worries for those who don't have connections are totally right to have, but i want to reassure everyone that having gone through the fire now, having plans and tools in place is going to make sure you don't need those to get a fair shake. there are plenty of transfeminine and/or transfeminist mods on the team. the people who aren't used to the bullshit homestuck fans throw at each other are learning, and the team is full of people i trust to protect trans women, and this includes paradox! i didn't know paradox personally when this server started, but in our interactions, he's been completely receptive to everything we've thrown his way.

and in general, i understand being freaked out about this, i really do. the history of the homestuck community's ability to stand for trans women is, at best, fraught, and at worst, utter failure. this decision was made in the wake of other decisions that i would have liked to see handled another way that hangs heavy in the air, and i don't want to see it become a pattern. again, smoking craters where trans women used to be. i also get that there's a lot of fear of things being opaque going around right now. i haven't signed any NDAs regarding the HSO server. i signed one for FRAF and that's it. i'm bringing you the truth, as i understand it.

i also want to stress that decisions like this are made as a group, no matter what. yes, i was asked to ask, but i also could have said no. it's not a matter of "i was told to by the boss", it's "i wanted to figure out a resolution that keeps the people i care about out of the fire, and it was a potential resolution". this happens a lot more than is shown to the public, where a lot of good, okay, and bad ideas are thrown around and thrown away in search of the right one. that's just the nature of working with others. it happens in writer's rooms, it happens in board meetings, it happens in mod channels.

similarly, i knew the artist (god it is weird talking around her. sorry queen) was getting more or less gangstalked, but, well. it's kind of like "show, don't tell". i had been told this by the user herself, but being shown its extent is a completely different thing from being told. from a remove, the right answer was always there. but this is the outside observer's perspective. it's easier to choke and get caught up in stuff in the way of the right answer when you're in the thick of it.

and just on a personal level, i would personally like some patience and trust, and thank you to others for sticking up for this. i've held on to this moderation role much tighter and for much longer than i expected to, because like. the history of trans women in fandom is one that is always precarious. i had expected the forums to be at about the activity level they are now (nice and slow, high-effort and niche. love you guys.) to be the most community managing i'd be doing. i knew the discord was going to exist at all about 4 days before it did. as it approaches 10,000 users, it is the largest community i've had any moderation capacity in by four orders of magnitude.

the new thing i've learned is that discord's built-in tools for handling harassment like this are fucking terrible. like, holy shit. we have automods set up with big and obvious word filters, we have mod reports, we're working on a ticketing system, but that's obviously not enough, and while margot suggested the "wait before sending a message" timer, it would be nice. but it doesn't work. like, at all. did you know that if you have a verified phone, that timer doesn't work? like, at all? it's frustrating. we have people with experience moderating big discords like this coming in and they're suggesting bot suites, so the tools should be better in the future.