Drew Linky
2nd of January
The Twitter callout account described in a recent entry is essentially imploding, if not in content then in reputability. I’m not sure how this was determined (it seems that they came out and said it themselves) but it seems that the account is being run by a person who was recently banned from the HSD called Phoebe. This person has attracted the ire of just about everyone for various reasons that are largely unknown to me, although they are apparently extremely racist1. I don’t have any concrete evidence of this personally, so it would be wise to take such information with a grain of salt.
What we do know for sure--as Makin has released the screenshots--is that Phoebe begged to be unbanned from the Discord server shortly before the callout account was created. Since Phoebe runs this account, it effectively destroys any possibility that it might have accomplished anything. All it does is further underscore how far people are willing to exercise petty grudges and try to get us punished. It’s interesting especially to note that the account has completely failed to gain any traction with callouts pertaining to figures who aren’t Makin.
To expound on this, various figures have only latched onto the information in the callout posts that concern Makin, but strangely ignored just about everything else. There’s vague discussion happening about getting Andrew Hussie, of all people, to come out and publicly denounce him, the subreddit, and the Discord server. The idea is that in so doing they might undercut his influence. This is completely preposterous and it only served to increase the entertainment of this entire debacle.
And make no mistake, this has indeed been very entertaining to us. It very swiftly became a meme to say, “Why haven’t I been called out yet?” or to otherwise complain about being left out of the out-of-context screenshots that the callout account has been posting. I believe Misha might have started this, and up to now he still hasn’t featured in any of the callout posts, much to his disappointment. This has been somewhat puzzling, as he’s distinctly one of the least fearful of any “repercussions” of being called out and thus says things that we understand should be causing a stir.
The account in question has also started posting images with names censored, although this is hampered by the fact that literally anyone can join the server at anytime and search through its archives instantaneously. Tera noticed this and discovered it had been included in a post (although it was not actually the subject), celebrating: “THATS ME / IM IN THE CALLOUT” (although it’s since determined that the person in the post was actually Wheals). Others have been similarly irreverent to the criticism, soaking in the ironic glory of being called out.
I haven’t seen this kind of manic energy in a very long time. There are all sorts of people crawling out of the woodwork to mock the callout posts: “remember to spam chat so when tensei says something problematic bigwarnings screenshots parts of your messages,” Carlarc remarked. Makin, of course, also participated: “why can't I get callouted by someone who's competent and not a moron?” There are countless examples of this throughout the day from all manner of people, although it should be noted that it died down at intervals. Then, inevitably, someone would post a new screenshot and the circus would start all over again.
At some point it was brought up that, while Phoebe started the account, it may actually be an old phantom who runs it currently, someone named Voidfire. I briefly described Voidfire back in one of the earliest entries of this document (22nd of August, 2017 for details), but the overall idea is that they were something of a conversational menace, and they were banned all the way back in December of 2016. The fact that they might still have a hand in all of this is bizarre and absolutely hilarious.
As the initial entertainment value began to fade away, more serious aspects of all this were inevitably introduced. Even Cookiefonster came in with an uncharacteristic bout of salience:
… why does Kate support this callout shit / I also don't like that Kate goes ahead and shits on hsd after the "we have no beef" promise from the live panel / … / I'm also confused that the callout account gives infamous banned users who everyone agrees are terrible as examples of why Makin is evil.
These and other issues with the callout posts were considered. Naturally, it’s troublesome to us that people try so hard to discredit this place and the people in it. Yet, it comes back to the fact that ultimately these posts affect us to almost no degree whatsoever. Really, it’s just the principle of the thing that bothers us more than anything.
However, a couple people began to speak out as the discussion ran its course. Speaking to the rampant cajoling taking place over the callout account, Qweq said: “... people's actions here are beyond just trying/wanting being funny. it already reached bad faith.” Such sentiments were mollified for a while, but resurfaced later in the day. A particular low point of the conversation was when Makin jokingly unbanned Archiewhite, who has been barred from mspa-lit for over a year, possibly two at this point.
Archiewhite is clamorously against Makin’s actions and history to the point of irritation, and the conversation immediately turned sour when he was allowed back to talk. He accused me of undergoing Stockholm syndrome for my continued support of Makin and the server, which he backtracked by claiming it was a joke. This only served to piss me off enormously and effectively stopped the fun completely. After much repeated nonsense like this, Archie finally left the conversation to pursue whatever his own devices were. I should hope that he stays far away from mspa-lit so as to spare us of his verbal drubbings2.
This unpleasantry aside, the day overall was pretty fun, but in the evening it did take something of a turn. Despite absolutely trashing on the vast majority of the callout account’s posts, it did raise some issues that people in the HSD considered important. To us, this was far more worth discussing than anything the callout account had to say: the opinion of nebulous Homestuck Twitter3 doesn’t matter to us except for what entertainment value we can extract from it at this point, but we’re far more serious when it comes to the matters and concerns of our own users.
Specifically, the issues we talked about involved two age-old problems that have surfaced repeatedly in the past. The first involved “rogue mods,” or explicitly VirtuNat and WoC, who have a tendency to be overly harsh on users in general. Or, I should say, they had this tendency, as it has not really happened in a matter of some months. That having been said, they still operate in a way that makes a series of people uncomfortable: Tera, Andrew, Qweq, Oda, Kratospie, VR, Multivac, Gitaxian, Canis, bellicosePhodopus, and Moonjail4 were all among those who professed a distaste for Nat and WoC’s general demeanor.
A huge element of that distaste comes from their casual flair for insulting individual users using derogatory language (which, I must stress again, has not really been an issue for a while). This caused us to review our policy with the usage of the word “retard,” which has been a subject of repeated debate over the last so many years. It’s been massively complicated due to the fact that it’s used liberally within Homestuck proper, and due to a rather pronounced degree of inconsistency in how mods treat the issue. We’re all pretty tired of this debate, and after so long we were somewhat able to obtain a consensus. Despite WoC being at the center of this controversy, Makin followed up on an obtuse tradition and gave him the final say in this matter.
To WoC's enormous credit, as soon as he was made fully aware that he had final say on what was going on, he didn’t just barrel ahead and install his own opinion on what to do. He first extended an invitation for comments from everyone in the discussion. Then, after a period of consideration, he delivered an explanation of his stance that was well-thought out and actually took into account all of the various factors that plague us right now. I’m not at liberty to explain what was said in detail, as this all happened in the modchat, but people on both sides of the issue were fairly satisfied with his reckoning of the situation.
Still, there remains the overall problem of trying to figure out where mods stand in the scheme of things. A huge question that was posed today is whether mods are held to the same community standards as everyone else. The answer is unambiguously yes, but there is intense disagreement as to what those standards should even be. Everyone has a different idea of what it means to be a good user and follow the rules, which is a necessary downside of the more ambiguous rule system we have.
I’m still of the mind that the ambiguity usually plays into our favor when deliberating on matters of a case-by-case basis, but people like Canis and Moonjail both suggest that there’s a lot of hypocrisy present in how mods behave and are treated as opposed to the common user. I’m not comfortable with hypocrisy, although I’m guilty of it myself on occasion. Makin’s rebuttal to all of this is that most of the HSD is perfectly content or else we would hear more complaints, especially in the surveys he does every so often.
Personally, I feel that he makes a mockery of that process too much for it to be strictly effective at allowing people to voice their complaints. There are a lot of systemic issues present in how we do things5, but it’s difficult to tell how much of that is our fault specifically versus a fault of how these systems function in general. There is always a faction of people who will be unhappy with what’s going on and seek to change it--the difficulty is in determining the validity of their complaints and weighing it against the opinions of the rest of the people involved. I’m sure we’ll return to this issue many times in the future, but for now there doesn’t seem to be any clear resolution.
Nothing more for today.
8th of January
Part of the content of the callout posts has concerned Cerulean’s involvement in the server, and his work on Aradiabot. This had been a problem even when Ceru was still a mod and worked regularly on stuff here, but since the callout account started up his claims have become more forceful: he now suggests that Makin “tricked” him into doing hundreds of hours of work for free.
This argument automatically doesn’t sit well with me. All of the mods have contributed an unbelievable amount of time to keeping the server going, but literally none of us have been paid for that effort--it’s just not possible to be compensated adequately for it6. That having been said, it’s not even necessary. There’s an unspoken expectation that, if you’re a mod, you’re helping out because you like the server enough to dedicate some free time to it.
All of this is to suggest that if you expect to be paid for your effort or otherwise don’t like it on the team, you’re allowed to leave at any time. Indeed, this very thing occurred with Dioxazine7 just recently, although they left presumably because they didn’t feel like they could dedicate enough time to keeping up with stuff. They asked to be removed and we obliged without problem. There are literally no hard feelings between us, as it’s mutually understood that sometimes things don’t work out and you’re entitled to do something else with your time.
With this in mind, Ceru’s lamentations seem less valid and are actually somewhat irritating. His regrets about being part of the HSD mod team are being used as ammo against us, which is its own non-issue in the grand scheme of things. However, it was pointed out that we’re still using Aradiabot despite Ceru not being around. This is actually a more interesting detail, and leads to some considerations: if Ceru is bothered about Aradiabot being used without compensation, why hasn’t he manually removed Aradiabot or--if he’s not able to do that--requested that we stop using it? Further, what’s stopping us from making a new bot as a replacement regardless?
The first question is mostly unclear, although I suspect it’s because Ceru doesn’t like confrontation and is afraid of initiating discussion with Makin, regardless of how justified that is. As to the second, the answer is that there’s literally nothing stopping us from making a new bot. So, that’s precisely what we did: Makin charged Nat and WoC, as the resident bot experts, to craft something that performed all of the functions Aradiabot did, with room for more.
From all of this, ArquiusBot was born. It still has some work that needs to be done, but Nat and WoC both put in around 30 hours by their estimate and got it running with almost the full suite of functionality that Aradiabot had, with plans to introduce more features as time goes by or as people request them. Makin was very pleased, announcing it to the server and declaring: “This is why they are still mods, btw.” Indeed, despite all of the recent controversies and discussion of why we keep them around despite how they treat users occasionally, it’ll be nice to have something concrete to point to as evidence of their skill and usefulness.
Nothing more for today.
9th of January
Late at night we somehow got on the topic of discussing gross or otherwise off-putting comics, including “Boys Club.” Boys Club is famous for being where the ubiquitous meme Pepe comes from. The comic in general has a simple premise and doesn’t actually seem to go anywhere, based on the descriptions I’ve heard from other people. It mostly involves a set of people living in apartment and messing around, with rather sophomoric elements.
After hearing an example of Boys Club’s scatological humor, I was reminded of something I discovered many years ago that fit the bill of “gross or otherwise off-putting,” but turned up to 11. This comic is literally called “Electric Retard” and is infamous for being exceptionally vile and offensive; indeed, being disgusting is kind of the comic’s most notable feature. WoC and I have discussed the work a few times in the past, with him describing it as “distilled shock humor.” Everything I’ve said about it thus far only manages to undersell just how horrible it is.
In the course of the discussion last night I made the grave mistake of linking to it--I fully warned everyone in the chat that it was “the worst thing ever,” but after looking at it themselves a bevy of people were immediately rather upset, including Moonjail (“yikes / delete that”), Canis (“there’s cursed, and then there’s this”), Multivac (“oh i dont like this”) and Velikiy (“drew that is just disgusting”). I found this response amusing but completely understandable, and deleted the link after about 30 seconds.
WoC and I continued to discuss it for some time, talking about the overall nature of the comic and its author. However, Moonjail commented some time later, asking if we could stop talking about it. He explained that it probably isn’t a good idea to discuss such things given that there are people literally trawling through the HSD for callout-able comments. All of it hearkened back to a time where the community as a whole was way less conscientious about what was posted and how it was discussed.
Fitting that particular tone, this led to Skyplayer linking some old comics, including a sped-up gif of the infamous NOMW, that were almost explicitly designed to elicit shock and outrage from those that read them. It was determined that this was inappropriate in a larger overall discussion about what sort of content should be allowed, and after a couple of complaints Skyplayer was warned. She was explicitly upset at herself for this and left the conversation to do some self-reflection, but at that point the damage was already done.
Toast and Moonjail assumed opposite sides of an idealistic battle concerning community standards, especially with regard to policing or even censoring content. Toast is an absolute proponent against censoring things, saying that to allow people to express their opinions is always better than to disallow it. He even referenced the concurrent discussion, claiming: “all the people whining about me being mean / kept on doing the thing they were mad i did / yet i dont ban them / why? cause im not a wuss / yet i guarantee if they were in power id be perma'd years ago.” As much as I tend towards actually exercising moderating powers, this point makes sense to me.
Conversely, Mines responded: “sometimes… beliefs can be bad,” in defense of the idea that not everyone actually deserves an equal voice. This point also makes sense to me in certain scenarios: some of our historied discussions in mspa-lit have centered around the idea of what to do with a neonazi spouting their beliefs. Some people are so vociferously against them that they assert violence is an appropriate and necessary response to silence them.
Makin and I (despite his overall resistance to censorship alongside Toast) at the time both agreed that in such a situation, systematically reducing their ability to tell lies or spread misinformation is ideal. For me personally, some discussions in the HSD are like this: sometimes you must simply step in and reduce someone’s ability to speak, for some reason or another. It’s not ideal and we avoid doing it unless absolutely necessary, but the reality of the matter is that sometimes it is necessary.
Toast, for his part, doesn’t agree with this and is adamant against being censored in almost any way. However, Moonjail described that comments which are posted purely with the intent to upset other people should not be permitted. This sort of argument is completely fine and even promotes greater understanding of each other, but before long we noticed Toast getting somewhat rambunctious.
Toast eventually lashed out at Moonjail at what might have been a joke, but was nonetheless worded way too harshly. After backlash from a number of people, I spoke with him in DMs and implored him to reconsider how he was approaching the discussion. Additionally, I asked him to apologize to Moonjail for lashing out.
Toast can be a very stubborn individual sometimes, but ultimately I trust in his ability to accept criticism and think critically about it. He proved my trust to be well-founded by apologizing to Moonjail in short order. He did not proceed without his principles and so fell back to defending his thinking, but even just the fact that he apologized for acting out of line made me feel better about the entire affair. I think there was a noticeable shift in the tone of the discussion after that, being less hostile and more reconciliatory.
Unfortunately, Makin did not share my outlook on the situation. After waking up, Makin reviewed the backlog and made a relatively drastic decision. At around 6 AM EST, he decided that Toast needed to learn there are consequences for his actions (“the fricking frick”) and removed him from the mod team. While not feeling particularly strongly about it, I do understand this decision and think it’s fairly warranted.
Toast, of course, took it a little more hard; to his credit though, he still took it fairly well. He threw out some jokes and witticisms, but after contemplating the idea for a bit, he seemed rather despondent: “i wont leave the server / but i will probably post here less because otherwise i would be less sincere and probably overall less enjoyable to converse with / … / i would probably just be more of a dick if i stuck around.” So at the very least, he’ll probably take a break from participating in the HSD.
This worries me greatly, and makes me sad: Toast was the first person I talked to in earnest from here, and he’s singlehandedly responsible for getting me to participate as much as I have in the last three years. However, Toast is self-aware enough that I think he knows what’s best for him. Despite the incident from last night, everyone in chat bid Toast farewell and voiced that they hope he comes back soon. I echo their sentiments in full, it won’t be quite the same without him here.
Nothing more for today.
19th of January
It’s been an interesting few days, to put it mildly. A wide assortment of things have occurred, including something that has been rather despicable, and then other stuff that was rather amusing. I’ll begin with the depressing stuff first, because I don’t want the good things to be overshadowed by what could ultimately be considered trite nonsense.
The sad news, predictably, is that the callout stuff on Twitter has reached a head. It’s been escalating slightly at times for the last several days, but Kate and Griever themselves kicked it up a notch. Griever pulled a repeat of his stint where he rejoined the community, posted something absurdly derogatory, and then left. Out of nowhere he posted on the subreddit condemning Makin for “putting a minor in charge of an NSFW server,” which is kind of strange.
The reason I say this is strange is because the original claim didn’t involve the NSFW server, it involved the NSFW channels. This is an important distinction for a couple of reasons. First, it seems that they can’t really keep the content of their complaints consistent, which further indicates that they aren’t actually bothering to follow up on information they get or otherwise verify it.
Secondly, MasterEmp was, to our knowledge, not a minor at the time they were responsible for taking care of the NSFW channels. The same follows for Cerulean and the NSFW server (edit: Wheals helpfully cleared this up after this entry was released. He describes that Cerulean lied about his age to get into the NSFW channels when he was still 17, but later by the time the NSFW server was created he was of legal age). If the basis of the concern is that we used to put minors in charge of NSFW content, this alone completely undercuts the validity of what they’re trying to do. None of this is even to speak of the fact that Makin didn’t even want NSFW stuff involved with the HSD, he simply put them up because of popular demand.
Griever wasn’t the only one involved, as I mentioned. Kate also tacked on a response to the post, initially claiming that Makin “oversaw a child porn ring” and then stealthily editing it down to “oversaw the sexual exploitation of minors.” The gravity of this accusation is unbelievably serious, which makes it all the more flabbergasting to me that she would post such a thing. If they genuinely believe that we put minors in charge of NSFW material that’s one thing, but as far as I’m aware this accusation literally came out of nowhere.
Indeed, I think that’s kind of the crux of all this to me now. I don’t even know where some of these claims are coming from. I’m pretty sure the ultimate origin for this current string of accusations is still the Twitter callout account we were dealing with at the beginning of the year, but accusing us of sexually exploiting minors is beyond the scope of anything that was posted on that account. At this point I think what’s going on is that the original accusations have gone through some sort of spite-driven game of telephone, because as the claims go around Twitter, they seem to get progressively worse based on nothing but their own perceptions.
Regardless of how it’s gotten to this level of seriousness, there’s an overarching problem with it all: whenever pressed for evidence, the people pressing these accusations are either unable to come up with any or point to the original callout account, which has been thoroughly debunked at this point. Literally all of the evidence from that account was taken heavily out of context, edited so as to be misleading, or outright fabricated.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, pointing this out hasn’t stopped people from latching onto it. I’m always just a little more sad whenever I witness the bullshit amplification principle at work. Not only that, but I think it’s accurate to say that the bullshit in this case is being solely propelled forward by people who hate Makin (not even the subreddit or Discord even) and want to see him removed.
I understand he’s had his fair share of altercations in the past--I’ve never been one to shy away from criticizing him when I felt he deserved it--but resorting to spreading malicious lies to try and “bring him to justice” is baffling and, I would think, self-defeating. The scale and severity of the claims being levied against him are patently absurd at this point, and I can’t help but scratch my head trying to figure out why.
In the end, there’s really only two explanations that make sense: either they genuinely hate him that much (which is in itself disturbing considering how far they’re going to trash his reputation), or they hate the fact that he’s in charge of communities that are often irreverent of who they are or what they do. The second option makes me a little sick to consider, given how much I’ve wanted to openly associate with the content creators in the past.
Of course, there is what could be considered a “third option,” which I have no doubt certain people reading this will cry out in support of: “perhaps they hate him because everything they’re saying is true.” I’ve already addressed this, multiple times in fact. I’m forced to believe that anyone who continues pressing this kind of thinking is not actually operating in good faith, because the alternative would be that their reading comprehension and critical thinking are poor beyond description. Let this idea and all others like it be put to rest for good.
Anyway, the overall point of all of this is that it fucking sucks. We immediately banned Griever and Kate from the subreddit for being slanderous and hostile, which naturally led to them intensifying their callouts on Twitter. It seems they inspired a bunch of copycats as well, either directly or implicitly: we’ve seen about a dozen people or so from within their personal spheres who have explicitly drawn up plans to try and raid the subreddit, with one person saying “if enough of us do this, maybe we can make the subreddit nigh unusable!” which further adds to the complete absurdity of all of this.
Another one of the claims levied against us is that we make our communities “unsafe for LGBT and minorities8,” but truthfully both the subreddit and Discord almost never suffer from people who try to exclude or harass marginalized people--and when such incidents pop up, we appropriately take care of it as soon as we’re aware it’s happening. This is yet another thing I’ve pointed out that doesn’t seem to stick with the people who are trying to make these callouts.
I think that the irony of a group of people claiming we’re unsafe for people and then proceed to try and raid us themselves is lost on them. When I step back and consider all of this together, it’s actually kind of funny in a perverse way: I’ve tried to explain to them that we pretty thoroughly check the subreddit to make sure things are going smoothly, and then of course we end up banning the people from Twitter who are raising a stink. It’s more evidence in the pile to suggest that we actually do our jobs and keep the community safe.
In fact, I would go so far as to call this particular claim insulting given just how much we’ve done to protect our community. I’m not sure if any of these people are familiar with the child porn raids we experienced back in 2017 or 2018. I can’t remember if I’ve explained that situation in depth, but it warrants a revisit here: back when I was first modded, it was because we were getting raided constantly by bands of outsiders who would spam gore and porn, pretty standard fare for online stuff honestly. Some time after that, we got bots and random accounts from people who were spamming actual child porn on the server.
The very first time this happened, we immediately went into overdrive: Makin immediately raised the security level of the server to make it harder for new accounts to post; most of the mods were constantly vigilant, roaming through every channel regularly to make sure that if anything was posted, it was deleted immediately. Ngame and I personally had a few nights where we didn’t sleep because no one else was available to watch for a while; we collected evidence from the intruders, such as message and account IDs, and reported them directly to Discord Trust and Safety; Makin further assisted Discord in catching the people responsible (something he’s done in other circumstances too; there are a few actual pedophile rings in the Homestuck community at least that Makin has helped to dismantle).
With all of this in mind, it’s nothing short of infuriating that people on Twitter are trying to point to us being uncaring for the safety of our users, or even actively harmful to them. It makes my blood boil to hear them spout shit like this, frankly; I have a feeling that if they were in the position we are, they would probably fuck it up enormously or simply quit because it’s too much to handle. Our community has become extremely stable and safe through our concerted efforts over the last few years.
I wonder if any of the people currently engaged in this bother to take a look through the submissions on the subreddit before they do their thing. Enough of them have surely looked at it by now that I wonder what they must think. Taking a cursory glance at our front page, every single one of these posts is utterly benign or outright supportive of Homestuck and its affiliated works.
This contrasts heavily with claims that we are “a stomping ground for bigots and bigotry behavior… literally doing nothing to protect the homestucks in their fucking server” and exhibiting “rampant racism, homophobia, transphobia and genuine shittyness towards anyone who doesnt fit their agenda” (not linking the owner so as to protect their identity). The hypocrisy in that tidbit about excluding people who don’t fit with agendas would be delicious if I didn’t think it was completely unaware of itself.
We’ve deliberated on all of this in the Discord server a bit, and while it’s frustrating to me personally, most other people don’t seem to care too much, or even find it amusing. Makin and Tensei have both commented on the proceedings: the former asserts that the number of people involved is so low that they’re basically unable to accomplish anything of note or cause any serious damage. The latter insists that the only people who are seriously bothered by any of this take things on the internet way too seriously. After some consideration, I think I agree with both of these points, although that doesn’t stop me from being upset about it to some degree.
I was supremely angry about all of this after Griever and Kate performed their spiel on the subreddit, but now that a couple of days have passed I don’t think I have it in me to actually be angry anymore9: this is all just too inconsequential, and it’s all happened before to no real effect. However, I’m still rather sad10 that these things are happening at all. It’s indicative of some really deep schisms in the community that will probably never be healed. What makes it worse this time is that people who have been officially involved in creating Homestuck content are tossing their hats into the ring.
I used to consider Griever a friend and I enjoyed talking with him about various things, but this is the second time he’s essentially come out and stabbed us all in the back. At this point I’m not sure if he does it because he genuinely believes it’s a problem or if he’s being opportunistic and trying to increase his reputation with people who hate us. Perhaps it’s both, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter which one is true: both explanations are dispiriting and rob my confidence in him.
Kate is the more upsetting figure in all of this. After this happened I went back and read my entry on the visit to Chapel Hill to see her Pgenpodcast live recording, and that entry was pretty optimistic--cautiously so, but it still spoke of hope for the future. The reality of what we’re dealing with now makes it completely tragic. Kate seemed fairly reasonable and nice in person, but online she appears to be nothing short of monstrous--her accusations have gradually become more outrageous, even crossing into the realm of delusional thinking. More than anyone else, I’m disappointed in her for advancing these false claims so far and for proving my hopes wrong.
As it is though, I think I’ve talked enough about this. There isn’t really much more to say about it: barring something truly explosive happening, everything seems to be a retread of stuff that’s already happened in this debacle. It’s possible that this could escalate further, but I’m not sure how that would be possible considering the claims lobbied against us now.
What next, one might ask? If the past is any indication, the number of people who are outraged will shrink until the callouts stop, either through critical thinking and gradual reassessment or through general apathy. I’m sure that all of this misinformation that’s been gathered or generated will be useful in future callouts against us though.
That having been said, it feels like all of this has served to strengthen our resolve as a mod team. As said previously, most of the people here aren’t taking the claims seriously or even find them funny. Despite that though, I’ve noticed that the tone on the mod team has been one of increased solidarity. We come from a rather diverse set of backgrounds and circumstances in the Homestuck fandom and in real life, and it makes me proud to see everyone standing together on these issues. I really appreciate the rest of the mod team and this community, especially for how they’ve responded to the circumstances that beset us now.
On that note, it is time to move on to brighter and better things. The community has been bustling recently, although I do want to point out one neutral thing that I still found somewhat amusing: #writing has consistently been the least used channel on the server since it was created, sometimes going days without a single message (the most I counted in a row was four or five). Due to its extreme inactivity, we discussed and decided shelving it would be appropriate11. We talk plenty enough about writing in mspa-lit as it is, there’s no reason for it to exist at this point.
Then a few days ago on the 15th, Skyplayer described that she had found her “Internzi badge” recently, which brought up something that happened during one of For Fans By Fans’ puzzle contests in the past. She described it succinctly:
Short version: During the FFBF arg I joked in this very chat that the ARG was being ran by an Intern. They took on the Intern persona and we had a blast with the puzzles. When they left FFBF their friend asked me to [put] together a goodbye present from a bunch of other fandom artists. Then they mailed me the Internzi badge they had made for their internsona.
This is a rather wonderful interaction by itself, but the conversation was heightened when joined by the very person in question. Internzi showed up and chatted for just a little bit, and though it was brief, it was a rather heartwarming encounter.
This aside, last night there was an extremely bizarre occurrence that I don’t think many of us will soon forget. One of the most prominent and popular characters from Homestuck has the online handle carcinoGeneticist, and as is to be expected in this fandom, there are plenty of copycats who assume this handle for various reasons, either because they like it just that much or they want to roleplay. As it is though, today we had two people who talked with each other using this handle, which quickly ballooned into nearly 20.
Obviously, this rapidly resolved itself into complete madness. Normally this sort of stuff would be banworthy, but Makin himself interceded and said that the people involved could “do this for an hour.” Without hesitation, everyone sharing the handle and more besides popped into the general voice channel, and outlandish amounts of mic spam and memery ensued. The sheer scale of the chaos was impressive, and while some were surely annoyed, most involved seemed to have a really good time.
As the hour passed the situation slowly increased to a fever pitch, and by the end of the hour the noise was incomprehensible. It was like being awash in a roiling sea of Homestuck bullshit; the energy was of a magnitude I haven’t seen in the voicechat for a very long time. One user named endeviousElf called it the “carcinoGenocide,” which I found to be an extremely suitable name for the event. Even a couple of mods were involved, with some just listening, but I know that Valkyrie actually changed her appearance to resemble another character from the comic and play along (as well as she could play along in the impressive din, anyway).
Then, as all things must, it ended the moment an hour had passed. To their extreme credit, everyone involved immediately stopped and changed back to their normal profiles, and they made no attempt to extend the event. It reminded me of some of the best moments of altgen with more restraint. Makin seemed to enjoy it as well: “I’m sorry to say I’m considering instituting a ‘KARKAT HOUR’ in every channel of the server,” he remarked. I don’t believe that we’ll see this happen again anytime soon, but that’s undoubtedly for the best.
Finally, I want to comment some on Arquiusbot’s development over the last week. Nat and WoC have both done an amazing job installing new functions and fine-tuning them: they’ve completely replicated the functionality Aradiabot used to have, but have somehow made it work even better. On top of that, they’re using their control over it to add a variety of fun and crazy functions, including some stuff Makin has requested.
For some days now, discussion of Star Wars has become increasingly frequent, owed especially to the release of The Rise of Skywalker recently. These conversations are all over the place, variously talking about the new movie and what we thought of it (spoiler: the consensus is that it’s fucking bad) to how it compares with the prequels to extended universe nonsense. The exact content of what we’re talking about doesn’t necessarily matter, it’s more so the fact that we’ve been talking about it a lot.
Makin finally had enough of this the other day, so he created a containment channel and associated role so he could get rid of the topic. This was effective if somewhat of a hassle to implement, so he requested that Nat and WoC build a command in Arquiusbot to make it so that, whenever he feels like it, he can enact the ban against Star Wars and automatically send people to the containment channel. The command is styled as “D--> execute order 66,” upon which for a period of five minutes using certain Star Wars related terminology will get you canned from the channel until someone comes and removes the containment role. This has actually been extremely effective at curtailing Star Wars discussion and keeping it from getting out of hand, a result I find more entertaining than it has any right to be.
Similarly, there is now a command for freezing the channel (Makin’s infamous ZA WARUDO) which he used to have to do by hand. Not only can he do it with a text command, but the bot posts a gif of the process in question, which automatically adds some more gravitas to the occasion. The channel remains frozen until he submits another text command (“D--> time resumes”), and though he was trigger happy with it at the start, his usage has fallen into more normal patterns. It definitely adds a bit more of a punch to the whole process though.
Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about Nat and WoC’s work on Arquiusbot. They are extremely attentive and quick to implement things that are necessary or even just fun. There’s an enormous amount of potential surrounding this bot, and I think I speak for more than just myself when I say I’m excited to see what we all do with it in the future.
Nothing more for today.12
11th of February - Makin Steps Down
It has been a very long few days. Sometime last week, the hostility between the HSD and subreddit versus Homestuck Twitter reached its absolute height. Andrew Hussie himself reached out to Makin, declaring that he wanted to see what options were available for easing tensions. Makin responded in a decidedly undiplomatic manner, and Hussie was not pleased.
I’m not sure how at liberty I am to discuss the contents of the subsequent conversations. After this initial problem, I stepped in to speak in Makin’s place and negotiated with Hussie what was to be done. Makin and I conferred between ourselves, figuring out how to respond to certain questions. Hussie asked us for explanations and evidence of what was going on, and I did my utmost to provide those things. Perhaps most importantly, we provided proof that the source of these escalating tensions was a malefactor specifically wanting to sow discord between our groups.
After all of these things, the three of us came to some critical agreements. First, the HSD and subreddit were not responsible for abetting criminals in any fashion, which was a key allegation on Kate’s part. Second, the fact that all of this trouble was possible because of a single bad actor indicated a deeper problem, being that there was no possibility of trust or support between our communities. Third, even if Makin isn’t guilty of the more heinous things he was being accused of, his history and current involvement in managing the community precludes coming to terms with each other, and opens the door for more of these events to happen.
With this last one, the three of us further concluded that it would be necessary for Makin to step down and hand control over to someone else. We agreed to this, but submitted conditions that must be met before he did so. Despite the initial rockiness of these negotiations, Hussie was amenable to the evidence we provided and our explanations. Thus, he graciously agreed to all of the stipulations we laid forth.
This process sounds pretty straightforward in the way I describe it, but it was actually a very intense set of conversations going back and forth almost constantly over the course of a few days. It was messy to untangle everything that was actually going on and reconcile accounts with each other. I think it’s safe to say that none of us were strictly happy with what was going on or how it had come about. This was a grueling dialogue about what we needed to do in order to secure the best possible future for the wider fandom.
By the end of last night, the 10th of February, everything had been arranged and agreed upon. Makin officially transferred the server and subreddit over to me, and we provided a subreddit post describing what was going on. It seems that the vast majority of comments were overwhelmingly positive. Some people had reservations of course, mostly in the sense that it felt like Makin was being used as a sacrifice to ensure peace. There were at least two people who were extremely upset for basically opposite reasons (one felt that this was a signal of the death of the subreddit and HSD, while the other felt that there was still no guarantee of the subreddit “defending marginalized people”).
I’m not sure what Makin thought of these proceedings once all was said and done. To be sure, this is probably one of the hardest decisions he’s ever had to make. One of the conditions I submitted to Hussie was that once he stepped down, Makin would be able to remain on the team in a purely creative capacity; I’ve mentioned before that he has a unique capacity for galvanizing the community in times where it would otherwise have died.
At first Makin seemed more or less fine, but then today he disappeared at a time where he would otherwise have been talking. There are some extenuating circumstances that I can’t really speak about, but I think it’s safe to assume that he was extremely demoralized. It is my and all of our hope that he doesn’t feel the need to go away. That above all would wrack me with guilt: whether he deserved to be removed for all of this is still, in a sense, debatable. I don’t want him to feel like he was unwanted by anyone, and I certainly don’t want him to feel like he should go away. He’s an absolutely critical fixture of our group, and he doesn’t deserve to feel bad about what all has happened13.
There’s not much else to say about this for now. Extenuating circumstances aside, this is just about the most positive outcome we could have hoped for given how this all started off. We should be relaxing after all of this as best we can, and yet I’m kind of stricken by this sickening sense that something isn’t right. I don’t know what’s to be done or what the future looks like for us. I never wanted it to get to this point.
Yet, what’s done is done. I can only hope that things will continue more or less as normal after this, administrative changes notwithstanding. Everyone on the server and subreddit are either unaffected or are even happy with the change. Mspa lit is not going away, I explicitly kept it around so we could keep our culture and shills talk. Makin is still on the team even if he has no authority or power to make policy. For Makin’s part in all of this though, I can only hope that he doesn’t feel too bad. If he feels obligated to leave after this, I will forever regret that we got to the point where we are now.
Nothing more for today.
1st of April - April Fool14’s Day 2020
After my ascendance, we tried to tell people that we weren’t doing anything for April Fool’s day because everyone was too tired and busy for it. I don’t think we fooled anyone really, but it was worth a try. At the stroke of midnight we enacted our plan: bringing back the theme from last year when the Epilogues were released, we condensed everything in the server down to two categories: meat and candy. Users were forced into a single channel called #prologue where they would be forced to choose a role using the same kind of system we have for choosing color roles, where one clicks a reaction and is given the corresponding role. Once they chose meat or candy, prologue was removed from their sight and they were put into the appropriate channel category.
Meat was where more serious channels went, specifically the Interests category. Everyone in those channels was expected to dwell under the rule of an iron fist, and at the first sign of dissent they were removed. Additionally, Jman created a bot for the day that checked all of the messages sent in #meat and muted people for increasing intervals of time if they sent a non-unique message (for anyone familiar, these are /r9k/ rules). Channels in candy, including the Creative category and the newly created #roleplay, were full of frivolous bullshit that had very little real moderation. In theory at least, no one was allowed to see both categories, and would be forced to stick in their chosen “timeline” all day unless banned.
The second layer of this event happened when a user was banned from meat, candy, or both somehow: we had a “reveal channel” called #pumpkin, which was actually the repurposed April Fool’s channel from previous years. Anyone banned from either “timeline” was sent there, and could access the Homestuck and general channels without issue as well as viewing the channels within Meat and Candy without being able to speak in them. Partway through the day the final episode to Pesterquest released so we opened up that channel to everyone, which I felt lessened the overall event just a bit15.
In the afternoon, a strange tradition formed where the meat category was ruled by Anervaria in the form of an authoritarian character from Homestuck, and eventually she formed the “Crocker Corps.” The candy side, in contrast, formed the Lalonde Revolution (whose symbol of “resistance” became a rose). Both sides fought for control of the #pumpkin channel. This became the culmination of the event, where meat, candy, AND pumpkin users ended up choosing one side or another. It was a totally unexpected development, and it was really interesting to see this organically play out as the day came to a close.
As it is the server carried on this way for almost the entire day, from midnight to 10 PM EST. There were some hiccups in the beginning due to Discord’s category settings being strange and not working as anticipated, but within fifteen minutes or so everything was set and working properly. The message was deleted so I can’t know for sure, but the last time I checked it we had 600 people who had chosen candy and 1,000 people who had chosen meat. The activity was absolutely incredible, with over 65,000 messages getting sent in the relevant channels throughout the day.
There were of course the usual bevy of complaints from people who found the event annoying, but for the most part it seemed as if everyone had a lot of fun, and that’s really all we can ask for. Overall I would consider this year a great success, and in some unanticipated ways. It’ll be very hard to do better next year.
Nothing more for today.
8th of April
It’s been a while since I did a proper write up of any day in the server aside from April Fool’s. The motivation to write things has been dwindling hard between finishing up my graduate degree and maintaining the server as its admin, so I’ve been terrible at keeping notes over the last several weeks. Using what I remember, I’m going to use this entry to briefly write up some of the more noteworthy things that have happened or are currently happening.
First and foremost, it’s important to note that some switchups in the moderator team have happened. Almost all of the old members are there, except for Jman, who stepped down for personal reasons after April Fool’s Day--kind of his swansong, in a way. WoC, on the other hand, was elevated to the position of full mod due to his considerable tenure, being part of the mod team longer than literally anyone else, and for displaying great critical thinking and level headedness when he cares to. He and Mines were both my choices for interacting with the liaisons from the official team for Homestuck, although there’s nothing to report on that yet.
Relatedly, we added a bunch of new janitors to the team at the beginning of March: Neth and Erieolae joined Qweq to watch over #general, Vortrex is now looking after #altgen with Prime, a user named Shroom for #serious, Penumbra for the Homestuck category, and we welcomed back Tera as janitor for the art channels. Moonjail was also added as the janitor for #music since Cyrene stated they’ll be out of commission for a while, but Moon has been so good at their job--increasing activity and making sure it stays of high quality--that we elevated them to pseudo-mod about a week ago. I think everyone is okay or even happy with these changes, and we’ve seen a lot of good coming out of it.
There’s something I want to touch on: I mentioned the release of the final episode of Pesterquest in the April Fool’s entry: not to go into too much detail, but on the day it came out there was a brief back and forth between myself and a user named Furrylatula regarding its overall reception. They claimed that pretty much everywhere besides the Homestuck Discord, reception to it has been really positive; within the server, the reception seems to have been mixed bordering on poor. This observation is fine and I’m sure it’s mostly correct, but then they used it to say that the HSD is an echo chamber of negative opinions. I took umbrage to this specifically, because by their own word this place wouldn’t fit the description of an echo chamber since there are a lot of conflicting opinions about the piece of media in question.
This is one of the more consistently frustrating accusations against us that I’ve seen throughout the last three years, precisely because we as mods take steps to make sure we don’t amplify one message over another. To be sure, we don’t always succeed at that goal for various reasons, not least of which is because we hold our own personal opinions regardless of our policies. The suggestion that we’re an echo chamber because people here openly express different opinions from the suggested norm is both ironic and mildly offensive. If I’m allowed to use a hamfisted metaphor, I think it’s important to note an island of varied opinions--not even pure, unguided criticism--floating in an ocean of praise. To be fair I don’t actually believe that the reception is universally good as was suggested, but that could spur a very long debate and here I want to keep the topic as just an aside, really.
For mspa-lit in particular, after many months of talking about it, Makin finally got people to organize and we’re watching LOST from beginning to end. We watch three or four episodes every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and at this point we’re about a week or two away from completing it. I’m reminded heavily of the group stream I had with Tera, Putnam, Andrew, and others where we watched literally all of King of the Hill over the course of several weeks. I’ve been missing an environment like this, and I can see us wanting or needing to do it more often as we go into the future. It’s just too fun and nice being part of a group of people who consistently watches things together. We haven’t been discussing LOST very much outside of when we watch it, but that’s probably to be expected--there’s a lot of moving elements in it and it’s difficult to really tell where we’ll be in coming episodes, so there’s not a lot of discussion to be had out of vague theorizing. It might have been different if we had been watching it together as it came out, instead of as basically an archival experience. Regardless, it’s been massively enjoyable for the last couple of months.
On a general basis, the server has shown a sharp uptick in the number of people we’re gaining and the number of messages sent per day. We surmise that it’s due to the coronavirus pandemic16--before things started to shut down in earnest and people were getting quarantined, we were seeing an average of 15,000 to 17,000 messages a day. After things started kicking off, it’s been closer to 23,000 to 25,000 per day, with some days spiking up over 30,000 for no real reason at all. It’s been kind of astonishing to witness, although I’m sure the addition of new janitors has helped at least a bit.
Some of that activity has of course touched on the stir craziness a few people have been feeling after being told to stay at home. For some reason, a particular discussion that sticks out in my mind was Yark describing the experience lockdown in their own country. They hail from South Africa, and they mentioned that the last time anything remotely like this happened, it was because of apartheid. I’m not especially sure why, but something about this kind of contextualized how unusual it must be for everyone around the world undergoing the same thing.
I hope that everyone in the server is managing to stay safe and healthy, although it’s chilling to think that statistically speaking at least a few people who are members of this server won’t survive this pandemic. For the most part though, I’m glad for the idea that a lot of the people here are using it as a way to keep in contact with others and talk during the shut-in. Perhaps people took it for granted mostly, but the internet has really changed how things work. Communities like this are really special, and I’m happy we’ve been able to keep it going despite everything17.
Nothing more for today.
13th of April - 11th Anniversary of Homestuck
I should describe the less pleasant things first and get them out of the way: Jman decided to take a break from the server for a few months, which he had already informed us about and stepped down from the mod team for. Skyplayer similarly left, due to feeling like there was an increasing gulf between her interests and beliefs and the rest of the chat. Jman is coming back eventually, so his departure is fine, but Skyplayer leaving stings a bit. Still, there had been more incidents where we had to tell her off for things that should have been common sense. I hope that whatever she does, she’s able to stay safe and be happy.
These things aside, this year was the first time I’ve handled the community stream all by myself, and if I’m allowed to say so, I believe I did a pretty good job. We streamed The NeverEnding Story and the special edition of Con Air, the latter of which is of course mandatory for the April 13th streams. I believe we’ve done The NeverEnding Story in a previous community stream, but long ago enough that I either wasn’t around for it or don’t remember. Either way, they were both a resounding success with over a hundred people viewing.
We had a major surprise for the day, with the release of a new official album. “Beyond Canon” is the first Homestuck 2 album, and it was honestly extremely exciting. When new albums come out, official or major fan releases, we also stream those using Twitch. I had never done this before, but Makin walked me through it a bit and I was able to get it set up before we had finished Con Air. Reception to the new album was overwhelmingly positive, as it had a lot of good themed music and a wide variety of genres, and it had an extensive array of composers from Homestuck’s history involved.
As is tradition we closed out with the Monifate Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff Moive. I’ve described this extensively in a previous entry, specifically the entry for the 13th of April last year. We had a surprising amount of people make it to the end of that, and I think I’ve made it a tradition to stream LuminantAegis’s 24 hour Homestuck music stream on Youtube to gently close out the night after that. At midnight I officially closed it by putting on Bowman’s Credit Score video on repeat until the next community stream.
As I said, overall today was a great success. It wasn’t anywhere near the scale of last year, which was the 10th anniversary, but considering we’ve been here for literally over a decade, I think this went very well. Hard to believe it’s already been a year since the Epilogues were first revealed to us; it was an incredibly turbulent time. Though official content is certainly not as interesting now as it was this time last year, here’s to hoping that this community continues to endure as time goes on.
Nothing more for today.
24th of April
We finished watching through LOST last week. Although the end had a kind of mixed reception, I felt that same sense that I get at the end of any solid community stream, starting with the great King of the Hill stream I had a couple years ago with Tera, Putnam, Andrew, and a couple others. I’m really, earnestly going to miss the LOST streams. Each one we complete is one more show that’s cast into the communal fire, fuel to keep conversation going.
Makin is going to try and use this weekend to help us find out the next big stream show, though he’s been doing Community as a pre-stream everytime we did LOST. I don’t give a single solitary fuck about that show, except for Chevy Chase’s wonderful performance as a scumbag, but when they finish that I think he’s going to start pre-streaming with Avatar: the Last Airbender instead. I look forward to that greatly.
Less pleasantly, Moonjail’s first couple of weeks as a pseudo-mod here have been kind of turbulent, I’m afraid to say. A couple days ago there was an argument with Tensei about the coronavirus pandemic, specifically with regard to missteps in arguments where Moonjail’s position was misrepresented, and then I got upset and said that everyone present needed some scientific education because of people misinterpreting graphs. Moonjail appropriately took umbrage to this because of their extensive background in science, although to keep things short, I believe we all managed to come to an understanding with each other by the end of the night. Apologies were exchanged, people hugged and cried, et cetera.
Unfortunately, it happened again today in an official capacity: Moonjail was trying to mod their channel and wanted to tell people not to say the word “retard” in it, but then the user that was told off for it complained to WoC. WoC bitched at Moonjail which caused hard feelings to churn, and I had to step in to try and calm things down in the janitor chat. Understanding was reached shortly enough, but Moonjail said that this miscommunication and subsequent bitterness was strike two of three for them (the first strike was not the argument with Tensei, but rather Valkyrie getting upset over something in altgen concerning a shitty user who I personally told Moonjail to ban).
Although I think threatening to resign is a bit drastic of a response personally, on another level I can totally sympathize with that. We can’t run a perfectly tight ship, but we also should be better at preventing these kinds of internal conflicts. To that end, I hope we manage to avoid anything else like this, at least for a while. It’s been good having Moonjail on the team and I would hate to lose them.
In the grand scheme this is all kind of a petty altercation, and so I want to say that the only reason I bothered to include these details in this journal is so I could include this mock summarization that Tera wrote up in the janitor chat:
You’re all welcome.
I want to briefly describe a couple of users who have been hanging around in mspa-lit for a while now too. Barkley and Husky have both been active for some months now, and they’ve both been very good at fitting in since they first joined. Husky is less active than Barkley, but they both seem to already be fairly knowledgeable in the sorts of things we discuss, and share a good mix of calmness mixed with humor where it’s appropriate. I’ve noticed Barkley in particular providing a large number of quality additions to conversations; as it is, I’m sincerely glad that both of them are here and participating.
Relatedly, other people like Velikiy and Yark, from altgen and gen respectively, have been increasingly talking in here over a period of several months. I’m not sure how to estimate the size of our little group by now, but it’s a wonderfully diverse bunch of opinions and viewpoints here. Despite Tera’s joke summary up there, it does stand: I’ve reflected on the nature of humanity and the impermanence in our server and community, and all I can say is that it’s good.
Nothing more for today.
29th of April
There’s been a substantial increase in activity this month. Some of that is expected--April Fool’s Day and especially the 13th, of course, are both associated with huge spikes in activity. This year has been different from the last two though, in that the rest of the month in general has also seen a greatly increased amount of activity. I’m sure this is due to a combination of factors, but the ones that come to mind most readily are a steady rise in the momentum of update culture18, as well as some relaxed standards since I’ve been put in charge.
That latter point isn’t really a positive one, I really need to start hammering down on some of the less savory activity that’s been developing here. For all of the concern that people outside of our server had with Makin, he ran a very tight ship. It’s going to take a long time before I get to that level, if ever, where I’m totally fine with casually ridding this place of malfeasants. I doubt I’ll ever be as wacky zany about stuff either, but I think that part is fine; it’s a great personality trait for creating excitement or entertainment, but I’ve never felt it was the best way to run a community. Time will tell, I suppose.
Today and yesterday in particular were fairly active due to a Homestuck 2 update that proved to be extremely contentious, both within our community and in the fandom at large. I’ll briefly cover the details later, but as an overview there were at least two or three things in it that managed to variously offend people. Some people simply said, “it made me feel bad,” which was a common enough refrain when the Epilogues were released this time last year. This isn’t something that can be discussed to any real degree, so I usually skip over such complaints.
In contrast, there were a lot of comments pointing out specific things that they deemed bad, which was far better. I added my own opinion to these conversations and went on my merry way. When I checked back later though, I saw an increasing number of comments from people who did like the update, and subsequently were accusing everyone who didn’t like it of being whiny children, stuff like that.
In defense of these people, I also saw some comments going in the reverse direction, saying that anyone who liked the update was a fool. Obviously both of these sentiments are wrong, in a way that’s paradoxically inflammatory and boring. There are some subtleties to this that I wanted to point out, but I think I’ll avoid over-explaining this time. The greater point is that there was a lot of mudslinging back and forth over this update. This isn’t outside the norm for all Homestuck 2 updates, really, but it got into some particularly nasty territory this time.
Before I mentioned that I would briefly cover some details about the nature of the discourse, but the more I think about it the more I want to explain fully19. This will undoubtedly be murky to people who aren’t familiar with Homestuck or even these events in particular, but hopefully it should shed some light on the issue regardless.
Some of the conflict over this update manifested in the form of comments made on Twitter by one of the official team members for Homestuck 2, who focused on a really specific complaint that isn’t too complicated to get into: namely, the question of whether or not flashes should be included in Homestuck 2. Their assertion was that creating flashes for Homestuck 2 isn’t viable because it would take too long, which would subsequently cause there to be a halt in the story while they made it. They also mentioned that Adobe Flash Player will no longer be supported after this year.
These things seem reasonable on the surface, but there’s a few reasons that it doesn’t really hold up. The most obvious one is that “flash” doesn’t really refer to the actual software that Hussie used to make animations; over time it’s become a colloquialism for any piece of animation, or even more loosely as any other pieces of media that aren’t just pictures and text. Realistically the team could use any software to make animations if they chose, it wouldn’t really matter.
Second is that flashes aren’t just flavor sprinkled in here and there to add stuff to the comic, although that was true plenty of times. Flashes were often used to bookend entire sections of the story, and to display major events of narrative progression. It would certainly take more time to create a flash than to simply draw panels and write text, but those sorts of delays are things that ardent fans of Homestuck have been used to for years. Further, the delay would be offset by a product that--if done right--would be far more appealing, engaging, and create more artistic diversity than just regular pictures and/or text20.
The particular thing that spurred this discourse was the first instance of any kind of real combat in Homestuck 2, which often enough was depicted with a flash animation in the original comic. This time, however, they didn’t have any visual depictions of this at all, animated or otherwise; it was solely text, which just smacks of laziness at this point. It came across to many of us as a way to weasel out of the hard part of making this webcomic. Indeed, at some point in the past, Hussie specifically mentioned that art is far harder to do than writing, and I’m sure creating visualizations of this battle would have constituted a large amount of work.
That having been said, I’m not sure why there are six writers attached to this project when one or two would probably get the job done just fine. I would go so far as to say that having so many writers is actively a detriment, because it leads to a larger variety of tones and styles that can conflict with each other, creating a work that’s more confusing for it. Since art seems to be the limiting factor in creating this comic, it makes way more sense to try and get as many artists involved as possible; contrasting art is far less of a problem than contrasting writing, and would actually be in line with the variable art styles found in the original comic.
Returning to the matter of complaints from an official team member, the overall point of my explanations is that deliberately choosing not to have any animations or anything else like that is kind of antithetical to Homestuck. A potential explanation for their decision that I saw someone describe on the subreddit is that the official team either doesn’t care enough to put in the effort or just doesn’t have the skill to make these things.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case, because the reasons provided originally were nonsensical or irrelevant. As it is, the tweets were deleted (part of the reason I’m specifically omitting the name of the person who made them), which indicates to me that the official team isn’t even interested in discussing the possibility. This is sorely disappointing, but to be honest the question of flashes is arguably the least important thing that people were complaining about with regard to this latest update, it was probably just the most straightforward to try and respond to.
Instead, the very end of the update had a development which was so out of character for three key figures in the comic that it can only be described as ludicrous. I’m earnestly struggling to think of how much detail I should go into with this because it’s honestly mind boggling in its absurdity; I can’t be too sparing because then the depth of the issue will be lost, but if I use too much it’s going to appear completely insane to anyone who isn’t already intimately aware of these things.
I guess it can be condensed down into two things: the first and arguably less contentious one is that two of the characters had a secret child that they named “Yiffany,” a direct reference to “yiffing,” which is a term that refers to furries having sex. People less familiar with Homestuck will have to take me at my word that this sort of thing is so outside the realm of reasonability for these characters that it can only be described as ridiculous. A vast majority of the complaints on the subreddit and Discord server centered around this particular thing because of just how drastically it deviated from the expected behavior of the characters involved.
This is something that specifically matters to people who care about Homestuck as a story, and about the things within that story. Outside the importance of fictional consistency, people were also angry about this because of the implication that one of the characters canonically had their genitalia changed to a dog penis (do you see what I mean about not being sure how much detail I need to get into?).
This is important because the writers, I believe, were using it as a piece of trans representation, but there were some points of opposition to this idea: one that was more gentle was that it was too convoluted a thing if it was a 100% real development; it would make more sense for it to be an excuse for the character having been trans all along. More serious detractors suggest that the implication is by nature offensive to trans people. I don’t really understand the particulars of any of these stances, it’s merely what I’ve seen over the last two days21.
As it is, I think this reveals something important about the nature of storytelling, or specifically a problem with what I see the creators are trying to do. Making a story that treats ideas of identity politics, diegetically or not, is going to attract controversy. If that’s the sole point of the work, that’s probably a completely expected result and as such it’s fine. Where this becomes a problem is when a story that didn’t originally focus on such issues makes it seep into how the fandom discusses the work. Something that I’ve seen proven true many, many times over the years is that conflicting ideologies in identity politics will invariably cause people to eat each other alive over precisely which idea or method of representation is the most correct one. That conversation is fine even if I want no part in it, but there’s a lot of back and forth between the creators of the comic and fans who aren’t pleased with the way this was all done22.
This is pretty bothersome stuff. With other media that I’ve seen interactions between fans and the creators, the people making the work typically ignore stupid or inflammatory comments and then engage positively with others. If a lot of fans are unified in bringing up issues they see with the work, good content creators will at least respond to those people in earnest, and the best content creators actually take those complaints into consideration and try to fix it in the next installment of whatever they’re working on.
That’s not happening in this case. Instead, as with the laborious explanation above concerning flashes, the official team members are simply digging in their heels. Like I said, that’s fine to do if you’re just ignoring comments that are stupid or inflammatory. However, members for the official team tend to lash out at people instead of merely ignoring them. This makes them seem cruel and petty, and I’ve seen an increasing number of people who actively hate their work because of that kind of behavior. I don’t know what kind of measure they’re using to deem their work a success, but from every metric I can see it doesn’t go well when they do shit like this23.
It brings up a lot of questions about what exactly their intentions are with this story, such as what exactly they care about and how much they care. I’ll touch on this idea again later, but what exactly is their measure for success? It’s really puzzling: if they’re going for critical success they’re failing spectacularly, especially when they deliberately ignore the kinds of conventions that made Homestuck proper as successful as it was. If they’re going for commercial success then that’s pretty much a failure too, with Patreon subscriptions remaining pretty much around 2,100 people since they started six months ago.
The more they engage in petty squabbles with fandom members or insult their suggestions, the more people will be turned off from their work, and the worse it’ll do. At some point they’re going to have to face the reality that they can’t have their cake and eat it too; they can do what they want, but they won’t be able to escape criticism when they do certain things. Sometimes I worry that they’ll never approach a point where they start to acknowledge their own shortcomings or the critiques and suggestions of the fandom. If that’s the case, then Homestuck 2 is doomed to failure. I really hope that they can avoid this, but given what I’ve seen so far I’m not very optimistic.
I’ve spent way too much talking about this, and I want to return to something positive before moving onto the next couple of things I wanted to write about. I mentioned that a majority of the interactions between people who did or did not like this update were negative almost to the point of hostility. However, I personally had a nice interaction on the subreddit with our music-turned-Homestuck pseudo-mod Cyrene. She enjoyed the update and I did not, but instead of ripping into each other about it, we had a pretty lengthy discussion about the nature of art and how people respond to it.
That former idea I’ll describe a bit later, but with the latter she effectively framed things in terms of “absolute versus relative criticism.” In short, the idea is that criticism can be presented harshly and as an objective thing (absolute) or it can be presented as an opinion (relative). For the purposes of getting through to the person you’re criticizing, relative criticism is more effective because it’s less confrontational and brash. This makes sense, and often enough I think that’s a nicer way of dispensing suggestions about a given work24.
On the other hand, I described that absolute criticism is often just a shorthand for what would otherwise be offered in a relative way; phrasing criticism in a relative way requires exponentially more energy and patience as you expose yourself to more content and become more confident in your power of analysis. Absolute criticism that doesn’t actually deliver anything useful is twice as frustrating as relative criticism that is similarly useless. However, if the suggestion therein is genuine and useful, then it shouldn’t matter how it’s phrased. If the worst thing you can say about criticism is that it’s phrased rudely, then it’s still worth listening to.
Based on this, I disagreed with Cyrene on the premise of their argument. As I’ve come to trust her to do, she took this in good faith and we both brought the conversation to an end amicably. We got a decent look at each other’s mindsets about why we did or did not like the update, and were able to explain ourselves as fully as possible. I’m not particularly surprised given who I was speaking to, but it was pleasant nonetheless.
I’ve mentioned the former idea--the nature of art--a couple of times in this entry and promised an explanation. To that end, we discussed it extensively in the Discord server today. Very often in the past we’ve had arguments about whether or not art can be appraised objectively, which is an absolutely monstrous topic whenever it pops up. Today was probably the first time where I felt we came to some kind of consensus about that particular idea.
Misha has probably been one of the most firm proponents that art can be judged objectively, but former explanations of why have been kind of wanting. He expounded on it more fully today, suggesting that art as an innate expression of creativity is itself subjective. However, he also posited that art can and should be delineated through strict, assumed axioms of quality. These axioms will necessarily differ based on what exactly is being discussed and by who, but his insistence is that whatever definitions are in place provide a fundamental basis for discussing art with other people, or enables one to talk about art with a specific goal in mind (he claimed, too, that this thorough explanation has always been what he meant, but I certainly never got this specific meaning out of his previous arguments).
Magistrate, Mines, and a couple others all pointed out that an assumed axiom is necessarily arbitrary, and as such is only a “subjectively objective” standard. Misha and I have seen that rebuttal pushed before, but it rankles with us a lot: qualifying everything as “subjective” might be true to a certain extent, but that word tends to be thrown out too often in these kinds of conversations.
To explain this a little more, describing opinions as subjective is often a quick and cheap way for some people to try and equalize all opinions with each other, which is horrible for a couple of reasons. It muddies the waters significantly, which robs conversations of a lot of their constructive quality and makes them less worth having. It’s not a problem to say that art is subjective, but it’s a problem to say that all art is equally valid25 or good, and I feel that distinction is often lost or outright ignored.
As it is, this conversation did not end like others before it: we were able to reach something of a consensus in this way, which of course was really pleasant. Really, in keeping with what I said at the beginning of this entry, the channel was active to a superlative degree for the entire day. All of it reminded me of a couple years ago, when we used to have discussions like this on a nigh daily basis. I hate to turn into the stereotypical old fogie, but it was exciting and made me nostalgic for the past.
To end on a more unique note, I haven’t yet described something fun that WoC and Nat have done with Arquiusbot. Since I took the reins of the server, they created the command “D→ linky,” which takes a random message from my posting history up to the last time the bot was restarted and spits it out. The idea is very silly, but it’s easily one of the most popular functions the bot has now26.
Almost every day there’s been a little time where there’s a glut of people using the command for fun as a magic 8ball by asking it specific questions, or simply seeing what it'll spit out. MrNostalgic and others have pointed out multiple instances where the result of the command was eerily appropriate and thus funny. Case in point:
This is probably among the best so far, and as the bot gets more samples to work with I’m sure even better examples will pop up eventually. Obviously it’s random chance for a given message to pop out, but there’s already some jokes that the bot is secretly sentient because of all this. WoC and Nat have done an excellent job with maintaining this bot, and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I’m looking forward to seeing what else they do with it.
Nothing more for today.
Makin
1 They have done way worse stuff than that, but combating callouts with callouts is like fighting fire with fire. Just trust us they're bad news. Interestingly, we fight fire with fire literally all the fucking time, never trust common expressions... or you may get burned.
2 I can't understand why Drew got so pissed off, Archie wasn't even that bad. I think the Stockholm thing hit too close to home (my home's basement (Drew's home)).
3 It's worth mentioning that the subreddit has one of the most followed Homestuck accounts on the site. I think to Drew "Homestuck Twitter" is shorthand for the people there that hate us, which are a two digit number of people at best.
4 Only two "people" in this group read the entire shills list. Do they truly represent us? What a mockery of democracy.
5 See Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" p. 382
6 Also more obviously, if I start paying mods people will start modding just for the money. We can look at the current state of the Homestuck franchise to see what kind of incentives and results such a decision causes.
7 okay real talk I have no idea who the fuck this is, I hope they were an altgen janitor
8 I don't make it a policy to ask, but as far as I can tell our mod team is extremely diverse LGBT-wise (it should go without saying, it's a Homestuck server), which makes this pretty silly
9 THIS MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL" - drew, two microseconds ago
10 !
11 I did this unilaterally against everyone's wishes and drew claims the credit now that it clearly succeeded, un fucking believable
12 why does drew keep saying this when the events take place weeks apart, WHERE'S YOUR JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY
13 I literally just went to sleep at a normal time after pulling partial all nighters for days to deal with this
14 guess who the fool was
15 how dare homestuck get in the way of our homestuck discord events
16 readers from the year 3030, 1. please make sure to resurrect me first, 2. coronavirus was a brand new pneumonia/flu pandemic that shut down the world for a couple months, with everyone staying home for extended periods to avoid spreading it. mostly only killed old people though, to the point president trump officially named it "boomer remover" during his second term.
17 something drew conveniently forgets to mention is that he has no ideas for 4/13 and he somehow wants me to do his job for him. Sad! imagine not being me
18 I don't actually think it's this, more that this is the only place criticism can happen without random people attacking you, and there's an increased feeling of community as a result for homestucks who use it. also jesus christ stop patting yourself on the back
19 in this segment we see the drew linkius' inability to stop its wordiness addiction after a promise to not over explain
20 Regarding lack of skill, I may be wrong, but I seem to remember the person in charge of sprite mode/pixel stuff like the specibi is someone with no previous experience, and it shows. Many criticisms have been shown of those specific segments, and many fans have shown IMO far superior and professional looking alternatives to existing panels. i.e. https://radicaldude42.tumblr.com/post/188866820502/homestuck-2-but-different-if-you-want-to-take
21 speaking as someone who's trans and has observed or interacted in some way with the community, i personally think that the facts of how they're going about jade's trans rep aren't what's offensive. if anything, it's more likely that the reactions to jade being gender nonconforming in any way that are more likely to be offensive, which isn't a problem with the comic itself. - Cyrene
22 I've gotta say I don't understand where you're going with this. I don't actually think the writers were going for trans jade at all, that's just the fanbase steelmanning the development. Hussie really just wanted to do poorly written crazy shit, and that's the problem.
23 I think part of this is the "us vs them" attitude certain people in the inner circle have been fomenting since 2014 or so. New members of the WP jam eventually become convinced everyone who's got a genuine critique is part of a hate mob or manipulated by one, even if they used to accept criticism just fine before. The nuances are lost. Ironically, the hate mob wins if the writers are making themselves miserable even when the hate mob's doing jack shit.
24 A popular method of delivering criticism tactfully is using "I" sentences that show something is just your opinion, which completely avoids the possibility of any hurt feelings. For example, "Your story is trash" vs "I think your story is trash". Yes, that makes sense.
25 Everyone has a different definition of valid and they think that's what everyone else means. A lot of people mean "you should be allowed to do it", and with that I agree. People have the freedom to do all the shitty art they want, but much like freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, freedom of expression doesn't mean freedom from criticism.
26 I want you to remember a huge criticism for my style of moderation is that people called it a "cult of personality". And look at this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2GN_jM1DuI