>FRAF moderators and Gio have said repeatedly that the FRAF forum is a standalone project, funded by merch sales, with no direct financial pipeline from Andrew or What Pumpkin

Gio said the opposite of this about the Patreon, that Miles mentioned, unless a social media update has come around.

>the licensing structure itself gives Andrew ultimate authority to overrule, revoke, or dictate terms, even if hes not directly managing day to day.

This is exactly what makes statements saying that Hussie has not been exercising this in areas other than the original comic important, notably when in the second article he directly implies that this has been the case the entire time for the HICU, and heavily implies it to be the case with VE, both of which have multiple people refuting the claim.

I would agree a lot more with you about concern over license control existing in the first place if he didn't have the exact same control without a license. If he has the rights to Homestuck, he can take down anything using Homestuck or make it be adjusted with legal threats of taking it down. Yes, it would be an Extreme Dick Move, but is just as effective as license control, and other companies do the same shit constantly. (I DO NOT APPROVE OF DOING THIS, FOR THE RECORD) It seems like a lot of the legal fuckery aspect (Which is not just signing an NDA, it's the settlement as a whole) was very Gio-specific, due to previous issues*

>He keeps stressing ''I was just a liaison'' like that somehow absolves him of responsibility, but if you're the one carrying the terms of negotiation, interpreting those terms, and delivering them to the other party for over a year, you're not a bystander, you're an active participant.

Don't disagree too strongly. I think the important part here is that he was doing it specifically for this situation, and that his role at HICU as a whole isn't to be Hussie's mouthpiece, which was the implication of the article and a large basis for its claims about the shadow leadership.

As well, I think something you might be missing is that with one of the key accusations made across both articles being just blatantly wrong (Hussie's shadow leadership), it's hard for people to take almost anything else in there with trust.

*I, personally, know jackshit about the previous issues the teams have had with Gio outside of being vaguely told about the lawsuit when it happened by friends. I'm looking into it now out of curiosity since it seems to be one of the most important pieces to all of this. Forgive me, it has been quite a long time since I dramafrogged.