@elegantSpinstress

I understand what Hussie and the team are going through. I say all of this as someone who still loves Homestuck and wants to see it do well. I hope by my various posts on this subject it's apparent that I'm doing my best to be fair to them (and yes, feel free to bring up my older, more-upset posts from when this news first broke and note the change in my tone if you'd like, I have a lot of complex feelings on this subject), and I fully admit I do not have the specifics on their perspective. One thing I've seen and hadn't considered for example is that simply granting visibility to something without its consent can invite harassment all on its own, even if that coverage isn't necessarily negative. The example given was retweeting someone's 18+ account that they don't necessarily intend to have associated with their SFW account for those not in the know. With this framing, and knowing there are places like kiwifarms and 8chan that obsessively stalk and track people like Huss and their often seemingly-vulnerable circle of queer friends and coworkers, puts something like the attacks on the Sarah Z videos into some kind of sense, doing an "any means necessary" to remove the attention (and by proxy, harassment) being drawn to onesself.

But what I've also tried to stress is that, if this is indeed the problem, I don't think what they are doing is much help. I keep invoking the Streisand effect because it keeps fucking happening. On the contrary, way, way more people know about this stuff now than they ever would have without the legal shitshow. And importantly, the goals they wanted (if those were indeed the goals) were not achieved! Unless the argument is that specifically the troubles with image they face are the fault of people seeing the UHC landing page site, going to Gio's blog because of it and reading his old-ass blogposts, it does not make sense to me.

With regards to Miles's statement, my bad on the language of "used". I only meant that he acted as a liaison, not that Hussie was specifically exploiting him by doing so (though we can all agree that this was probably the wrong decision overall). I also don't think Hussie is intentionally deflecting criticism of himself onto his friends or team members. Like I said, I think the entire reason they did this is because Hussie isn't good at it. Miles says he didn't tell Hussie what to do. I think maybe he should have.

But I'd also say that Miles was not solely dedicated to just clearing up some misconceptions in his post. Gio is obviously trying to push a narrative, but Miles is trying to counter that with his own narrative. I'm not about to go track the actual word count or anything, but roughly half of his post (starting from 'my read on the situation') is talking about how Gio is the problem, and the stuff that happened is his fault. It starts with saying that he wasn't "doing everything he could", because he refused to sign a license, of which Miles talks around the condition where Gio had to lock himself into massively altering or removing his own content and disavowing videos talking about it.

It's also framed in this manner where Gio being able to distribute Homestuck, officially or otherwise, is a "privilege" Homestuck is granting him, which they had the right to "revoke" with the DMCA as their hammer. And I suppose this comes down to personal values, but I'm someone who straight-up doesn't believe in Intellectual Property law, and Homestuck as this fan-driven quasi-socialist queer hub that constantly incorporates the work of others, feels hypocritical to be acting in that position.

Like, I'm outwardly in favor of digital piracy. I don't think Nintendo is right to take down ROM sites either, even if they released every single possible game on them on the virtual console or Switch online or whatever. I think people should get money for their Sonic fangames, even if those Russian creeps could have seriously damaged fan relations with SEGA by trying.

But Homestuck is not a massive corporation. By Hussie's word, it's a very small one. Just because they legally had the right to take down the asset pack or the landing site doesn't mean they should have or that they had to. Even if every word out of Gio's mouth is a lie, I don't think that's an appropriate response. Like for instance, if someone were, say, an abusive spouse, that wouldn't make it right to set a precedent where abusers are framed for armed robbery.

Now, are you correct that this won't actually become precedent? Not sure. Like I said, I have no idea if the fact that I believe some of the stuff in the Hiveswap posts would be a problem for me. Any FRAF members who have experience with that and/or believe any part of them can weigh in on this if they'd like. I'd like to think that someone acting on genuine belief and concern wouldn't be targeted, even if it did mean signing a "no shittalking us" agreement. Gio himself says something along the lines of "I hope this is the worst it ever got", implying he doesn't know of a worse scenario, but I'm pretty sure here and there I've heard rumblings of Homestuck fan projects not working out because of official involvement. Obviously the Viz and Odd Gentleman deals didn't go the way they wanted.

This is why I try not to litigate things based on the moral character of Gio. Narrative or otherwise, I think Homestuck acted in the wrong. And moreover, their actions were related to suppressing (something Gio views as, accurate or not) corporate whistleblowing of worker abuse. Would we rather that information not be freely accessible just because the messenger is a prick? Is the negative impression the framing of those blog posts generates worse than what happened to the people described in them?

Ultimately I'm not saying they shouldn't be ignoring it because I think it's wrong for them to try, it's because I think whatever they have to tell us is either going to change nothing or will make things way worse. It hasn't gone great for them in the past. They can prove me wrong if they want. I hope they do.

I just want all of this to go away. There's not even money on the line here for the most part (hypothetical money and whatever Bambosh paid that lawyer, I suppose)! Just a bunch of kids saying mean words and then going "he started it, no SHE started it" when the teacher breaks them up. It's all so fucking stupid.