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.
It appears to me that Hussie used the law to 'bully' someone only after that someone spun the wheels so much that they got openly frustrated with them. Don't get me wrong, I think copyright law should be abolished and Hussie is a shitbag, but Gio is not the David to Hussie's Goliath, the article is so emotionally charged and self-mythologizing and acting in bad faith that I have a hard time feeling any sympathy from Gio. Until we get every side of the story I'm not going to believe a notorious shit-stirrer who ruined peoples lives.
I also find it just a bit suspect it was dropped after FRAF was announced. But that's just me.
But the story isn't "Hussie is taking down Homestuck fan works and is coming for yours next." Gio's article isn't about Hussie removing the UHC. It is about Hussie (allegedly, if I even need to say it) using legal threats to exact interpersonal revenge against someone they do not like, while catching a completely innocent party (Unless Bambosh had a problem with Hussie I am not aware of...) in the crossfire. This is unconscionable regardless of who it is happening to.
Gio's language was/is sensational and insensitive. I think focusing on this to any significant measure draws attention from the actual problem, as stated above.
Also, yes! There is not a clear conclusion as of yet. You should not under any circumstances have a solid opinion on this. We have not yet heard Hussie's side or received any verifiable proof at all.
Hot metal looks like cold metal, but feels different.
I must say, I really don't think you know me very well. I am not interested in any kind of theatrics over whether Gio or Hussie wins the good person competition. In fact, I really don't care very much at all about what Gio is like or what he wants. Is everything you say about him accurate? Probably not, but that's not my problem.
What matters is how Homestuck handled the UHC. With or without Gio's commentary, the discord logs display nigh-unquestionably a situation in which Gio was pressured to disavow Sarah Z's video and contradict his own coverage of Hussie's misconduct. When he refuses, Hussie is the one to get the law involved. Nobody forced them to do this, and Miles is not denying any of this in his response.
This is the problem. This is what the blogpost is built on. This is the thing that, if Gio is lying, should be the easiest thing in the world to deny or disprove, and the rest of his arguments would collapse with it. Seems like a valuable idea for a damage control thread. So why aren't they doing that? Why is Miles's post so cagey about the terms, when clarifying those would supposedly completely destroy Gio's allegation? And if there is some reason they can't just say it, why are you so sure that's what it would do, and why can't they even tell us that?
Look. This is the extent of what Miles says about the license. A grand total of about four sentences that actually address the most important part of Gio's long-ass self-important rant.
So the key points are:
1. Gio is wrong to say he did everything he could, because he didn't sign a license (no mention of why that might be)
2. Because of that, he doesn't get to make the UHC anymore. We're taking it from him.
3. Gio is trying to "control access" to Homestuck? So I guess kici or the MSPFA mirror or chadthundercock just don't count?
4. Gio wouldn't have been able to shittalk Hussie and Homestuck anymore if he signed. This is probably true.
5. "he was asked to help recontextualize events". So that's the "take down articles critical of Hiveswap's development and publicly disavowi the Sarah Z video" thing.
6. Gio is the problem, because he didn't just sign whatever we put in front of him.
Do you see how nowhere in here is there the slightest consideration of the idea that what they asked of him wasn't okay? That apparently Gio needs to be punished with a DMCA for not falling in line? That "take down your articles and publicly humiliate yourself over a video you didn't know was going to quote them" got so heavily laundered?
Gio could be a real piece of shit, for all I know. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But whatever Miles says, "this is about Gio" rings pretty hollow when the UHC is an open-source piece of software that initially had two developers. And importantly, if they just said "that's too bad" and parted ways amicably, not only do I doubt Gio would've made the blogpost, the UHC would still be in active development. So for all this handwringing that "Gio is the problem", none of this would be complete without that takedown.
https://youtube.com/@DeepDiveDevin
damn it, a bunch of other people replied while I was writing that.
https://youtube.com/@DeepDiveDevin
@mobiancruxtruder i won't disagree that on the whole it sucks when a Creator or Brand™ (or whatever hussie's homestuck classifies as these days) uses the law to control someone else's interactions with their thing. i think a lot of people on this thread would lean towards sailing the seven seas over letting mickey mouse be sacred iconography forever, if you get what i mean.
however, i also think you're flattening the nuance of the situation a bit too much. firstly, hussie has always stated that the hiveswap articles are based on bad information spread by a malicious source (gio also acknowledges this accusation in several of the articles). so the problem is not that gio criticised homestuck or hussie, the problem is that gio has spread what hussie contends is misinfo. this may not be a meaningful difference to you (i acknowledge that 'only use our approved sources' can easily scan as 'don't say anything that makes us look bad'), but the fact that in a whole sea of people talking shit on hussie, hiveswap, what pumpkin etc. these articles are the only ones to get this reaction is very relevant, imo. and i think when what was on the table was gio/the UHC getting a homestuck official seal of approval, it becomes obvious why those articles would come up. if they stayed unaltered, that's homestuck basically going 'yeah these are reliable'. which is an obvious problem considering (at minimum, from hussie's pov) they're not.
also... the UHC still exists, and is/can still be worked on, because (i might have the terminology wrong here, i don't know shit about github) it's been open source and available to be forked p much since it was created. if im understanding what the takedown notices covered, the only thing that's changed is ppl who aren't homestuck can't host the asset pack anymore, and you can still find that asset pack very easily like, everywhere? including through the official homestuck.github.io url. gio + bambosh are also credited on said site. there's even a whole copyright spiel at the bottom talking about how anyone can modify the app however they want as long as they don't claim homestuck the comic comprised of anything that it didn't, originally. so like miles said in one of the discord logs, the UHC is now in a less legally complicated position than it was before the negotiation. this could be me underplaying the severity of the situation since im admittedly biased against gio, but i think if hussie had the motives/mindset gio says she does, she would've nuked the thing from orbit. she didn't, she just took it out of gio's hands, specifically. we still have it, and can still do virtually whatever we want with it.
UHC is also not the only mirror of homestuck. if hussie swung the legal hammer on EVERY attempt to archive the site like this, esp while the main site is lost at sea, yes absolutely that would be insane bully behaviour. but i think it's pretty clear that gio's past actions, and the way they handled themselves with this negotiation, is the reason it shook out the way it did.
and theres a fuckton of people on this forum with licenses + monetisation rights, and (according to them anyway) they didn't require hussie's personal approval to get that position. gio makes a lot of rhetorical arguments about how this shows hussie can + will wipe fanfics or fangames that she doesn't like from existence. but she didn't wipe fanfic, or anything transformative for that matter. she wiped an asset pack of her work. and nothing else.
what im saying is, there are a lot of ways this negotiation could've gone better. but since gio was + is clear about the terms they wouldn't agree to, it's like... i don't understand what's supposed to be shocking about the outcome. they did not and do not have the 'right' to an archive of hussie's work. they said as much themselves. and since trust completely broke down between both sides (assuming it wasn't already broken in 2020), gio then couldn't be 'trusted' to have ownership over a hugely popular way to access all of hussie's shit. if you don't want to sign a contract with the museum, you don't get to keep responsibility over where all the paintings go. if that makes any sense?
@timeisrestored EXACTLY!!! If someone is scrolling through these comments please make sure you read her comment ^^^^
I'm baffled at the amount of people both complaining about Hussie using the law where they clearly have the right to (in the case of having someone stop creating a personal brand around distributing a download of their work), and people saying the fact that Hussie isn't using the law as suspect (in the case of not outright suing Gio for previous defamation/slander) and actually trying to use the carrot first.
IMO this is a case that Gio thought he could get to hold the ball without having to actually play ball with someone else's work.
@timeisrestored (wow, this forum needs multiquotes badly)
First off, I appreciate the measured response. I know I've been speaking very passionately here tonight.
Second, I was under the impression that Gio cannot work on the UHC at all now, but if that's wrong, my bad. However it only makes Hussie and Homestuck's behavior look more weird and frivolous that they're essentially punishing one dude with a restriction as petty as "cannot run a website about your Homestuck reader". Like if they considered him and his writing a real threat, they'd launch, for example, a libel or defamation suit, right?
Also, it's just fucking nuts that they'd see Gio of all people and think "yeah, we can get him working for us AND get him to delete those articles!". Like just don't fucking work with him if it's that big a deal.
I understand Hussie's take on Gio's old articles. The problem is that I think they have a right to exist, and whether they get the official seal of approval or not, Homestuck's Streisand effect with them has done far more damage to its reputation than everything that was actually in the articles. It makes me wonder what exactly the end goal is. I do think, for example, the assertion that Hussie just canceled 3D Act 1 because he felt like it kind of absurd, and the response that it was because they ran out of money makes a lot more sense. But it's their problem when they're letting "misinformation" proliferate instead of offering those rebuttals themselves. Especially since I still believe a lot of what's in there.
And yes, I'm aware of other Homestuck mirrors existing, that's why I just don't buy statements like "continue to publish the Entirety Of A Body Of Work That Didn’t Belong To Him" and "control access to Andrew's work". I do think it might make Gio's story one among a minority, that plenty of HICU and FRAF people aren't going through the same stuff, but I don't think "we brought the law down on just one guy we dislike" is much of an excuse to be able to do it at all. Kind of like how if you say "this person did a bad thing so it's okay to be racist/misogynist/homophobic/transphobic to them", you're actually following the exact same logic as every bigot.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, y'know? I know Gio is eccentric (read: dickhead), but that means he's a litmus test for how far Hussie can be pushed, and a big part of that is information about his work that, sorry, definitely includes some real misconduct. And I don't think we've seen the end of those leashes tightening.
Also, whatever's going on with the official github changing from "run by HICU" to "run by Homestuck" even though it's still just Kohi, I'm not sure how the boundaries work there.
Anyway, fuck Andrew Hussie anyway, but I think I'll dip from this thread now.
https://youtube.com/@DeepDiveDevin
TBH in my opinion the issue isn't really anything to do with legal stuff, it's that they first approached the license by saying "why would your past issues with hussie be a problem" and "we're willing to just discuss the UHC in this situation" and they then switched to "if you don't remove these articles and apologize for writing them we're going to copyright claim you". i have issues with the article, i think it probably could have been about 500 words and said the same thing. im also positive it's not the whole story, so i don't think anybody should be making conclusions like this until a legitimate response exists. but that is what it boils down to from my understanding of the situation
@timeisrestored
Something I think you're glossing over a lot, as well as a lot of the "pro-Miles/Hussie" posts, for lack of a better word, is Bambosh's initial involvement and final word regarding all this. I've included a screenshot of the whole thing, but I'm quoting the most striking part below.
"Every time I’ve tried to talk like a reasonable human being, you’ve shot it down. Every interaction we’ve had has been a thinly veiled threat legal threat towards me. I should think the fact that I’ve been spending my limited personal funds on a lawyer to engage with you on your terms would be enough to demonstrate that I really really wanted to make this work, but apparently not.
I developed this project out of a love for Homestuck. And thanks to this entire negotiation, that love does not exist anymore. Frankly, every time I think about the shit you’ve tried to pull over me in this negotiation, I feel physically ill. I cannot imagine a world in which I sign this contract and can just resume business as usual. The moment has passed. You’ve beaten the motivation out of me."
Regardless of what you think of Gio, it paints a pretty damning picture of whatever was happening behind closed doors. It also doesn't gel very well with Miles' tone above of "I love Bambosh and wish him the best."
You can say that message was doctored, or lacking important context or w/e, but given that Miles' response glosses over it and focuses primarily on Gio, I lean towards it being true and he just doesn't have any good response to it.
Obviously, if it turns out that it was doctored, then disregard that! But I'm going off what info is currently available, same as everyone else.
@perihelion
This exactly. The actual problem is Hussies alleged conduct during the negotiations, not the requests they made during them. Hussie is entirely in their right to take down the UHC. If the articles were a problem, they should have been a problem from the start. If this was the case none of this would have happened because Gio would say "No, I won't retract those articles" day 1 and they would (hopefully) go their separate ways. (If they proceeded to threaten Gio even in that hypothetical case, he would have an even stronger case.)
I honestly don't think that Hussie changed their opinion on the articles during negotiation. I think Hussie's opinion on these articles was clear from the outset, which makes it even worse that they would misrepresent that. However, even if they DID change their mind mid negotiation, the correct course or action, especially as the party with essentially all of the power, is to request a change in terms in good faith with no threats on the table. They did not do this, and instead unilaterally changed the terms and threatened Gio if he did not accept them.
It frustrates and worries me that Miles' middling at best response has managed to reframe the discussion away from this for many people. I am not willing to say this was an intentional manipulation, because I don't know Miles at all, but I do wish this response was not put out at all. It does not accomplish anything good.
Lastly, I want to reiterate as many others have done that if you have a solid conclusion on this yet you are wrong.
Hot metal looks like cold metal, but feels different.
I personally am of the opinion that Gio cuts out a LOT of messages that would provide a lot more context than currently is given. Maybe I'm thinking like a lawyer myself here, but if Gio and Bambosh were working together on the UHC and were considered a combined party in this whole situation, then I would be REALLY curious what Gio's and Bambosh's messages to each other were like before Bambosh's final statement, especially since Gio asks us to believe a lot of HIS speculation and "summary" of what happened over the course of two years of back and forth.
Especially with how much Mile's messages towards them always seem to have the same tone (and I'm sure the absolute worst possible things Miles could have possibly said would have been posted), and the pretty heavy difference in Bambosh's early responses versus Gio's to Miles, and especially after reading Gio's framing of Mile's messages as domestic abuse... I wonder how much embellishing Gio was sending to Bambosh throughout this whole thing. Particularly the "the shit you’ve tried to pull over me in this negotiation" from Bambosh - what AH wanted from Bambosh was pretty straightforward, it was Gio who had things come up later. That sounds like Gio being able to use Bambosh to sound like a neutral third party. Frankly, I'm suspicious of how much embellishment versus screenshot Gio uses, and that makes me suspect the whole narrative he's trying to present.
I don't particularly get why you would assume "Gio was lying or exaggerating to Bambosh about what Andrew/Miles as a proxy were threatening" over "Miles/Andrew were threatening legal action to an extent that lead to Bambosh washing their hands of the whole thing," aside from preconceived bias. We're lacking screenshots of that happening because they were conversations Bambosh had under NDA, and whatever happened in them led to that statement.
One is conjecture, the other has screenshots and Miles statements backing it up, as well as Bambosh, Gio and Miles stating lawyers were involved.
I'm sorry to jump so hard on that particular statement, but ita eerily reminscent of language I've seen people use about whatever the heck went down with the WP office fiasco... the employees Bambosh wasn't mistreated, an unknown employee Gio convinced them they were and no one else is at fault!
@seth Gio has a very clear narrative he's trying to sell here, and he's already been caught lying about Austin from Vast Error - "suspecting" that he was ousted from the project by Hussie and having bad blood with Homestuck as a whole - as well as Cami saying outright that Gio was attempting to twist their words when "interviewing" them. He has a pretty clear pattern of behavior and extremely transparent goals! Everything he says has to be viewed through the lens of him trying to make everything fit into his narrative, and he's already lied to do so.
While I think there's a real possibility that some of the things talked about and claimed in Gio's articles are true, it's already been verifiably proven that he went out of his way to lie about other things. He sorta put himself in a really bad situation if his goal was to actually get the word out about a bad situation, because on one hand if the things mentioned in the article are true it's clear a lot of stress was put on a lot of people by the actions of some people and threatening legal action and then not following through on that looks like a deliberate scare tactic, but on the other hand Gio has proven without a doubt that his account of matters can NOT under any circumstances be fully trusted. Unless someone else "spills the beans" on this topic, someone unrelated to either Gio or the other parties involved, someone which likely does not exist, we will never get a satisfying and trustworthy conclusion to any of this.
And that sucks.
Inside you there are 2 wolves. Not me though, I'm special, I get 3.
> it's already been verifiably proven that he went out of his way to lie about other things.
Do you mind pointing me towards where this is? I've seen this secondhand a lot but I don't use twitter and google is only giving me reddit posts of cropped twitter screenshots.
@sword/@plans
Gio definitely has an extremely strong bias, but if we take the facts as is and ignore the way the frame Gio puts around them, I think the picture is still very bad. You can say Gio's taking things out of context and you are absolutely right, but unless Gio has actually changed that statement from Bambosh or the messages from Miles, Andrew/Miles/Homestuck treated Bambosh in a way that made them "physically ill" and completely disengaged from a community/project they had been personally (not monetarily) invested in for years.
re: sethblaidd
dw i gotchu
https://x.com/avstinado/status/1953948887640932581
https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/reply/68964d40eb0e1f3bcab321ae
Also this tweet but this is a judge of character more than anything
https://x.com/avstinado/status/1953954309709746521
Obviously this has little to do with truth telling, but Gio has also been editing the articles pretty constantly, once to remove an antisemitic and a few times to fix pronouns from people. Weirdly he's been continuing to edit the article cuz the word count keeps changing almost every time I check it but I'm not reading 40k words to find the 100 ones that changed.
Inside you there are 2 wolves. Not me though, I'm special, I get 3.
honestly, if that screenshot Gio has of Miles shitting on Sarah Z and Lady Emily is real and they're still pissy about the videos, I think the Homestuck team owes them financial compensation at this point, let it go
I don't know, folks, if the primary criticism for Gio's blogpost is just "the author took a needlessly-inflammatory tone," that is some real "praising with faint damnation." If something in the article were an outright lie, I would want to see a counterclaim describing what the truth is. But the closest thing to "lying" he's done is apparently just an aside, phrased as unconfirmed speculation, being refuted by the person involved in it. Wondering if something is true and it turning out not to be is not lying.
This is a continuation of the pattern in how Homestuck reacted to the Sarah Z videos, where she repeatedly asked them what specific thing in them was wrong and what the truth actually was, so she could report their side, and they just kinda bloviated for paragraphs without really saying anything, then sheepishly retracted their bizarre and inappropriate legal threats against her.
The core sticking point for me, throughout this, is that it would be trivial for Homestuck to correct these supposed lies, and they keep failing to do so. It would be lovely to learn there's something I'm missing or not understanding. But the criticism leveled at Homestuck is thoroughly consistent and straightforward. My understanding is:
- Bambosh and Gio were co-owners on the UHC.
- Bambosh was told to sign documents he wasn't able to without Gio.
- Gio was told he couldn't join Bambosh in reviewing them until he signed an NDA.
- Gio was not given one to sign. They continued to demand Bambosh sign the thing he can't legally sign.
- Things just went nowhere for 10 months until Bambosh quit the project out of frustration.
"Neither of us can make any major decisions about the project without consulting with each other. Bambosh doesn’t want to and doesn’t have the authority to, and we designed it that way on purpose. Bambosh cannot legally sign anything without showing the paperwork to me, which Andrew insists the NDA prevents him from doing. There is no play here; neither of us could consent to any policy changes without the consent of the other[...].
So for an extended period of time Andrew and Miles don’t allow me to review the mysterious new documents Andrew is demanding Bambosh sign, and Bambosh can’t sign them until I can review them. All progress is stonewalled by Hussie. By breaking procedure and trying to bully their way into power, Andrew has deadlocked the project."
- Gio eventually finally gets and signs an NDA, and is then told he can't be brought on unless he retracts his criticism of Hussie from an unrelated project.
- They then threaten to take down the UHC if he refuses, despite claiming to be fine with it existing at the start.
- He refuses, they take down... just the website Gio set up to host the reader? For some reason? While leaving the just-as-infringing UCH github files up??
Like, this is a bonkers-exasperating chain of events that has been presented here, and although I'd love if Homestuck could present its own account of events that disproves everything here, going by past behavior I can only asssume they never will
@plans/sword
I don't see anything "verifiably proven" in either of those links, unless we are operating under different definitons of the word lie.
In the twitter screenshot, and if there's more I will eat crow, Gio is certainly painting a narrative and suggesting a possible connection between Austin leaving Vast Error and Hussie's (alleged) control over the license, but there's no claim being made. It's up to the reader to decide what they believe, in a very similar fashion to Miles saying "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" in his reply.
It's speculation, Gio is sure as hell attempting to fit that event into their narrative, but not at all a lie. Didn't claim Austin said anything, didn't claim they spoke with Austin behind closed doors, just saw an event and tried to fit into the overall idea they are pushing.
Similar thing in Cami's post -- has a narrative, trying to get things to fit into that framework, but I still don't see anything that's actually a lie. As Cami said, that section is neutral-ish/positive.
My problem remains that, even if you filter out all of Gio's spin (i.e. most of the HICU is fake article, it has a weak premise that Gio constantly calls attention to), the facts of the situation look very bad.
The constant editing I would assume is because this article was written very emotionally, probably without a proofreader, and Gio, who clearly feels very strong about the whole situation, is responding to feedback and fighting the worst of the concern trolling. I think the "Gio-ish" thing was incredibly insensitive but calling it anti-semitic is ridiculous and was distracting from the content of the article. Similar situation with the pronouns... Miles literally refers to Andrew with he/him pronouns in the included messages.
@wheatrice
Yeah honestly the fact Gio keeps editing the damn article really irritates me. Maybe I'm just being petty. The pronoun updates and removing the "joke" are objectively good edits, and at this point I also think a lot of the more egregious comparisons likening Hussie and Miles to domestic abusers have also been removed for good reason. I guess he has no problem making edits to his articles when people other than Andrew Hussie have a problem...?
But also it just allows them to shift tone and move the goalpost on their arguments. One of the major rewrites they posted (under the Hostile Takeover banner) makes it more clear that it's not really about the takedown of the UHSC (which didn't even happen), but the trying to assume control over it, and the aggressive legal behavior from Hussie's side. While I'm not really a fan of blunt legal action trying to cut the software out from under a developer, I'm having trouble buying this specific argument because...I mean come on dude, there was no way they would let Gio continue to host Homestuck on the SAME WEBSITE where they are talking mad shit about the people who worked on it. That's not an unreasonable ask and it also doesn't seem like it's some grand betrayal if that wasn't made obvious from the start as negotiations became more serious. I just don't know about all that.
