Gio is a normal guy

RE: @Deep Dive Devin

Excellent points. I would like to respond to some of them.

Firstly, I'd like to make clear I have indeed no intention to make this a gossip corner. I shall not be writing forum essays about every skeet (I learned it!) Gio makes. I reserve myself the right to respond to big developments and bring up discussions of his behavior I think need to be addressed, but if I were to simply list all the things I dislike about Giovan, this thread would be way too long.

Secondly. Let's talk about the copyright issue.

By positioning myself in the, let's say, "pro-HICU" side of things, I feel some (not you specifically, tbc) have internalized two grand misconceptions about me: that I think Hussie hasn't done anything wrong ever and that I love copyright. I wanna focus on the latter right now.

Let's make one thing clear: copyright law is for the benefit of corporations first, artists are an afterthought. When a video gets copyright-strike'd on YouTube for playing a song, for instance, nine outta ten times that is done in the name of the rights’ holder, usually the label or the parent company of such, not the musicians who actually created the art. When an author writes a book, its publisher has the rights of distribution, which often includes things like merchandising and rights to adaptation. In the business of comic books, we have especially egregious examples of writers losing control over their characters -- the case of Alan Moore and Watchmen comes to mind.

And this is all shit. And it is especially shit once we get to the issue of transformative work. Sampling in music, photo collages, parodies, or even just playing a clip of something to talk about it in a video. All of these, tho protected under the vague concept of "fair use", are constantly under attack, used by vindictive corporations and sometimes creators. It goes without saying that things like fanfiction and game mods are on another level of scrutiny entirely, currently in this position where they are allowed to exist, but never profit from it. And even then, it's not uncommon to hear horror stories about those being taken down, especially fanfiction (something something Anne Rice).

As a response to that, many artists have taken upon themselves to release their art thru means that allow transformative work to flourish freely. That usually does take the shape of the Creative Commons License, but also things like public acknowledgement/support of work that builds upon their own. Which is very cool and I always love to see it and it is far from a perfect solution.

The first problem with doing such a thing has less to do with the thing itself, and more with capitalism at large. Once again, the actual corporations who usually hold the art's copyright are obviously not keen on doing Creative Commons, so the artists that are able to have either been handed incredible deals that are not the norm whatsoever, or are working independently -- which, to be clear, being indie does not mean not being corporative.

As a rule, independent artist make less money. That is not to say we don't have many stories of indie success, and conversely, a lot (more) tales of artists that were screwed over by corporations and went broke. I point this out simply to say that going independent is mostly a matter of ideals rather than a business decision (mostly, again, there are exceptions). And while the willingness to face more hardship in order to stay true to yourself is an admirable trait, ideology and convictions do not pay the bills. To live off of your art is a privilege, and one that feels so bitter that it barely feels like one.

Now, I'm under no impression that Hussie will go broke if they put Homestuck under Creative Commons. They are, as it seems, pretty wealthy. I'd even go ahead and say Homestuck being under Creative Commons would be a smart move. That does mean giving away certain control over the distribution rights they have only recently gotten back from VIZ, so I also see why there would be some hesitancy there, but ultimately, I agree.

However. I would like to point out that, even before HICU or FRAF were a thing, people were already profiting from their Homestuck fanworks without great issue. Let us remember that Vast Error has had a Patreon for years, and SAHCon has been able to operate without much trouble before they were officially HICU. Granted, the organizers of the latter have rightfully brought up the general lack of clarity of what they were and weren't allowed to do, so please do not take this as me saying it was perfect, or better, or virtually the same.

But again I point out. Gio's fork of the UHC is still up. As is his Patreon and Kofi. For all his talk about being silenced, about Hussie wanting to control his work, the UHC is still available. Now, could Hussie, potentially, take it down tomorrow if they wanted? Yeah. Is that a valid reason for anxiety? Sure.

The idea that a Creative Commons license would prevent that is erroneous tho. While you cannot revoke CC, you can file your work under a new license if you wish to. This does offer protections to fanworks and alternative distributions made during the work's time under CC, but not afterwards. And additionally, not prior to the filling of a work under CC either -- that is to say, were Homestuck to become Creative Commons today, that still wouldn't make the UHC's existence bullet-proof. Additionally, I'd like to point out that CC does not mean you cannot take legal action towards those you deem back actors using your work. A CC license isn't "copyright anarchy", it is just better copyright, one that I'm still in favor of, but that does not resolve the problems brought up.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the good will of an author towards its fandom. And I’m not saying so becuz I think that’s a good thing, but becuz, again, despite the outcry, you can profit from Homestuck fanworks. Yes, even if you’re not HICU. There is good will, even to those who we could argue don’t deserve it.

If you want more protections than that, what you want is the death of capitalism. Which I want too! Right now!! Violently!!! Read Marx!!!!1

But that is much bigger than Fandom v. Author.

In short. Hussie created Homestuck and owns the rights to it. A creator owning their creation is a good thing, and what they decide to do with that ownership is up to them. What Hussie has decided to do is not only allow unprecedented freedom to its fandom, but in addition, a special kind of semi-official support to it.

I cannot pretend this is a bad thing.

I said this in another thread I can’t remember which one but as much as I’d like copyright to vanish or never be an issue for anyone ever again. We do live in a society and have to go along with many a shit thing until conditions improve (ideally through action.)

(that action is not going Yay when Disney of all companies is leading the charge against anti-ai on copyright grounds (instead of say impersonation as a single example bc I’m trying so hard not to soapbox and failing oh no) which I think is a big giant huge red flag)

(I’m so annoyed by this bc every time I bring it up ppl act like I’m from upside-down world. like. copyright bad!!! these cases are bad!! dreamworks putting a disclaimer on their new movies is BAD!! because they can sue YOU funny little fanartist for replicating their work via an AI you never used -especially because so many “ai detectors” are absolute bs and don’t do Anything other than cause people to accuse and lash out at each other because someone accidentally drew a hand backwards or enjoys surrealism- and I don’t know a single person in my life who has the funds and could actually go to court over that.)

oops I soapboxed anyway. waaah

@Margot

I think "before HICU or FRAF were a thing, people were already profiting from their Homestuck fanworks without great issue" would be a pretty big point of contention between you and Gio, then. In his blogpost he mentions a game he was involved with other HS creators on basically going up in smoke right before its Steam release simply due to how Homestuck responded to his involvement, and he also mentions a few other "publicly announced threats of legal action by Homestuck against fan projects".

I am unfortunately coming at all this stuff long after the fact and my information may be incomplete, so I apologize if I get anything wrong.

Going through them in order, the old Pesterchum client. The current one is maintained money-free as far as I can tell. This one had a kickstarter, which went down due to using someone else's IP:

"Unfortunately, due to a request by What Pumpkin regarding trademarks, I've chosen to take the project down."

So yeah, that is a Homestuck fanwork being given what sounds like a C&D over the IP's usage being monetized. It would later rebrand as Open Source Fandom Chat and make double its goal anyway. Then the money was all refunded, the creator went back to (presumably a moneyless version of) Pesterchum and it dropped support in 2021. No clue what happened there.

The second one certainly looks like the least-justified. It was a deviantart tutorial for making your own scalemate plushies, and in the creator's own words:
"I was ordered by Andrew to take the tutorial down".

So that's a non-monetized fanwork (as far as I can tell) being taken down, and this was 2011, so probably before Homestuck sold any of their own, right? If so, that one probably hurts the most, since it sure looks like they took down a fan creator's totally-free tutorial just so they could sell the end result(I presume the official scalemate plushies were not literally just made with this tutorial, though). It's still online on other websites. But yeah, dick move if so. A real "Samus Returns", that one.

Then he links to readMSPA's downloadable archive. Or well, he links to a dead MPSA Forums thread, which readMSPA itself quotes in reference to the limited distribution of its own offline archive (I have heard on at least two accounts that this archive served as the basis for the asset pack Bambosh made for the UHC, though I have no way of verifying this).

It reads:
"We can turn a blind eye to very minor distribution of such an archive, since in cases like [this] it's really more like advertising, but any sort of publicly available downloadable archive would definitely fall outside fair use laws."

So that is sort of a legal threat toward a rehost of the comic (it seems there used to be an online reupload available? this all comes from a time when my immersion in Homestuck was a lot shallower), which I think means that you could justifiably call other reuploads (in my head I've just been calling them Kici and Chad, which I think is cute) endangered. I think it would not be surprising to see them get an informal takedown request once the official site is back up, though hopefully Hussie has learned not to poke the bear on this one.

He also mentioned Homestrife, the fighting game. I don't know whether I'm misreading or he is, but his link directly highlights the part that says "due to various reasons(one of which was not being shutdown/C&D’d), as of September 2014, this project was put on permanant hiatus". Sooo what does that mean? It looks to me like it's saying they shut down, but it wasn't because of any legal threat. Is perhaps Gio reading this as "we got a C&D, but we're shutting down for some other reason"? A quick google search lead me to makin linking a backup of a blog post where they say WP declined a partnership with them, leading the game to cease development due to the expense, and I quote from one of the comments,

"They told us that they simply don’t allow crowdfunded projects for anything Homestuck related".

So. I guess you can call that a threat. As in, them saying it's not allowed carries the implication that you'd be in legal trouble if you did it anyway.

Finally, a recent tweet mentioned The Overseer Project, which is...fine? I'm just googling shit here so obviously if there's old drama I'm missing everyone is free to chime in, but V2 is still actively updated, like "github updated last week" territory. I do see that it's V2, and I saw one reddit comment saying "I think it got C&D'd" with no source, but in lieu of anything like Pesterchum where it was revived by someone else, it still has a patreon page for donations.

So what do we make of all this? I presume these were among the most damning examples Gio had (that he could talk about publicly at least), and what they ultimately amount to is two instances of Homestuck not wanting fan creators to monetize their IP, one informal agreement to not touch readMSPA if it isn't throwing entire copies around willy-nilly, and one takedown of something seemingly totally-innocent in hopes to monopolize the same idea for money. And within all that, there's still multiple versions of pesterchum online (albeit not the original, but I'm not sure what happened with that kickstarter or why the dev shelved his legally-safe client), there are still multiple site rehosts online (for now, we'll see) including readMSPA's if you ask real nicely, the overseer project doesn't seem to have gone anywhere (???) and Homestrife and the Scalemate thing (if you know where to look) are both still available, even if I think Homestuck was wrong to leave them out to dry over money they didn't need.

Does this make it wrong to say fanworks were never in danger? Yes, I would say so. Even if you think this is all small-potatoes, the fact that they had to be preserved in the way they were was not a case of Homestuck influencing them positively, simply being slightly more-lenient when the things they either took down or allowed to rot away were made available again.

Does this mean it's wrong to say current fanworks aren't in danger? I don't know. Certainly if Gio's story about the game he worked on is true, that's absolutely fucked. It's another way they've been terrible to this one guy with others he worked with as collateral damage. Do fanworks this one guy isn't involved with have anything to fear?...who knows! But I certainly wouldn't want to be part of a fandom where people who can work on your fan projects are secretly copyright-hazards the rights holders will go scorched-earth on regardless of how the people around him are involved or what they know. I think with almost all of these cases, I don't see any scenario in which Homestuck doing literally nothing is not beneficial to both them and everyone else. Are the results as destructive and predatory as Gio makes them sound (and, conversely, what may legitimately have happened to him, Bambosh and the youtube people)? Maybe not, but that doesn't make the end product good.

All of this gives me more anxiety about the alleged official response from Hussie. I hope that thing gets massaged to hell and back by everyone he works with until it's basically just a pledge to not fuck anyone over. They're not gonna get anything good out of mentioning Gio, Bambosh or Sarah Z again unless it's an apology, and I've seen them apologize for like three things ever.

Oh yeah, and one last thing: It was my understanding that the way, for instance, Vast Error made money was by selling T-shirts with their fictional signs, but with no actual Homestuck material on them. So that's definitely still skirting the line and clearly implies that they weren't just able to print their trolls on stuff without getting on HS's bad side. Whether you choose to view that as a big nothingburger anyway is up to you.

my memory ain’t the best but wasn’t the problem with the original pesterchum client that it became too costly to upkeep and it went offline for a lil while and then someone else picked it back up? my remembering stops there so idk if any newer version got C&D or what have you but I’m decently confident that’s not what happened to the original one from ye olde forums

That’s all I got to add idk about anything else

the game gio worked on was befriendus, which is now part of FRAF without his involvement, so no, i would say it's not in danger. gonna let margot respond to the rest if she wants to but just wanted to get that out there

@autumn The Pesterchum kickstarter page still exists, along with the message about Homestuck saying they can't do it. It may be that the cost of maintenance was what inspired the patreon like with Homestrife, and that's what eventually lead to it dying off after all that, but the copyright thing with the kickstarter happened for sure.

@lyrichartwell Okay, well that does add context. It's weird that he says "the whole project was a loss" in that case. I mean, I guess it certainly was for him, given that the official side cut him off from his friends via allegations that we neither can confirm nor apparently know what they even are, which is...yeah. Whether or not they're true, it makes me understand his bitterness about the whole affair a bit more. Whether you think everything is just because Gio and Hussie hate each other or whatever, Hussie isn't exactly starving him of motive.

Lots of digital ink has been spilled on this topic which I think has done a good job of exploring in various ways why it's probably not worth the time spent dwelling on it. Your average person just isn't that concerned with a creative team and their antics, even when there's a lot of drama and sore feelings involved. Even Gio and his most ardent supporters struggle to form a coherent, defensible case out of interpretations of law and ancient fanmerch takedowns. Why?

Because Gio, who self-describes in his socials as the guy who "saved homestuck" on a website copyrighted under his own name (or rather, not his name, but his online moniker.) is behaving incredibly anti-socially and any reasonably well-adjusted adult can tell that right away, even if they don't understand exactly why.

To speculate a bit, it seems to me Gio, and that whole reddit community as a whole, are all mired in some kind of parasocial animosity toward Homestuck's creators, and have been for years. It's deeply unhealthy behavior. I can't help but note the subreddit describes itself as the "largest, most active Homestuck community" which should tell you where their heads are at over there. Not fandom, mind, since a lot of them have nothing but derision for much of the content and the people responsible for it in their eyes. These are people who spent a significant portion of their lives online defining themselves as a massive anti-fandom, so it's only natural a resurgence of official content from the creators they've aligned themselves against for so long would lead to this kind of fallout. It's sad really, but little more than the consequences of their own decisions.

At the end of the day, however much you find criticisms of official Homestuck team behavior to be valid and worth discussion, however much interpersonal drama goes around the internet and Gio and these guys spinning their wheels and crying and yelling into the void, the fandom overall isn't going to get behind it and most folks wouldn't engage with it at all unless and until polite discourse breaks down into full-on cyberbullying. That's the good, healthy response to all this I think, and hopefully the last word I feel inclined to share.

Oh also this is kinda apropos of nothing, but he manufactured a cherub chess set and is gauging interest for a marketable product on one of his websites, all with no mention of Homestuck or a certain creator. All designed by Gio himself! Pretty impressive, huh?

@devin just wanna address another thing. Yes, while extending empathy to gio and seeing his side of things, it does suck that he was seemingly cut out of a project(we don't know the extent to how or why gio left the project so, speculating on that doesn't seem productive) and he would understandably be bitter about that, I think we should do a little thought experiment and extend that same empathy and perspective to Hussie. Hussie's writers felt unsafe and uncomfortable with gio's "reporting"(which is to say, exposing things about them in a gossip blog without any oversight from any actual journalists). They were affected financially, and emotionally in an extremely negative way from gio's actions, and these are people that not only worked for Hussie, but were his friends. I think that, much as you say Hussie is not starving gio of motive, Hussie clearly has their own motives for disliking and distrusting gio, and not wanting him involved with projects. Despite this, Hussie did try to repair burnt bridges with gio, and tried negotiating. After negotiations fell through, gio framed Hussie as an abuser, compared them to donald trump and nazis, and is now making baseless accusations of "scabbing". Gio is certainly not starving Hussie of motive, either.

My memory isn't the best but I'm pretty sure Homestrife was trying to reach a licensing agreement with WP and when that failed, the project fell apart because they would have no way to legally use the IP. The project was simply too visible at that point to keep it a fan project, because it could then be C&D'd at any time. I'm sure there was some intention to monetize, as well. They basically got the red light from WP and decided to honor it, or at least that's the impression I was left with, so many years later.

I intend to respond to all of this when I have the time to write. There is a lot to say about all the cited projects and how Gio misrepresented history again, but I wanna be thorough and fair

@mobiancruxtruder

I actually looked a bit into the overseer project stuff. The current iteration is not the original one. It's a fan preservation effort with bugfixes added onto it. [2] The story goes that the project a week after it announced V3 would separate itself from being related to Homestuck, that Whatpumpkin went and issued a Cease and Desist to Overseer V2 out of the blue, they also weren't able to get in contact with What Pumpkin despite sending them multiple emails and got a lawyer to try and find out if the C&D was real or not[1]. Apparently someone from WP said that the C&D is fake after this news came out [3], It's all admittedly very hard to follow since i can't find much on this due to how long ago this was, like for example, how was the email sent from an official WhatPumpkin email address, since the writings note that it wasn't a spoofed email. So i can't give anything solid since this was nearly a decade ago and I'm mainly relying on reddit comments saying things with no source and a archive of the post in a reddit comment for this information. Which according to a reddit comment has been said to be "mostly false" by James Roach (Which i can't confirm properly, so i guess I'll just have to trust a reddit comment and hope that fella wasn't lied to on discord 8 years ago. I really wish there was a proper write-up for this stuff for me to reference.) (Adding to this after the fact, i hope you have more information on this Margot, i admittedly wasn't in the fandom at the time, at most i read a fanfic or two. So you probably know more details on this stuff where im relying on a single reddit post and hearsay.)

To be honest I'm not sure about the Scalemate plushie thing being representative of Hussie's beliefs today, mainly because we haven't them do anything like that afterward and also because the whole logic behind it is silly. (The idea of the guide needing to be taken down because SOMEONE ELSE could use that guide to make Scalemates to sell to others is very funny) [4]

I'll just drop the Home-Strife stuff blog link here if anyone wants to read it, don't really have anything else to add that the post or Devin don't already say. https://web.archive.org/web/20150914042747/http://homestrifegame.com/blog/?p=197

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/5umrak/what_pumpkin_calls_for_cease_and_desist_of_the/ddv6l9s/ (Thank you random redditor! Without you this would be lost as the web archive doesn't have it and the tumblr blog this is on requires a password to enter now.)

[2]:
Also this message and the reboot discord is on the self-described unofficial discord since it lacks any official ties to the original project (as far as i know, i basically just joined that discord to play Overseer a 2 years back, it was pretty fun beating up Imps with Yo-yo's, though the grind is unreal!).

[3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/5umrak/what_pumpkin_calls_for_cease_and_desist_of_the/ddvh7wa/ (This is the best i could find on this being fake? Sadly i can't find anything else on this because I'm not joining and digging through a discord server for 8 year old message logs, assuming if those logs even exist anymore. Man i hate it how so many people use discord as a forum. Makes it hard to find things like this. It looks like the top comments on the reddit post were deleted at some point, which look to have been the ones to explain the situation. :/ )

[4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/oidml/scalemate_plushie_tutorial_learn_to_sew_by_making/c3hqat3/ (actually look at the whole reddit thread here. There's like two imgur links from 2012 with people showing off their scalemates. It's pretty neat those images are still around!)

(Just tacking this on at the end here)

@lyrichartwell, If the game Gio's talking about is Befriendus then Gio's account of events states Hussie legally threatened a fangame due to his involvement in the project... which i find rather concerning to say the least. (Though i personally doubt it's about Befriendus, the way Gio describes it. It sounds like an original project. Though it could still be about Befriendus since some details sorta match up (Befriendus is technically Gio's first game according to their portfolio.), Gio is probably being vague to avoid throwing his friends under the bus.)

Sidenote: I can't really comment much on Gio's journalistic integrity in relation to the Hiveswap articles since i read them a few years ago and haven't re-read them since. (I do mean to get around to doing that though) All i can say is that i don't remember anything in them sending people to harass WP staff or other people related the Homestuck in them nor does anything like that show up saying so when i skim the original articles. To clarify, I'm not denying that people were harassed when the articles came out, it definitely happened as some people just like the idea of having a "reason" (excuse) to harass people. (Especially if it's someone they already don't like for whatever reason, like for example if you wrote something they didn't like, or y'know they just hate women, or anything considered progressive.) (Like I've read too many people be happy when someone is revealed to have done something wrong because now they have a reason to hate them outside of just not liking them and/or their work in general.) To state it again, Gio writing articles about the Hiveswap fiasco doesn't make him responsible if someone uses those articles to harass WP staff. It's like holding the creator of that Scalemate plushie creation guide personally responsible if someone else decides to use that guide to sell unofficial scalemate plushies. I dunno, maybe I'm extending too much good faith on Gio here but i don't think the articles were meant to lead to people being harassed. I've always had the impression they were meant to shine a light on what the hell was going on with Hiveswap. Like people did pay for it (Technically they paid for a Homestuck Adventure Game + a bunch of merch, so much merch in fact that it cut heavily into the Kickstarter funds if memory serves me right but still, they paid for a game.) and WP at the time was very silent about what was going on behind the scenes.

Sidenote 2: Spent way too long writing this. Good thing i did though. I made some very silly mistakes while writing this which i had to go back and correct, and then correct those mistakes i made. Like seriously, if i posted my first draft of this, i would've gotten info on the overseer situation wrong (Did you know undertale fans can't read?) while somehow not explaining the overseer situation at the same time. (There's a reason why a High School teacher i had recommended i take AP classes instead of AICE classes) I'm not particularly good at writing research heavy works like this so i have to make up for it by spending more time checking over my work to catch blindspots and silly mistakes like that.

(Spent well over an hour after this final image catching minor grammar mistakes (I think i have to fix my grammar checker, i think i have typos in there messing with things, or this text box is just broken.) and catching places where i don't get my point across properly. There are probably mistakes here and there but it was never going to be perfect tbh.)

@empatheticrecluse @lyrichartwell

I understand your perspectives, but I'm trying to come at Gio's arguments from as unbiased a perspective as possible, and I just have to wonder if we'd be talking about him in the same way if we weren't all Homestuck fans with a vested interest in the property we like succeeding. Hussie is not a megacorporation and their words obviously can be more personal and (in some ways) easier to trust than, like, if Nintendo were the ones issuing these C&Ds, but it just feels icky no matter how much I try to rationalize against the idea that Gio just happened to suck anyway. I think there are some things that you should not do to someone even if you think they're a terrible person, and without knowing exactly what was said to the Befriendus team (but knowing some of the stuff Gio says Homestuck has claimed about him, which in certain cases looks to me unverifiable to anyone other than personal acquaintances), it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Hussie and their team "feeling unsafe" as a result of the Hiveswap posts is fair enough, but I think that someone who pulled the shit they allegedly pulled probably isn't supposed to feel all that great about it. I can only "both sides" this so long without looking at the power dynamic, and that's without even engaging the fact that the rest of Befriendus (if it is indeed Befriendus) was collateral damage, like Bambosh and the UHC (arguably Sarah Z as well). I don't care how uncomfortable Gio makes them if them shooting back ends up hitting other people. I'm glad the game still isn't dead, I guess.

@singularant

In the blogpost where the game ceased development, they said they planned to keep developing the game as a fan project after WP declined partnership, but it was specifically that this would require crowdfunding that WP said they weren't allowed to get.

@maxnexus

All good info. Don't have much to add other than it's surprising to see the Overseer complaint get called "fake". No idea how true that could be, or what the hell James could possibly have meant by "mostly". It looks to me like they sent a C&D, immediately regretted it, and came up with a cover story.

And yeah, to all this, this is why I'm so reticent to litigate whether Gio is a bad person or whatever, I'd much rather just know what Hussie and WhatPumpkin did or did not actually do. Because even if the answer is that Gio is the worst person ever, how Hussie and their company treats people they perceive as threats can say something about a lot more than just Gio. Would they have become as hostile to metroidhat/eyes9 if she'd refused to take the scalemate tutorial down, even though that absolutely constitutes fair use on all levels?

(side note: hey! she made the SIGNALIS storch plushies!)

sorry, metroidhat's username is eyes5, not eyes9.

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.

@margot

I am not trying to weaponize anyone's story. Gio already did, and I was assessing the accuracy of those claims. And make no mistake: none of the people involved were treated the way Gio describes his experience. I know that, I was never trying to imply otherwise.

The result of that assessment was not me trying to venerate Gio or his rhetoric; I think he's exaggerating big-time. My tone may not have brought this across properly, but I broadly believe all of these exist in "Hussie shouldn't have done that, but it's mostly a big nothing" territory. But regardless of Gio's framing, a kernel of truth exists here, the claims of "Homestuck fanworks have never been at threat" and "HS fan creators were monetizing okay before now) can at least be disputed.

Saying "it's fine because things never got that bad" doesn't sit well with me, because this still rests on putting trust in Andrew to not escalate things where they shouldn't. And, well...! Sometimes they do! Creators harboring no ill will towards the company doesn't mean the decisions were right, and 3 of them (possibly 4) not getting C&D'd just shows we're not jumping the gun and going scorched-earth on them, which I never disputed. But I don't think it's speculation or even a stretch to say that an IP holder is exerting power when they tell you you can't get money for your thing based on their work, C&D or not.

I brought each of these up because I assumed they were the worst examples Gio had of "Homestuck fanworks under threat". If there exists better, more-specific examples of this, I don't know about them, because as I've said, my level of immersion is shallower than a lot of people here who have been consuming Homestuck fanworks for a decade. That's part of why I'm still talking about this at all, my only bias is liking some stuff Hussie made. I have no allegiance to any of these people. I am awaiting your future post, as you say, but still think this stuff is worth considering. I'm not making any call to action here, I'm mostly trying to square away my own beliefs on this, and I think talking about it can help us understand this situation and possible future problems better. It's the most-neutral space I've had to actually discuss it, since previously all I had were unincorporated social media spaces, or else the reddit and discord that would necessitate dealing with Makin.

As for the overseer thing, sure, okay, I guess that does constitute speculation on my part. I'm just baffled by the phrasing of "mostly fake" from James. Like...it's an email. Either WP sent it or they didn't.

Popping in here I know the conversation topic has mostly moved on but I just want to say the Scab thing he said really grinds me gears man that shit is so out of pocket.

Responded to it directly here: https://bsky.app/profile/camyosh.bsky.social/post/3lxlnoyn5bc23

^ Esp since some of the most verifiable accusations of wrongdoing against Hussie involve union-busting? if it wasnt scabbing to work on hs after that, it certainly isnt when gio, a non employee, gets caught up in things

So I will go thru all of the cases brought up in whatever order I see fit, as well as some additional ones.

1. Pesterchum client

In 2013, after a while of maintaining it out-of-pocket, a free version of the Pesterchum chat client, developer ghostDunk decided they wanted to improve it in a way that would cost them greatly. They then turned to Kickstarter, not for profit, but for funding of the project itself. The project would, indeed, ultimately be cancelled after a request from What Pumpkin.

This happened little over a year after the Hiveswap Kickstarter, a controversial mess of its own. So yes, this brief project from almost 12 years ago had the plug pulled on it, at request of What Pumpkin, who likely did not want any sort of confusion around crowdfunding projects while they dealt with their own transition from webcomic to... Well, more than that. I wish not to be pedantic, but the words “Cease and Desist” have not been mentioned. I’m not naive tho, if they had continued the project, they would likely have received one, but I still think it is important to say that didn’t seem to be the case. What Pumpkin made a request, the dev complied. This is not a legal threat, as no threats were made legally.

This is, if not a position I would personally take, not only very normal, but seemed to be resolved amicably. Here’s a screenshot of the dev asking people not to make a mess out of it, the same day it was cancelled (which was, btw, a day after it started):

2. Homestrife

Gio is just wrong here. The link he himself provides straight up says they did not get shutdown or C&D’d. I went after the post where they announce the end of the project, I assume the same one Devin has found thru Makin on reddit. Before addressing the comment highlighted, I’d like to call attention to the last two paragraphs of the post itself:

Once again, it seems very clear to me this was ended amicably. We have another request to “not harass What Pumpkin”, as well as thanks for their support to fan projects. Homestrife was put on permanent hiatus due to both expense and the general desire to move into something of their own, which the team additionally recommends others do as well.

That said, here’s the comment itself:

The comment repeats that there are no hard feelings, and makes no mention of legal threats. The “no crowdfunds” policy also seems consistent with the previous case. And again, while I wouldn’t deal with things like this, I did not write Homestuck.

It bears repeating (something I seem to love to do): would they receive a Cease and Desist had they continued the project? Likely. It is still not what happened. A legal threat is like. An actual thing. The Sarah Z C&D was a legal threat, categorically, independently of one’s opinion of it being justified or not. This is not that. It wasn’t even hostile from any available evidence.

3. Read MSPA

The link provided by Gio in his blogpost doesn’t work. Throwing it on the Wayback Machine actually shows that has been the case since 2022, so why Gio would choose to link it to this instead of the Offline MSPA page confuses me. Luckily, as it was pointed out, we have an excerpt of what it says:

This is not only not a legal threat (no, not even sort of a legal threat), it is also straight up reiterating something that is said in the section above:

About the claim that there was an online version of this, I’m honestly a bit confused. The page seems to link to a short description that seems to imply so, but it is also worded in a confusing way that doesn’t make it very clear. I’d also point out that the Wayback Machine shows that direct contact with the creator was the main way of getting it since 2013.

4. The Overseer Project

As @maxnexus has pointed out, it is really hard to find any reliable sources on this, as it was a long time ago. Homestuck.net lists it as “revived and in active development by Jady Draconevix as of late 2023”, but I’m not sure how to verify that and have found the blurbs in the site to sometimes contain wrong information.

I also, perhaps controversially (tho I’d hope not), refuse to rely on r/homestuck comments from years ago as my only source to what might have happened. I’ll simply accept there is not enough info about this, and thus not really take a stance other than to point out it seems to be currently working fine, so. shrug

5. The Scalemate Sewing tutorial

So, I’ll try to keep this one short. After attempting to investigate more about the situation to very little success, I decided to simply reach out to metroidhat/Eyes5 on BlueSky. They seem to have become a rather successful prototyper of officially licensed plushies from various IPs on the Fangamer and Symbiote Studios stores. They are really good btw, I’ll sure be getting one once I have the means.

Our interaction was brief. I asked if she could clarify what happened all the way back in 2011, and while she seemingly confirmed it was exactly what it says on the tin (i.e., Hussie asking her to take the tutorial down), she also said she did not wish to bring it out back in the open, and would prefer to not talk to me any further. I respected her wishes and backed away, and I would ask that nobody try and contact her about this or any other Homestuck drama.

So yeah. Pretty scummy imo. The plushies weren’t being sold, nor was the tutorial monetized in any way, and it seemed to be advertised as a way for you to do your own Scalemate as opposed to how to manufacture them for sale. While it is true, as I’ve come to learn, that the taking down/DMCA’ing of pattern tutorials in the arts & crafts community is quite common, I’m pretty sure it falls under fair use, and even if it didn’t, again, I’m no copyright-lover. I have no defense, nor a desire to make one.

6. Vast Error

The DECONRECONTRUCTION (makers of Vast Error) Patreon page dates back to 2019. Wayback Machine archives show that they were selling merch with their trolls on it as far back as 2021. A quick look at their Tumblr FAQ does reveal there were some copyright concerns, which is why the Bandcamp albums are priced so high and direct people to download the linked free version in the description (this is, btw, still the case? Even tho they’re FRAF now? Not pointing it as a sign of one thing or the other, I just wonder what’s that about), but it also outright confirms:

There seems it was, however, some Redbubble copyright bullshit happening back in 2021 that hit VE and other fan artists, when VIZ finished their partnership with Redbubble and took down designs that were absolutely under fair use simply for being tagged “homestuck”. This sucks, but Redbubble being shit and VIZ neglecting their now revoked share of the Homestuck IP is nothing new.

7. Befriendus

This is the part where Gio cites the mysterious game he worked on:

While he doesn’t make it explicit, this does seem to imply it is Befriendus, as Blueberry said. He specifies he’s seen it happen to a FRAF project, and the Befriendus credits page cite him as Technical Advisor, as well as sharing the Programming and Animation duties with project director Alienoid. He also wrote a joke secret route in the game. His portfolio page still cites him as occupying those positions currently (tho that may simply not have been updated), as well as takes credit for the creation of the Fansim Engine, which I believe is a modification to the Ren’Py engine for making visual novels more resemble Pesterquest/Hiveswap.

I searched both the Befriendus and the directors’ social media for any indication the game ever had any intention to be released on Steam and found nothing. Gio is no longer in the Discord server, and tho I cannot confirm when he left, his last messages date all the way back to 2022. This may indicate that this refers to another project entirely, or that Gio’s account is wrong.

Regardless, this claim, as it is usual for Giovan, doesn’t really have a source. And I’m sorry, Gio already loves to bend the truth around the things he does cite as we saw above (and beyond), so. I’m not about to just take his word on it. I’m not claiming it is completely fabricated, simply that “this is just like the mafia: threatening to sue people” doesn’t fill me with confidence that the facts are being presented as they happened here.

8. Rachel Rocklin

So these are the two examples I talked about that weren’t cited but that I wanted to talk about, as they are the closest Gio ever gets to having a point.

So, in 2012, two persons in the Homestuck fandom were approached by one Rachel Rocklin, a representative of What Pumpkin, and also the writer for the "A Fun Day for Bec", "A Fun Day for GCat", "Party Crashers", and "A Fun Day for Jaspers" Paradox Space stories. One of these fans was producing some Nepeta hats they planned to sell at a convention, while the other was planning to sell some unspecified cosplay items.

Both posts are linked in the article itself and you can go read them if you want the details, but the bottomline is that those fans were categorically threatened and intimidated by Rocklin, who did represent Hussie. The latter example, the cosplay person, actually transcribes the emails they exchanged, where the manipulative tone is quite explicit. To add insult to injury, this post was made after what seems to be a wave of harassment from the fandom itself, with the OP seeming very distressed.

While details are missing and hard to research, this is just. Shitty. Scummy. Pretty cruel. And petty, most of all. I genuinely feel for those fans, I hope they are doing ok these days.

Conclusion

So. Let me start by saying that I resent the idea I ever claimed “fanworks were never in danger”. Me mentioning there were fanworks that were able to monetize themselves, specially in more recent years (tho still pre-HICU and pre-FRAF), is a very different thing.

Secondly. Look. It’s very obvious at this point Gio exaggerates. And misrepresents. And lies. And uses words he does not understand, or pretends not to. All of the cited projects were presented as examples of Homestuck viciously chasing creators out with their lawyers.

Pesterquest client was not legally threatened. They were asked to cancel their kickstarter, which was then immediately re-worked into a new project, and the original Pesterchum was still allowed to exist without any bother.

Homestrife reached out to WP for a partnership and were politely turned down. They were also informed WP does not allow for crowdfundings for Homestuck. The negotiation was amicable, and the team decided to move on to other projects.

ReadMSPA has always been very open about the fact what they were doing was technically illegal. They were still allowed to operate, and you can get the Offline MSPA archive thru the main method it always had: contacting its creator.

The Overseer Project still exists. I don’t see the problem here.

So all that is left is, indeed, three instances where, over a decade ago, Hussie/What Pumpkin were pretty shitty to fanworks. I again say, I have no intent of defending their measures. It was shit. Shame on them.

That said. Am I supposed to ignore the very observable improvement on fan-creator relations we’ve seen? Am I truly supposed to believe that HICU and FRAF are actually a farce to conceal Hussie’s evil manipulation becuz Gio is not part of it BY HIS OWN CHOICE?

Gio likes to paint himself as someone who has been blacklisted from Homestuck. That Hussie is personally seeking him around the fandom to make sure no project he is a part of can flourish. Yet, he treats HICU and FRAF members as either traitors or victims of manipulation. He has literally chosen to alienate himself over and over again.

He is throwing a tantrum about the Homestuck website being fixed. He is calling people working on it scabs. As much as the UHC has been the main way to access MPSA the past few years, Giovian is terrified that the UHC might become, one day, obsolete. Becuz that would leave him as someone who has done next to nothing for the fandom.

This is the last I will comment on this particular conversation. I think I have made my points very clear already, and feel I’ve done my due diligence on the research, despite its admitted gaps.

I will now sleep and dream about my wife. Goodnight FRAF forums.

Hey @margot, I appreciate the detailed post. I'm not sure if I have much to add right now (I'm gonna have to think about this stuff for a bit), but I do want to apologize, I didn't mean to imply that you were uncritically accepting Homestuck's "fanworks were never at threat" comment. It seems the official side's history with monetized fan content has been inconsistent. Certainly not wholly negative like Gio implies (and I definitely don't believe the "they're coming for your MPSFA account" vibe), but I still see a lot of places where I think they would have been well-served to ignore things entirely.

I think with all of this out in the open, I'd like to be able to retire from the thread myself. Believe it or not I don't much enjoy talking about this (despite how much of it I've done, yes), I just think it's important, and I think being able to discuss this in a frank manner helps us build a profile for what we're looking at here. So thanks.