Seeking truth through conversations on Love and Fandom
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im probably not gonna answer any more asks about swamp. The bottom line is hes been an influencer in this fandom for a while and was willing to pirate Hiveswap and distribute pirated copies of the game because of his sense of ideological superiority. That’s the Disc Horse, that’s what I care about. if you want to find out about his past drama, ask someone else.
The history of swamp’s blog is that of a lazy, arrogant blogger smugly taking the dimmest view possible about what has now been DRAMATICALLY REVEALED to be one of the most hard-working, dedicated, kind-hearted and well-intentioned group of LGBT art creators out there, actually doing the work and taking the risks to make an IMPACT on the cultural sphere.
This has involved denigration perception of their brand among fellow fans in vicious sacrifice to building up his own status as an Ideologically Good and Correct Progressive, and literally hurting their bottom line and risking the death of their ability to make art.
And he’s done this NOW, in the age of fucking Donald Trump, when LGBT stories and antifascist stories are at more risk than they have been in the last century. There’s not much to value in his ideological legacy.
im so very furious i havent been this furious in a long time. keegan is one of the nicest and most patient people i’ve ever met and he has some of the most insightful opinions on m/m relationship representation in media and its treatment in fandom that i’ve ever seen and the fact that people like fucking arc who is a cis ace person thinks that her kweer card entitles her to the same level of perspective that keegan, a gay trans man has, is so fucking unbelievable to me because it pretty much proves so many of the points keegan has so succinctly made over the years.
this completely ignores the lesbians and trans mlm who he’s labeled ‘cishet women’ yaoi fetishizers. oddly enough, when you mislabel people over and over again for having the gall to prefer a different ship than you, and then your followers send them hate over it, people don’t end up thinking of you as nice and patient…
but instead you managed to make this about aces not being queer
This is the last thing about this fucking asshole I’m gonna say. I got better shit to do.
But let me be profoundly clear: I am not a cis ace person. I am a queer woman.
And what’s hysterically funny is that when SW first came at me and tried to drag me for being “Fake Queer”, I sent them a long message explaining why, at the time, I had been using the “ace” label. It was a reaction to a deeply traumatic event that I still have not and will not speak about publicly (half because i can’t, half because it’s none of anyone’s business). I was very badly damaged by what happened– still am– and part of my reaction was IDing as “ace” for a while even though I am more accurately “theoretically bisexual, functionally lesbian.” I’ve since moved on and recovered enough to put that “ace” label away as things get a little easier. As the idea of being attracted to people stop filling me with anxious dread.
THE BEST PART IS I explained this to your precious little friend. I told him about my extremely personal trauma. I told him because I wanted to impress on him how he needed to stop assuming he knew people based on their fucking tumblr minibio.
I gave him a show of trust that he ignored because it didn’t fit his narrative.
Your nice and patient and insightful friend was an asshole to me and to a lot of other people. And the fact you still think I’m a dreaded fake gay ace woman who has no place in this discussion makes it clear he never fucking changed his tune, he never learned, and he’s literally the sort of anti scum everyone in fandom is fucking sick of. The kind that will happily perpetuate a lie because they want to continue shitting on people they don’t like.
And people like you fall for it every time.
I’m queer. Your buddy lied to you rather than risk losing face. End of discussion.
This is the last thing I’m saying on this subject because I have actually interesting shit to discuss, which swamp wizard is fucking not.
But I want to note that I got off EXTREMELY light in the grand scheme of harassment Swamp has incited, despite the fact that I was the initial point of contact–and conflict–that got him to start tracking women lgbt dirkjake fans and making vagueposts about them and w.e the fuck.
I still kind of hold myself personally responsible for bringing up the core disagreements that led Swamp into conflict with these women, so I feel pretty lousy about that.
The least I can do is point to the fact that I, a dude, got off pretty clean, while it was lgbt women who kept getting the worst of his vagueshit and presumptuous attitude, ideological superiority and lgbt gatekeeping.
So y’know. Just a lil thing to consider there.
Anyway if you ask me, Hiveswap’s fandom should be flooding Shelby’s inbox with gratitude for speaking up, and also being involved with the damn writing of Joey in the first place.
It’s clear to me she was strongly involved in the development of Joey and that she and women like her were strongly consulted to source Joey’s writing.
WP deserves gratitude for that as a whole, but Shelby SPECIFICALLY deserves gratitude for being the voice of confirmation for that creative intent and for living or just closely closely knowing the experience Hiveswap is putting to screen.
I know MORE about the lesbian experience than I did before thursday thanks to Shelby, and I’m grateful.
@Swamp-Wizard this, by the way, is what actual mlm/wlw solidarity looks like. It’s not just a meme you use for progressive brownie points, its caring about lgbt women and wanting them to have more doors open to them.
Hiveswap accomplishes this both through having new characters to relate to (like Joey) and new respected and valued content creators/role models who’s success can be an inspiration to girls like them (like Shelby Cragg).
friendly reminder that pirating hiveswap is a Shit thing to do and by pirating a kickstarted indie game no matter your opinion about it you are still actively stealing the success and income from a studio of queer folks and undermining a passion project for a number of people and you should feel Bad
[Note: Long post incoming. This is going to include hiveswap spoilers.]
News on this front finally reached me and I’m fucking LIVID that this was going on so, for once, I am getting in the discourse, and I think from now on my official discourse policy is I’m not bothering unless what’s involved is shitty enough that I’m willing to call a spade a spade.
To be clear, I’m naming Swamp by name only because he’s the one who’s actions and words I am currently furious with, but the influence he’s had on his groups moral and progressive priorities is worth bringing up. Plus he’s gone so no one can fucking aggro at him “For” me or whatever.
I will not be naming anyone else he engaged with by name in this way, because it is Swamp specifically and his toxic ideological influence on ***MOSTLY MINORS*** that I care about.
Every single person currently defending swamp and who has been engaged in the actions I’ll be describing is a rational thinking and feeling human being and they are also, for the most part, minors. They’re also pretty much all drama hounds so they will absolutely all see this and come to their own conclusions.
Let them think things through on their own, and most importantly leave them the FUCK ALONE. I want zero direct interaction between me and these people, even through the proxy of someone unwillingly taking what I say and using it as justification to send them anon hate or w.e If you do this it will be expressly against my wishes, and I will be pissed.
Are we clear? Good.
So it turns out I’ve got some stuff to say.
I’ve had swamp-wizard blocked for months because they were kind of this weird pedantic double-faced asshole to me for months. There were a number of incidents that led me to finally giving up on pursuing a friendship with him, including swamp inciting harrassment against actual lgbt friends of mine like @callmearcturus .
One such early incident was couple peeps in his crew coming at me personally for being a furry. Which Swamp “disavowed” at me publically but given that he’s been a two-faced liar about everything else, his credibility with me is zero and I do not trust him. Even if he’s not personally responsible there, it’s a good example of the absolute NONSENSE priorities his particular brand of moral purity encourages kids to engage in.
Because furries are a known cultural bastion for LGBT sensibilities, so there’s a long history of furries being mocked which has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with their close relationships with self-idealization, self-love and being, you know, LGBT which makes the whole practice of mocking them fucking hilariously anti-progressive.
To be clear, I am not upset and don’t care.
I only and exclusively mention this because the hypocrisy endemic to a bunch of people goddamn fucking OBSESSED with the idea of being Morally Pure “Progressives” cheerfully making fun of people for identifying with a group historically about, you know, positive depictions of LGBT identity and personal upliftment is relevant to what I’m going to say:
Swamp Wizard doesn’t give a fucking SHIT about women or queer people, and the piracy of Hiveswap is proof. Everything OP said above? Goes double given that Joey Claire is a fucking marvelous character who already EXPLICITLY, CANONICALLY, CONFIRMED BY SEVERAL WP STAFF an exploration of compulsory heterosexuality and literally, explicitly a lesbian.
She’s also a fucking MARVELOUS protagonist. She’s a good big sister! A brave and willing friend! She’s a goddamn HERO, and the kids at school call her a poser for liking games and not being “girly” enough and she’s neglected and angry about it and LOUD about her anger and the narrative regards her as *completely in the right*.
Hiveswap’s narrative is one DEAD FOCUSED on the big, ugly, bitter, complicated feelings of a teenaged EXPLICIT lesbian already, feelings that are treated completely seriously and given the absolutely spotlight, and we’re only on Act 1.
Hiveswap is a DIRECT response to the rightful complaints fans have had about Homestuck’s relative lack of direct stories about female sexuality, and that should be taken seriously, not shoved under a bus because of some dude’s petty fucking bullshit about not liking a tasteless joke and jumping to conclusions about stuff in a game that is JUST NOW beginning.
What this showcases for me is a stunning and complete lack of any kind of common god damn sense or perspective. Swamp apparently hyperfocused on one off-color joke and one panel of EXTREMELY AMBIGUOUS BLUSHING on the part of a boy (Joey did NOT look interested), that WP staff themselves SAID was ambiguous, NOT NECESSARILY ROMANTIC blushing….
and spun this whole fucking self-satisfying, morally superior yarn about how this was DEFINITELY ABSOLUTELY HETBAIT and hiveswap was RUINED because…xefros and dammek have conflict. that the whole series will likely center around given that dammek is the fucking PROTAGONIST of Hauntswitch.
But basically what you’ve got here is swamp overvaluing the fanon ideal of a m/m relationship and his personal views on the male creator of the game to the point that he COMPLETELY skipped over what a narrative like this can mean for lgbt little girls and grown lgbt women, and completely ignored the voices of the FEMALE creators ALSO WORKING ON THE GODDAMN GAME that loudly confirmed this was intentional.
And then he used this to justify stealing ACTUAL MONEY not just from the male creator but from the women who clearly worked on developing Joey’s story, too! Because apparently their feelings and work and need to survive dont fucking matter! And neither does getting to see Joey’s incredible canon depiction continue!
Hiveswap could be fucked up and problematic in EVERY OTHER RESPECT and Joey as depicted thus far would still make it one of the most progressive works in history. It would still be worth it. It would still be important.
And if missing that fact is not the most fucking typical result of this self-righteous anti bullshit, I don’t know what is. Listening to people like Swamp means hurting the progressive cause and real, living and breathing LGBT people who care enough to MAKE this art and risk their livelihoods and probably suffer economic hardship for YEARS to get this story about this little girl who likes girls out there–in favor of what? petty ego, bad analysis, and bullshit short-sighted, mean-spirited, CRUEL fan entitlement. It’s disgusting.
This guy isn’t the face of evil, but he doesn’t sound the nicest either. Let’s get this analysis fresh out of the pan while the discontented buzz is still Hot™. Dammek has made 1 canon appearance – hurtling through space and time at ??? ???/??? – and has no in-canon lines yet, but we can still say a lot about him through environmental storytelling and dialogue. So, that’s what we’re going to do. This post will also contain some classpecting, so for those new fans out there, don’t worry if that confuses you, it most likely won’t be directly relevant to Hiveswap’s narrative and is just some legacy fan fun.
EDIT: Sorry I just realized how shitty and compressed all of the images are, so I’ve added some captions.
This is a pretty good reading that I agree with considerably. I have some context/insight to add to it that I’ll probably cram into my Xefros post, but this is good enough that I no longer feel the need to write an entire Dammek meta post myself, at least not soon.
Suffice it to say, I agree completely. Dammek is almost definitely a Thief of Breath, and I’m excited to see whether the themes laid out for him in Act 1 remain consistent throughout the Acts & Hauntswitch.
EDIT: Whoops i wrote Xefros instead of dammek there. im tired
a bit of an easily missed tidbit about jude up in his treehouse, i even missed it on my playthrough and didnt get this until i went back to get all the achievements
if you get the bag of marbles to the secret window with the cultists and rub them together, you get this text which suggests Jude is very overly sensitive to the sound that marbles make when clacking around together, which honestly isn’t that much of an unpleasant sound, but it really distracts him!
and this combined with obsessive paranoia about the cultists and conspiracy theories and his insistence about following proper flare gun safety rules and other such tangentially related traits paints for me a very strong picture that Jude is possibly autistic!
i think i just realized something pretty interesting about the retconned timeline and why adding vriska onto the meteor somehow “magically” solved some problems.
so, right before she was killed in the game over timeline kanaya right hooks her into realizing her latent lesbianism:
because this event happened in both timelines, people maybe forgot, but vriska essentially just developed a red crush on her old moirail. so she tries to get close with her again and tries to sneak herself into the time kanaya’s been spending with rose.
and at some point she’s gotta notice these two are becoming an item and she just accepts that her crush is crushing on someone else, but then…
rose, her crush’s crush, fucking ditches kanaya on their supposed first date. instead, vriska finds her drinking soporifics and she’s just livid. “WH8T ARE YOU DOING???????? WEREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO MEET UP WITH HER? YOU’RE THE ONE THAT M8KES HER HAPPY AND YOU CHOSE THIS SHIT INSTEAD OF BEING WITH HER?”
I sort of think this reading is made way stronger by the stuff I think I just uncovered which has me literally abuzz with excitement. I’m not sure if its EXACTLY like this but…it sounds resonant. Theres something real here and I think I can prove it.
Flying through Storytelling 