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.
Guys it's right there in point A? 😭😭
"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."
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
i don't have much to add, since i am literally just a bystander here with no real understanding of copyright/legality disputes. but i DID want to come in here and give you a thank you for taking the time out of your day/night (yesterday lol) to give the fandom some kind of response from someone direclty involved, even though we know its not an "official" response. getting someone elses perspective (from someone who was there, in the time) is super valuable for clarifying information/understanding the nuance of the situation.
i think a lot of people are expecting something you cannot give them, which sucks, but im thankful for the assurance that a) some kind of official statement is forthcoming, and b) that some of what gio said now has an alternative viewpoint to it.
i think the issues around the legality and copyright are the main crux of the article. i personally have problems with a lot of the emotionally charged language and targeted/malicious framing present within the "article" (which frankly should have just been called blog post vs being portrayed as an article, lol) and the ppl in this thread arguing that this statement sucks because of the same type of language (emotional) feel like theyre purposefully reading bad faith into your post vs coming at it with like... any sort of empathy or understanding. and that sucks! and im sorry that this is all happening.
uhh tl;dr thank you for posting and im sorry people are being shitty towards you and the hicu/fraf team
But it shouldn't be in the works! It should have been done years ago, right when the IP was returned to WhatPumpkin. Hell, push some of the Patreon bucks to help the web team work more time on it if it's necessary. A page that loads only texts is not WIP, it's an embarrassing presentation of a piece of Internet history. I'd accept having a compromised version with the terrible HTML5 conversion of the Flashes if it means that at least Homestuck can be experienced the way it was meant to, but the website is not even there yet.
All this time that will likely be spend by the official team to reply to Gio could be used to formulate an actual plan, hire people, reorganize and shift priorities, just something that shows me that the people currently running the Homestuck IP actually care about the comic.
And my main issue, again, is that Miles keeps saying that Homestuck is accessible, when it is undeniably not accessible. Some people might not be able to use the UHC for a variety of reasons, and they can't rely on others' work to pretend everything is fine. That is what bothers me about Miles' messaging. I have to repeat it again:
The Datapocalypse is here, and if no one believes me, go to homestuck.com and tell me that this is okay to have as a portfolio.
Moving the goalposts. Sometimes something won't happen right when you want it to happen. It sucks, and I'm not even saying Hussie or collaborators haven't completely dropped the ball by taking this long. But that's not a fucking apocalypse, that's just life!
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
so the story is:
> gio made a blog post about how hiveswap hasn't come out (factual)
> homestuck team makes a big stink about it (threats) exposing the past mismanagement
fast forward a few years
> homestuck wants to collaborate with gio and bambosh on UHC
> refuse to talk until both are under NDA
> attempt to get bambosh to sign over ownership, refuses to give gio an NDA
> stall and occasionally threaten lawsuits
> eventually scare bambosh away, now gio is the owner of UHC
> threaten a C&D if they don't go through with collaboration
> claim that gio was actually the one stalling
> in part of the new agreement apparently gio has to take down inflammatory blog posts
> that's an unreasonable demand so it never ends up happening, somewhere along the way homestuck forks the github
> sue gio multiple times for trademark infringement, presumably just as a threat since they were fine with it originally
> eventually take down the site entirely
> gio makes an article on how this is pretty bad stuff to do
is there something i'm missing? at what point did gio stall or defame you? what even is this excuse?
and by the way, homestuck.com is still completely non-functional.
Why is the website accessible in the first place if it's so broken
feel like the logical thing would be to take it off until its at least 90% functional
ie has more than text and links
"Ok, but your teen years will be ruined just because you didn't buy an egg."
Popped in here to get the other side of the story, even if this is an unofficial reply. Happy we got that. Wish we could have gotten more. Annoyed at the mess that is this situation. For my part I feel a bit conned and mad at myself. Read Gio's article and baited myself into being emotional swept up. This was before learning about the redaction of The Gio-Ish Question which. I don't even know what to say really.
I think what this situation has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is that a large part of this fandom is filled with people who aren't fans of homestuck as it exists right now, but as an "event" to witness the drama off so to speak. Dramatizing issues, going with the most bad faith reading of things possible and not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. An animosity that goes beyond the general tension a fandom has with a creator but into downright parasocial insanity. I am not even sure how you could begin to fix this. All I can hope for really is better communication, which definitely is going to be difficult since we invoked legal procedures and I hope we get to see the actual full logs of the conversations had between Miles, Bamboosh and Gio. Discord logs are already fuckeasy to edit. The logs on gio's blog aren't even that, they are CSS recreations. Aught to be taken with a giant grain of salt.
Whatever happens next, I hope this doesn't hurt people as much as the first round of drama with gio did. If i see another Sarah Z video about this I am going to explode.
I'll never settle just for a fee
Not livin' in harmony
I said I gotta let things go
Oh, let things go
I think more people need to remember that Gio has done a ton of writing about Psycholonials that implies Psycholonials proves Hussie wants to be a cult leader and that Hussie and the Homestuck team approve of indiscriminate political violence, with big chunks of "evidence" being... tweets supporting Black Lives Matter. Ever since I read that it's been very hard to take him seriously as a good faith source
Spades Slick is a butch lesbian 2k25
@cello Where is the Datapocolaypse? Where? Nothing has materially changed. We are still in the same state we were when Gio was hosting the UHC. It is not gone. Was the Datapocolaypse happening before this happened?
You're moving the goalposts. 'UHC is dead and the website is now the only way to get to homestuck' is not true. I mention that. You then go on to say 'what about people who can't use UHC?' which is a valid criticism! It's awful the state the site is in and we have seen no evidence they are 'fixing' things. But pretending this little scuffle has killed the UHC is untrue.
@s4brface Will like to mention there's multiple websites that host homestuck that allow you to watch flashes through Ruffle (a modern flash emulator that works in-browser), some of which are directly made with mobile in mind for those who are unable to use the UHC. And all it takes to find them is googling "Homestuck", going to the 4th result (homestuck.net) which is after the currently-dysfunctional official site, the reddit, and wikipedia. Once there all you need to do is click the giant green "Read Homestuck" button at the top of the page, and it'll explain the UHC as well as website mirrors.
It's not hard to find the other ways to read it in the slightest.
I'll note that this is the least impersonal you'd want a statement regarding anything business/legal. I think a lot of people are waiting for a response to Gio that matches Gio's energy. By all means be mad about Homestuck selling out; I'm not about to stop you from bemoaning a loss of hipster cred. But despite what Gio would have you believe about them, neither Hussie nor the HICU are about to drop an hour-long attempt at character assassination.
Magic is FAKE AS SHIT/FUCKING REAL
I am incredibly detached from this situation and I'm surprised to hear there's people who are firmly abrasive on the works of Homestuck to the point of thinking it's okay to throw around death threats regarding the rights of a work that ultimately belongs to it's author who is doing what they can to recognize it's dedicated community. I feel like FRAF and it's adventures is proof of that. Well however it swings, I wish you, Andrew and all of the teams the absolute best.
I'm welcome for criticism on this reply if it seems like I misunderstood something but there are a few things I want to talk about. I think the criticism Miles has on the way the article was written was pretty valid. It seems, to me, that Gio focused more on trying to use language that villainizes the Homestuck team than he focused on actually trying to get across information in a concise manner. Part of the villainization was making it seem like every employee was directly under Hussie's thumb. It seemed like his primary goal was to get people angry, rather than to inform people on a shitty situation. And the weird thing is, I do think people would've been angry anyway? Even Miles mentioned Homestuck handled things in a shitty way, but yeah he walked on eggshells talking about that shit because he didn't want to step on the toes of the official response that'll come out... eventually. His response isn't perfect but it's understandable, there's some nuance to be had here.
But, like I said, the article Gio wrote wasn't concise. Everything is so drawn out, filled to the brim with his personal opinions, metaphors, and unnecessary sentences. Not even to MENTION the unnecessary sentences. There's also an overuse of adjectives and metaphors that draw out the word count. He keeps on talking ABOUT what happened instead of saying WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. It's not even until "Abridged", which is the SIXTH section, that you get a bullet point that summarizes anything. By that point Gio has already worked up anyone thoroughly reading the article by talking about abuse, psychological manipulation, fucking, frogs and scorpions, and spending a huge portion of the previous sections talking about themself instead of the events that happened! They just sprinkle in small details here and there so you think you're actually getting somewhere like a clickbait article.
I'm criticizing the writing of the article. Not defending Hussie. Just wanna make that real fucking clear. But going back to criticizing the article, I wanna just, share the ending paragraph for the section "Abuse Tactics."
This is where the first sentence in this reply comes in. This uh. This isn't an abuse tactic? Is it? I guess the concept of having a job is like, inherently abusive, something something capitalism, but that's not the point that this paragraph tries to make.
"There are people whose housing has been dependent on how much they can make Andrew like them!" is a good example of a sentence that isn't necessary, the information it conveys is already implied when Gio mentioned "...an obvious situation of financial dependence, where your livelihood depends on keeping Andrew personally happy." These are also both examples of a sentence that's longer than it needs to be. Talking about people's housing being dependent on their fucking job wasn't necessary. The purpose was to get an emotional response out of people. Even though they're just talking about how you need a job if you want to have a house.
No I don't think Hussie was in the right for demanding Gio delete articles he wrote in the past. I'm not saying that's a valid example of something an employer can ask you to do. Hussie demanding that was super shitty. What I am saying is that Gio wanted to make the "Abuse Tactics" section longer than it needed to be because their goal is to paint Hussie as an abuser rather than just someone who does shitty things. To the point they try and use Hussie just being an employer for people who work on Homestuck projects as evidence that everyone who works for them is in a "cult-like high-control environment." If Hussie does create a work environment like that, if anyone has evidence for that, lemme know. But the fact that Gio was so bad at writing the article makes me skeptical to even believe that! But I haven't always been caught up on the legal troubles that Homestuck team has gone through so I genuinely don't know. My point is that Gio focused so much on making the article inflammatory that I don't see them as a reliable source.
This whole thing reeks with the fact that Gio wants nothing more than for Hussie to get #cancelled. So much so that even though a lot of the things they allege would in fact call for that, I'm curious if their pattern of making things out to be worse than they really are goes deeper, and there's some things they're hiding or just straight up lying about. But I'm only curious about that because of how bad they were at writing. I wouldn't feel that way had they just laid down the facts. Shut the FUCK up about frogs and scorpions.
I think Hussie has done some things that are really shitty that they should be rightfully flamed for. But that's not the same as thinking they're someone who's genuinely evil and abusive. You've read Homestuck. You should know the difference. But that's what Gio thinks of them, and they clearly care more about people agreeing with that than just telling their story. And it worked! Despite how atrociously the article was written, people are talking about how their life's mission is now to kill Hussie instead of just talking about holding them accountable for the things they did wrong.
And seriously. Go through some of the sentences just in the screenshot I posted and play a game where you try and lessen the word count. It really highlights how awful he is at writing. It's fucking hilarious. I was able to take a seventeen word long sentence and turn it into ten lmao.
re: cello
I think any true fans of homestuck are upset that the website is not in a good state right now. Yes, it's disappointing that it has not been fixed fully yet. However, I think at this time, it's incredibly silly to get upset that the website wasn't fixed years ago. We can't go back and change the past; we can only support the team moving forward. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who thinks that the homestuck ip has been handled well over these past few years but, in the recent months, we've seen some amazing strides being made by the HSBC and FRAF team that makes me feel hopeful for the future.
i'm fujoshing out
Addendum to my previous super long reply: The entire article was hard for me to read. The reply talked about why it was so hard to read. If I missed some things, just talk about it. Hussie treated these people really shitty and handled the situation super poorly and too aggressively. I think in hindsight I can understand calling them an abuser for abusing their legal power, so I take back what I said regarding calling them one, but I don't think Hussie abuses literally everyone that works for them? Everything else I said about the article just being generally poorly written is stuff I still stand by though.
Theres some things in this that I don't quite agree with but the biggest are
This seems like a reframing of the narrative to imply that Gio intentionally stirred the pot to cause problems for no reason... Gio looked into what happened to the Hiveswap funds relying on publicly available information, statements from employees, and official Patreon posts. Homestuck, as an entity, has never been transparent with fans. Had they been, Gio wouldn’t have dug through all that, but HS fans had been waiting for years and donated thousands of dollars so the lack of communication created a need to investigate. I do not believe he's just a rogue bad faith actor who, despite clearly putting in a ton of effort into preserving HS when nobody else did, just wants to tear down WP and Andrew and the team.
To just say “Gio refused to sign a license” while correct, is misleading, as it omits key information. Gio stated that he wasn’t allowed to read the license before signing it, which makes it totally understandable to not want to sign. The way you explain it sounds more like "He didn't do exactly what we wanted him to do so it's his fault" which isn’t a fair representation of the situation. This whole thing could have been really simple, you didn't have to offer weird shady legal contracts that he couldn't read for this to work out (if we're to take what he said at face value, which has not been disproven). Could've been a very straight forward "don't tell anyone about this until it's ready, don't resell it, maintain it and keep it updated, if Andrew wants to make some new additions add them, and we'll pay you for working on it". Gio’s concerns are valid, and he clearly wanted to find a way to make this work.
UHC wasn’t about controlling the work and was not profiting directly from providing access to the comic, Homestuck has always been free to read online. It was just a fan-driven project aiming to provide access to and help keep Homestuck alive when official sources were failing to maintain it. Andrew as IP holder still has the legal right to strike UHC down of course, HS is his property, but there was literally no reason to and just because you have a legal right to do something doesn't mean you aren't a bit of a jerk for doing it.
Honestly my main concern isn't the issues surrounding TUHC, it's more so to what extent Hussie is actually involved with Homestuck and whether HICU is actually independent creatively as advertized (because this is what people paid money for.)
As for some speculation: I think what might have happened is that Hussie was actually maintaining a nuanced seperation between "Homestuck" and "HICU" that meant that there's effectively two overlapping teams- the official Homestuck stuff, and HICU. Which we sort of already knew from Hiveswap existing, but we didn't realize that HICU members were pulling "double duty" and also operating on a branch of this "official Homestuck team". So for HICU functions they're independent and only consult Hussie when they feel need to creatively, but for Homestuck functions they're serving as direct liasons.
None of that excuses the overbearing NDA language, assuming it is accurate, nor the lack of communication about this distinction assuming this interpretation is accurate.
Ultimately we have to wait and see what official statement is put out before we can come to any ultimate conclusion.
I've decided to post a log of a conversation I had that should prove once and for all who's the Good Guys and who's the Bad Guys. Of course, I owe The Public much better than pithy screenshots, so for readability's sake, I've constructed a Star Wars Special Edition Screenshot Remake to convey what happened through interpretive art. Read it and weep:
You have been invited to partake in the GAME OF GODS. YOU are JUNE EGBERT, taking your seat at the BLUE SIDE of the table, and we are all VERY PROUD OF YOU. Your opponents are THE LATE NAGITO KOMAEDA, FUNKO POP VRISKA SERKET, and SOME GUY IN A HAT.
https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/t/forum-god-game-calvinball-with-cards
Really sorry this all happened right before the trailer for the animated pilot dropped. Wish the best for y'all.