ok, so, big day. i’ve been at work all day with my phone blowing up but i just got home so now i can make a post about this UHC situation.
to be clear, this isn’t the “Homestuck Official Response” or whatever, but there’s stuff i clearly want to address now, because this story has taken on a life of its own and i’d like to keep things considerate and maybe give my own side of the story here before any “Homestuck Official Response” happens.
if this is something you have strong opinions on (which i completely understand), i'd really encourage you to give this a read with an open mind.
a few early tl;drs but i’m getting into all of this in more detail below, so... this post is a highly suggested read if you’d like to begin to hear a different side of this story:
A: no, the UHC is not gone forever, there is a fork up right now. the Homestuck site itself is still being worked on and improved and andrew has no intentions of turning Homestuck into “lost media”, that’s not going to happen. Homestuck is not going away or in any danger of disappearing, i promise.
Aa: here is the fork: https://homestuck.github.io/
B: no, FRAF and the HICU are not andrews evil goons commanded by a shadowy puppet-master.
C: i’ve already begun getting threats over this, and also seen all kinds of accusations slung at me, the HICU, FRAF, even james, so i’d like people to hear me out here and not attack people over this. gio, to his credit, has also emphasized this, which i appreciate, and i'll also emphasize that i do NOT want people harassing gio over this. i have no interest in starting a flame war.
D: a more organized and “receipt”-y account of this whole thing from Homestuck's perspective may be coming in the coming days, though certainly not tonight. i am not just talking out my ass, here, but i also didn’t exactly have presumably months to spend perfecting a gigantic article that positions me as the epic folk hero and the other parties as the nefarious pawns of a shadow cabal, so sit tight for some other stuff. i don’t really know that i am going to have much (or any?) part in writing that if it happens, besides offering any screenshots of my own.
E: i'm of the opinion that gio's article was pretty transparently not written out of a benevolent desire to protect homestuck fans' access to the comic.
F: i anticipate that this post is gonna be treated as something to refute, but it's a Post. this is not like, My Counter-Article, like i said i'm not the guy writing one. i'm getting my perspective out because i think everyone has a right to hear it.
okay, let me get into it. some context.
the thing i need to start this off with is as follows: 2 years ago, before HS:BC was even coming out (and, i’ll note, WELL before i was ever a co-director) andrew asked me if i’d be comfortable acting as a liaison/go-between between him and bambosh+gio regarding offering a license to the Unofficial Homestuck Collection and bringing it into the fold, allowing them to monetize and publish a bunch of behind the scenes goodies like more book notes, other future collabs, and sneak peaks etc. it would have been a cool one-stop shop for homestuck shit, and i was new to the HS:BC team and incredibly eager to get involved in not just writing HS:BC but anything else. the reason andrew asked me to be a liaison is because, as i’m sure is pretty obvious to anyone by now, there was no love lost between andrew and gio over the previous round of homestuck PR clusterfuckery that happened 4-5ish years ago, and andrew thought this all might go over better if i was between andrew and gio to like, make nice, try to offer the olive branch in a less intimidating way, etc. maybe also because shit like this “exposé” has a tendency to keep happening when gio is around, which is a riddle i’d invite us all to contemplate.
i wanna pause and emphasize something here, because it’s one of the most important things i want to get across. i was acting as a Liaison for andrew, as a MESSENGER, FOR andrew, not as like, a Lawyer or and Advisor or a “coconspirator” or the guy who authored the decisions that actually got made here. i did not and do not tell andrew what to do about anything, certainly not about how to handle the Homestuck IP or any moves he wants to make legally. i gave some advice on how to communicate and actually Did The Communicating, but during all of this i wasn’t even the director on HS:BC, i was literally just a writer who thought he was stepping into a short, sweet process to get a cool collaboration going between the UHC and Homestuck as an IP.
i was also NOT acting as a representative of ANY aims of the HICU. you can ask literally anyone on the team if this was on our docket, the answer is no. again, i was acting as a liaison for andrew to try and keep communications more productive so that we could start expanding the Homestuck<—>Fan network and do cool shit. i’m hardly an accredited PR guy, but for what it’s worth, i tried.
i obviously mentioned the HICU to gio and bambosh, and it was still taking form as an entity back then so i was super loose with the term and the role it actually played in the issue of the UHC (which is to say, Literally None.) in a way that in retrospect i Obviously Should Not Have Been. that said, i need to make this abundantly clear, now, because the team and i are already starting to get threats over this: the HICU is not “secretly controlled by andrew” (nor is the patreon money split with Andrew, by the way.). we hold a license for Homestuck, his property, and obviously consult with him on merch, 4/13 events and the like that we participate in, but he doesn’t control the team, and he certainly doesn’t control HS:BC. the same needs to be said now for FRAF as well; cami and others have already gone into this and i expect this conversation is going to continue to play out for a while, but FRAF is not “controlled by andrew” either. like the HICU, FRAF holds a license with andrew to work with and monetize Homestuck fanworks, because at the end of the day, Homestuck is andrew’s story.
the number of people who actively talk to andrew between FRAF and the HICU can probably be counted on one hand, and of those people, the number of those who have had more individual conversations with andrew than you can count on one hand is even less.
all this is to say, no, the HS:BC team/HICU are not all “andrew’s goons”, no, the FRAF team are not andrew’s goons, and no, the HICU and FRAF themselves, as projects, are not andrew’s. neither am i. we are licensees with homestuck to get legal permission to do what we do, and earn the right to be compensated for that license (for which i’m extremely grateful, by the way) but i am not a Homestuck Inc./What Pumpkin Employee, and neither are they. any work any of us do for Homestuck or about Homestuck we do because we love it and the fandom, and the role that i played in this UHC scenario was because i thought i was going to be stepping in to mediate a quick situation that would help reconcile gio and andrew and give something cool to the fans at the same time, not because i was trying to, what, get involved in a messy situation for no reason other than to hurt people and punish the fans? why would i do that? or, for that matter, why would andrew?
anyway, i’ve WAY over-emphasized this point, but it just matters to me, A: because i don’t want the HICU *or* the FRAF team to be getting this kind of smear campaign slung at them while they’re trying to do something cool and B: because for trying to help mediate a sticky situation, i’ve been lambasted as a manipulative detriment to the fandom to probably tens of thousands of people???
MOVING ON.
basically, i spent like a solid year on and off as a go-between, trying to mediate between andrew and gio+bambosh (bambosh, notably, seemed really excited to work with us initially until talks deteriorated), from like september 2023 until i think like december 2024 or january of this year or whatever the hell. you can go read the precise dates in gio’s article, i’m positive they’re somewhere in there. after a certain point, it became clear to andrew and to me that my role as a liaison, messenger, whatever was just not working out and i haven’t touched this shit since.
obviously, That Year Of Trying Did Not Work Out, Lol.
actually, for what its worth, i want to emphasize here that i have no grievance whatsoever with bambosh, at all, and for whatever stress i contributed to their life during this saga i am sincerely, actually sorry. they were legit a pleasure to talk to and i was really, really looking forward to seeing what they’d be able to cook up with Homestuck’s backing and resources. i hope you're well, bambosh.
anyway. this is my personal read on the situation (as Miles, The Guy Who Was Actually Here For All This), and i want to try not to sling personal accusations as much as i can despite being dragged through the mud along with my entire team, but my observation throughout this whole process was Not that gio was standing up as a stalwart defender of the rights of the fans to access homestuck, because andrew Wanted to work with him, and bambosh Wanted to work with us, and andrew doesn’t “hate homestuck and want it to go away” (the whole reason i’m allowed to make HS:BC with the HICU is because andrew wants the fandom to keep thriving!). gio was Not trying everything he could to make this work, because by his own admission in the article he refused to sign a license to continue to publish the Entirety Of A Body Of Work That Didn’t Belong To Him, and i also strongly suspect did everything in his power to dissuade bambosh from licensing when it was bambosh andrew was doing the initial negotiating with, Precisely Because We Were Worried About Situations Like This. at the time i actually thought that was TOO paranoid, believe it or not, but holy shit was i wrong about that, lol.
what it felt to me that gio was doing was stalling any progress andrew tried to make with the UHC because licensing it meant he wouldn’t get to control access to andrews work, or have the, i don’t know, “clout” (???) of managing it without any oversight, and almost certainly because working with andrew would have meant he couldn’t just go around talking shit on andrew and Homestuck as a company anymore whenever he pleased (and, clearly, he pleases). also i guess because he was asked to help recontextualize events that transpired during a saga of misery that resulted in multiple members of the old team being bullied off the internet and the complete halt of Homestuck Anything for like three years.
i am trying not to be uncharitable here but like, really look at the article. it is super inflammatory. there are legitimate critiques to be made about the way Homestuck as a business has handled things in the past, and even some ways i would obviously have suggested this situation be handled differently MYSELF if given another go at it, but this is not a measured critique, this is shouting “FIRE!!!!!!!!” in a crowded theater, presented as an attempt to save the fans from a Datapocalypse that isn’t even going to happen. this isn’t the action of someone who “loves homestuck and wants to protect it” because it accomplishes literally nothing but making everyone who actually likes homestuck fucking miserable. who does that help?
this is conjectural and speculative, but frankly after an entire article painting me as a manipulative liar who hates every homestuck fan after i spent a year trying to mediate a delicate situation so that gio could work WITH HOMESTUCK, when i and my team have lost sleep and poured our whole hearts into trying to make the fandom a cool place to be for all the incredible people who love this comic for two years, i think i’m allowed my own take, and that’s this:
this article isn’t about you, the reader, as a fan and your threatened right to have continuous access to Homestuck, because that’s not in danger. i promise. i have worked on HS:BC for two awesome years now and i have never felt in danger of Homestuck Disappearing, and i wouldn’t BE working on HS:BC if i felt there was some attempt to destroy Homestuck (because, again, why??? would i do that???). this isn’t about copyright law or protecting fan projects, because fan projects are being actively endorsed by andrew and Homestuck/WP and allowed to monetize, thrive, etc. this is about gio. andrew asked to bring gio on to work With Homestuck under a license, and gio refused. i delivered andrew’s messages and was the face of this series of exchanges, and gio spent an entire article painting me as both a villain and a victim in front of thousands of people. the HICU and FRAF and andrew have all been trying in their own ways to make homestuck fans happy with comics, merch, fanworks, and more, and it’s been working, so gio decided to shit on that parade because he screwed himself out of being a part of it.
this has all turned out to be a headache more enormous than i could possibly have imagined, and if i played any part at all in bungling this or making it worse by not being a good enough communicator or a bad liaison then i sincerely apologize for that. i’m here first and foremost to try and make homestuck fun for everyone, and today was obviously the opposite of fun. that said, i also am not gonna just sit here and let a bunch of innocent members of multiple teams, andrew, and myself get thrown under the bus by staying quiet while people take potshots at us.
i anticipate there will probably be some kind of official counter-argument or whatever from Homestuck (not the HICU, not FRAF) in the coming days with more Capital D Documentation, so if you’re looking for a more Annotated Account, that’s probably where you’re gonna get it, not here. i don’t think i’m gonna stick around answering questions in this thread or anything, either, i’d just like people to think on what i have to say, and to reiterate one last time that i’d like everybody to treat all the team members of various teams with grace, because they are literally Not Involved With This.
and also, once more for the record, i do not want people harassing gio over this. i'm zero percent interested in trying to start a flame war.
jesus christ that was long. sorry if i got at all personal, here, and for everyone who stuck around to read the whole thing, i am sincerely grateful.
... as the ancient hawaiians used to say.
thanks for the response, miles. i had so many friends driven out of HS spaces by certain people years ago and i know how exhausting and hurtful dealing with them is. i really really hope that at least this time the truth will come out, unlike last time
This is extremely hard to grasp to me and will only get harder once an official response from Homestuck is made, I feel… No matter who’s “right” or “wrong”, this all just sucks.
*I should clarify in my first comment, that I know this isn't really a black and white situation, or that I’m gonna just blindly trust/spread any “Hot Goss“ I’ve heard about Gio, and I’m absolutely not a heavy defender of Hussie! But the anger is directed very strangely rn and most of what I’ve heard makes this seem like a pattern, and I can’t say I’m encouraged to jump to his unwavering support from all the flourish text he wrote in his favor is all.
Half way through reading Gio's write up I was feeling pretty uneasy about it all if I'm being honest. I feel like if you really just focus on the logs, you get a more grey reading of the situation that people on "twitter" aren't really taking away because they're just seeing what the tweet says and saying no to reading 10 thousand page write up on a blog lol.
This is overall a very ugly situation and so far I've seen Gio's side of the story and Miles' opinion on what happened and... they don't really contradict each other? Gio makes a lot of spurious allegations, but I don't see any claims actually denied in this opinionpost. But if Gio's claims on why he kept Bambosh from proceeding with the licenses are correct, Miles has left those justifications out which does make the whole situation look worse.
I'm going to wait for the official response with actual citations for further judgment, and advise everyone involved to do the same.
Fate is a river, and sibling,
Idk why everyone is acting like the above post is some kind of actual official statement or whatever from the company. Everyone has questions about specific things and wants to demand answers from Miles here. Miles is only speaking on what he can personally tell you. Demanding answers from someone who doesn't have the answers at all is a waste of time, and you are yelling into a void.
"Why didn't Miles mention this! Why didn't he bring up that?"
Because the post isn't about any of those things and it even say's it ain't about those things in the beginning lol, it's about the very specific accusations that Mile's himself and other people can directly refute because they work for the HICU and that is the accusation that they're a "fake" Union that Hussie controls.
I find it really funny that people expect Miles, who has already said he isn't a legal representative, to just spill the beans entirely about what could very well be very legally case-sensitive information if an NDA or some other document is involved here. Of course, he is not going to talk about the things you have questions about. He either doesn't know or can't tell you to begin with. He already told you where you would get those answers, too. You just have to be patient and wait for the official response from the actual company.
Calling a bunch of forum workers and fan creators "goons" who are controlled by Hussie is incredibly demeaning, and it does warrant a response, especially since people are dragging in creators who have nothing to do with this because of something Gio said that had no backing or proof. Miles is right in feeling angry about someone essentially accusing him of being an evil henchman simply because he talked to a person as a go-between, and that person was mad at his friend (not even Boss, because he doesn't actually work for Andrew Hussie.)
"If he's NOT an evil henchman, then why is he still talking to Hussie and whatnot hm??? Why doesn't he tell us all the juicy details about the legal disputes and possible legal abuse???" Probably because he, like he has already said, is not a Legal Representative or a Lawyer, and that is only something they can do. This is like waltzing into a business and demanding why the secretary doesn't just tell you the CEO's schedule and other information that ain't your business.
Hey.
I'm posting here (and basically making this account for this) because there is something that genuinely bothers me about your response, Miles: your repeating that access to Homestuck has not been affected, that Homestuck is still accessible and that there is no Datapocalypse going on.
No, Miles. The access and accessibility to Homestuck has been compromised. The Datapocalypse is here.
See, here is the thing about the Unofficial Homestuck Collection: its existence hinges on the history of homestuck.com, previously known as mspadventutes.com. During 2016 to 2018, the website worked perfectly fine, even as it rebranded to homestuck.com due to the contract with VIZ. However, with the announcement of Flash being discontinued in 2021, an attempt was made by VIZ’s team to adapt the Flash animations and games to HTML5, a conversion that was at best of dubious quality, and at worst a complete shit show. But all of Homestuck was still there, even if of an inferior quality.
Then, during the 2020s, after the VIZ contract was finished and control of the page returned to WP, nothing happened. There was no update to the original website besides a link to the Epilogues, and the quality of Homestuck.com’s Homestuck part (you know, the thing the website is named after) deteriorated more and more, until at some point in 2024 where the website simply went down.
This is where the Unofficial Homestuck Collection comes in: a way for people to experience Homestuck, the MS-Paint Adventures and all other media related to them at their best quality. A replacement to a website that had been left stagnant and forgotten by its own owner. This was meant to be simply an alternative to a non-functional website for new and old fans, with the eventual hope that homestuck.com would be restored.
It is the 9th of August of 2025, 9AM, and as I launch Homestuck.com, I am met with broken images on every page. I go to page 82, the “a symphony impossible to play” animation of John standing outside his home, and it does not play. This is everywhere on the website.
The integrity to access Homestuck is compromised. Do not pretend it isn't. The UHC exists as an alternative, yes, but do not use that as a crutch to lean on. I shouldn't care about what happened with Gio, Bambosh and Hussie. I shouldn't care about whatever Gio said is true or not. I should just be able to enjoy Homestuck as it was when it was finished. But I can't. So, I do care about what Gio said, because the one attempt there was to try and get the website fixed was shut down due to Hussie's behavior, of which we have ample evidence that it's just his way of dealing with fans (see: emails he sent to Sarah Z., the Homestuck Discord mod team, et al.). The one change we could have had to get a better way to read Homestuck was snuffed because Hussie.
If you care about Homestuck as you say you do, fix the website. That's all I am asking for.
Honestly after reading Miles' response I think if Hussie wants to get involved in the homestuck community he needs to get his hands dirty and comment himself. It's not right for Miles to speak "for" him that's weird and wack.
.
If he doesn't want the hate he can do what any other creator who hates their IP does and fuck off and leave the "toxic fans" or whatever but it's very strange for your friend to use their good graces and social capital to defend and speak for you.
PEACE A/\D LO\/E O/\ THE PLA/\ET EARTH
This situation is just too much, most people would define it the same way...
It's going to be so hard to be patient right now and wait for a more official and detailed reply. We have one side of the story, and most of us want the other one so we can have a better picture of what is happening. I'd rather be cautious than begin pointing at people and say "They are in the wrong! The villain of this story!!" without much proof. I bet many fans feel the same way
However, people are getting attacked because of this, people who are working on HS or any HS-related projects. It doesn't matter if people are in the right or in the wrong in this situation, being rude to people (in general) is not going to solve our problems. Let's think about it: there's something that is making fans unhappy, and the best way to be heard and for the HICU to do something about it is to... attack the people behind it? Call them names? Treat them like the scum of the earth? It's hard to comprehend why people think that's going to be helpful in order to save Homestuck
I can only judge those wrongdoings knowing they come from some individuals, but I cannot accuse anyone of encouraging them to do that, that wouldn't be fair if I'm saying that I'm waiting for the other side of the story before drawing any conclusions. I can just say how sorry I am that you are dealing with that particular situation right now, I really hope you are all ok
It's truly amazing, in a tragic way, how many people in this thread either were so caught up in the Twitter Drama Us V.S. Them Mindset, or lacked some combination of basic empathy and basic reading comprehension to process that this is the personal story of a guy who's had heaps of vitriol slung at him for 24 hours, and not a "gotcha! Gio is wrong and im gonna prove that we're the Good Guys!!!". Particularly when he outright says it's not an official response. Come on guys.
(particularly that guy who started criticizing the lack of capitalization. like... really? is that where we're at?)
That being said, I know I'm late, but thank you for speaking on this, Miles. I can't say I would've blamed you if you had wanted to be as far from the fandom as possible at the moment, so I appreciate you giving your experience. Wishing well to you and everyone else affected by this.
air fryer? um, thats called a Prince of Breath ._.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that:
a)Something happened behind the scenes that made Bambosh stop all communications with Miles and made Hussie step in and take the reigns;
b)Why wouldn't Gio just say no to the conversation IN GENERAL with the person he had a smear campaign that lasted to this day?
...And I live by that.
On the topic of "we're not Hussie's goons", I feel like a lot of you are misunderstanding the point here, that Miles was only doing the communication between parties, without the choice of telling how anything should go. What Gio described as abuse might have just been Miles trying to make up for the fact that Hussie was trying to take harsh legal decisions against Gio and Bambosh, for all I know. I'm not excusing the threats that were made, just saying that the issue here was the message, and not the messenger, and it's clear to me that's what Miles was trying to say in his post.
@cellophaniclordling even before the UHC takedown, homestuck.com had already stopped working for a while. The present isn't the only time where non-official sources were the only way of reading Homestuck. The only difference is that, now, the UHC is not an option (the official fork is though, for what is worth.) And besides, they're already working on getting the website back, so really, it's not that serious. And honestly? This might be the lesser issue here.
And this reminds me of something that's a little off topic but I'll take the opportunity to say it here. Gio frames the whole story as a lose-lose situation for them and Homestuck but, actually, it isn't. Because Gio got DMCA'd and lost their work, while Homestuck is in the same position as before, because they can still just make their own fork of the UHC reader and the asset pack is mostly content that they own, so they can make an official replacenent to the UHC whenever they want, not to mention the plans of bringing back the official website anyways. All that was lost was Gio and Bambosh's participation in the project. My greater question is, did Gio not realize things would end up like this if he took the path of resistance, or was writing that article attacking Hussie, Miles, the HICU and Homestuck worth more than his reader? I don't think the conduct taken by Hussie/Homestuck was ideal, but Gio's certainly wasn't either.
And that's about it.
@cello It would be incredibly wise to read the post. Nowhere in the post does it say 'just use the website.'
>A: no, the UHC is not gone forever, there is a fork up right now. the Homestuck site itself is still being worked on and improved and andrew has no intentions of turning Homestuck into “lost media”, that’s not going to happen. Homestuck is not going away or in any danger of disappearing, i promise.
Aa: here is the fork: https://homestuck.github.io/
There is a fork hosted right there of the UHC in its entirety hosted by Homestuck. Gio's version of it was taken down and as far as I'm aware this one is identical to that one...
The framing of Gio's post concerning the archive really frustrates me because all the claims of legal threats and abuse and manipulation and such aside its a blatant untruth to say 'UHC is dead and nuked and you can't download it anymore from any official source'.
Is it not being actively worked on now with this? Sure. But I don't think it was getting updates anyway? It seems pretty finished.
this topic tells me a few things:
1. it obvious why gio thought miles/hicu/fraf were just "puppets"/shells of hussie: that's why miles was involved in the first place - to act as a sort of "mediator" and relieve the tension between gio and hussie
2. reading comprehension is rapidly reaching "the poor are getting pissed on" levels of bad; i'm sorry for everyone whos messages got misinterpreted
3. i can understand why bambosh left - i also wouldn't want to deal with this kind of situation
4. right now, the easiest way to read homestuck is finding the forum, finding the post about homestuck collection (without any search functionality), and following the download instructions. which is not easy for new readers (at least without help)
5. gio had at least one point - this could have been avoided by putting homestuck as a comic into creative commons license - but i'm not sure about the consequences of that
^ me when i talk
wanted to come here and wish the people scrolling these posts a good evening
don't stress yourselves, it'll be okay
@s4berface Yes, I know that Miles did not say that people should use the website. Yes, I know he recommended to use the Collection. Yes, the Collection can still be downloaded and used at this moment.
My point isn't "just use the website", my point is that telling people to use the Collection is a crutch that Miles is presenting to avoid the more serious issue that the website this comic, and its predecessors came from, is unusable. None of the images, GIFs or Flash/HTML5 conversions work. If the Homestuck team right now wants to do good on the fandom, they should focus on fixing homestuck.com.
They can answer Gio's blog, prove us wrong, or make themselves look like clowns, that I personally don't care if it happens or not. What I care is that they show this property they are using some respect by making it viewable in the format it was meant to be (through homestuck.com) rather than circumvent the issue (the website is broken) with an alternative (The Homestuck Unofficial Collection) that is currently in limbo (at any point it could all be lost).
That is all.
Thank you Miles for giving us another perspective on the drama unfolding! I'm sorry hate is being thrown at you and your team for this.
From what I've gathered so far:
Everyone can still read Homestuck, it's not gone forever.
FRAF and HICU aren't part of a shadow cabal answering to their cult leader, Andrew.
The guy from VE left for reasons unrelated to the drama, contradicting Gio's claim.
Your perspective lines up with what Gio encountered. Recreated on Discord? It's weird. But I'm glad you gave some insight into this.
Bambosh seems to have been a cool guy to chat with from both perspectives.
There are questions about the NDAs and other legal proceedings that haven't been answered, but I didn't expect anyone to talk about them at length anyway because they are potentially ongoing legal matters?
Gio made a holocaust joke in his article ("The Gio-ish Problem", yikes).
Gio made multiple references to the frog and the scorpion (personally just rubbed me the wrong way).
"Bangin' sermon you got here, old man" - Davepeta, probably
@Cello the post also literally says that they are working on getting the homestuck.com site up and running again. I really don't know what other developments you could possibly demand on that front, nobody's gonna click their fingers and just have it Abraca Happen
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
Nowhere in Miles' post says that he or anyone at the team is working on the website. If it is there, please highlight it so I can read it, because I did quick re-scan and Ctrl+F and found no mention of it.
@Cello maybe not in this post but it has been stated multiple times by different people and the website has gone back up (albeit still unfinished) so yes, it is in the works and has been for some time.
And that's about it.