HICU has rebranded to Furthest Ring Studios

Neato

r/homestuck is taking this as well as you'd think they would (why i'm still a part of that community is beyond me)

RE: self

can't edit but like. it's basically just "andrew hussie (evil) is doing another thing to take over homestuck by renaming the HICU to remove the I and the U from it. all hail giovanh (saint who can't ever do anything wrong)"

Deltarune save point

oooo that's like so fire.

RE: kurosurintomasu

oh god the hs reddit.... bluhhh. genuinely who cares if it gets renamed lmao

what a strange thing to try and stir drama out of

anyway, seems cool, makes sense to keep things clear between "we are the team that makes beyond canon" and "official homestuck". they also mention the team possibly sticking together after the end of beyond canon, and i would honestly love to see them make something original so that sounds cool

RE: self, gardenagnostic, lyrichartwell

NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT, I THINK I SHOULD ACTUALLY LINK THE THREAD - TW: HOMESTUCK REDDIT
https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1odkjuj/announcement/

just read the comments, you'll see so many... ugh, it just sucks down there

Best name for a legal Homestuck entity yet. What Pumpkin was fun, Homestuck Independent Creative Union was good, but this is better. It also clarifies a lot the various structures involved in all kind of official Homestuck activities.

Long live Furthest Ring Studios!

(And also yeah, every day r/ drifts further away from the light of basic decency.)

> NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT, I THINK I SHOULD ACTUALLY LINK THE THREAD

Why exactly do you think you should point the discussion of this towards what a kiwifarms-tier board has to say about it? The compulsive hatecrush a lot of ""fans"" have on Homestuck staff is truly fascinating to me but if we talked about everything they did on a small public forum like this we'd be talking about them all the time which is just unpleasant. It's probably better for the team to not make it all about that stuff.

I can defintely follow the reasoning here. "Furthest Ring Studios" sounds like a company, rather than a fan collective or a branch office of Homestuck. It also reflects the fact that the people who work for it are vast, cyclopean, betentacled and many-eyed beings drifting for all eternity in the non-space between universes.

RE: reimaruwa

okay if i'm gonna be really honest here i have no fucking clue why i did that

my brain works in mysterious ways and sometimes it just does stuff that is beyond comprehension and reason and i hate it for that

apologies

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.

I don't think there legally could or can be an official statement about the Hiveswap money, which is the reason one of Andrew's friends (not a WP/Hiveswap team member) posted about it on tumblr in the first place, as a fan + ks backer who was upset in those capacities. I don't think that info was ever intended to be announced to the public even if it were legal, because it's a surefire way to get accused of lying to cause drama. Which is what the staff were accused of anyway even though they never actually said anything about it. Funny!

But all of those things are off-topic I think. Even if some of them are interesting, the idea that they're actually relevant to the discussion of "we have a new name and logo" is an idea you're being sold.

Actually I do think the bueracracy of all the different organizations over the years is a little bit silly. But it's probably necessary for various formal and legal reasons.

It's at least kinda related. This is a new name and a logo, but it is also a statement of intent, they say "what cool things will we make AFTER Beyond Canon?". So going forward, if this is more than just "the group Andrew put together to fix Homestuck", I do think it makes sense to know exactly what and who it is, legally.

I'm not out here to defend Reddit, or Makin, or Gio or whoever, to be clear. I have my gripes with all of them, I've tried to quarantine myself from seeing most of them (Makin behaves himself in the official discord at least). I am ultimately someone who loves Homestuck and wants to see it do well. But sometimes it looks like Homestuck's work culture is "just have faith that a person with a lot of power over you won't seriously screw everything up", and that's a bad thing whether or not they actually do.

I'm not sure why you think it looks like that though - from where I'm standing I have no idea what any of it looks like (other than perhaps 'messy' as a neutral value statement). That people are speculating otherwise, at length, for years and years and years, doesn't actually indicate anything in particular.

the new name is a lot better ^_^ good luck to them

the ongoing drama vexes me a little. I don't think Hussie is evil, and I don't think Gio is evil, either. it's normal to have multiple Gios in any fandom, but there's such an allergic response to it, I take the time to read both sides. I don't care about what the new team is doing, hate them, or assume malicious intent. I actually feel a little hopeful that they learn from any mistakes that were made, like all human beings lol. the new stuff made me laugh a lot. but I'm not posting on reddit or obsessing over people that are haters ._.

not to like invoke the "does anyone in this thread smoke weed" but like i do not think so many words need to be wasted on discussing conspiracy theories from reddit like Who Cares

we do not need to dig into every single decision from every single person or entity related to homestuck to sniff out some ulterior motive that usually involves hussie being cartoonishly Evil.

what i want to know is what (if any) other names were in consideration and if there were any funny/joke ones

yea maybe i do .w.

I kind of agree Autumn, but I think it's ok to educate yourself on the offending articles so you can identify when someone is spreading misinformation about it. it's not really that bad, and people act like it will burn them. forums are kind of the place to have a conversation about it. after seeing how much people Really Do Care... i Care why. and enough to say that both angry parties are annoying and contradict one another LOL

on topic:
1. waiting for Fart Ring edits from people that hate them and those who like them as well. (i won't make them. this is my prediction)
1. I like how the logo looks like a gleaming eye ⊚

the only thing about this change that upsets me is the fact that now Beyond canon is even more separate from original homestuck... I liked when it was inseparable one from the other, but with FRS they make a very clear distinction :/

I wanna reiterate that I'm not taking any theories about Homestuck or its ownership as writ. I just think that the way they operate and communicate is weird, it's not like any other thing I'm an active fan of (indie or otherwise), and it bothers me that there are questions I see big and small properties answer often that Homestuck doesn't or can't. I don't represent anyone other than myself (if you see my posts on /r/Homestuck, you'll notice that people there sometimes treat me as a sycophant for Hussie, which must look weird to anyone here). Ever since August and the mental funk it sent me into, I've been trying to take an anti-absolutist perspective when possible. I didn't feel good about the way I responded to all of that stuff.

I do not think it is invasive or conspiratorial to ask "Who owns Furthest Ring, and was the HICU what its name said it was". I think those are normal things to ask of any company, big or small. That will remain my only real take here, and if you do not think it warrants a response, you don't have to respond.