I don't really get the general vitriol for Hussie

Hussie gets a lot of flak for being overly litigious over very petty matters. After all his claims about libel it doesn’t help that his kickstarter backer update ended up confirming one of the worst accusations, that he had been paying TOG to work on Act 7

I don't think that's it. Most of the controversies are to do with post-Kickstarter stuff that happened well past the point of Hussie having that kind of relationship with the fandom. Hussie was very present in like, newsposts when I started reading the comic, but not in any kind of reachable way. When people managed to get some questions answered (and got trolled in the process with stuff like fat Vriska jokes) it was always a big deal, not something casual. There are creators who have used internet fan spaces to be always-at-reach in that way, but I don't think I'd count Hussie among them.

That was meant @cubecrow. Sorry

Trying to use contractual sleight of hand to steal (the UHC reader) and prey on people he has power over kinda warrants at least a tiny bit of vitriol.
Or at the very least, it firmly puts someone outside of the "Good Person" camp.

cry about it lmfao

The part I don't get is why everyone calls them spiteful. I finished the comic for the first time not too long ago, and I kept waiting to see them hate Homestuck and the characters and the fans like everyone said they did. I waited through Act 6 and even through Meat (haven't read Candy). I never saw it happen. They made bold decisions with certain characters and left others' arcs unfinished, but writers do that all the time. Where was the hate? I genuinely can't see where it comes from.

And frankly, if you had to deal with hundreds of thousands of people declaring you a spiteful asshole every time you did something new with your own characters, thinking anything that wasn't written well was an intentional attempt to Destroy Homestuck and hurt them personally, and sending death threats to your friends, wouldn't you get a chip on your shoulder?

>doctorqoyote: "The part I don't get is why everyone calls them spiteful.[...]"

I think its something she tried to cultivate a little bit back when the comic was still running, when they interacted with people sending asks (or whatever they were called) to their forum spring. I thought their shtick was always pretty obviously a joke? but I don't know how other people react to things. Another thing that might be contributing is that a big part of psycholonials is about fandom and fan reaction and parasociality to a creator and their. uh. I was going to say art but its more like "Thing" in Z's case. Their whole deal. anyways Z has a really strained relationship to their clown cult in that they both idolize her and put eyes on their every move. I could see how someone who isnt looking too hard could see that and think "oh yeah hussie hates us". But i dunno. also its been a minute since ive read psycholonials so if ive biffed my reading and or missed something key lemme know. But yeah, I think i agree completely on the whole this sentiment:

>doctorqoyote: "[...] And frankly, if you had to deal with hundreds of thousands of people [...]"

like really, i think a lot of people forget sometimes that everyone is a human being and human beings react emotionally and aren't perfect logical robots or something, and then use any moment of failure as an excuse to turn into a parasocial piranha. Because like, I don't know hussie in real life or online, and her decisions do not impact my daily life. I am perfectly content to not have an opinion on her. I think a lot of people could stand to give less of a shit on some things.

in our case it's ironic hatred. we genuinely love the asstroll and so feel the need to give them shit. but that's just one system. other people and other systems have different opinions

it's different for everyone. personally i don't like how she treated her artists/programmers/musicians/fans over and over again behind closed doors

I've often seem people earnestly debating some ex cathedra remark of Hussie's which all but had a laugh track playing over it. Dude liked playing around back in the day - if you got an answer to your question, there was like a 66% chance it was either a joke or misdirection.

Spitefulness in the actual comic - A lot of people across all sorts of fandoms have a very strange idea about how authors think. In this view, if something happens in the story, that's something the author approves of. If anything bad happens to the fan's favourite character, that's because the author hates the character, and by extension, hates the fan too. It is VERY HARD to write an actual story with real drama in it that tiptoes around this belief. The writers of so many sequels have found this out to their cost. And Hussie.... typically responded to this kind of fan outrage by teasing them, leading to some of his most edgelordly pronouncements.

(Meanwhile in the fanfic world, you get other fans who love to pile unceasing torment upon their favourite characters....)

Expanding upon that, I think that's also why there's a lot of vitriol for the epilogues, they feel like they 'ruined' these characters people are so attached to in many ways just because they didn't stagnate, meanwhile you have people who try to make 'better' versions of the postcanon by removing all conflict and trying to still have a story. It's an interesting dynamic, particularly when you add onto that the fact that she's inserted themself into their works as a literal character (particularly in homestuck) it's just interesting. There's a metaphor about death of the author here somewhere in here too considering. Well. Yknow.

Hussie has been kind of a shithead over the years, which makes me personally not like 'em very much.

That said most of this vitriol started after they came out as genderqueer and began associating heavily with trans women. So if you don't understand the vitriol, you should try being more bigoted, that might help.

"That said most of this vitriol started after they came out as genderqueer and began associating heavily with trans women."

that really is the kicker of it. a lot of these people will swear up and town hussie isn't Really transfem or even that her transitioning at all is some kind of joke, but those of us who have been in the fandom for a long time can attest that no one treated her like this when they still *actually* saw her as a man.

also worth nothing none of the men on hiveswap, friendsim, or hs2 staff ever got even a fraction of the hate the transfem members did. transfem staff would get blamed for every gripe about the comic, even if they weren't even on the credits for that particular release. I even remember some of the *anonymous* contributors being witch hunted because fans *suspected* they were a known transfem fan's pen name.

it also speaks volumes how even "hussie defenders" will admit there's things worth criticising-- the racism, the slurs, whether or not something was handled well, whatever-- but somehow all of the mainstream complaints boil down to "i'm angry that vriska/june/eridan/sollux/whoever have been confirmed or implied to be transfeminine" or accusing transfem staff members of being predatory and dangerous over anything and everything including pure vibes.

i honestly can't in good faith even say it's personal, either. it goes further than hussie and further even than staff-- i'm sure i don't have to tell you this, but anyone with eyes has probably seen the BIG difference in how transfem fans are treated within the fandom compared to their non transfem peers. from condescension to hostility to unpersoning and pedojacketting.

and it's just nuts for a story that has so much transfeminine subtext and has resonated with thousands of trans women to have this big, loud circle of fans making the space unsafe for the very people who (given hussies status and the amount of transfems who have worked on the property) have contributed the most to its very existence.

sorry for the soapbox rant i've been holding this in for 5 god damn years and made an account here because this forum is the first time in that entire time i've felt like i could say it without being either ignored or crucified for it.

TLDR: if you have a virilant hatred of hussie, and of the women who have worked on homestuck over the years, and that hatred somehow doesn't extend to say, any of the men or cis people on staff, maybe ask yourself why that is.

Oh lor, so we're back to "Ethics in Video Game Journalism: Transphobia Edition." Figures, given the scraps of info I've been able to glean on the fate of the Homestuck 2 team.

(aaargh, think I may have abjectly pronounfailed in my previous post, and there's no way to correct it! Sorry about that.)

Is Hussie transfem? I thought they were just clowngender after Psycholonials. Any pronouns and such, specifically not nb. Has it happened since?

clowngender is a transfeminine position from the origin point of binary assigned male

transfem's more of a blanket term, useful to describe the experiences of stepping away from the idea of maleness towards any presentation seen as more feminine

like, just because she's a boy doesn't mean he's not a girl, and that has both subtle and overt implications for how they get treated

note that i don't believe calling hussie a boy or a girl is accurate in every context

y'know, just the funny ones

Ah, I'm a bit reassured then! It's just, while I'm not great with subtext, it suddenly occured to me that the people who still insist on he/him-ing Hussie are doing so very pointedly.

I think that's a little silly. Hussie hasn't said anything about avoiding he/him pronouns, and clowngender is specifically about "not caring" and it's not a part of the binary so why would it imply transfemninity? I'm nb, which means I don't want to be pigeonholed either way. I wouldn't want people to think me being nb implies I'm masc or fem. Now, obviously clowngender is a different thing but I don't think it cares to be seen that way either.

From what I've seen plenty of people around Hussie use he/him. If you go out of your way to decide anyone who does is trying to do a bigotry it will be a world full of targets because Hussie never actually made an argument against it. I doubt Hussie wants to be seen more of a woman than before. Clowngender seems to me to be more of an "I'm too enlightened to take gender seriously" position, with all the pros and cons implied by that. It's definitely a gender queer identity, but I don't think it's intended to be especially fem at all.

as another NB person, the gender binary is framed around masculinity and what does and does not qualify as 'masculine' or 'manly' due to patriarchal biases, therefore any movement away from the gender binary by an AMAB person is inherently transfeminine, even if that person doesn't specifically identify as 'feminine'. Becoming NB as an AMAB person means rejecting masculinity and embracing femininity, even if you aren't identifying as 'feminine'.