I'm not even sure we're allowed to talk about this but people used these forums to talk about the UHC situation so I'll shoot.
If you haven't seen it yet, read up.
Use this thread for discussing the subject and whatnot.
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My take: I can understand where the OHSD staff is coming from in wanting Makin to not have that kind of power over fandom spaces anymore but some things about how they're going about it do concern me. The Discord server getting taken down is one thing, that place was famously toxic and even if Makin/other mods never really supported some of the things being said there they were still harboring that kind of discussion in their server so they can't really say they're completely exempt from the blame. Couple that with a general negative vibe towards Hussie's works and the circlejerking within the active members that didn't really make it a very friendly place for discussion and the reason why it being deleted was for the best becomes clearer.
The subreddit is a whole different thing, though. For starters, I think a lot of people use it more passively than the Discord members would, since all it takes is being subscribed to it to get posts on your Reddit feed while you're just browsing the website casually. Most subreddits are also seen as places to get news as well as ask questions about topics that have answers that will stay up for a long time. Get rid of the subreddit and you're getting rid of thousands of news posts with reactions from people of the time, genuine questions and discussions about the comic as well as a lot of easily accessible fandom lore. Someone on the replies of the Reddit post made a comment I really agree with: taking down the subreddit is about the same kind of damage to the community as taking down the MSPA Forums, just maybe to smaller scale. But it's still damaging nonetheless.
And yeah, I know the userbase from the subreddit is about the same as the people who used the server, at least in their way of thinking about Homestuck and the people behind it, but I'm not sure taking down the subreddit is worth making them move elsewhere. It's a shame Reddit doesn't allow admins to change the r/ of their subreddits because otherwise this could probably be solved by changing r/homestuck to something like r/homestucktruth or whatever without having to displace everything. Well, I'm not sure how much the official staff likes the idea of just making an r/homestuckofficial... not that I think it's the best solution.
That being said, I also do think there's a point to be made about fandom spaces being centralized and being organized by the brands, and as much as I think the Official Discord's staff is pretty alright (I don't interact there much anymore so maybe I'm out of the loop) the server is still not a place where every kind of discussion is allowed to happen which... is fine since Discord servers are super messy but I understand when people become concerned this could be applied to other spaces as well... like the subreddit. Which is also not a great place for discussion when a whole subreddit or its mods have opinions that contradict yours.
There are a lot of criticisms of how Homestuck as a property and its projects are handled which I think is fair, take for example the UHC situation and the fact we still haven't gotten that official response from Hussie that was promised 8 months ago despite all that it stir up in the community, or a lot of the Hiveswap development complications which at least to me haven't been completely cleared out yet to the public, this kind of thing warrants fair discussion and the fact that attempts have been and keep being made to change focus from those topics by people involved just makes the people who already have little faith in Homestuck lose even more of it. I guess you could say for the most part that's a win and that we don't need those people in the community but is everything they have to complain about really that unreasonable?
I guess FRAF is a good alternative to the subreddit since the staff here doesn't seem to be against most topics being discussed, but as long as there's a Discord alternative I don't think there's going to be much traffic here, which might be for the better or worse depending on who you ask. Not to mention Reddit always being in the top results of any search. I guess now it depends on Makin & co. to decide for themselves how headache inducing they want their following weeks to be in regards to how the fandom spaces will be organized from now on.
And that's about it.
