Queer Hacker Affinity Pride

The idea for Queer Hacker Affinity Pride came to me from a very strong experience I had at the Matrix Conference at Malmö in 2026. Originally, I was not going to go. I had come to believe that some people holding structurally significant roles disapproved of me, because I had forced them to accept things that they didn't want to confront. However, it's clear that I was paranoid, and if these people existed there were less than a couple. Either way in my mind I had it that way, and I didn't want to go to somewhere to interact with people that did not want me there.

But I knew that there would be creatures there who deeply appreciated me, and I really wanted to go and see my friends and various floofs who I admired.

After my talk for Draupnir had been rejected,¹ my initial response was to create a room party where I could give it instead. But I had equipped a jetpack for my transition during this time and so Matrix became much less of a priority in the weeks preceeding the conference. I was making some really awesome progress with myself, and I wondered if I could just host a party that anypony who appreciated me could come to and leave it at that.

At the end of the first conference day, I was really anxious that nopony would come, that they would be doing better things, like eating at corporate dinners or something. And that it would just be me and whoever. But 7 of my friends came and we had one of the most incredible nights, and it would be dubbed a "Gnuxie Party".²

The atmosphere we created would then continue outside of the party, speaking artist to artist about each other and our work with such a deep appreciation and understanding. Giving each other intimacy, support, and inspiring each other. And we would party every night after. Creating an environment where I could express and explore parts of me that were buried deep away, or still needed to be discovered.

This made me completely euphoric and feel so secure. And in the early hours of the morning I would just pass out in total bliss.

What is apparent to me is that I loved these creatures as hackers. Creatures enthusiastically explaining technical shit I didn't understand while I had my head against their chest was fucking awesome. And being surrounded by people who reject so much of the bullshit in the world, and who embody that rejection in how we choose to live, is incredibly endearing to me.

I don't really know why but before this point in my life I was really self aware in public and awkward and for whatever reason my own party fixed me like a switch had been flipped. I felt so confident and I was so hyped up to express appreciation for others and their creativity. Which fed creativity in myself in creating this webpage.

If you're ever invited to a Gnuxie party or wish to host your own, here's what to expect.⁴

Before we explain the rules of a Gnuxie Party, I think it's important to understand that a major reason why Queer Hacker Affinity was so strongly realised in 2026 at Malmö was because of the pre-existing releationships between everycreature present. We already knew and appreciated each other's work, interests, and the things that made us awesome. And this foundation provided the trust and security that allowed us to become vulnerable and affectionate. It's not necessarily something that can be easily reproduced by gathering a room full of strangers under the Queer Hacker Affinity Pride flag. And in Malmö's case, nearly every single guest had some kind of complex connection to me.

A Gnuxie Party is a space where queer hackers can be themselves and enjoy each other's company. Everypony is just as welcome to spend the evening chatting and making friends. Affection and intimacy are absolutely celebrated but they are not a condition to belongoing to the herd. Intensive transport sim gaming is equally a popular activity.

These gatherings can be particularly affectionate and sexually charged. Be prepared to see creatures spontaneously cuddling, kissing, making out, and engaging in playful physical intimacy, including toplessness and clothed grinding. This is the upper limit of physical intimacy that everypony should expect to encounter during the party, and something everycreature attending should be comfortable being around. None of this is organised or expected, and happens spontaneously between creatures who want to share intimacy, with mutual consent and respect for everypony's boundaries.

Everycreature must be able to enjoy the party witout feeling pressured to participate in or witness sexual activity. For creatures who want to take things further together, more overt sexual activity is welcome after the party has ended, and when everypony staying has knowingly opted into this environment. There's no expectation that anything will happen, but there's also no shame in wanting it to.

This is not the canonical explanation or meaning of the flag, for that see the Overview above, they're just things that I used to create it. And I just wanted to have a section where I could show how even more deep and meaningful this creation is to me :3

• The ring of the core duals as a reference to The Draupnir Project. A project I lead for years both in opposition and rejection to a lot of bullshit. The Draupnir room party I was hosting at the conference transformed into the first Gnuxie Party. Its blue colour is the same pale blue from the trans pride flag. The way the ring is 3d is inspired by an early logo that I made for Draupnir.
• Self-improvement takes purple from the colour pallete of my OC. The original lore/story I designed for my character was meant to be some metaphor for Lisp hacking, and the difference between using magic for exploitation and coercion or for invidiual creativity. And empowering creatures to use magic in a way that works for them and break them free. Self-improvement in this sense is also a gentle reference to beach's (Robert Strandh) ideas about continuous improvement of yourself as a software engineer and not just software. Beach would tell me the most productive a person can be is if they spend half their time "slacking off" reading and researching and not doing any work. Which at the time as a student navigating toxic ideas about productivity and hustle culture was very amusing and humoursly refreshing. Especially given that beach remains one of the most productive and work focussed people I've ever interacted with, just look at his GitHub profile. Oh, and should I mention that he's been working for decades to create a metacircular Common Lisp Object System Operating System? It's suffice to say that he had the greatest positive influence on me in terms of finding love for hacking.
• The colour for appreciation is a reference to Pinkie Pie, though I don't think we use her colour pallette directly. The friends I have who stan Pinkie Pie are the very best creatures to be around. One friend in particular has such a positive attitude to everything, and appreciating other beings and art, in a way that remains genuine and cultivates infectious positivity. That i am very sure that they showed me the kind of life I could live and the kind of mare I could be, and really roused an unrelenting determination and fight that I have been feeling in me and riding to get there.
• The colour for creativity is a reference to Fluttershy and the essence of Vylet Pony culture. That art does not need any kind of sophistication or explanation to be sincerely loved, and that loving something weird or nonsensical is to be celebrated rather than be embarrassed about or mocked. And that celebrating creativity this way creates a positive feedback loop that is really powerful because it inspires creatures to make art and be more fully themselves in a way that they may never have otherwise attempted. I think that yellow represents creativity generally but I think I also like the imagery of Antonymph and Cutiemarks generally as a good bite into this culture. I've been listening to Vylet Pony ever since I got immersed in the online fandom for mlp fim back in 2016. And, while a lot of things have been shuffled around in recent years, she generally has been very open about her own journey through life. And her work has always helped me introspect on my own life as I bump into things in the path she's beaten up ahead. One thing that is relevant here is that we were both raised in environments that were pessimistic and elitist about other people's enjoyment and interest in things. And I certainly carried that cycle forwards until I read and listened to Vylet's experience with this.⁵ Tangent maybe but I should also mention that at GalaCon 2026 Faust said that Fluttershy was designed as the pony she was for the first 25 years of her life. And I didn't realise that I was a fluttershy until like February 2026 when somepony asked me who tf was best pony and I said i didn't know. But I was covered in fluttershy art, and probably holding Flutterbat. I guess it was always unconscious. It's unfortunate that I think it's very easy for some ponies to misread fluttershy from the pilot and early in the show as being just another generic male written brain dead Ferengi Screech Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemale character, written to be submissive and polite, rather than a mare who is fucking suffering with a lot of complicated shit that is preventing her from asserting herself. I guess maybe misreading her is exactly part and parcel of the depiction though(?) I don't know i've not read or written the tumblr analysis on this one.
• Euphoria is orange because… this orange colour isn't exactly right it just matches everything else i think. I kind of imagine a hazy kind of orangey/white colour. Maybe even brown. Like oxidised belgian triple– wait a minute, which is funny now that I mention it, since a few years ago since I set a profile picture of just the colour on my rateyourmusic.com because I associated it with the glowing sweet spot of alchol consumption. lmao. Euphoria is sense because obviously being supported this way should make you feel more than euphoric as fuck. And it's nice to say that it's the output of the situation if you like.
• The idea of using the memory cell as our own symbol for queer hacker affinity loosely entered my headspace because the talk I was going to give at matrix conference had me doing extensive research on the MIT-AI hackers. And they had this like fucking crazy sci-fi cabinet of an entire megabyte of magnetic core memory, dubbed the moby unit, that they hooked up to the MIT-AI PDP-6 (and i think it stuck around for the KA-10 unit 8 but not sure). I want it to be really clear that I don't associate with or ideate those hackers though.⁶
• Self-improvement as inhibit is alongside creativity because I think it's a nice metaphor for choosing your own destiny if you like. And in this sense creativity and appreciation are inputs into the system alongside self improvement :3