Hussie vs UHC - Is this, like... actually true?

Not to mention conveniently leaving out information from our discussion that I do think is relevant, like the fact that Andrew is not consulted on our nominations for FRAF. We only consult the HICU, not because its in the license terms or even ever asked, but because they have been friendly and kind to me and my team and we value their input. They have not exercised any actual influence over this decision outside of 1 specific case that they genuinely made a good point on that I agreed with. We're not handing the list off to a shadow cabal that tells us who we are and are not allowed to consider, they let us know if they have any concerns, what those concerns are, and we take them into consideration with the weight that they deserve.

Re;the1woomy, try to form your own opinion on this by taking all the evidence into consideration. Don't be so quick to be upset at Hussie and don't be afraid to be wrong if/once more information comes out.

Re;cami, thank you for your input! It's been very valuable to hear someone connected with the team weighing in on this.

shelby, immediately jumping to discrediting gio through accusation yourself without sources is not a good faith argument

Sometimes it's best to just. Sit and wait for more info to come. People don't have to have a reaction to news right away, especially if they aren't immediately verifiable.

My completely unnecessary two cents is that Hussie & co. were/are planning on releasing an official HS collection, or otherwise becoming the main source again... which, yknow, is fair. It is their creative work after all.

So they tried to get the UHC either taken down or merged with the new OHC. One way or another, the discussions went pretty bad -- given Hussie's track record, I don't doubt that at least some of Gio's claims are true, but I doubt he had no part in things going sour.

Re: the question of "why would Gio lie", the blog post (on Vriska day, of all days) and the text recreations instead of screenshots is pretty obviously his attempt to get ahead of the narrative. He's accepted that he's probably not gonna be able to outright save the UHC, and that it's gonna become public eventually, so he presented the story in the light most favourable to himself. Probably also why he used text recreations so much -- to leave out any parts that make him look bad, even if his claims are still generally true.

Alary has a very good point, too -- it was honestly kind of discomforting seeing him use he/him exclusively in the post. I didn't catch that he even changed quotes. That doesn't mean he's lying about Hussie's behaviour, but it does mean he's kind of a dick himself, and probably writing as much out of personal distaste as he is from any nobler intentions.

(its also worth noting how many people in this very forum were also using only he/him in the initial backlash... yikes)

>the1woomy

like i said I’d be naturally suspicious of anything until more people involved give their stories. to make a comparison its just like with any sort of nonfiction book or article, having more (relevant) sources helps one feel more confident that they can trust the information. if there’s only one source and it’s something big like this, being patient and waiting for more info is always a good idea

ive been asking for sources on gio being a liar in the past and idk if it got buried under other posts but... id still like them if youre able to.

Something that was pointed out to me, the title of the blogpost says that the UHC was "Taken down", and not something like "Taken down by me," which is what happened, which could lead to people that didn't fully read the article seeing the title and assuming it's saying "Taken down by Hussie sending a DMCA." Try to be on the lookout for stuff in that article that could be deliberately inflammatory or misleading.

i will say coming out via video game Easter egg (and then confirming it on social media) is an extremely bold and powerful move I think more people should do

HOWEVER I do think a lot of people kinda missed that info (and technically he/him is part of any pronouns even if… yaknoo) so I cant begrudge any Forum user for not knowing…. for gio however it’s Not A Good Look

Thank you for poiinting out the formatting of the title, that feels fishy to me. Like, saying taken down instead of taken down by me sets off so many alarm bells in my head.

huge agree with zap-rowsdower i haven't seen a single claim that gio is untrustworthy or a transmisogynist or a stalker or whatever that's been backed up with any kind of evidence.

Re;zap-rowsder, I'm currently looking for sources myself, but this is something other people can corroborate. Still, even if he hasn't had any issues with stuff like this in the past, you should still be taking what he says in the article with a grain of salt. Those text recreations of Discord messages are still insanely shady to me.

>soupedman

fascinating how no one specifically mentioned the stalking, and aysha if you recall deleted pretty much all socials and patreon discord to avoid stalking and harassment

But yeah as sucks as it is to say a lot of people who were both involved with homestuck in some manner and had issues with what gio said ended up nuking their socials/blogs/servers/etc. I do still have contact with someone but id rather not bring up such a shitty time for the sake of a forum argument when what I’ve been saying is “I smell fish. Let’s wait for more info”

I think the whole thing is suspect, in that some things might be "technically true" but presented out of context or with twisted intentions in part because of the real premise of these blog posts:

Andrew Hussie tried to work with Gio (someone who AH didn't trust for what are probably behind-the-scenes valid reasons) in supporting a project that is entirely based on essentially bootlegging the comic that AH made. With stipulations. Which is why I think there's so much effort put into making AH seem like a dictator over the rest of FRAF/HICU, who apparently didn't have issues with AH's "demands." One of those stipulations of confidentiality being based on Gio's I think obvious history of presenting AH and Homestuck as a poisoned project (Sarah Z avoiding talking to any HS members and just getting gossip and speculation from Gio). Gio kept dragging his feet and wanting to be able to do whatever he wanted with it. And decided that he needed to get ahead of whatever fallout of burning bridges with the actual owner of the work he was trying to control access over. Thus, presenting this whole thing as AH forcing Gio to ~KILL HOMESTUCK!!!~. As if Homestuck doesn't exist on all of our hard drives at this point anyways.

He wants people to panic and be mad at AH for something HE is doing.

Like if I made a comic and someone was basically republishing it while I was reworking a deal with my main publisher, I think I would be in a pretty similar mood as AH. Lowkey this could only happen in the HS fandom because AH has tried for years to let people do what they want, which seems to keep exploding. So I'm really not surprised nor resentful of AH trying to create a code of conduct.

I do agree with everyone that we should wait to see what information comes about from this. TBH I think the "Homestuck is DEAD and it's HUSSIE's FAULT" is a way of getting people to panic so they AREN'T waiting to hear more information.

Re;alexis, people just really seem to hate Hussie's guts and are looking for whatever excuse they can to justify it.

theswordwizard;
HICU proclaimed that hussie wasnt involed at all, this was evidently a lie, hussie was supposedly uninvolved with most of homestuck 2 and beyond canon which was also clearly a lie, viz is not going to rework a deal with hussie, and nowhere was gio presenting it as AH attempting to KILL HOMESTUCK, as clarified several times, they wanted the collection online, created a fork themselves (which you can go and see for yourself), and gio was in no way attempting to control access to homestuck, it was an open project that anyone could create their own fork of.

I'm not trusting a 5-digit word count callout post, straight-up. This isn't the format you use when you're trying to just convey information or protect people. There's more malice sewn into gio's words than what hussie's being accused of.

It's depressing (but not surprising) to see the unofficial discord take the whole thing at face value. As for the collection: mirrors are still up. And even in the world where hussie is shooting her own work in the foot, she knows she can't stop people from circulating the files.

@remedyhearts the "frog and scorpion" analogy is pretty indicative of the portrait he's trying to paint.