Ok look, like I said, I am taking the proper time to verifying all the claims made and giving my own take on it, which has included a lot of Wayback Machine diving and reaching out to at least one of the involved.

For now, I would like that any opinions on what might have happened cease. Devin, again, your attitude to be "as unbiased as you can be" towards Gio has gotten you engaging in a lot of speculation. Like a lot of it.

I don't mean to be harsh, but many of the cases Gio brought up as heinous abuses of copyright were actually ended amicably, many with specific requests not to use the event against What Pumpkin or Hussie. I know you know that, as you cite many of the posts in which those things were said. Again, I do not take this as malicious, I see it as an attempt to find the truth in the middle, which is noble, but this is a flawed way of approaching. You use terms such as "sort of legal threats" to characterize refusals in partnerships and attended requests, talking about this reality where "what if these creators didn't comply". We live in this timeline, let's maybe focus on what actually happened instead of imagining how it could've gone much worse, specially when the person spearheading this imagination exercise is prone to misrepresentation and exaggeration.

Again, please wait for my full response for details, but upon looking closely, I was easily able to find provable times Homestuck has been categorically shit to fans and fanworks. You have not brought these examples up, even tho Giovan has, but I do not intend to pretend they never happened just becuz they weren't used in an argument against me. The argument has never been "Homestuck has always been perfect to the fandom". Mistakes were made. People were hurt. My point was that Gio's attempt to paint it as this dictatorial buried past, calling HICU a discriminatory inner circle (actual thing he said btw) ultimately comes down to being mad Hussie allowed some people to use his intellectual property but not him -- and even that is a misrepresentation, as one more time for those in the back, THE UHC IS STILL UP. His bitterness may be legit on some level, but the constant inputting of malice, manipulation and outright crime, not only towards Hussie but anyone that associates with them, is simply not.