I mean. For as much time as I spend on reddit, and for much I dislike it in spite of that. It does sort of sound like the Independent Creative Union isn't exactly independent, and not a union either. Like they called themselves that but they definitely said "think of us like a union" presumably because they have a flat power structure when Andrew is hands-off, but if Andrew can be hands-on and they don't have collective bargaining power, then yeah, it's fair to criticize a thing like that calling itself a union, right?

I'm not even saying anything bad has gone down there, it certainly sounds healthier than we've heard tell of before, but if a workplace is non-union but happens to provide well for its workers, we wouldn't be calling it unionized just because, right? Like this does suggest to me that they still own the whole thing. Less about what necessarily did happen and more about what could.

I don't know how much I agree about the whole "shell game" argument. The idea that Hussie is like, flooding us with different names to...I guess shift the blame when something goes wrong, maybe? It's not happening, in any case. It's never taken the heat off of Andrew personally, without too much knowledge of the Viz deal the only time I've ever seen someone else popularly blamed for something that was (probably) not their fault was the rumor that TOG ran off with the kickstarter money. And I'm not aware of any time that WP personally gave any credence to such a theory, though I do think you could criticize them for not clarifying what did happen in any way until some of the Sarah Z drama. It's entirely possible they just call things studios or companies or whatever with the expectation that they'll move onto bigger and better things eventually, and then for whatever reason, they just don't. Maybe this time they actually will, I dunno.

Still, it doesn't make much difference in this case because it's fundamentally a name and a profile picture change. So the people who believe there's literally no distinction between HICU and Homestuck Official (whoever's even a part of that these days) don't have any reason to change their opinion, and the people who think the HICU could do projects Hussie has no control or ownership of at all don't have to think anything different either.

That would be a good question for them, though. I remember during Gio's cringe-ass conversation with Cami, the most useful question he asked was "is FRAF capable of confirming an affiliate that Hussie takes issue with" and the answer (albeit delivered in a wishy-washy manner) was yes. So it would be great to hear the extent to which Furthest Ring is capable of developing projects which Hussie has no ownership over or making decisions he seriously disagrees with.

Actually, guides to who exactly owns what would be extremely enlightening as well.