I'm an older fan from 2010. (This will be my first post on this forum, but I hope that doesn't taint what I have to say here.) and I left the HS fandom aroound 2015 as the fandom seemed to be dying and I was just aching to jump ship. Several years later I peeked back in to find the once very open minded, kind, and welcoming fandom I had known become so incredibly hostile and full of vitriol. It has, in my view, changed in ways that match the attitudes of several other fandoms right now, in that it has ultimately become full of people, young and old, who are very reactionary and puritan in their beliefs, with little to no critical thinking skills or media literacy. It was something I never expected to see in the homestuck fandom in particular because having media literacy is so important to enjoying and understanding all the layers of storytelling that make Homestuck such a work of art. why everyone seems so eager to crucify another person, let alone the person who made one of their favorite works of art, as someone awful, when there is little to no evidence to support the claims people like sarah Z and Gio have made when characterizing hussie as some horribly abusive person.

I thought taking such words with a grain of salt when Sarah made no effort to reach out to people who were actually on the creative team, or respond to the team members that reached out to her, would've been a given. but it wasn't. And thats whats so shocking.

I'm all for people looking out for people, especially if the situation happens in real life. Lets say to help someone out of a potentially dangerous situation. But this practice of immediately taking every bad thing you hear about someone else *online* at face value, without any due dilligence, and then unfollowing or blocking-- often when these people are your friends-- Its absurd. Its inhumane. Its cruel. Why is it so much to ask oneself, "Is this person lying to me? How do I know if what I'm being told is true or not?" If you dont have the means or energy or skill to verify information for yourself, is it that hard to simply think, "I'm not sure, I dont know if this is true or not," and hold off on making any big decisions about it? It is, apparantly. Because people do not care about people, and they do not care about the truth. They care about looking good, and being treated well by the in-group. And right now, accomplishing that means, apparantly, not valueing how we treat other people when it comes to communication or spreading rumors.

the point im trying to get at here is that there has been a serious culture shift in fandoms all around, not just homestuck, and it is honestly really devastating and it makes me really upset.

In my opinion this shift is not hussies fault alone, but rather the fault of various factors at play, many of the political. But I won't go into that here.

I'm not of the mind that hussie is a god or an infallible god king that has a giant control complex-- I'm sure they have as many problems or character flaws as any other human being.-- But I think people who make this assertion are projecting their own faults onto them, as opposed to anything else. When there isn't immediate danger or consequential, physical threat of harm, I think it's always a good idea to question the motivations of anyone who paints someone in a negative light without any real evidence behind them. And if such evidence cannot be provided, especially with claims as heavy as "They manipulate and abuse everyone they work with into silence" and "everyone" is a mystery number that could be as tiny as 5 and as large as 100, then that seems, at least to me, excessive and unrealistic. In fact it borders on magical. It is not easy to abuse large swaths of people as a singular invidividual, especially if youve no direct blood tiesto them. And if they ARE being abused, surely there is someone other than Gio who can bring fourth evidence or account for this abuse? Some ex-employees who might vouch for it? There are plenty of ways of protesting work misconduct in a company without breaching an NDA. But its like no one is thining about this.

I think ultimately, many fans already did not like hussie over arbitrary, inconsequential, and ultimately meaningless creative decisions they didn't like within homestuck and jump at any excuse to have that dislike validated with uunevidenced smear campaigns. Because this behavior happens so often in fandoms outside of Homestuck too. While I was away from homestuck in other fandoms, this was all I saw. This is still, mostly, with painfully little exception, all that I see.

Its refreshing seeing posters like you. It gives me hope. I would like to, one day, return to a fandom culture that doesn't lob serious accusations of abuse at creatives and fans alike over failed-vibe-checks, and things like shipping or creative differences.