherever he goes from here, he has become deeply sick and I hope he seeks assistance to get his head back on straight.
A petty knock-on effect from this is that he was one of the two people boosting the server. I’ve never described this somehow, but Discord has a feature where people who are paying for the enhanced service called Discord Nitro have the option to “boost” servers. If enough people boost a given server it unlocks extra perks such as increased video and audio quality on call, expanded emote storage, and other goodies. This was mitigated in short fashion by several individuals who all boosted the server, which put us at “level 2” out of a possible three. I don’t necessarily expect much to come of it since this place is still meant to be temporary, although it’ll be nice to have it even if we don’t need it.
Despite that huge rattle, I think today was overall a lot better. Enn came back since the main server has not manifested yet, and he hasn’t made any overt complaints. There’s some weirdness I had to talk over in DMs with a couple of people I won’t get into, but if they can behave publicly that’s really the important part, and I trust them to do the right thing. The flood of people from earlier has slowed to a trickle, assisting in finding people who actually deserve to be here for one reason or another–whether it’s because they have real contributions or simply because I recognize them. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m more or less open to having people come here as long as they can conduct themselves responsibly and not make the space shitty for everyone else15.
We are certainly in a weird spot, is the long and short of the matter. The folks in #the-labradory, especially B3es, lupoCani, Nero, and Skye, have all discussed the matter extensively and there seems to be an option. I wish I understood it better, but my technical knowledge is just not expansive enough for it. If I understand it correctly, they are basically saying that we can rent a server space called a “droplet” (through a website that lupo and Makin are both already using) and use that on the protocol Matrix to host a server on Stoat. The cost doesn’t seem huge either, about $7 USD a month, which I would happily throw at it.
I guess it does beg the question of what exactly we’re doing with it. They say there’s an option to mirror messages between Discord and whatever instance we choose to put on Matrix, which would allow people to choose more than just one client. For my own part I’m most concerned with being able to control our message history and avoid summary takedowns like the HSD experienced. It all does seem quite a lot of effort for what is essentially a gated backup server though. I need to type up something comprehensive so we can finally get to the heart of the matter.
Nothing more for today.
27th of February 2026 - 10th Anniversary of the HSD
Though it may be in exile, we recognized the Homestuck Discord’s 10th anniversary of being created. Technically it was yesterday on the 26th, but who’s really keeping track at this point?
I commissioned Alice for a painting, and the subject is something we’ve joked about for some years: the School of Athens by Raphael has been suggested every so often. Spines was the one to remind me of it last year, and it seemed that if we were to actually go with it at any point, the 10th anniversary was the time for it.
Alice finished the painting and sent it to me just in time:
Click for full resolution.
People listed left to right.
Upper level: Livina, WoC, Fungus, Makin, myself, Misha, anankeAverted.
Lower level: Enn, aberrantArtificer, Ifnar, terminalTermagant, Ikhanad, Niklink, Natwaf, Interrobang, Tarty, Helena floating above the previous two.
It is distinctly bittersweet for a few reasons, but I still like it entirely too much as I have with previous commissions. The symmetry in the School of Athens is particularly pleasing, and Alice using Tensei, Bowman (notice it says “720” in Greek numerals on the right next to his face), and Fat Husky is a lovely touch. A comparison between this and the original article will reveal a pleasant closeness to the composition of the original, though Alice has said if the HSD comes back in full she will “add more chud mods.”
Makin is quick to call this kind of thing a waste of money16 but I have no regrets whatsoever.
Not much else to say, things have definitely settled down a bit. I’ve rearranged the Refuge slightly based on small thoughts I’ve had. I’ll take the time to fully list the structure as it is now, in order.
Obligatorily we start with #announcements and #roles, then:
#general, including threads Politics and News, ANIMALS (largely unused17), Admissions Council (now closed for more direct control of invitations), and the HSD Emoji Spam Thread (most useful)
#media-and-personal-projects, which I repurposed just today after some feedback, and added a thread called “gayming”
#homestuck-stuff
#shitposting
#bot-stuff-and-spam
#nu-mspa-lit
#the-labradory
General voicechat, which was previously positioned in such a way that people kept joining it by accident. It is now separated into its own category to avoid this problem.
And finally a hidden thread for #carl-bot-logs.
A humble arrangement, but for now this is what we have available to us. The only foreseeable changes are that personal projects may be made its own channel apart from media, if the two topics don’t mesh well. I was going to combine #media and lit into their own channel but decided against it with an impassioned argument from Tetrahedron on the matter. It is quaint what we bother to discuss in detail when the stakes become this small.
I was experiencing a lot of angst about the current state of affairs, but overall I feel as if I can live with it now. The situation is tenuous enough that it may change on a week to week basis, but for now I can reliably speak to people I consider important and share information as necessary. What more can one ask for?
A couple of random bits of information I’ve collected over the week: Bruhmeister was initially seen as an unintentional inclusion in those first couple of days when the server was entirely too chaotic. However, after watching them for some time in #shitposting, they appear to regularly post pictures of polar bears. When I questioned them about this behavior, they had a peculiar response: “I found images of them on pinterest one day and thought Oh this could be like. My thing. Our thing / Like how @Warplark has the seals and @actinomorphicAgar has the touhou battles / Plus theyre just cute / Bears in general are great. Weird dogs18.” An unassuming answer that I find interesting for the sheer lack of pretense.
For efforts of conservation, B3es is apparently hard at work setting up a Matrix instance for a Friends Only instance that we can be more certain is not vulnerable to the wiles of Discord as a hosting service. I’m not sure as to the overall state of that project, although Nero seems to have an instance on Stoat prepared and ready to go. I need to coordinate with them more closely to figure out how to access it, and how it looks.
Nero’s other project includes a Javascript recreation of the Homestuck Discord based on our collected message packages. A number of us have received these zip files and Nero has studiously put together a program that will extract the HSD specific messages from it, and then plugs it all in into a cohesive timeline. B3es made it simple when I asked, but that sort of thing is firmly outside of my capabilities. I hesitate to share an example for now; once the process has been streamlined and more people have submitted their messages, it will be gratifying to see. Far from complete, as it’s based on voluntary submission of information, but it will be far better than nothing.
In all, we are still chugging away for now. The culture of the Refuge is an oddly inchoate thing, settling into a shape that may be less than stable. If the HSD is truly gone, then only time will tell if we survive for a while or die quickly. For now, I hold onto my kernel of optimism. We still have plans, such as a (strictly public domain) stream of All Quiet on the Western Front for the weekend, and we are trying to put together a game night in Left 4 Dead 2. Even without these, I’m grateful to everyone who is still hanging out and I hope we will continue together indefinitely.
Nothing more for today.
2nd of March 2026
The server has calmed down and feels like it’s approaching some sense of equilibrium. I was worried about the possibility of imminent explosion or implosion, but it seems we’ve largely avoided this. People have actually been talking at a somewhat consistent rate of about 2500-3000 messages a day, which is honestly amazing for a place this size. I still expect it to go down somewhat, but considering other servers I can think of are much less active I will happily take this for now.
With restricted invites we still have some more people trickling in gradually, including one person from the shitposting channels called Ashley whose whole deal seems to be posting nothing more than horses. We also have a guy named SaltySeagull whose claim to fame was posting a random Pokemon trading card every day which would then be pinned by the shitpost pseudo. They had an unbroken streak of something like 400 days doing that in #altgen, so in order that this tradition may continue I have given this individual special dispensation to pin their own stuff.
We also got 20nypercent, who was prolific in the politics channels and lit, as well as some other stragglers like Shroom, Sky20, Potato, Aksel, Anervaria, Erieolae, and even the vaunted Marcy found her way to us. Honestly it makes me very glad just to see these people again. In addition we do have some people I’m not very familiar with like dotjson, though good people vouched for them to come in. I worry about inviting too many people who are kind of outside of my awareness though.
We also have lost a few people, for various reasons. I already listed some in a previous entry, but two notable incidents that come to mind are a vaguely unpleasant encounter with someone named Sherbert, who essentially came in just to friend request some people and called me “unobservant” for forgetting who they were19 (technically can't fault them for this, but it still rubbed me the wrong way). More benign was a user called HypnoticOcelot whose only contribution was to say “hey guys” every three or four days and literally nothing else. There are a couple of other things on the backburner which may eventually prove to be an issue, but unless they boil over I'd rather not discuss them.
Aside from all this, I restructured the Refuge slightly so that the media discussion channels are collected below the casual channels. A totally arbitrary choice, but if it sucks I can just change it around later. Current order is: #announcements, #roles
Casual chat category with #general, #shitposting, #nu-mspa-lit, #the-labradory, #bot-stuff-and-spam
Media discussion category with #media, #personal-projects, #gaming, #homestuck-stuff.
Ideally, I won’t change it around anymore unless something huge happens. Even if people complain about something, I think it’s safe enough to ignore at this point and let them figure it out. Besides, upon request Makin brought Arquius into the Refuge, complete with Linkybot and Drewbot functions. That alone has brought some mirth back, and I’ll continue updating the related archives in case it’s particularly funny.
Nothing more for today.
11th of March 2026
More pertinent information: after three interminable weeks, Makin finally got a response back from Discord admins about what’s going on. Contracted statement from him:
Got a reply from Discord support, they told me that they checked and yes, there was a real copyright claim made that I need to contest with a counter DMCA. I've asked for more details on what content was infringing exactly, as that's one of the basic requirements for filing those.
This led to an extended discussion in nu-lit about how to proceed. Makin finely summarized it into three possibilities:
- random troll: I file a counter DMCA and server returns in 15 days
- hussie: I file a counter DMCA (will need someone to give me their details) and cross my fingers that he's not immature enough to escalate again, I don't think hussie would have a case but he might start an unwinnable lawsuit that he plans to drop only to get rid of us, he's a multimillionaire
- streams claim by disney or a different actual movie owner: I file a counter DMCA and cross my fingers they're fine with the content already being down and don't bother pursuing further. realistically discord might still leave the server disabled after that though.
We largely ignored the first possibility (though Misha chimed in later to say that was almost certainly the case). Even if it is, the off-chance that it’s either Hussie or the streams being responsible opens up a big can of worms.
If Hussie is responsible for the DMCA, making a new Homestuck server isn’t even really a viable idea because he will almost assuredly continue such claims. In such a case, filing a counterclaim would also be dangerous for two reasons: it would require the real life information of whoever volunteers to submit the counter, and the possibility of it escalating into court. None of us are particularly affluent and that kind of thing requires money, and unfortunately Hussie is more financially capable than any of us (even if Vibri and others are trying to claim he is in fact “poor,” which is definitely untrue).
We’ve had a few people suggest a half-willingness to deal with this scenario. I would absolutely put my name forward, as some people from the HSD know me in a real life capacity and Hussie’s harassment would mean fairly little to me (indeed, I despise him enough already that it wouldn’t matter). However, I am extremely poor, which makes any possibility of this going to trial a non-starter. Tarty lives in Europe and would be fairly insulated, but the idea of being obligated to court makes this hard for him as well. Enn has shown a definite eagerness to put himself forward and doesn’t seem to give a shit about the possibility of going to court over it. I would honestly expect him to be smart and energetic enough to want to deal with this kind of thing, but he’s professed he thinks Makin doesn’t trust him enough to handle this task.
The Disney possibility is basically worse but with more question marks about what could happen. Talking about the murky legal practices of a shambling megacorporation is not really something I want to do here, suffice it to say none of us wants to deal with such a thing. If Misha is right and it was simply a disgruntled random deliberately fucking with us, then our waffling serves little purpose. Without actually knowing the content of the DMCA though, we have no idea. Makin has said he’s requested further information so he knows how to counterclaim, I guess we’ll have to see what happens when Discord decides to get back to us in another god damn month.
Given our stay here has now stretched to almost a month and it seems we’ll be here a while longer, I decided to change the name of the server since the Refuge was somewhat undeservedly lofty, not to mention generic. When I was first fishing for names Tensei mentioned “Unofficial SPAT” as a humorous choice, which feels appropriate given that the server now resembles a living archive of stuff we had in the HSD (I’ve collected a significant amount of the emotes we lost, though we are certainly missing dozens more). Accordingly, I’ve renamed the server to the Unofficial SPAT Club.
Serious matters aside… we continue to trundle along peacefully. There have been around ten or so more additions, which is a pace that has felt far more manageable than the explosion near the start of this matter. We also picked up an old regular who left the HSD some years ago named SamPrime, who has proven to be a somewhat mixed addition. I like her plenty but she is honestly somewhat overwhelming at times, with lots of typos in her general speech and other variously confusing misuses of English.
I’ve already threatened a couple of times to “put her in the crystal,” a nebulous punishment I picked up from Reti and a couple others. Other than sounding vaguely menacing, I don’t believe this phrase means anything specifically. The only possible origins I’ve heard involve Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda occasionally imprisoning people in literal, gigantic crystals, or the Iso-Cubes from Judge Dredd. At any rate, I will probably end up segregating20 Sam to the shitposting channel if this continues but I would prefer not to.
I get a good sense of satisfaction whenever anyone from the old days is brought up, and I’ve even made one or two allowances for people who are more just friends of current members rather than storied regulars. I’ve generally stayed away from doing this though, for reasons that Putnam appropriately brought up: “friendship is transitive” was the exact phrase she used, meaning “I’m friends with you, thus your friends are friends with me.” This sort of thinking has killed other groups I’ve seen of this nature, though in cases I remember it was mostly uncontrolled. Hopefully any sense of restraint will prevent this from coming to pass.
Nothing more for today.
CURRENT END OF ENTRIES
If you're reading this, you have reached the current end of updates for SPAT. The Homestuck Discord is still going, and I still write stuff, don't worry. The changelog will have information whenever it feels prudent for me to write, which will almost certainly be more sporadic in nature due to not wanting to cover the same topics or describe the same events repeatedly.
Support
For any of you reading this, I hope that this document has been entertaining, informative, or even both. I maintain this document for my own satisfaction and that of others, and to keep the memory of this community alive as the years go by. If you so desire to support me in this endeavor, then the link for my Ko-Fi page can be found here*. I would be immensely appreciative of any support, but this resource is first and foremost meant to be enjoyed openly and without any sort of charge so no worries either way. If I receive donations then they will first and foremost be used to cover monthly/annual operating costs for the website. Thank you for reading regardless!
Makin
1 I'm at least comforted by the fact the HSOD is adding mods that still have the "new user" badge, meaning they're desperate enough to "hire" people who have been on the server for under a week. We'll have to see how sustainable their approach is.
2 no it was part of the actual rules. you couldn't call vriska a huge bitch, you could only call her a "mean ol' duck" or "pillweef", the two exceptions
3 ironic foreshadowing
4 holy ivory tower breadman
5 ironic, he could reference star wars but not "somehow he returned" himself
6 THE wadapan?
7 THE GREATER GOOD
8 easy achievement
9 viral marketing, BRAVO NOLAN
10 Chidi?!
11 spoilers: I was right
12 summary of this entry: drew forces a tattoo on the undersirables, posts an image of a space nazi, and finally comes out as a fascist
13 some of them, I assume, are good people
14 maybe drew should write a book on how to make 400 friends
15 - Donald J. Trump
16 to put it in perspective drew mentions above an alternate hsd would have cost 7 dollars a month, so this cost like five years of a server running
17 insert fat husky image here
18 polar bears are complete psychopaths though, unlike dogs. unlike dogs that aren't pitbulls. and probably those genetic monstrosities like dough boy? - note from Drew: “Dough Boy” refers to a horrifically inbred pitbull. Other associated phrase is “2x Pimpy 3X Bape,” more details here
19 I have no idea who this guy is and don't remember them from either server, and people who read SPAT will know I tend to remember everyone without flaw
20 I can't even make jokes anymore
* Drew finally sells out. Sad!