Gio is a normal guy

wild to me that people keep insisting the guy who's been like this for 6 years is actually just a good and reputable source about literally anything.

Acting like Hussie hasn't made anti-semitism remarks/a whole storyline(https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Skaianet_Systems_Incorporated), wrote/said slurs (Daves blog where he says the Nword, Dave beign hussies early self insert, Hussie being the Homestuck writer), made racial stereotypes (HIC, Damara), and even more! lol

This, in fact, is crazy. Like does he think that explanation makes it better...

The fact that Gio came up with that comparison is insane. He must've thought he was "sooooo funny" because how do you publish an article with a dog whistle with your name in it and think it makes you look good?

RE: Deltrius Even if Hussie has made some stupid decisions in writing homestuck, that doesn't suddenly make it reasonable to compare him and the entire HICU to the fucking NAZI's.

Seconding Natalie. This isn't a contest of "who's worse", this is a statement of "the guy everyone's treating like a totally innocent, honest person compared himself to victims of genocide".

RE: @dirk

Lack of relevance. Does not engage with the question. Lack of elaboration on the presented sources.

C-

Re: the1woomy

Oh no, I'm not saying it's okay. I'm just saying that the person these people are vehemently defending has done the same

The fact that people are defending this is just nuts to me.

"Hussie has a long history of mismanagement and kind of being a huge dick, and this isn't necessarily hard information to find or prove." Objectively true statement!

"...and also they said and wrote tasteless things over a decade* ago, so I'm not sure why you're complaining about the other party using a Nazi dogwhistle over hobby drama" Come on, man.

*I cannot believe I have to add this as a disclaimer, but obviously Racism Is Bad. Please interpret my words in good faith.

yeah. im repeating myself at this point, but i am willing to believe hussie isnt good at project management, because not everyone is. maybe they really are This Bad at it.​

there is no context in which gio is remotely justified in comparing himself to holocaust victims. and it really makes it obvious that this is written in bad faith.

The image is broken (my fault for using a Discord link) so I'm reposting it down here.

Aye, my heart sank when I first saw that blog post. But the more I learn about this dude's chequered history in the fandom, the more convinced I am that like 97% of it is just shit-stirring from a deeply unpleasant egomaniac.

UPDATE: both the new section title, "The Gio Question" and the footnote that said it was edited from the "The Gio-ish Question" are gone from the article. This is what is looks like now:

Not only that, any mention that it was ever anything but the current title is gone. This the second (but I would wager, not the last) instance of Gio editing things out of an article when it turns out it makes him look bad, without leaving any trace of it. The other one being his removal of any mention of Austinado after they publicly denied the accusations that they left Vast Error becuz of beef with Hussie. Real professional, definitely an actual journalist.

If the problem with this isn't obvious, allow me to explain: most people are going to read the article once. Some, judging by the waves of Reddit bros we get here from time to time, haven't read it even that many times. The accusations thrown by Gio, even if scrubbed, however, continue to be reproduced. This creates a double problem where, for instance, people continue to repeat the lie about Austinado, and when we bring up that they themselves have refuted that, people move on to ignoring that completely, or even, claiming it never happened. Without acknowledging their mistake, Gio is hiding his little fuck-up. Same way, if we were to bring up the whole "Gio-ish Question" bs, the fact they doubled down on it (if you think that footnote was an apology, you need to learn to want more from life), we can't simply point at his article. We have to rely on people having saved a screenshot, or to the WayBackMachine, or whatever.

If this sounds like me speculating or catastrophizing, know that I've been watching it happen on BlueSky all day. This is, if done on purpose, scummy as all fuck. This isn't Gio correcting himself, this is Gio trying to sweep his mess under the rug. He's not saying "I was wrong about Austinado" or "I never did an antisemitic pun". He's trying to pretend he never did anything wrong.

This just seems to be the way he operates tbh, and while it could be chalked up to "the guy thinks removing the offending material and not acknowledging it further constitutes contrition", boy it sure is interesting how difficult it makes it for people (trans women) who want to warn others about his pattern of behavior bc they instantly run up against the wall of people asking them for evidence and because the evidence has all been deleted and very few trans women actually wind up being the types to obsessively catalogue screenshots of this kind of stuff, so its easy for people who don't value the opinions trans women to dismiss it as some nebulous crowd that's trying to slander him for "exposing homestuck's bad behavior"

UPD8: Gio and manipulation through language.

So, I suppose this thread has become the “Gio bullshit newsletter". Not terribly proud of such a thing, but honestly, not that ashamed either. I think it is past the time someone gives Giovan himself the Gio Treatment. Minus all the speculation (God, I loathe speculation) and the 3 dollar compliments on Kofi.

This one I will admit, however, is a minor one. Worry not, I do not intend to simply gossip about every little stupid thing he says on BlueSky. But I do want to use his new favorite word to have a talk about how Gio chooses to phrase things. So, a minor one, but definitely not a short one.

So, Giovan has decided to start calling the not-yet realized relaunch of the Homestuck website “scabbing”.

As we see in the second image, this isn’t the first time he’s done it, as Gio was quick to make clear in his article that any attempts towards having an official way to read Homestuck would be interpreted by him as an act of “scabbing”.

So. For those unaware, a “scab” is a pejorative term for a breaker of labor strikes. That is to say, someone who either continues to work during an organized strike, or someone who is hired to replace those not working, either for the duration of said strike or permanently. Now, I am not one to be stuck to dictionary definitions, especially as the crossing of the picket line evolves as labor practices evolve, said evolution often being directed not really by laborers, but by corporations, who have become increasingly better at technically not committing labor violations.

So. Gio’s argument is that, after the negotiations between him and HICU fell thru, any attempt by Hussie to make their own body of work available through official means qualifies as scabbing. Any attempt. Becuz it is, you see, “replacement labor”.

If I assumed good faith on Gio’s part, I would say he does not understand the meaning of the word scab. That he is fooled by a superficial similarity that is made much worse than it actually is by the fact that, as he’s made very clear, he believes HICU and Hussie and What Pumpkin NYC and Aysha U. Farah are all out to ruin his life. When someone pointed in the post’s comments he was not striking, let alone employed by Hussie in anyway, he had this to say:

And this is why I don’t assume good faith from Giovan.

So, we immediately admit there is no strike. No strikes, no scabbing. But there is a “labor angle”, you see. As a “capital owner is refusing to negotiate with people using it to produce actual work”.

So. The capital in question is, I assume, Hussie’s own art, made available thru the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. Which not only includes Homestuck and all MSPA content, but also previous comics such as Whistles and And It Don’t Stop. I find very interesting how Gio poises Hussie as the “owner” of this “capital”. Not becuz it is inaccurate, Hussie does own all which is made available thru the UHC. But I’m sure the more accurate term would be “creator”. Becuz, unlike the owner of a factory, since we wish to sound oh so syndicalist, Andrew Hussie wrote and illustrated all the content that Gio is using to produce “actual work” (the exception is, of course, the music, which Hussie has not created, nor owns, nor has claimed to at any moment).

That established, you must be wondering: what is this actual work Gio has made with Hussie’s stories. I wish not to diminish Gio’s work on making the UHC possible -- while Bambosh is the actual creator of it, Gio has by all accounts been fundamental to its maintenance and improvement. But if I, let’s say, upload a piece of media to The Internet Archive for preservation reasons, and then a few years later, the entity which actually owns (or, in this case, again, created) the media in question decides to re-release it... How is that scabbing? How is that... Anything but extremely normal or, even, positive?

Now, I hear you, the analogy isn’t perfect. Giovan didn’t simply rip all of the Homestuck assets and uploaded somewhere. He helped to maintain a tool which made it’s reading especially accessible and comfortable. Funnily enough, that’s not the labor he decided to bring up all the way back in the second image, but the fact he “wrote a working site” that they tried to take control over, but I digress. That is, indeed, labor. It is work. I suppose it would be more comparable to me hosting my own website to grant access to the proverbial piece of media, and kept it updated with all that I thought could be related to it.

I even think it is fair to want some kudos for such an attitude. I’m a historian for goodness sake, I understand the effort that goes behind preserving something that, if we are not to put that effort on, may be lost, or at least, made inaccessible. And I certainly understand how it feels to get little to no acknowledgement for it.

The key difference here is that Andrew Hussie is alive, active, and very much in favor of having control over their art -- something that is apparently an unforgivable crime to those who haven’t created much in their life.

The framing of “refusing to negotiate” is hilarious when you consider Gio wrote a whole article about how they did negotiate. It didn’t work out, as it seems Giovan is an extremely difficult person to work with for reasons you are free to decide if you find legitimate or not. So. Hussie, who wants their story to be available, is making a new website. Becuz they are not, nor were they, ever, even for a second, obligated to work with Giovan.

And for those who still seem to be under the impression Hussie, or HICU, or literally anyone, has taken down the UHC: IT’S STILL AVAILABLE. It’s been 20 days since Gio said it was definitely gonna be gone for real, yet you can still download it from the creepypasta ass website, as well as GitHub.

Alright. I promised this wasn’t gonna be a wall of text about Gio’s most recent tweets (or whatever the BlueSky term for it is). What I’d like to point here is the very deliberate choice of words, and how this is a pattern with dear Giovan. He loves implying, or outright saying, untrue things without technically telling any lies. Again, how he calls Hussie the “owner” of Homestuck, a true statement, but one that serves the clear purpose to paint them as the rich uncaring businessman as opposed to the person who actually did all the work in question.

The same happens with how Gio is obsessed with the idea of Hussie/HICU “taking control over the fandom”. Again, if we lived in a world where this was said in an isolated vacuum, it would be a fine, accurate statement. After three years of silence (damn I wonder what caused that), Homestuck is not only back with a new team, but they have released the FRAF forum, and there’s all these fanworks which are now receiving support from it. That does speak to a desire to provide official Homestuck channels that can be overseen by people that Hussie trusts. This, additionally, has the effect to finally addressing and taking measures against the bigotry of the main unofficial Homestuck communities, be it the general concept of the HS fandom in social media, or those with more direct moderation, like the subreddit and its respective Discord server.

Unfortunately, we live in the world where people like Gio exist. So any official Homestuck channel is actually a sneaky personal attack on the integrity of fake amateur journalism and a nefarious attempt of taking control over the fandom. By supporting fanworks. And making a Discord whose owner hasn’t publicly stated it is a “safe place for homophobia” (hi Makin). The horror.

And if you think I’m exaggerating about Gio’s reaction to the Discord server’s mere existence, I have bad news for you.

I’ll be the first to say that the Official Homestuck Discord is. Rather unusable right now. A lot of people have been joining exclusively to cause problems, and a recent situation, while seemingly resolved, did cause a bit of a stir among me and other transfems. It is also the only large Homestuck community that has made an actual, continuous and on-going effort to address transmisogyny in the community. Is it perfect? Absolutely the fuck not. It is ten thousand times better than any of the oh so sacred fan spaces Gio is trying to protect from... Like, idk, having competition? ‘Cuz much like Gio’s fork of the UHC, all other communities are still around. If you hate yourself and/or trans women, the subreddit Discord is waiting for you with open arms and an awful list of media recs.

I would now like to specifically address the people who are, let’s say, more charitable to Gio. Not his fans who skimmed past it all, the people who are listening to both sides, and see flaws on Gio, but are also suspicious of Hussie and HICU’s reportedly “scummy” behavior. First of all, thank you for reading all of this. I have not proposed myself as an unbiased commentator at any moment, and tho I think that attempting to be one is fundamentally flawed, your willingness to hear me out despite that demonstrates to me you do indeed care about the truth, and at the bottom of it all, skepticism is allowed and supported in this household which we are all stuck inside.

Second, however, lemme ask you something: what words are being used and with what intent here? If you write a book and maintain the rights of it, would you first be called owner or author? More importantly, in what situation could you imagine someone calling you one or another? To what ends?

This is all I have for you tonight. I do have plans for a breakdown of Gio’s mirror of Psycholonials on MSPFA tho, becuz that one is... God it sure is. It’ll probably be a while until that is done tho, as it requires both an analysis of a work of art and an analysis of the opposite of that.

Wait patiently. You'll be seeing me again.

what a normal guy, I think, thoughtfully

this is not particularly helpful information but a bsky tweet is called a “skeet” and don’t let anyone ever try to convince you otherwise e.e

Even if everything Gio said was true about Hussie only wanting to do all of this to 'control the fandom' I literally do not care because the people who currently have the most "control" over the fandom are transphobic pieces of garbage who spend all their time harassing trans women on the internet over petty drama lol. The people who are on the opposite side of this whole thing are so fucking awful and I have personally had the misfortune of speaking to them and seeing their awful behavior on this very forum and website. Maybe I would be a little less biased against them if they all weren't so openly terrible and hostile lol.

If Andrew Hussie wants to open a discord and rerelease THEIR COMIC THAT THEY MADE they can do that they do not have to ask for permission or whatever lol. Also Gio wants this to be an issue for the community so badly but Andrew Hussie just dislikes Gio. Literally has never made any move towards anyone else besides Gio.

This is just beef between Gio and Hussie and that's it, but Gio is just bound and determined to drag everyone else into it for no reason at all.

Okay I wanna preface this by saying that I actually don't think this or any other thread should become "the Gio gossip hub". Not only do I think that doesn't help, I think we should be better than our biggest critics on this subject. I already felt bad bringing up Gio and the UHC in the discord announcement thread, I don't think anything good is going to come of it. Miles said not to harass Gio in his response, and that was probably the best part of that response. I have seen some people doing it anyway, and I want that to not be the case.

THAT BEING SAID, Yeah I don't have any way to agree with Gio on this. I think he was treated wrong, I think Bambosh was collateral damage, I think the Hiveswap articles contain some-amount of truth, and I think it's reasonable to be worried for future Homestuck collaborations because of that truth (I really hope Spindleroo is keeping Hussie on a leash and that whole project isn't going to blow up in their faces). But I don't have any defense here, he's just wrong.

I'm trying to decipher the exact mindset behind his words. The reason scabbing is wrong, primarily, is because a significant portion of a workforce is in a state of demanding better conditions from their employers by denying them labor, and workers who choose to do that labor anyway are harming the chances of better conditions being achieved.

This situation is a bit different. Gio did refuse to work for Hussie without certain conditions (namely, the terms of his contract being changed, which I think is fair), but he's only one person, and not indispensable to Homestuck, however bad their treatment may have been. This comes across as more akin to a film director having a big fight with their lead actor, said actor leaving, and then being replaced all before they'd even started shooting. It's sort of like saying any worker who replaces another that left over something unfair is a scab.

Margot hits the nail on the head here; My mind went to Strife, the old FPS proto-RPG. That game was released right between Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, sold like shit because of it, and died for years, only to be reverse-engineered by a Doom source-port developer in the 2010s. But then, not long after, you get NightDive and an official release of Strife, scooped up from rights hell. This is actually the exact sort of thing copyright exists to protect, the opportunity for a rights-holder to reclaim their distribution of work they own over unofficial distribution during a lapse in production.

Where I disagree is in the veracity of all this. I'm a copyright anarchist, I believe in pirating and profiting off fanworks and using other people's work as your canvas, and I think it's fair of Gio to characterize Hussie as a capitalist in all this. Hussie themself describes WP as a corporation, and what we see from Homestuck in the Gio debacle is Homestuck acting like a corporation, just with really unprofessional rhetoric. I think the unspoken idea behind criticizing FRAF, the HICU and their handling of the UHC, is that all of the people involved should be able to monetize their work regardless of what the official side thinks or does. Homestuck is a fan-driven property, and Gio says elsewhere that a solution to this would be releasing Homestuck under something like a creative commons license, which protects the original property but allows the public to do what they want with it (my only misgiving is that I feel it could be cannibalized by larger corporations in this with fan creators losing a lot of visibility, but I'm not a copyright lawyer so I dunno if that's how that could go down), and I don't think that's necessarily unreasonable. It also dispels the unspoken fear that a fan project who doesn't or couldn't go through FRAF (for whatever reason) would be unprotected, not to mention unable to monetize itself.

That being said, I don't know how much I believe the fandom control stuff. In any fandom, something is going to be the thing that eventually takes a dominant position as the big hub where that thing is discussed. It's fair for Gio to not like that or to not like it to be something that Hussie could control and/or theoretically use to squash criticism and/or dissent, but he's also still palling around with Makin, who clearly wanted something similar given the whole MSPFA and "Official" Homestuck discord debacle, or the business with the stuff Homestuck.net was rehosting. So is it about not wanting centralization, or is it about wanting centralization through someone else?

I used to post on the official SEGA forums before I joined SSMB and Retro. I didn't like that they wouldn't let me swear, but I wasn't feeling any more pressured or controlled there than when I moved to Sonic forums where the userbase was actual, rational adults. I'm here, on an official Homestuck forum, right now, still sympathetic to a lot of stuff Gio says. I'm not in any danger with the moderators and none of them have ever given me the impression that they had any action to take against me. I'm not even sure if the dudes who were transparently just here to shit on others were banned. I haven't seen discussion of Gio or his stuff being deleted or edited, Miles even linked to Gio's writeup in his response. This, discord, reddit, they're all just places where people type words on a screen and other people read them, nobody here is the arbiter of what Homestuck or Hussie do, and neither are the places Hussie doesn't like so much, or even the forums dedicated to outright harassment and doxxing of the team members. Exactly what kind of fandom control is it that Makin and Gio are so afraid of?

Last note: Gio knew that the site revival was already happening in the background while his dealings with the UHC and Homestuck were ongoing. He had lots of nice things to say about Kohi. Is he now accusing Kohi of being a scab worker for continuing to do their job instead of, I guess, quitting or threatening to quit alongside this one other guy they don't really know that well? And if so, why did it only become scabbing once Homestuck officially announced this?