Title: Polygon's "Life after Homestuck" (Thread) Status: published Date: 2021-11-11 Category: fandom Tags: hiveswap, homestuck, psycholonials, tweets ad: it's just my polygon qrt thread
![Polygon: “I came to regard that fandom as being pretty close to a cult [...] And that’s about how I’ve come to regard all fandoms now.” - Andrew Hussie on life after Homestuck: https://t.co/CRcoFmfBb1 https://t.co/dGnqw3hMGg](https://twitter.com/Polygon/status/1458877215702233094) ![giovan_h: Okay, so I have a whole thing about Psycholonials planned, so I won't get super deep in the weeds on this, but let's skim this for the highlights. There's some interesting stuff here. https://t.co/FQM0zJcz1z](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458936715410907140)
![giovan_h: 1. Andrew Hussie personally identifies with Zhen in a lot of ways, especially with her loss of control over her movement and attempted personal rebranding. https://t.co/cqPUT8MDHl](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458938200337137673) ![giovan_h: 2. Andrew sees Psycholonials as an "anti-cult narrative", which... if you've read the story and the consequences the various cult leaders and members have for their actions, is odd. https://t.co/kRj0JmTZlI](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458938744300527618) ![giovan_h: 3. Further, "cult" is very much how he characterizes fandom as a whole. There's a lot here I actually agree with about toxic volatility, although I expect we're imaging two very different people. https://t.co/fyNOo1iYnR](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458939622537506818) ![giovan_h: 4. He has some interesting thoughts about wanting to not be deified or made into a blank-slate character for fans to project onto in a parasocial way. I'm intensely curious whether or not this is reflection he had after writing himself into Homestuck as a blank-slate god figure. https://t.co/AhQoG3YEkc](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458940419648237573) ![giovan_h: 5. Directly following him praising himself for stepping away from the spotlight and not becoming a cult leader, he laments how he somehow lost control over his brand. He doesn't say what he imagines the "preposterous hallucinatory projections" to be, though. https://t.co/ovXTvqRcEH](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458941324938334214) ![giovan_h: 6. This article also gets into the Hiveswap controversy and... this is where I have to get into how this article is bad. Let's start with this absurd paragraph that paints Sarah Z's video as hallucinatory rambling accusations without addressing its validity or even linking to it. https://t.co/nQIdvhBvys](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458942035596091395) ![giovan_h: It's not hard to see that the author (priv, so I won't @ them) isn't exactly a subject matter expert about that "controversy", as they're somehow under the impression that Hiveswap is finished. (Wonder if that has something to do with getting all your information from Andrew?) https://t.co/lfVMqZv5bf](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458942998146961410) ![giovan_h: Instead, the article resorts to classic both-sides-y handwringing about "public theater" and how Sarah and I ignited reddit with "speculation". This is not a good look when someone has serious, credible accusations against them!](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458943908252209157) ![giovan_h: (In fact, compulsive middle-of-the-road-ness is something Sarah herself was blasted for by some people when *her* first video came out! Then she did more research and refined her opinion based on the evidence, which was the correct thing to do)](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458943909434994691) ![giovan_h: This exhausts the meat of the article, aside from a bunch of weird false and misleading insinuations about fandom people, including me. https://t.co/9XZNjmTpGz](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458945569490194440) ![giovan_h: It's also incredible in its own right that an article about Andrew's intersection with fandom managed to get around addressing any of the actual controversies. Like, that took some real verbal athletics. Unless it was just omitted for ease, but would journalism do that?](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458945934927273989) ![giovan_h: "Fandom" here is treated as a great force of nature, some all-consuming external flood whose machinations are unknowable and that can only ever be fled from. Absolutely no attention is paid to how the creator's decisions form and curate their audience https://t.co/f1LE3wvZEI](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458947270917959681) ![giovan_h: It's true that the author of a work doesn't have an absolute enthralling power over their fans, but to pretend there is *no* connection and that both parties are helpless victims at each others' whims is obviously dishonest.](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458947668776996873) ![giovan_h: But this is done intentionally, because granting there's a dynamic there to interrogate at all invites public discussion about the actual actions taken by both audience and author, which is something Andrew has absolutely refused to engage with on any terms.](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458948206075813890)
## More ![giovan_h: i can’t believe polygon put out a hit piece on me](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1458931786222903301) ![GreatCheshire: @giovan_h Did they even interview you beforehand?](https://twitter.com/GreatCheshire/status/1458932336649809920) [Sarah's thread](https://twitter.com/marysuewriter/status/1458968563268526081?s=20) ![marysuewriter: (Also, to be clear, I have nothing against the author- it looks like this was mostly just intended to be a nice fluff piece on a creator and their work. I just take umbrage with how some of the real harm WP did was glossed over or justified and the language used in certain parts)](https://twitter.com/marysuewriter/status/1458968582100905984) ![FloppyAdult: It's interesting to see a dude who once thought Homestuck could be as big of a franchise as Star Wars frame himself as he does in this piece without any real pushback lmao https://t.co/ooMG5Q8DEv](https://twitter.com/FloppyAdult/status/1459210031237410816)