@sethblaidd

I think the "what changed" is pretty simple, for a period of years after HS^2 ended, Homestuck as a story or "IP" or whatever was effectively dead or dormant. The thing that changed was Hussie reorganizing the legal structure of his copyright, the situation with VIZ, and the plan to spin things up again with the HICU and Beyond Canon. The website is now even more busted, and so suddenly it's a big problem there's no official version of Homestuck and the fans have maintained the best version. This is the period of time Hussie and Miles initially reached out to Gio. And by Gio's own admission (via Miles's discord post), the legal advice Hussie initially received WAS to DMCA the collection and move on! But they didn't do that, and tried to cut a deal, and everything fell through. All pretty logical tbh.

I don't even disagree there's probably a personal motive because the bad blood between both of them is pretty obvious. And it may not even actually be about copyright which Hussie has been playing fast and loose with. But if they are concerned about maintaining the Homestuck "brand" or whatever, there's more incentive to go after Gio's website specifically because again, it also hosts articles disparaging the authors! I really don't think the other mirrors have stuff like that? I don't really want to speculate about motives though, at this point people have got that covered in spades lol