On the Psycholonials MSPFA mirror

CONTENT WARNING: Psycholonials spoilers, Fight Club spoilers, police brutality, racism, gun violence, misgendering, targeted harassment.

I have no words to describe how much longer than I originally planned this ended up being. I am, officially, sealing my identity in this community as the girl who talks too much.

So be it.

When I first heard about the Psycholonials mirror, it was explicitly as a counter-recommendation. The inflow of both new and returning fans to this community has gotten many people interested in reading Psycholonials for the first time, with many finding their way to an MSPFA that seemed to have the story in its entirety. Of course, when asked if that’s how they should experience it, the response from older fans would be a resounding “no, just get the actual game, it’s free”. This is a simple answer, and honestly all reason you need: the intended way of experiencing it is free of charge and will run with pretty much any specs.

Of course, that is not the only reason why the mirror comes extremely not recommended. While there was some observable effort put into preserving the novel’s visual identity, all it amounts to is a lesser version of it, missing the proper implementation of its OST (by many considered one of, if not the best aspect of Psycholonials) and at times just skipping entire panels and parts of the text.

And then I was told about the commentary added by the uploader. Which of course, entails being informed who this uploader was.

Continuing onward in his mission to make all of Andrew Hussie’s lifework available through less than ideal means, our favorite amateur journalist has taken it upon himself to make a mirror of Psycholonials in MSPFA. Said mirror is even one of the items in Gio’s portfolio, under the “Game Stuff” tab of his blog, which also provides a link for you to download the assets for a mod that allows it to be read in the Unofficial Homestuck Collection (I think at least, I couldn’t get it to properly work and the GitHub page wasn’t very helpful). A selection of highlights from the commentary was also released as an article in Gio’s blog.

[Link to the highlights: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/02/22/psycholonials-commentary-selections/]

I would like to remind everyone that, though Psycholonials is today completely free to play, it was, at the time of this mirror’s upload, a paid product. Gio is quick to point out, however, that this is not copyright infringement, as the official Psycholonials FAQ does say Let’s Plays are not only allowed, but encouraged.

So. Apparently, this is not, or at least isn’t referred to as, a mirror. This is a Let’s Play.

While today the more common format is a recording or stream, written LPs were very popular in the mid-2000s, such as and especially on the Something Awful forums. People would make long threads about their experiences playing a game so people could watch along and comment, which could take the shape of a helpful walkthrough, a first-time playthrough, or community gameplay, where the thread followers would be polled for the decisions taken in-game. This interactivity, being it the direct participation of the audience in the gameplay itself or the indirect participation of simply reading the thread, is in fact what makes an LP a transformative work, with the viewers experiencing a game thru the perspective of the player, with the way they react to it directly coloring their perception of the medium. For games with more active gameplay, that means observing a specific style of play among those available. For games with diverging paths, that means coming along with the player’s personal journey amidst many others. All of these are different ways of experiencing the game than it would be playing it yourself, with the reasons of doing such a thing being various -- maybe, as it was my case for a long time, you do not have access to the game for whatever reason, and this is your only available way of experiencing it; alternatively, maybe you have played the game already and would like to see how someone else would do it.

In this case, Psycholonials is a kinetic novel. That is to say, a visual novel with no diverging paths (until the very end at least, and even then, very minor ones). This means that the transformative element available here would take the form of the player’s reactions to the content presented in it, as well as their general input on it. In the more common type of modern Let’s Plays, the commented video format can additionally include the aspect of reading the text aloud, something many could find useful -- I, myself, am dyslexic, and have only experienced both Pyscholonials and Homestuck by having a friend read it aloud with me. Shout out to Blueberry.

Look, I am no anti-piracy knight. A lot of art and tools would simply not have been available to me if it weren’t for alternative means. Even if this was just a Psycholonials mirror, I am not here to attempt to cancel Gio for making Psycholonials accessible in the format it is an obvious spiritual successor to. Again, it is not really necessary anymore, as Psycholonials is now completely free in its original superior format, but on its face, it’s fine.

But this is Gio we are talking about.The same Gio who has taken a firm stance on... checks notes... the existence of any way of reading Homestuck that isn’t through his own fork of the Unofficial Collection. The same Gio who has been calling the people working on the new website “scabs”. The same Gio who has repeatedly demonstrated a distaste for the idea that Hussie owns any of their creations, often under the guise of opposing copyright abuse and sticking it to corporative bullying of fanworks. Very noble causes, mind you, but ones that start ringing more like excuses once you realize Giovan’s “fanworks” mostly just consist of alternative ways to read works made by Andrew Hussie.

I do not mean, with this, to minimize the fact the Unofficial Homestuck Collection (still available, btw, 1 month and 9 days after it was supposedly taken down) was pretty much the only way to read the MS Paint Adventures for years, making it fundamental in its preservation. That said, it has (particularly after Gio’s attachment to the project) grown to include pretty much any work tangentially related to Hussie short of Hiveswap, Friendsim, Pesterquest and Beyond Canon. Anything from Hussie’s old comics to NAMCO High -- like, the entire game, becuz Terezi is there? -- is in the archive. And again, from a preservation perspective, this is actually cool, but combined with the opposition towards Hussie releasing their own art through means they control makes me, to be blunt, rather suspicious of the intentions of this “let’s play”.

So, what sort of commentary does Gio have to offer about Psycholonials?

Surprisingly, not as much as I thought. It is no secret for those who have read Gio’s blog that they are not a huge fan of Psycholonials, and seem to be, in fact, under the impression the events depicted in the plot are actionable threats against him. So when I heard the infamous mirror earned said infamy not just for its poor quality, but also for Giovan’s thrilling commentary, my mind conjured footnotes on every page, exposing his opinions on every bit of it -- not unlike the commentary in the printed editions of Homestuck by VIZ, for instance. Y’know, like an actually entertaining let’s player would do when covering a game with nothing but its plot and visuals to offer.

Gio does... Something different, leaving his longer opinion pieces to separate, skippable pages titled “Bonus Features” in-between chapters and interludes. I say longer opinions becuz every 15 pages or so we do get a little “well that just happened" zinger from him. And I will admit, while mediocre, it is very in line with LP content. Which, for a while, made me wonder if this was even worth talking about at all. I care not for dunkfests, nor do I interpret every action by Gio as inherently malicious. Writing parasocial articles about people you hate is his schtick, and I would hate to steal that.

So what if he made a shitty Psycholonials mirror. So what if he called it a Let’s Play becuz sometimes, very occasionally, he interrupts the narrative to say the protagonist is a bad person, in a great display of his investigative skills. So what if he called Hussie “Andrew Ponyboy” on page 370-- actually no I do need an explanation for that one. But at the end of the day, people are entitled to their opinions, right?

Right. And then I read thru the aforementioned Bonus Features. And I think we should talk about the Bonus Features.

Preface

In which we talk about the mirror’s Preface, after getting past our own.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=1]

I already covered a few of the oddities here, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. We see explicitly expressed that part of the intention with this is to make the text accessible, and that it would’ve been written around August 2021 (4 months after the release of the last chapter) and then released for the 1 year anniversary of Psycholonials, in February 2022.

At the bottom section, the link titled keep making things takes you to an archive of a Newsrama article about the printed versions of Homestuck when they were first coming out thru VIZ in 2018. This is not relevant to Psycholonials per se, it’s just a reference to Hussie’s humorous answer when asked “What is next for you?” by the interviewer.

[Link to article: https://web.archive.org/web/20180404204127/https://www.newsarama.com/39334-andrew-hussie-takes-homestuck-from-the-web-to-print-with-viz.html]

We also have a note telling us all of this was written prior to the “Ana Diaz’s Interview”, referring to the Polygon article titled Andrew Hussie, the reluctant cult leader, on life after Homestuck, released on November 11, 2021, where Diaz interviewed Hussie about Psycholonials, fandom and cult mentality.

[Link to the article: https://www.polygon.com/features/22674181/andrew-hussie-interview-homestuck-psycholonials/]

In a now incredibly unsurprising move, Gio does not link to Anna Diaz’s interview when you click on the hyperlink titled “Anna Diaz’s Interview”. It, in fact, takes you to one of Gio’s own “articles” in his website, in this case, literally just a Twitter thread he did on all his problems with it reposted to his blog. Journalism.

[Link: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/11/11/polygons-life-after-homestuck-thread/]

Despite his warning that he won’t go too in depth about it, there’s actually quite a lot of analysis in there. Not good analysis, it’s still Gio, but how much he has to say here is notable when contrasted with how much he has to say about the visual novel itself in the mirror that is, I assume, the “whole thing about Psycholonials” he had planned. And since it is, let’s take a look at it:

Not much to say here. Zhen is clearly somewhat of a self-insert of Hussie, though very obviously not a 1-to-1, and they freely admit so in the article. Gio is bringing this up to make some accusations later tho, so let’s continue.

Here, Gio casts doubt that Hussie intended Psycholonials to be an anti-cult narrative. Nevermind that it is literally a story about a woman’s path of self-destruction until she breaks down and is only saved by abandoning the cult she formed and choosing to let herself be loved instead of worshiped. But whatever, we can disagree on how well Psycholonials conveys that message, considering our POV character is the literal cult leader in question. Although I, for one, both disagree that Z faces no consequences for her actions in the story, and that a narrative necessitates its characters to go thru punishment in order to make clear they are in the wrong to begin with -- I may have been raised Catholic, but I’d like to think I grew past the “I need to be told bad guys are bad and will go to Hell” mentality.

Once you consider that Gio just pointed out Hussie identifies with Z, his claim that Psycholonials is actually pro-cult carries a very heavy implication.

He then proceeds to say he agrees with Hussie about how fandoms can be much like cults. But he agrees differently. He thinks this thing is true, but not how Hussie thinks it’s true. You see. It’s different.

This part is so telling to me. If you read the section Gio is commenting on, it is very clear this is an artist trying to gather their thoughts on how to best approach a fandom that admires you, and how whatever you do can have a negative effect. Hussie has done both: she used to be very active in the fandom, then decided to step away from interaction with fans and later from most writing of Homestuck altogether. And this absence was translated into both deification and vitriol towards them.

Gio looks at that and brings up the fact Hussie’s jokey self-insert in Homestuck has god-like powers and is a blank slate(?) for fans to project a personality onto. So, remember creatives, if you decide to have any fun with your self-insert or sona, if you flatter yourself even a little bit, I guess that takes away your right to complain about people being parasocial to you? Becuz you’re clearly asking for it, according to Giovan at least.

So the first part of this is just not true. Hussie at no point praises themselves for stepping away in any section of the article prior or after the one commented here. All the commentary on stepping away is shown in the tweet above, and most of it is literally about how a vacuum of leadership can itself be dangerous.

And the second part is. Nothing. Hussie did lose control of her brand. The website went down, VIZ stopped publishing the books, Homestuck^2 was put on hiatus, and everyone and their mother had a theory about how that meant Hussie somehow scammed everyone. Of course, Gio is not willing to entertain that idea as they are one of the people spreading many of those theories. Becuz this article is essentially about how Gio is mad that Polygon interviewed Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck and Psycholonials, and not GiovanH, the self-titled “amateur journalist” whose only hobbies are mirroring Hussie’s work and writing blog posts about how Hussie sucks.

And if you think that’s harsh:

So, I feel the need to say: obviously, being part of mainstream journalism isn’t enough to make you trustworthy. Many news vehicles are owned by big corporations and are thusly driven by capital, making what they choose to publish to be put under a certain filter we can only hope has our best interests at heart as well as being profitable. It is also true that independent (and yes, amateur) journalistic outlets are often some of the only ways certain stories, specially of abuse from the hands of the powerful, even get to come out.

All of this said, Gio going after someone with an actual journalistic portfolio to show off is extremely rich. As he decided to start with a, what was it again...  “absurd paragraph that paints Sarah Z's video as hallucinatory rambling accusations without addressing its validity or even linking to it”, let us start by pointing out that is not what the paragraph says whatsoever.

First of all. Damn. Imagine not linking to things properly.

Second of all, it doesn’t even make a statement about the validity of the accusations. Probably becuz they looked up the source of it and all they could find was Gio’s blog, who even aside from using extremely dubious sources for his retrospective of the observably turbulent development and release of Hiveswap, just engages in speculation and conspiracy at every other paragraph. I’ve been told by many sycophants -- and on one occasion by Gio himself -- that all I do is try and discredit him as a person without looking at the “evidence” he’s presented, and tho that is not true, there’s actually very good reason why you shouldn’t trust a source that is known for lying, exaggerating, speculating and harassing others (more on this later). Gio as a source only flies if you have, oh idk, a Tumblr gossip channel, not when you have an actual reputation as a trustworthy news vehicle to maintain.

The section does mention the fact it reignited a lot of speculation about the true timeline of Hiveswap. Becuz it did. People were speculating about it. I was speculating about it (tho mostly among my friends). A previously established version of events was challenged by a pretty well-known channel and people had opinions about what was true and what was not. They interviewed Hussie, so they asked their opinion on it. I cannot stress enough how outraged Gio gets at very normal things Diaz says and does.

Also, while it is erroneous to call Hiveswap finished, to then extrapolate that to say Diaz clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about and how this a bad article becuz they got “their information from Andrew” is honestly so illustrative on how Gio sees anything relating to Hussie, What Pumpkin, and now, FRAF and HICU. If you talk about them but you don’t talk about Gio, if you talk to them and don’t talk about Gio, you are a bad professional. How dare you not make it about me?

Y’know, with how much Sarah has doubled down on supporting Gio, I do wonder what she thinks of this “she was rightfully put on blast for analyzing more evidence than just my blog. She has corrected that tho, and now agrees with me fully” attitude.

He then takes issue with the phrasing in parts of the article. He says parts, but this is the only thing he shows to have a problem with. They identify themselves as one the amateur reporters, but take issue with the presentation that his reporting was on matters private to Hussie’s company. Which is so. Strange. Like. Even if it was all true, is that not what the reporting was on? Again with being outraged with normal sentences.

They also seem to take issue with the next sentence. The one that is clearly the last point on an escalation on different levels of engagement by different people. He feels the need to point out he did not harass Hussie’s brother, when it is very obvious that is not the insinuation whatsoever. Of course, this is not surprising coming from the person who does that type of insinuation all the time -- if you want examples, look back to tweet 1 and 2 in this thread.

It literally covers controversies, he has been complaining about how they covered it for the whole thread.

Also. “Would journalism do that?” is so funny. When I am lost in life, maybe I too shall ask myself, WWJD: What Would Journalism Do?

I’m putting these here for the sake of completion, there’s not much I can say without repeating myself. Gio is mad becuz people care about what Andrew Hussie has to say about being the creator of Homestuck and what that means in relation to its fandom. But nobody has asked what he thinks. And that is a travesty.

So yeah. Now that we got all of this bullshit out of the way, let’s take a look at the actual commentary the mirror has to offer.

Bonus Feature 1a

In which Gio pretends to know about game engines.[Link to page: mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=58]

So the first great bit of commentary Gio has to offer is that Unity is “overkill” for a visual novel of this simplicity. Now, while it’d definitely not be my first choice, and Ren’py is definitely the champion of the visual novel engines if for the simple fact it was built with them in mind, Gio seems to act like it was never done before. Not only do I pity the fact he (and many others for that matter) have not played Lookouts by paranoidhawk (seriously it’s free on Itch go play it), he literally just cited some middleware that facilitates the creation of visual novels in Unity, showing there is very much a niche there.

And even if there wasn’t. So what. Like, if I made a bog standard turn-based RPG in Godot, would you come at me all “just use RPG Maker!!”? There’s like, infinite reasons why someone would wanna use a new engine. Thousands of motives they would wanna do a simple project in a new engine.

I guess the complaint comes from the fact Gio is under the impression there was some sort of mistake with the way the game’s assets was presented, presumably attributed to Hussie’s assumed lack of experience with Unity. At no point do they consider that maybe the game about the delirious girl who is constantly afflicted by alcohol, disease, anxiety attacks and cosmic space clowns might always look out of focus on purpose. And again, even if it wasn’t, most of us would just laugh at the supposed incompetence and move on right?

Not Gio. We have a whole new thread by Gio, about how much this single “mistake” fucking sucks, linked in the mirror. I won’t cover this one in its entirety becuz it is actually quite well summarized in the page, but I wanted to comment on two aspects of it. Here’s the link for the entire thread if you wanna get the whole picture tho: [https://x.com/giovan_h/status/1366286535411269634]

This one is quite simple, but the entitlement to what Hussie does with their art (and their money, I suppose) is just. Sad. I’m sure they must feel like having previously worked on Befriendus has granted him great knowledge on how to make visual novels, but people use different software than you do sometimes becuz whatever and I promise, telling your friend how much Photoshop sucks and how stupid they are for not using Krita does not make you likeable. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Also, what the hell does this mean. Does he not believe Adelaide Killigan was the lead engineer? Do you disagree that is the title they shoulda been credited with? Apparently it doesn’t even matter, cuz Andrew Hussie, credited as writer and illustrator only, is the real one to blame for this thing that is definitely a mistake.

Bonus Feature 1b

In which Gio directs harassment to people.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=101]

After a couple of screenshots and transcriptions of the menu and credits page, Gio gives a few shoutouts to the names he recognizes. He then complains Astro Kid isn’t one of these names, linking to a song by Clark Powell, originally titled Someday but retitled Together in the Psycholonials OST album, in which they featured. And you know, perhaps that’s fair. I’m not privy to Powell’s personal artistic relationships, but on the face of it, yeah sure, I guess they should be there.

Let’s talk about how Gio credits these folks tho. Specifically, the folks he does not like. “James Roach, from music” (like, in general? As a concept?) is very funny, but the one that jumps out is definitely “Aysha [she doesn’t get a surname i guess], from the HS visual novels and her scandal”.

Guess where the her scandal link takes you to.

[Link to the article: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/06/30/the-sarah-z-video-fallout/]

This is perhaps one of Gio’s most famous articles. It describes and comments on, as the name suggests, the aftermath of the aforementioned Sarah Z video A Brief History of Homestuck, as well as the follow up report on the legal threats sent to her, titled Homestuck Sent Me A Legal Threat, And Then It Got Worse, with a specific focus on how Aysha, the lead writer of Homestuck^2 at the time, reacted to it.

To be forward, yes, Aysha was extremely suspicious of the Sarah Z video, posting with pessimism about the wave of harassment she was bracing herself for. Gio acts extremely dismissive of her concerns, as he has a habit of doing, so he catalogues every tweet she made on the subject while offering dismissive comments.

Now. Truly. Why would a Palestinian queer woman fear backlash from the Homestuck community after the online discourse essay YouTuber makes a video about it? Sarah Z’s fans do not harass the subjects of her videos (definitely not, do not look it up, that never happened), and this for sure wouldn’t ignite any part of the fandom who might have, oh idk, harassed her writing partner off the fandom or anything, right? It was definitely a very good time for Homestuck^2, and they did not get daily harassment, and there is no reason to worry whatsoever about the set-to-premiere-soon video with a thumbnail spelling out:

This is, of course, burying the lede. What Gio is doing here is constructing a narrative that paints Aysha as this unreasonable woman (a favorite of Gio’s) who thinks she’s being chased by everyone, when in reality she just can’t deal with criticism and ethical games journalism. There is no acknowledgement to the harassment of her and other creators previously, aside from a general statement that harassment exists, later in the article. No attempt to understand why Aysha would be anxious or panicking about it. He, in fact, does not even seem to acknowledge queer people -- especially queer women, and even more especially, trans women -- just get this kind of harassment at all:

This unwillingness to engage with the idea of queer people being made targets of harassment as soon as anyone provides a reason for “legitimate outrage” (more often than not, either a rumor or a listing of all and any mistake the dangerous queer has ever committed in their entire online history) is, of course, very rich coming from the person who has been keeping a record of every move of a mostly queer POC team so they can write blog posts about how they are evil.

Anyway, the “scandal” Gio is referring to isn’t any of this, but what came later that day. In response to Aysha’s claim that Sarah never contacted them for comment, some people started bringing up the fact What Pumpkin refused to comment when Gio reached out previously:

And then Gio himself shows up to say:

I hope I don’t need to explain why the assumption that if you refuse to talk to Gio you’ll refuse to talk to anyone is absurd. The idea that, becuz What Pumpkin refused a response to the (at the time. Good times) small blogger who accused their employees of literal crimes without a credible source, they won’t have anything to say to one of the fandom YouTubers is so insane it is actually disingenuous. Sarah Z didn’t reach out to Aysha becuz she didn’t think it was important. Hell, she didn’t think it was important to mention her by name when talking about how shit her comics was (but really, what would Aysha have to worry about).

Aysha then did something questionable. Becuz when you’re panicking about the harassment you’re expecting to receive, and the person who could be blamed for much of that harassment appears once again to mock you on Twitter, you are prone to making bad decisions. In this case, Aysha posted this to her Patreon server:

Someone in the server tipped Gio off about this, and in his own words: “it would be negligent of me to react without verifying, but it’d be irresponsible not to react, so I had to verify it. So, I looked up the discord server and dropped in”. He neglects to inform this wasn’t exactly a public server, but one you had to pay to be invited in, resulting in a pretty small community all in all. That is not to say that, as Gio words it in the article, “putting out a hit” on someone is fine, regardless of the number of... Potential hitmen? See, this is my problem here. Gio has every right to be upset. But it’s not enough for Aysha to have lost her cool, she needs to be a hysterical woman who does not accept any criticism. And he needs to keep milking this one message for years to come, like he did in his article back in August 8th, pretending like what happened next wasn’t Aysha deleting her entire Patreon server (as well as Patreon tiers/rewards altogether) and then leaving What Pumpkin altogether out of feeling unsafe. But Gio also doesn’t acknowledge that. Gio only acknowledges the supposed harassment towards Gio, which we never see btw. I’m not saying Gio got no harassment. The one saying that is Gio actually:[Link to tweet: https://x.com/giovan_h/status/1382049735180189700]

So, since Gio will only credit the woman he harassed for her work in Homestuck and “her scandal”, I would like to take this moment to remind him, and others, that Aysha U. Farah (yes, she has a full name) also had short stories published by Uncanny Magazine, Wizards of the Coast, among others. She self-published the (now unavailable, I am sad to report) noveletta Puss in Heels. Ever since distancing herself from the Homestuck fandom, she was also a writer and narrative designer for award-winning game Life Is Strange: Double Exposure. Currently, she is a writer for Pathologic 3.

---

The second part of Bonus Feature 1b concerns the Silence Mill, the name of the studio that Hussie used, at the time, to publish Psycholonials:So as you can see Gio just. Straight up accuses Hussie of opening a shell company. Becuz she opened a new studio for a new project. And this is... A trick? Somehow?

Like, The Company Corporation might have a funny name, but they are a real company, subsidiary of the also humorously titled Corporation Service Company. If you Google them, the first result is their website, incorporate.com, where you can open an LLC, C Corp or Non-Profit for a fixed price + state fees. And yes, Delaware has lower fees than most states, as the website itself tells you. This is... In no way illegal, shady, or uncommon? It’s not even that expensive!

But Gio is so deep in his theory about how everything Hussie ever does is a secret evil plot that he is legitimately just fighting windmills here, using terms like “tax avoidance” to conjure up and just possibly get confused with the actually illegal practice of “tax evasion”. And I know that is the case becuz the The Company Corporation link takes you yet another Gio twitter thread (what? Did you expect it to take you their website or maybe a Wikipedia article? Of course not, you rube) where he literally gets those mixed together:just accused you of a crime again, whoops

I must also point out that the Silence Mill Inc. is not listed as the publisher of Psycholonials anymore. It seemed this was going to be the vehicle for whatever Hussie was going to do, but it seems the plans changed after the shitshow of 2021.

Bonus Feature 2a

In which Gio misgenders a trans woman.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=148]

Not much to comment other than yeah. After making a big noise about crediting people properly, Gio goes ahead and misgenders Clark Powell, who had been out for years prior to the release of Psycholonials. Her pronouns are she/her, if you were wondering.

The erasure of trans women in the Homestuck fandom is a huge issue. When we aren’t harassed out of it altogether, we have to deal with people ignoring our identities, even by so-called “fans” like Gio. I’m not even saying this was malicious, it’s just the fact Giovan makes such a point on being thorough about her work, linking to Soundcloud tracks from over a decade ago, and still manages to get her pronouns wrong both in the mirror and the highlights article just goes to show how little thought there even is to things like this on his part.

Bonus Feature 2b

In which Gio attempts class analysis

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=179]

Hey did you know Andrew Hussie is wealthy? That’s right, she’s made a lot of money even before Homestuck (which as we know made her billions) from her “rich family with serious monetizable patents”. Which is Gio’s very strange way of saying that, prior to Hussie’s success as an artist, she and their father were respectively the Chief Technology Officer and President of Master Colors, LLC, a company that made a variety of very successful Photoshop plugins, leading eventually to them filing a very profitable patent on a tool for early detection of cancerous tumors.

What does that have to do with anything? Well Gio thinks it’s weird a “rich white man” is into juggaloo [sic] culture, as it is a... “working-class-to-poverty culture”. Y’know, Violent J is a literal millionaire, but I guess Hussie is not poor enough.

Also, y’know, this being released (if not written) a year after the Psycholonials launch, the insistence on referring to Hussie as a “man”, something Gio does to this very day, is just shitty. Hussie had explicitly come out both thru the visual novel itself and then on social media at this point.

This is not the only time Gio casts doubt or ignores Hussie’s identity. Later on (page 796, to be exact), in the cast pages, he seems confused by the fact Hussie’s self-insert “D-Clussie” is labeled with the clown emoji that represents the sort of “genderless identity” Zhens talks about.

Anyway. There is a lot to be said about wealthy people writing stories about the working class and doing a bad job of it, missing the nuance and experience an actual member of that class would have as opposed to an outside observer. There is a lot to be said about how that transpires in Psycholonials even, and how the intersection with racial politics is rather messy if not downright tone-deaf at its worst times. There is also much to be said about Hussie’s history of messy racial politics, from And It Don’t Stop to Homestuck and Psycholonials itself, with the “aracial style” inherited from MSPA being an extremely ill-fit for a story that is so concerned about racism.

Much to be said. Gio doesn’t say any of it tho. He just goes “Andrew Hussie is rich and wrote a story about class” and then moves on to talk about the UI.

Bonus Feature 3a

In which Gio talks xenogenders.

Oh shit, hang on

Bonus Feature 3a

In which Gio does NOT talk xenogenders.[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=207]

So after misgendering two trans people, Gio decides to give their take on gender. He seems to take issue with the fact Zhen refers to nonbinary as the center of a male/female axis, which is indeed an erroneous idea, as nonbinary is an umbrella term that can mean many things (including the thing Z describes, but I can see why that would bother someone).

My reward for almost typing “fair enough, Gio” is being blasted with his take on clowngender and agender, by complaining Hussie got them wrong and also didn’t invent them. Which is like if I talked about what being a historian meant to me, analyzing my relationship with it and how it ties into my identity, and then some rando on the internet said “you didn’t invent History >:(”. Except it’s worse than that, actually, becuz it is Gio once again looking to delegitimize Hussie’s gender. Cuz they’re not poor enough to be clowngender, and also that’s not what that is, I looked it up on UncommonGender. No really, that’s where the clowngender link takes you.

[Link: https://uncommongenders.home.blog/2018/04/23/clowngender/]

Bonus Feature 3b

In which Gio attempts class analysis. Again.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=227]

So after not having anything to say about Hussie’s relationship to wealth and how that affected the politics displayed in Psycholonials other than “he’s rich”, Gio criticizes the protagonist of the visual novel for “burning money”. By this, he means the fact Zhen makes sure to drink the most expensive booze from Abby’s house, later complaining they have “run out of wine that costs over ten thousand dollars”. Giovan then explains things like this, “having enormous amounts of money and wasting it on personal expression while others are suffering from poverty” are what make billionaires bad. Y’know, not the inherent nature of the capitalist system that births a billionaire, which makes it so acquiring that amount of money is the direct result of the exploitation of an entire class of people. Billionaires are bad becuz they drink expensive wine. And I guess if you drink a billionaire’s expensive wine you are just as bad as they are?

I am shocked that Giovan ‘those rebuilding Homestuck.com are scabs’ H has a poor understanding of class consciousness.

Anyway, he also likes how the game looks now. I guess it grew on him.

Bonus Feature 4b

In which Gio skips Bonus Feature 4a.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=300]

What else is there to say here. It’s bad class analysis, it’s bad media analysis, and I have no fucking idea what “reverse fight club” means.

I would like to call attention to the very beginning of the feature tho: “i know I’m supposed to say this girl needs therapy but maybe therapy isn’t for you. maybe just go to prison”

So Gio really dislikes Zhen. Which is fair, she fucking sucks. She is as self-centered as she is self-destructive, she is volatile, manipulative, and just kind of mean. Though I can still appreciate her character, I’d want nothing but distance and maybe her OnlyFans from her in real life.

Gio says some. Very interesting stuff about her, though. But this is probably better suited for our next section:

Bonus Feature 5b

In which Gio discusses police brutality

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=388]

After two paragraphs dedicated to summarizing real life events that not only inspired but are somewhat depicted in Psycholonials, Gio makes the claim there is no police brutality in Psycholonials, and that it was just a bunch of people being mad online.

This also and especially extends to how he talks about Zhen as a person. Like in page 304, where he says she “is the kind of person you really do need to keep at gunpoint”. No really, that’s a direct quote:Skipping over the fact he just lies about the cop not shooting at Zhen at the end of Chapter 1, Gio seems to be under the impression an “anti-cop story” is when you portray bad police officers doing bad things, unlike the good and innocent cops of Psycholonials. That honorable boy in blue was doing society a service by pointing a gun (and shooting) at an unarmed Chinese-American. I’m pretty sure she attacked him first also.

This hits me as particularly strange. Gio has been very open on social media about how cops are an inherently abusive force that only truly benefits the higher classes, one thing that, I thought, we were actually in agreement with each other. Here’s him saying “All Cops Are Bastards” and “no countries are good” (which I’m sure sounds very radical if you’re American) way back in 2019, almost a year prior to the murder of George Floyd.

So I’m not really sure what this whole “these cops aren’t even bad” business is. Does his vitriol for Hussie just exceed any sort of ideals they claim to hold? I guess I’m glad he keeps his opinions on what unarmed POC should be held at gunpoint and shot at exclusively to fictional characters, but then again, as we’ll see soon, Gio gets reality and fiction mixed quite a lot.

Bonus Feature 6b

In which Gio accuses Hussie of being a cult leader.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=465]

Again with the attitude that Psycholonials fails as a story about oppression and class struggle becuz Gio wasn’t told explicitly that America is bad. This touches upon another big aspect of his commentary, one that I’ve touched upon already: Giovan has very poor media literacy.

When he’s not straight up misremembering parts of the Chapters he just played, he goes on these rants about authorial intent, how this would be a great story about cult mentality if Hussie had “intended it as such”. The depth of his analysis literally only goes as deep as “Zhen is bad, so cops are good. Hussie identifies with Zhen, so they actually want to start a cult. Zhen is a bad person, so any time the narrative shows any empathy towards her, it is actually saying she’s right”.

Then of course, that is itself tied to the fact this is less about analyzing Psycholonials and more about using it as a vehicle to air out grievances with its author and speculate about how they’re secretly evil. Notice how Giovan chooses his words carefully once again. What Aysha did was wrong and thoughtless, but to say she called for his “public lynching” is such a gross exaggeration, especially when you explicitly deny the fact she herself was panicking about the harassment that would come (and it came).

I’m just gonna say it. I don’t doubt for a second Gio has received harassment throughout the years motivated by his reporting on Homestuck. He also contributed directly to harassment towards a bunch of trans and queer women. I condone no harassment. But I’ve seen his fans swarming my sisters, always careful to not say the quiet part outloud, becuz they know they can silence them if they are loud enough. They’ll shout “no evidence” and then discard any evidence you present. Gio himself is a big fan of the “reblogging and blocking” tactic, where you expose a critic to your audience, calling them a liar and whatnot, and then block them so replying or even seeing the post becomes a chore. While this happens, his fans gather around the post like hounds to bark at you, and you better not lose your cool about it, becuz the moment you do, you’re getting mass reported for “making threats”.

I speak from experience.

Bonus Feature 7a

In which there is nothing but a broken image.

[Link to page: mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=500]

Bonus Feature 7b

In which Gio writes fanfiction.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=560]

I don’t even know what’s happening here. Yeah Gio, I guess if you re-write someone’s story badly to make it explicitly say the bad things you believe it’s saying, it sounds pretty bad. Here, I can do it too:

This piece of lackluster fanfiction comes right after Chapter 7, the one where she kills Joculine, revealed to be one of Zhen’s old haters, and sends out a squad of assassins to execute her other “antis”. This also officially marks the beginning of the end for Z. Her own anger and grudges get the better of her, above any sense of revolutionary thought. This drives a wedge between her and Abby, who keeps trying to warn her that she is becoming a villain.

It’s a shocking moment. One that makes you realize Z is not headed to anything but a path of destruction, including and especially of her own self.

But Gio doesn’t see it like that.

He genuinely believes that Psycholonials is a story about an Andrew Hussie stand-in killing online meanies and how that is a good thing she wishes she could do irl. More than that, he can’t see any other possible reading, it seems.

Y’know, since he mentioned it previously, I actually wonder what Gio’s take on Fight Club is. There’s this utter insistence that the narrative of Psycholonial glorifies every action Zhen takes, how the fact she is the point of view thru which the story is told proves that it is on her side. How the supposed lack of comeuppance is proof all of it was justified by the narrative. And these are all things that are true of Fight Club, both the book by Chuck Palahniuk and the movie by David Fincher, which indeed, led to it becoming adored by libertarian chuds who didn’t get that Tyler Durden is supposed to be shit. If you’re not a libertarian chud, however, you can see how Durden as a character manipulates people’s (specifically, men’s) genuine insecurities and righteous anger toward capitalism to breed a cult of chaos and violence that ultimately does succeed in their goal.

The impression I keep getting is that Giovan wants Psycholonials to get the same treatment Fincher’s film got when put on Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video, where the ending cuts abruptly before the ultimate assault by Durden’s cult and displays this message instead:

Bonus Feature 8a

In which Gio explains the plot of Psycholonials to you.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=631]

Yep. That’s pretty much a summary of the conversation Z and Abby have in Chapter 8. Zhen does not have a plan. Abby can see that her friend has gone off the deep end. Of course, we can gather from Gio’s previously expressed opinions that he does not think this is the intended takeaway, and that Hussie just made Abby be right on accident. When Z repeatedly and pathetically deflects all of her only friend’s concerns, they obviously intended her to look heroic and immaculate.

Bonus Feature 8b

In which Gio tells us we are almost done.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=685]

Good job not misgendering her this time, Giovan.

Bonus Feature 9a

In which Gio compares support for BLM to terrorism.

OK. SO. First things first, here’s the link to the page, as it is quite a long one, so I’mma break it down into a few parts: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=762

Once again, the framing of the conversation is how Gio thinks he has somehow figured out that Z was wrong. He claims it is “self-evident”, even.

He then uses the speech in Chapter 8 as an example to how the camera and narrative frame Z as heroic and righteous in her anger:None of this is new and I think I have exhausted all I could say about how I think he’s wrong. There’s only so many ways I can say empathizing with a character that sucks does not mean justifying their actions, allowing them righteous rage is not saying they’re right, and that I don’t believe having a “moral of the story” at the end is necessary and that I think to expect that is childish.

But as the subtitle of this section suggests... There is more going on here.

So. As it’s been laid out, Gio not only thinks the narrative justifies Z’s actions, he also thinks Hussie and company are in favor of it, at least on some level. He says so explicitly, many times, including in this page, and then here, he claims that if you take the ideas Hussie promotes IRL, that becomes even more obvious. We are now going to take a look at where those links take you, and keep in mind, these are, according to Gio, supposed to be examples of Hussie’s support for harmful ideologies.

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200531160957/https://twitter.com/HSPesterquest/status/1267122903226580993]

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200603045914/https://twitter.com/homestuck/status/1267815083704385537]

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200602201151/https://twitter.com/homestuck/status/1267584158039228424]

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200502075847/https://twitter.com/homestuck/status/1252260403536703488]

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200119151328/https://twitter.com/homestuck/status/1218770740599590912]

[Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201005121044/https://twitter.com/homestuck/status/1311635037989801988]

[Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20200531162244/https://twitter.com/HSPesterquest/status/1267123302616592384]

So um. Yeah. The awful, terrible ideologies Hussie supports in real life are support for the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and... I guess just. Knowing SonicFox? Like, I’m genuinely baffled here. We previously saw how Gio seems to forget his convictions about police when it comes to Psycholonials, but this is on a whole other level.

Also, is Gio just. An anti-Communist? Is “seize the means of production” and “join the Communist party” supposed to be this grim sign of something terrible to come? Like, I could tell by the way he’s been calling people scabs that he does not understand labor rights, and probably isn’t very familiar with leftist theory, but c’mon.

Bonus Feature 9b

In which Gio admits he didn’t get it.

[Link to page: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=787]

I made notes while reading thru this mirror, and all I wrote for this part was “Bad analysis, does not engage with the question. F-.”

And y’know what. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much all I got.

Bonus Feature 9c

In which Gio explains how there is good and bad cancel culture.

[Link: https://mspfa.com/?s=42998&p=805]

So Gio closes it all with his big take on cancel culture. He acknowledges the fact it is weaponized towards marginalized people, that people will make up excuses to go after them for who they are and then pretend it’s not about their identities at all.

He then proceeds to offer his excuses for going after certain marginalized people while telling us it had nothing to do with their identities at all. Becuz, you see, “snakes” (very subtle, Giovan) will claim that any criticism directed towards them is an attack on, and I quote, “whatever minority group they decide to identify with”.

Becuz y’know. If there’s something that you can always count on to shield you from criticism it’s making clear you are a minority. Or “identifying” as one, I suppose. He brings up people “who will take full advantage of being able to do the indefensible without consequence”, and to that I ask: who is this mythical minority that can get away with anything, Gio? Who is this queer that can do the indefensible? Who is this trans woman who got away with simply existing in the Homestuck community, let alone doing anything questionable, without a handful of horror stories about every space she was in?

Aysha is gone. Her writing partner is gone. Pip is gone. For years, even Hussie was gone. Yet there you stood, Gio, somehow always being silenced, and yet never shutting up.

Oh, and social media bad. Did I mention?

Conclusion

In which Margot stops talking, at last.

Psycholonials is a messy story.

Not just visually speaking. Not just becuz it is #problematic. Tho it is both of those things.

It is a messy story becuz it is about messy people. People who’ve been hurt. People who are still hurting. People that hurt others in response. It’s about coping badly with terrible things that were done to you. It’s about feeling like you’re not allowed to heal. And it is about love, and learning to be loved.

Ever since the launching of the Official Homestuck Discord Server, I have had the opportunity to discuss this visual novel with more people, after honestly not giving it much thought after playing it all those years ago and not particularly enjoying it. My passion for it was re-ignited, not just upon re-examining its contents and themes, but by seeing people talk about what it meant to them. About how it helped them figure out their gender. How it introduced them to the idea of political praxis.

But among all the narratives I heard about, there’s one that is particularly of note. That being trans women, who have as much in common as they have fundamental differences, all of who nonetheless identified with Zhen. With her rage, with her flaws, with her self-isolating and self-destructive behavior. With the way she can only engage with her sexuality by weaponizing her own fetishization. With her loneliness. And above all, how her existence in and of itself is a struggle to survive.

It always hits me as funny when people say we don’t know what caused Zhen’s cancellation in the events prior to the game. Why was she chased out of the internet? Did she do something? What did she do? Was it justified?

It’s unclear, they say. We just don’t know.

Except I do. We do.

I debated if this thread was worth the effort from the moment I got the idea of making it to the very last character I typed down. This isn’t my first thread on Gio, though it most certainly is the longest. And I think that, at least for a good while, it will be the last. All that I can say has been said, and repeated about one hundred times. Anyone that had to be convinced, was.

The reason I even started these writings was becuz, after years of silence, a community I so loved returned, better than ever. The Forums, the server, HICU, the FRAF fanworks. I was welcomed with opened arms, I made connections, acquaintances, friends. For the first time in a while, it felt safe around these parts.

And then some people, many the cause of making this community so dangerous to people like me for so long, began saying this was actually bad. A place where trans women actually have a chance at being taken seriously? Not on their watch.

I questioned myself many times if I was becoming Gio’s Gio. I don’t think I am. And I’ve been told I’m not when I asked for a sincere answer. But the fact the concern is there at all tells me it’s probably time to give it a rest. I’ve done my part. And if duty calls, I will continue to.

For now tho, I think I will take the warmth offered to me by all of you and let myself get cozy. I got a few creative projects on the way. Blueberry and I have been working together on a fan adventure we hope to show all of you sometime next year. I’ve also been slowly but surely working on a solo fan-project I won’t say much about, except that it is rather... Foolish.

Thank you for reading. You’ll be seeing me ‘round.