Read it Here:
https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/t/the-uhc-situation?page=1
The thing about Miles' post is that it reads like someone trying to get ahead of the backlash without actually touching the substance of what they're being accused of. It's full of tone management, soft disclaimers, and long digressions about who's ''really'' in control of what, but when you strip all that away, what hes actually doing is reframing the UHC mess into a story where Gio was just stubborn, paranoid, and trying to keep ''clout,'' while Andrew was benevolent and simply wanted to ''work with'' the project.
He keeps stressing ''I was just a liaison'' like that somehow absolves him of responsibility, but if you're the one carrying the terms of negotiation, interpreting those terms, and delivering them to the other party for over a year, you're not a bystander, you're an active participant. The way he positions himself as both central enough to know what happened and peripheral enough to be blameless is... convenient!
The repeated reassurance that “Homestuck isn't disappearing” is almost a strawman. Gio's blog was never built around the idea that Andrew was going to delete the comic. It was about sustained, bad faith pressure to bring the UHC under Andrew’s control, and the legal leverage used when that failed. Whether another fork exists is irrelevant to whether that pressure campaign happened, and Miles doesnt actually deny it happened, he just reframes it as normal licensing talks that Gio ''refused'' out of spite or ego.
Theres also this repeated insistence that HICU and FRAF ''aren’t Andrew's goons,'' which sidesteps the actual critique... That the licensing structure itself gives Andrew ultimate authority to overrule, revoke, or dictate terms, even if hes not directly managing day to day. You don't have to be on his payroll to be operating under his leverage. Saying ''Were not controlled'' without addressing the power imbalance is like saying ''My landlord doesnt control me'' while your housing still depends on their goodwill.
Miles' framing of Gio's refusal to sign the licence as ''stalling'' or ''not trying to make it work'' also glosses over the fact that the license terms, as described in Gio's post, would have handed over creative independence and allowed Andrew to seize control at any time. Refusing that isn't sabotage, it’s protecting autonomy. But in Miles' version, that becomes a selfish, destructive move instead of a valid boundary.
And there's a big emphasis on how much the teams have ''poured their hearts'' into making Homestuck fun, and how this whole thing is just a distraction from the good work they’re doing. Thats emotional framing, it turns criticism of a specific abuse of power into an attack on the fandoms joy itself, which makes it harder for people to actually engage with the underlying behaviour being described.
Ultimately the post feels less like a ''different side of the story'' and more like an attempt to reframe the same events in softer language, remove the context that makes the tactics look coercive, and centre the harm to Miles and his teams feelings over the harm done to the independence of the UHC... its damage control.
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re:pressure I read all of the chats and there's definitely a lot of hemming and hawing on gio's part over the course of 2 years especially since fraf was also in retrospect being developed in conjunction in that time. Have you ever worked on a group project with someone that you HAD to work with? If someone is actively stonewalling you what are you supposed to do at that point? Where was gio's lawyers responses? From the chats gio posted it looks like HSBC did change the NDA at their asking.
There's also A LOT of assumptions about what is going on with bambosh in the blog post as well and until we hear from them I wouldn't take it at face value. Gio readily posted all of the logs from him and miles. Where are all the logs from bambosh supporting all of the suppositions gio made on his behalf?
re: NDA Gio is someone who readily posts every possible chat log that they get their hands on, would you trust your interactions with someone like that to not misconstrue things the moment he could? I can see their perspective that to approach and work with someone like this, you need CLEAR rules and boundaries which I think ends up materializing as NDAs when you're working in an official capacity.
Re: vriskazone
If thats genuinely how you see it, fine but so far, the only pushback I’ve gotten has been about my tone, my wording, or the fact that I’m ''new and stirring up discourse,'' not on the actual points I've raised. If people want to disagree, that's fair, but I'm not going to keep engaging with replies that dodge the substance just to nitpick the messenger.
Goodnight and Read the lovely response to Miles' post from Crowbarscool:
https://www.fruityrumpus.com/forums/t/the-uhc-situation?page=2
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RE: chthonikix
You have literally been doing the exact same thing deltrius has been doing all day except for the "Hussie Side", although unlike him have been ignoring several points and making rude comments for no reason.
Please be serious right now, youre a hypocrite.
Re: chthonikix
Look, I haven't been ''doting'' on you or obsessing over this. I interacted with you maybe Twice. I literally asked you to provide proof about the transphobia claims because you kept dismissing Gio's blog and everything else by default and calling Gio transphobic without any provided evidence. The reason I called you ''Ragebait'' is because you weren't engaging with any points made, just stirring drama. That's it.
I don't care about You or this forum drama. I've barely been here, like, less than 1 hour tops just to post my thoughts regarding this situation and see reactions. So this whole ''13 hours'' thing? Yeah, no. That's not me. If you think making a couple with an 11 hours gap between them counts as ''being here,'' then maybe rethink that. I'm not obligated to interact with anyone here, nor do I owe you respect.
Have a nice day/night wherever you are, Goodnight
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have fun on your inquisition
"Without love, it cannot be seen."
You don't care about forum drama? It's literally the only thing you've posted about. You made multiple topics on the subject. You've replied to almost everyone with walls of text. I'm sorry but that's just kinda funny.
Anyway, maybe your rancid vibes and the air of bad faith you exude is why people don't want to engage with you.
>FRAF moderators and Gio have said repeatedly that the FRAF forum is a standalone project, funded by merch sales, with no direct financial pipeline from Andrew or What Pumpkin
Gio said the opposite of this about the Patreon, that Miles mentioned, unless a social media update has come around.
>the licensing structure itself gives Andrew ultimate authority to overrule, revoke, or dictate terms, even if hes not directly managing day to day.
This is exactly what makes statements saying that Hussie has not been exercising this in areas other than the original comic important, notably when in the second article he directly implies that this has been the case the entire time for the HICU, and heavily implies it to be the case with VE, both of which have multiple people refuting the claim.
I would agree a lot more with you about concern over license control existing in the first place if he didn't have the exact same control without a license. If he has the rights to Homestuck, he can take down anything using Homestuck or make it be adjusted with legal threats of taking it down. Yes, it would be an Extreme Dick Move, but is just as effective as license control, and other companies do the same shit constantly. (I DO NOT APPROVE OF DOING THIS, FOR THE RECORD) It seems like a lot of the legal fuckery aspect (Which is not just signing an NDA, it's the settlement as a whole) was very Gio-specific, due to previous issues*
>He keeps stressing ''I was just a liaison'' like that somehow absolves him of responsibility, but if you're the one carrying the terms of negotiation, interpreting those terms, and delivering them to the other party for over a year, you're not a bystander, you're an active participant.
Don't disagree too strongly. I think the important part here is that he was doing it specifically for this situation, and that his role at HICU as a whole isn't to be Hussie's mouthpiece, which was the implication of the article and a large basis for its claims about the shadow leadership.
As well, I think something you might be missing is that with one of the key accusations made across both articles being just blatantly wrong (Hussie's shadow leadership), it's hard for people to take almost anything else in there with trust.
*I, personally, know jackshit about the previous issues the teams have had with Gio outside of being vaguely told about the lawsuit when it happened by friends. I'm looking into it now out of curiosity since it seems to be one of the most important pieces to all of this. Forgive me, it has been quite a long time since I dramafrogged.
That's it, I'm gonna do what I should have done a long time ago.
I'm going to beat him to death with this hammer.
READ BLOODSTUCK https://archiveofourown.org/works/66056185/chapters/170221711
I agree with OP's general sentiment that any official response will need to explain the reasoning behind the strange behaviors raised in Gio's article in detail rather than the more broad and ambiguous response Miles has given. One example of such behavior that seems to get overlooked/forgotten in many of these threads is the initial NDA juggling that happened prior to the legal threats, prior to the complaints about Gio's blog history, prior to Bambosh leaving.
According to Gio, he was ready and willing to sign NDA after Bambosh had already done so, but Homestuck did not provide the NDA despite saying they would multiple times. Gio makes it seem as if Homestuck intentionally prolonged the process in order to try and get Bambosh to sign while circumventing Gio's involvement entirely. From the text logs Gio has shown, it seems that Homestuck understood that Bambosh and Gio must both sign the license in order to proceed but are trying to pin the blame on Gio for stalling progress.
What explanation could an official response give for this behavior other than what Gio has given? I never want to rule out extremely poor communication but it'd be a hard sell in this case, especially considering that professional lawyers are assumedly already involved in the process by this point. This is just one example of strange behavior, but it stands out to me as a more concrete example of hypocrisy as opposed to the alleged emotional abuse stuff. A lot of context is lost in the text logs and we see it through Gio's interpretive lense so I'd rather we focus less on the characterization of the communication and instead focus on the actual things being said and done.
Yeah I don't have the patience to follow the drama really, I'm just stepping in to say that I agree with you @deltritus
@chthonikix is really going hard with the ad hominem attack lol. How about you attack me instead? I agree with OP completely, but I joined way before them. Please now attack my argument.
I am inclined to believe the HICU and BC staffers when they say that Andrew Hussie has no involvement and isn't in charge of them, especially if all of them are saying it. Andrew Hussie has fucked up by bullying a smaller independent fan creator with legal action, but he is by no means this shadowy boogie man who is pulling all of the strings and manipulating everyone to do his bidding lol. Gio writes like none of the HICU staffers and the FRAF workers have a mind of their own or something, or that they're all just sooo enamored with Hussie that they'd do whatever he asks. That is just patently not true. We have a lot of testimony from the staffers themselves who work on this saying it ain't true, and the only person saying it IS true is a guy who already thinks the whole thing is bad anyway because it's associated with him.(And who has a checkered past of his own that everyone conveniently leaves out for some reason, but I guess checkered pasts only matter if it's Homestuck Official's lol)
And we still haven't gotten an official response from Homestuck at all. Mile's does not talk about the things you mentioned most likely because he probably can't, seeing as this is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and is also not the concern of anyone here besides Gio and the people at HICU, and also because he cared a lot about disproving what Gio said in regards to the whole "There is no HICU" thing.
Miles spoke about what I can only assume he can talk about, which is essentially what he knows. Discussing the legal side of things could get him into trouble, even if he's not actually Andrew Hussie's lawyer or his actual legal representative. Honestly, I think people making posts like this need to just wait instead of instantly jumping the gun and wanting all of the answers, because the truth is, you might not even get all of those answers.
People are too focused on finding a person to point the finger at and hate rather than looking at this situation practically and without blinders on. There's like 0 empathy happening at all in these posts lol, everyone is so unable to put themselves in the shoes of anyone else. Like, yes, it sucks ass to be Anne Rice'd, but it also kind of sucks to have someone publicly lie and call you and all your coworkers goons because you just happened to be mediating talks between him and your boss. It doubly sucks to just drag in some other person who has NOTHING to do with any of this, and imply you were bullied away from your project by the guy you hate with 0 proof.
And before you jump to your computer to type angrily again about why, why, why don't you have any answers, I can't tell you that and neither can anybody on these forums, because it ain't even your business. It's actually NONE of our business; we are just bystanders commenting on it. That's all any of US (useless FRAF and reddit chatters) can do, and I feel like a lot of y'all have just forgotten that lol.
If you're really that disgusted by everything that's happened to the point you want to do something, the only thing you can do is just stop interacting.
How come despite constantly parroting "how Hussie and the comic sucks" the fans are yet to accept the fact?
Lmao. Lol, even.
This is not the first instance of Hussie pulling off soemthing like this. Anyone remember the whole ordeal happening with HSD?
No one here is saying Hussie has never done anything wrong. People are saying that this situation requires more nuance than "One side good, one side bad".
Time to take off the rose-tinted glasses then, eh?
Most of it reads as denial rather than justified skepticism (it's fine to like something in spite of its creator's actions. Really).
i think most of all that none of this discourse so far is useful bc we do not have statements from all sides
we do not have the information and should wait until then (which will likely be soon) to form a proper opinion
i dont think Miles post is the abhorrent statement a group of people make it out to be
i also dont think that it should be gospel
and neither do i think that gio's blogpost is all that keen on the good faith he has said it to be
i dont want to say that all of it is untrue, i am certain that he believes he is in the right, and im also sure that there are valid concerns in there
however i also think that he blew the presentation bc it really does read like a callout post
and i am of the opinion that a callout post is never to be taken at face value and trusted fully
ive seen too many of those that were fully fabricated smear campaigns to do that
i will admit that the use of exclusively male language when referring to hussie before it was changed to neutral pronouns (on account of finding it icky when people use "any pronouns" to stick entirely to a cisgender reading of nonbinary or otherwise genderqueer people) furthers my aversion to believe everything gio has presented
but i also wont exclude his POV
i got into the fandom late (which tbh i am glad about) and i think there are a lot of preconceived notions and prejudice in pretty much all directions at play and that simply is not productive
Re: Lyricheartwell & Elegantspinstress little jabs at me
Good morning, I took some time to write out a couple replies.:P
First off, this isnt ''forum drama.'' That label is exactly how people downplay real issues so they dont have to engage with them. Ive been talking about the larger situation, licensing pressure, the way this all lines up with Hussie's past behavior, not petty interpersonal squabbles. Meanwhile, the person calling me out here is the one who’s been spreading the baseless ''transphobic Gio'' rumour with zero proof, a rumour Gio himself has denied on Twitter and which no one has backed up despite being asked directly. That's actual drama stirring.
The ''bad vibes'' and ''people dont want to engage with you'' thing is just more empty personal jabs. I havent been chasing people around or begging for interaction, the only ''engagement'' Ive sought was asking for evidence for a claim, which no one has provided. If siding with Gio and focusing on what we have gets written off as ''bad faith,'' maybe its because some people don’t want to think past the narrative theyve already decided on.
And as for ''just stop interacting'', Im not here campaigning or trying to ''do something,'' Im literally commentating on the situation. You don't have to agree with me, but trying to shut down conversation entirely just because you don't like the perspective says more about the weakness of your position than it does about mine.
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Re: Elegantspinstress
I don’t think anyone's seriously arguing that Andrew is some omnipotent puppet master micromanaging every move the HICU and FRAF make. That's a strawman. The issue isn't about day to day control, it's about structural leverage. If you hold the licence, you hold the ability to step in, revoke, or dictate terms whenever you want. That's the dynamic Gio was talking about, and Miles' post doesn't address that at all.
And yes, Gio has his own baggage, no one’s denying that, but the existence of his baggage doesn't magically erase the very real pattern of behavior from Andrew and WP, including past legal intimidation and abrupt project shutdowns. Both things can be true, Gio isn't perfect, and Andrew has a track record that makes people wary of handing over control.
As for ''Miles probably cant talk about it because of legal stuff,'' thats exactly why calling his post ''the other side of the story'' is misleading. If it cant address the key disagreements, licensing terms, legal pressure, past precedent, then its not actually giving the other side, it’s just a partial defense focused on reputation management.
Finally, the ''it's none of our business'' line doesn't hold water. If this is about the preservation and accessibility of a major fan resource that thousands of people use, it is the fandom's business. We might not get every answer, but asking questions and pointing out holes in the narrative is a valid response, especially when the ''wait and see'' approach historically just ends with no answers at all.
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Re: Jester
On the Patreon/FRAF thing: Gio's point wasn't ''Andrew gets nothing from this Patreon'' in an absolute sense, it was that FRAF as a forum is its own entity, not being directly bankrolled by Andrew or WP, and that the Patreon exists to support the projects tied to the license. The fact that merch revenue or Patreon money ultimately passes through licensing doesn’t make the forum itself a WP-run operation, and that distinction matters when people are implying it's all secretly Andrew's payroll.
On licensing control: yes, Andrew could technically use copyright law to do the same thing without a license, but a formal licensing arrangement streamlines that control. It creates a codified, pre agreed path for enforcement instead of requiring fresh legal threats each time, which reduces friction for the rights holder and makes it harder for the licensee to resist. It's not just about the possibility of overreach, its about removing barriers to it. That's why ''he hasn't done it yet'' isn't the reassurance some think it is.
Re: Miles being ''just a liaison'': exactly. No one's saying he's a permanent mouthpiece for HICU, but in this specific context, he wasn't neutral. He carried Andrew's terms for over a year and was a direct link in the chain of negotiation. That's not passive, even if he wasn't the decision maker, his involvement had weight and influence, and he chose to put himself forward now as a voice in this conversation.
As for the ''shadow leadership'' thing: I think this is where people are talking past each other. Gio's framing isn't ''Andrew is secretly micromanaging every HICU project,'' its ''the licensing structure gives him the power to step in at will,'' which is a structural fact whether or not he's exercised it in these specific cases. The disagreement is over how actively that power is being used, not whether it exists.
And if one part of an article doesn't land with someone, that's fair, but that doesn't automatically nullify every other claim in it, especially when those other claims are supported by documented patterns of behaviour outside of this one dispute. :)
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