Hostile takeover

In November 2023, Homestuck sent me and Bambosh (co-creators of the UHC) an offer to collaborate on The Unofficial Homestuck Collection. We initially engaged with this offer because it came with a commitment to respect the project’s independence and for the collaboration to be fully insulated from previous personal grievances.

But this pretense of constructive collaboration turned out to be false almost immediately. For the entire period of time since the first communication — now multiple years — Homestuck has used threats, lies, legal shakedowns, and other psychological pressure tactics to attempt to seize control of The Unofficial Homestuck Collection in a hostile takeover. There was never a legal basis for Homestuck to control The Unofficial collection, and so they have been attempting to use extra-legal tactics to do so.

While the archival impact is unfortunate, the main complaint here is not that we were entitled to distribute Homestuck and it’s wrong that we’ve had to stop. We have no particular legal right to reproduce or distribute the copyrighted Homestuck material, and so never assumed we would be able to continue doing it. The fact that executing the takedown demands we’ve received results in Homestuck being unreadable is a side effect of a deeper problem.

The problem is that the way Andrew acted is completely unacceptable. They demanded control over work that was not theirs, demanded we denounce their personal enemies, demanded we recant previous criticisms, and more. This was all done under a pretense of constructive collaboration with the community that turned out to be false from the beginning. Ultimately Andrew has demanded (in violation of their own assurances) that we denounce previous criticism of Homestuck management and give full managerial control over the independent Collection project over to Andrew and their chosen delegates. Under this extortion we would be required to participate in Andrew’s attempt to sweep their past professional misconduct under the rug, and we would remain subordinate to any other demands they made to use the project to attempt to control the fan community.

We have not allowed this hostile takeover to happen to the UHC. Since Andrew has fully committed to hostility towards us and fan projects in general and demanded things we cannot give them, I’m choosing to disengage rather than face a perpetual series of baseless legal attacks and other harassment.

Reluctance

My worst fear is that by explaining this I might appear at all eager to stir up trouble. I am not a rabble-rouser and I do not enjoy conflict. Even now I am focusing on capturing the important parts, which means leaving out “juicy gossip” which is exciting but not load-bearing. Unlike people in the “content industry”, for me controversy is not revenue — it actively costs me money when people read my work. I am exiting this affair with many fewer thousands of dollars and a fun new set of stress-related health issues. If I am a clout-chaser, I am the worst to ever do it.

The archive work, the collection, and everything else I’ve done surrounding Homestuck has all only been motivated by a care for the work and the people in its community. I would still care for Andrew too, had they not been the absolute worst. If I could snap my fingers and get whatever I wanted, I would not have another exciting and scandalous story to tell, I would be happily maintaining a resource that people have found valuable. I can imagine nothing I’d rather do.

But The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is a community project, and project maintainer is a leadership position that comes with responsibilities. When people are harmed they’re entitled to clear and honest communication about what happened. Which, in this case, was very bad. I also feel a responsibility in cases like this to be transparent because doing so may help protect the safety of others.

I am also going to have to describe conversations I had with people, which I am loathe to do. One of the things I pride myself in is my ability to keep confidence, and I’d never discuss private conversations unless there are extraordinary circumstances. This is an extraordinary circumstance: not only did the parties involved already repeatedly violate my trust in eager attempts to harm me, keeping this kind of information secret has been a tactic they abuse to protect themselves from accountability.

Being Cooperative to a Fault

I have done everything I can to avoid this contingency, to the point of folly.

I have been very careful to keep the door open to the original collaboration as promised or another amicable resolution. Homestuck rejected this continually and repeatedly. At no point did The Unofficial Homestuck Collection ask for any money or favors, or do anything other than offer to give them work for free. Any attempts to work constructively were violently shut down in favor of Andrew pursuing a personal vendetta and ultimately demanding absolute control of the project. Andrew could have also simply dropped the issue and returned to the status quo of the UHC operating unlicensed, but they refused to do this.

I maintained a frog-and-the-scorpion dynamic: I was the frog,² taking a gamble and giving the scorpion a ride it needs. Andrew’s the scorpion: if they could overcome their nature, they get nice things for free. If they couldn’t, they’d sink themselves. For me it was just a matter of swimming Andrew to the goal and hoping they wouldn’t sink everything. I wanted to make the most generous possible effort in order to see if Andrew can possibly be reasoned with. They cannot. As the frog to their scorpion I tanked seven or eight hits that each should have been fatal. Every time they made a request we gave them what they wanted, but they rarely did. It always came back to a lie or a threat. Every question, every concern, every suggestion from us was met with outright hostility. I cannot overstate how much Andrew has dug in their teeth and chose the path of most resistance, every time, even when it meant destroying themselves to do it.

Offensive behavior

Regardless of how it was done an assault on the collection is a tragic loss. But the way Andrew went about doing it has been vile.

I have been astonished at the extent Homestuck is willing to flagrantly lie, manipulate, extort, and otherwise try to use bullying and pressure tactics in order to gain power over others. I was already skeptical about Homestuck’s project management skills from my postmortems of other projects, but I had never gotten such a close look at how truly brazen and malicious it all is. The shamelessness of it all has been genuinely shocking.

The concerns I brought up about Hiveswap amounted to one blip of data. Since then, I’ve been privy to many, many more incidents that form a clear line. I have it on good authority that what I’m going to describe here isn’t an isolated incident; I’ve confirmed this has happened to other people, with other projects, with other sets of demands. The constant factor is the abuse of power. This isn’t just what they did, it’s what they’re like.

Andrew themself is a manipulative, and controlling: a matured and competent bully. The systems they build around themselves are designed to mask this behind plausible deniability. Because of Andrew/Homestuck’s almost mythological status, people are willing to extend them a lot of good faith, and they very aggressively exploit that. They are practiced at manipulation and use social and legal pressure in order to control others, especially people they view as problems.

Explicitly, the action taken against The Unofficial Homestuck Collection was not based on a good-faith attempt to protect Andrew’s rights, but was instead direct retaliation. This was the case not just with me but with Bambosh, someone Andrew had no complaint with until Bambosh didn’t yield to their demands. Even the slightest lack of deference was enough to make Andrew treat him like an enemy too. There is no material copyright complaint here, copyright is only a legal tool being weaponized. They made it clear throughout the process that they approve of the collection and want it to continue to exist. But they also wanted full control over it. Takedowns and similar demands were only ever used to apply pressure to force people to behave socially in the way Andrew demanded. This approach seems to have been their standard operating procedure for many years.

Andrew creates a coercive environment where they have a high degree of control over people. The various tactics Andrew employed with the UHC are all in a pursuit of the same common end we see in so much of their other behavior: getting people under their thumb. They manage power over people which they use to reward friends and punish enemies. I totally understand how they’ve gotten away with treating people like this. It’s practiced, effective manipulation. If I hadn’t already had it impressed on me that Andrew was a bad-faith actor I needed to be vigilant around, it’d probably have worked on me too.

If you are one of the people who have worked with Andrew in the past and this description does not ring true for you, I am happy for you. Unfortunately that does not change the fact that Andrew behaves this way with many others. If Andrew treated you decently, consider that if Andrew had treated others with the same decency there would be no problem, and we would all be much better off for it.

Abridged

This will necessarily be abridged. Unlike past reporting where I’ve had to draw conclusions from what little material was published, this has been a multiple-year ordeal and I have comprehensive documentation of every offense that took place along the way. If I covered every offense committed by Hussie/Homestuck as part of this process, that explanation would be longer than all the Hiveswap work put together. This is a summary, but trust me, there is no secret message buried in the cracks where they say it’s opposite day and they were actually cool and good the whole time.

One common motif I’ve had to edit around are platitudes that turn out to be demonstrably false a few moments later. There are a lot of them, and every time I include one I have to go back and note that it wasn’t true, or it sounds like I’m presenting it as fact. So it’s a lot of “that wasn’t true, that wasn’t true, that wasn’t true…” wasted on non load-bearing thoughts, and that just turns into speed bumps.

The Collection

If you’re not already familiar with The Unofficial Homestuck Collection, here’s the quick technical summary. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection (UHC) is an offline archive and reader for Homestuck and its related works. The collection was originally written by Bambosh approx. 2019-2020, and released 10/25/2020.

Homestuck referenced several websites that no longer exist and used deprecated technologies like Flash, and so it requires special restoration for people to read it. Special restoration is especially needed for people to read Homestuck now, as the homestuck.com website went offline entirely in early 2025.

I had actually been working on developing an equivalent program at the same time, so shortly after the release of the UHC I contacted Bambosh and offered to help polish and expand the collection. I’ve been working with him on the project ever since. Since 2021 I am formally a “co-creator” of the project, and the Application was owned and copyrighted jointly between us.

The collection is licensed under GPL 3.0 with a §7 attribution clause. This just means anyone can contribute to the project, or modify it, or create a new spin-off version, as long as their changes allow other people to continue doing that. Because of the creative material represented, the §7 clause also requires crediting information to be retained in any copies or spinoffs.

The UHC has been an extremely rewarding project for me because of how much the community has appreciated it. Any time I see people talking about starting or re-reading Homestuck, I always see someone in the comments point them to the UHC, which really is incredible. The little utilitarian value function in my head is so happy with the reception the project got, not just because it’s a fan-favorite, but because of how much the whole community has really appreciated it being out there.

Endorsement

Fortunately, when it came out, Andrew didn’t attack it. In fact we saw the opposite. There was a stir at launch about people involved with the official team praising and recommending the UHC, which culminated in Andrew Hussie themselves updating his only web presence at the time to point to it:

Andrew even came back to Twitter to agree that the UHC was “100% the best way to read Homestuck”:

So that’s where this story starts: the creator of the original work telling the public their version of their own work is broken and people should use the fan archive instead. We are not entitled to make reproductions of Homestuck but we have been given a blessing. By the time we get to the end of the story the official website will have been fully abandoned in favor of sending people to this collection. The one power Andrew has is to try to take down the asset pack, but in this case they actively like the collection and wants to see it remain up.

Good Faith

Given what we know about how Homestuck has historically acted, the safest thing to do at this point would’ve been to tell them to go pound sand. But, it was also possible that things were actually changing internally at Homestuck for the better, which would delight me.

Homestuck and The Unofficial Homestuck Collection were in a position to collaborate for mutual benefit. There is not a hierarchical relationship here. Homestuck was in a position to give the UHC a license to distribute the asset pack, promotion, and development support. The UHC was in the position to use UHC work in an official Homestuck website, give Homestuck a working archive of its inaccessible work, promote the Homestuck brand, and give Homestuck a license to use the UHC reader beyond the GPL. This was also a key opportunity for Homestuck to publicly legitimize the HICU by visibly working with its community and not against it.

There are three basic possible outcomes:

• Win/Win: Andrew has the HICU work collaboratively with the existing fan project. Maybe we put together licensing that lets us distribute the asset pack, or maybe we fold the thing into an official project with new licensing.⁴ There are many mutually-beneficial options here.
• Neutral: Homestuck doesn’t have to pursue any action here at all. They can continue to allow the collection to be distributed as it was, but retain the ability to take it down at any time if they want.
• Lose/Lose: Andrew demands an arrangement that’s not mutually beneficial. They think they can take control of the project, or compel me to give him a blank check, or whatever. I refuse, Andrew takes legal action, I take down the project. I put together a report on what happens (you are here), it’s revealed how bad Andrew was, the UHC is harder for anyone to use including Homestuck.

This process started before the HICU and before “free licenses” were being talked about, and so I was fully ready to license the UHC by paying money out-of-pocket. I would have (and, in fact did) make personal sacrifices to make this work.

But I’m not dumb. There’s a requirement on us to be responsible about what commitments we make.

The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is a community project. It’s not just my work, it’s the work of dozens of community members. As the maintainer of the project I’m responsible for doing right by the whole project and everyone who trusts me to maintain it, including both its contributors and its users.

Part of what it means to be a responsible and trustworthy member of the community is not being negligent. I can’t make agreements that put valuable resources like The Unofficial Homestuck Collection at risk just because it would be easier for me to trust someone, especially when their trustworthiness is already in question.

If Andrew made a bad deal with Viz that resulted in them not doing right by the website, that’s Andrew’s neglectful error. If I make a bad deal that lets Andrew not do right by the collection, that’s my neglectful error.

But what I have here is a very, very good deal for Andrew. It’s a free house for you, Jim! We’ve done this enormous amount of work for free, and we were happy to keep doing it in ways that more directly profited him. The only requirement we ever had is that we would be working with Homestuck, not for Homestuck. To unilaterally hand a community project over would be to treat its many collaborators inappropriately and ultimately compromise the work.

If Andrew doesn’t see this as primarily being about asserting dominance over an enemy, this should be easily navigable. If they can only play dominance games, it’ll collapse. I was always pushing to do the kind of collaboration they approached us to do, but I was never willing to cross the line into predicating any work on some public humiliation ritual.

If Andrew wants to help us they can. If they want us to give him our help they can have it for free. If they want to control us they can’t. It’s that simple.

⁵

It is a perfect instance of the dynamic of the scorpion and the frog. I’m the frog, taking a gamble and giving the scorpion a ride it needs. Andrew’s the scorpion: if they can overcome their nature, they get nice things for free. If they don’t, they sinks themselves. For me it was just a matter of swimming Andrew to the goal and hoping they wouldn’t sink everything.

At the time James Roach was the person most visibly handling the day-to-day handling of Homestuck operations, and from what I’d seen of him he seemed completely professional and reasonable. So if we would be working with him this could easily work out. My expectation from the beginning was that the more Andrew involved themselves the more they would shoot themselves (and therefore the project) in the foot. So the emphasis placed on Andrew’s minimal involvement made us think we could avoid this problem, and maybe someone else even understood it too. What they said throughout the introductory phase — and the fact that they were asking to work with me at all — indicated that was the case, although this would later turn out to be false.

So we took the responsible route: we decided to allow them to prove their goodwill by being as cooperative and friendly as possible without creating vulnerabilities that a bad actor could exploit. I was going to try to pursue a mutually-beneficial collaboration, but I was going to be sure that in doing so I wasn’t leaving myself open to being exploited. Good faith without being negligent. I still think this was the right approach, even though it came at significant personal expense.

Roles and Agents

Andrew forces people to be intentionally vague about an enormous amount of important information as a power play. That includes who all is acting in what exact role, requiring me to do additional untangling here to explain it.

Miles is here as a representative of Homestuck, Inc. and Andrew Hussie. Consistently, Miles acts as a direct proxy for Andrew’s intent (sometimes copy-pasting his actual messages), which is why I’m treating Andrew and Miles as a unit. Miles sometimes attempts to do some persuasion on Andrew’s behalf, but this is done as an empowered agent. There were a few personal conversations I had with Miles, but he went out of his way to clearly mark those as speaking on his own behalf, in contrast to his usual role as a direct proxy for Andrew.

June 25, 2024, miles

…

• miles 05:36 PM
  • i’ll let andrew know!
• GiovanH 06:04 PM
  • have you noticed you have the job of “priest”
• miles 06:09 PM
  • LMAO
  • low priest
  • ive never heard it put that way but i love the comparison
• GiovanH 06:10 PM
  • it seems like a good gig
• miles 06:10 PM
  • gives me an excuse to say “andrew works in mysterious ways”

As a member of the HICU Miles is straddled in what should be a tricky position with conflicts of interest, except that the labels are mostly fake. Andrew is the interest that counts and everything else is smoke and mirrors.

When they later try to make a distinction between Andrew and the HICU, Miles continues to represent Andrew while James Roach essentially represents himself in a management role at the HICU, although it turns out the structure of the HICU allows Andrew to overrule him on any point.

September 02, 2024

• GiovanH 12:41 AM
  • (@miles real quick before I get too deep into details here, you’re speaking on behalf of Andrew/Homestuck Inc here, correct?)
• miles 01:37 PM
  • yes im speaking on behalf of andrew

…

• JAMES 08:58 PM
  • also for the record, since it seems like thats kind of an important point: i dont represent andrew legally or even personally im just sort of here to kind of help out where i can as an interested party in the longevity and wellbeing of homestuck as a whole
• GiovanH 08:59 PM
  • (yeah, I’m conceptualizing james as being here for the hicu, basically)
• JAMES 08:59 PM
  • much more interested now that i’m sort of at the helm of some stuff, my name and reputation being very intimately tied to the property at this point

As a rule Andrew has refused to directly use his name for anything. To maintain plausible deniability, maybe. It’s a cheap stunt and I’m not letting you fall for it. When I talk about “Homestuck” as an actor, I’m talking about Andrew Hussie or a duely appointed representative. Andrew, ultimately, is responsible for these choices. If occasionally Miles or James or some other layer of Homestuck management was the one to type a message, it doesn’t matter. Andrew has final say, Andrew set up the management to work the way it does, and Andrew is ultimately responsible for events they cause.

I know the Joker’s Trick here is to set Miles up to take the entire fall when this goes south, but that’s a sad ploy and you’re not going to fall for it this time. No more of this plausible deniability human buffer crumple zone trickery. It’s just Andrew’s decisions, sometimes with a human shield if Andrew thinks it’ll benefit themself.

You Know Gio’s Here, Right?

So, there is an obvious elephant in the room, which is the fact that I’ve been a harsh critic of Andrew Hussie’s professional behavior before and they took it very poorly. Andrew specifically said that he’d never have anything to do with me and implied I was a stalker and sex pest. So this conversation happening at all was weird, and it was even weirder how this was insistently painted as a complete non-issue.

As for my side of things, I had thought this through before we replied to the original email. For the sake of the project, since there was the potential to do real good on the table, I had decided to take an attitude of “agree to disagree” and simply not make it an issue. I’m already working on The Unofficial Homestuck Collection without letting my personal frustrations impact the work. I could work with Andrew as long as they were being reasonable, and if they insisted on bringing up old hostilities in a way I couldn’t brush past, we would have to part ways on the project.

But Andrew rejecting my involvement — or even instigating hostilities over it — would deny them goodwill and access to The Unofficial Homestuck Collection. There was never any possibility where him refusing to work with me would end up with him getting control of the project and me leaving it. If they wanted to work, we could work, but they would have to at least tolerate working with the people in charge of the project, as is obviously the case for anyone wanting to collaborate with anyone.

I wasn’t expecting to be working much with Andrew, though. It seemed much more likely I would be working on projects through James Roach, or Miles, and that would have been my preference anyway. So it caught me off guard when Andrew wanted to communicate with both of us privately.

October 02, 2023

• miles 11:04 PM
  • the way we tend to do things in terms of folks the HICU is collaborating with is as follows
  • once (or if) you guys do feel comfortable signing the NDA, andrew and i are going to chat with each of you one on one. one at a time
  • think of it as like. idk i guess an interview?
  • not that we need your Credentials because your work speaks for itself, its just that andrew likes to have a chat with folks as well in a semi-formal setting so that he can be on top of everyone we collab with
  • again for reasons of, yknow, privacy comfort etc
  • so when the time comes, we’re gonna basically wait for you to sign the NDA (we’ll get another draft to you before then and ofc no need to sign until we’ve agreed on the form that’s gonna take), then we’re going to chat with bambosh, then we’re gonna chat with gio, and then probably after that we’re all gonna chat as a foursome
• Bambosh 11:07 PM
  • That sounds agreeable to me
• miles 11:07 PM
  • cool!
• GiovanH 11:08 PM
  • that seems like a terrible idea
• Bambosh 11:08 PM
  • :O
• miles 11:08 PM
  • ?
• GiovanH 11:08 PM
  • that will be the most uncomfortable conversation I’ve ever had in my life
• miles 11:09 PM
  • really?
• GiovanH 11:09 PM
  • but okay? if he wants???
• miles 11:10 PM
  • can i ask why itd be uncomfortable?
• GiovanH 11:11 PM
  • the last thing andrew said about me is “I don’t trust him, I will never speak to him, and probably no one from WP ever will either.”
  • so I was just planning on granting him blanket permission to skip that part if he wanted

…

• GiovanH 11:14 PM
  • if he wants to, I’ll do it.
  • i’m just anticipating that being extra interesting
• miles 11:15 PM
  • i mean speaking frankly i cant imagine andrew has any desire to get “interesting” about anything LOL, we just wanna chat with folks and work with you guys via the protocols we have in place to make sure the team is comfortable

…

• miles 11:16 PM
  • yeah no worries, again we’re here chatting now because i wanna get the ball rolling on how you guys are feeling
  • but yeah at that point its gonna be the sign -> chat pipeline, and beyond that theres nothing more we really wanna do

…

• GiovanH 11:18 PM
  • feelings-wise, for me having criticized someone does not mean I’m unwilling to work with them. (obviously)
• miles 11:20 PM
  • so for whatever its worth, andrew knew you were a big contributor on this before we reached out, its not even close to a dealbreaker
• GiovanH 11:20 PM
  • by this point I figured he must have
• miles 11:21 PM
  • yeah! like
  • i guess what im getting at here is that we wanna work with you, we like what you guys are doing, and we definitely dont have any intention of getting weird about this lol

Takeaways:

• Miles emphasizes yet again that my involvement is a non-issue, to the point of acting confused by my hesitancy
• They know really thoroughly that I’m a major contributor to the project and that wasn’t ever going to be a dealbreaker
• Yet more promises that nothing should be unpleasant or hostile, they triple-promise not to be weird about it

This absolute commitment that there would be no discrimination against me over past disputed complaints is the only reason either of us were willing to engage in any of this in the first place. It was the premise of everything that came after. Every time you see them contradict this basis represents an absolute forfeit of credibility and integrity from them. It is the whole game lost each time. I need you to really, really commit this to memory. Put an extra copy up next the article. This foundation is going to slip through your fingers so fast it’ll seem bizarre it was ever there.

Andrew agreeing to work with me without making an incident of it was the mature thing to do, but still unexpected. I had made the decision that the responsible way to handle a working relationship with Homestuck would to be to make it a point not to try to abuse my position to try to rehash old conflicts or “balance the books”, and instead just work on individual projects where we could find mutually-beneficial arrangements. Homestuck was promising it would do the same. Trucies.

Within those extremely minimal playing rules, I was completely willing to put bad blood behind us and work constructively. Maybe this was naiveté, but I prefer to think of it as insisting on acting in responsible good faith. If something went wrong, it was going to be because someone attacked me, not because I refused.

Homestuck Independent Creative Union

Miles had been very secretive about what actual plans there were, saying we needed to be under NDA first. At a high level that makes sense, so we talked about the structure of this new HICU while we reviewed the waiver, which includes an incredibly broad non-disclosure agreement.

I spend a lot of time emphasizing how important it is that this doesn’t hijack any existing work (because the language of the waiver indicates that it will), and Miles goes out of his way to reassure us that it won’t be.

October 02, 2023, Bambosh, miles

…

• miles 10:13 PM
  • can you tell me what kind of conflicts you guys are concerned about?
  • i wanna make sure i can assuage your worries as best i can but itll help me to understand what your concerns are

…

• GiovanH 10:16 PM
  • in general, making sure the UHC stays an independent project, and not assigning Homestuck/Viz/whoever rights over the software/editorial decisions/etc
• miles 10:16 PM
  • okay cool cool
  • anything else jump out at you guys?
• GiovanH 10:17 PM
  • Big picture, I’m okay with an NDA to keep any New Unreleased Happenings secret
• miles 10:17 PM
  • alrighty

Despite all this lip service, the first draft of the “Homestuck Community Participation and Release Agreement” itself contained an attempt to strip signatories of creative independence. The original waiver had an intellectual property provision that forces “all creative concepts, stories, characters, settings, dialogue, project ideas, plans, and all other information related to the Homestuck intellectual property” to be bound by the licensing contract between the HICU and Homestuck, Inc., which is a separate, secret document we were not allowed to see until after committing to it. This would turn any signatory into a “poison contributor” who couldn’t work on any independent fanwork.

• GiovanH 10:27 PM

  • can you give me an example of a scenario you’re worried about?

  • ok for example

  • You understand and agree that all creative concepts, stories, characters, settings, dialogue, project ideas, plans, and all other information related to the Homestuck intellectual property discussed by Group are bound by the conditions described in the licensing agreement between the Union and Homestuck, Inc. All information is deemed Confidential Information.

  • this seems overbroad, and would (accidently?) capture all “information related to the Homestuck intellectual property” that we discuss with each other, including UHC work, as the IP of Homestuck Inc
  • as well as fanwork and other stuff
  • which I don’t think is anyone’s intent, but that’s a kill-switch I don’t want to make

…

• miles 10:36 PM
  • i can go ahead and have a look at that line and get back to you about maybe striking it, because i totally see your concern, even though i can straight up promise you man to man (whatever thats worth) that we have no intention of operating that way
  • because again, we’d love to work with you guys if that’s in the cards for us
• Bambosh 10:39 PM
  • That would be excellent if you can make it happen
• miles 10:39 PM
  • i can totally talk to andrew about it

At our request, we had this line struck from the participation waiver, since the purpose of the NDA in the first place was to allow us to discuss project plans together, and once a basic goal was established a sensible license could be drawn up around that. Even though what was struck was the absurd “blank check” clause — where they commit you to follow a separate document you’re not allowed to read first — they still grumbled about making this exception.

There’s a lot more wrong here, but a full analysis of the release document is outside the scope of this story.

We also get an early description of the union here which matches the description the HICU would later give itself:

October 02, 2023, Bambosh, miles

• GiovanH 10:22 PM
  • also, is the Union the same as the Group, or is there a managment layer? I wasn’t clear on that from the doc
• miles 10:22 PM
  • so to get colloquial about it, the Union is basically like
  • the collective of Homestuck Contributors

…

• miles 10:22 PM
  • if it helps, think of the HICU as an actual union.

Beyond Canon, About About the Homestuck Independent Creative Union
The Homestuck Independent Creative Union (HICU) is a union of creative contributors which was established to consolidate members of future Homestuck Projects, beginning with the launch of Homestuck: Beyond Canon.
The HICU is a totally independent entity from Andrew, What Pumpkin, VIZ Media, or any other corporate interest. Andrew has given the union a free license, so they may legally work within the full Homestuck universe and monetize their efforts to support the members. The union is both creatively and financially independent, and no outside individuals or companies are receiving any royalties or payments. Only the members benefit, and income will be distributed among members as equitably as possible.
Andrew is not creatively involved with these projects in any direct way, but remains available to the union for consultation at their request.

First, they’re calling themselves a union of creatives. Although not a formal labor union, they’re committing to act like a labor union: “an organization of workers formed for the purpose of serving the members’ interests with respect to wages and working conditions.” The HICU is bound to represent the interests of its members, not Homestuck’s. They immediately establish that they’re entirely separate and distinct from any existing structures — including Andrew Hussie. Separate entities, separate responsibilities, separate interests. We’re supposed to treat the union like a union.

If you’re paying close attention, you’ll notice another problem here: why is Andrew involved in Union business? If the Union is really independent of Homestuck and Andrew, why is Andrew intimately involved in the basic process of onboarding people to the union? That’s an immediate conflict of interest.

In fact, why is Andrew involved in any business related to Homestuck at all? What Pumpkin announced not only that Andrew left What Pumpkin in 2020, but that they chose to “fully discontinue their creative involvement in any future Homestuck projects”.

It will turn out later that all these labels — “What Pumpkin”, “Homestuck, Inc.”, “The Silence Mill”, “the Homestuck Independent Creative Union” — they’re all a shell game. The HICU isn’t at all what it says it is; Miles misrepresenting the union from day one, and the union itself continued lying about their independence on their webpage for years. But that’s another story.

Commentary contribution

Part of the sell here is Homestuck making the pitch that working with them would allow us to do genuinely useful things. What kinds of things was Homestuck looking to contribute, besides official support? I was always keeping in mind the possibility of using the UHC, or a version of the UHC, to replace or supplement the Homestuck website.

But one of the first things Homestuck pitched to entice us was this: it turns out the rest of the Homestuck commentary is finished, and it’s just been locked in a vault. This is the commentary they already committed to releasing as part of the book collection they and Viz announced and failed to complete.

October 02, 2023, Bambosh, miles

…

• miles 10:03 PM
  • but as regards the collection, one of the things i think is okay to let you guys know is that andrew thinks itd be cool to get the last of his author’s commentary in the collection
  • which would actually be Exclusive to the collection!
• GiovanH 10:04 PM
  • Oh, that would be very cool. I wasn’t sure if that had been written, actually
• miles 10:04 PM
  • heh they totally have
  • and because viz isn’t really doing the books anymore, the collection seems like it might be the best of all possible homes for them
  • but there are some other ideas andrew is playing with that could crystallize as we work together with you guys and the Collection

That’s the kind of juice I would never share under any reasonable condition (even though it was never under an NDA.) But Homestuck has crossed too many lines, and that context is an important part of the story, so there’s the reveal. The work is all done, Andrew’s just been keeping it locked away. Possibly just as a card they was holding onto to someday dangle as raw bait?

Beyond Canon

Just a few days after this (while Andrew was still on vacation), the Beyond Canon reboot announcement and new site went live.

Miles himself would shortly after be confirmed to be a writer on HS:BC himself:

Meet the Team — Posted on 25 October 2023 by James What can I say about Miles? Miles has known Andrew and I for years, and has such a natural and charismatic charm to him. I knew him largely as a comedy writer before this but seeing him pour himself into worldbuilding and plot mapping has really inspired me. Miles brings an important element to the team, in that he’s kind of a bro. The kind of guy that could probably best some kind of beast in singular combat. His favorite guys are Equius and Dirk. You really need that kind of energy sometimes. Miles’s writing is so full of character and charm. I’m excited for you all to see what he has to offer. I personally think this project could not exist without him.

NDA Deadlock

This is when we get the first major stall to the project, and it’s caused by Miles and Andrew trying to pull another fast one with licensing.

Now that Andrew has Bambosh behind closed doors, instead of moving on to the next step of giving me an NDA to sign and onboarding me, they cut me off entirely and start putting pressure on Bambosh to write them a blank check. At this point, the NDA makes it impossible for us to coordinate and communicate, so it serves here to isolate and corner a victim who is unable to communicate the aggression to the outside world. I keep asking to also be allowed to sign the same NDA, but am always rebuffed.

We already knew the NDA clause in the waiver was extremely broad, but we didn’t know if the intent was to protect peoples’ privacy as we were told, or if the plan was to weaponize it. We now know the purpose of the NDA was to be weaponized because that’s how Andrew immediately used it.

With this trap set up, Andrew tries to get Bambosh to sign more paperwork and commit the project to a new, secret set of terms under a new previously-undiscussed license. This is an intentional violation of the previously proposed schedule — Bambosh is only supposed to be doing a nominal interview here, not getting pressured to agree to a new set of terms. They’re demanding a blank check before we even sit down to talk ideas. Basic divide-and-conquer, executed by someone whose goal turns out to be to conquer.

November 07, 2023

• GiovanH 04:47 PM
  • speaking of which, any paperwork updates for me yet?
  • i know you were doing it staggered
• miles 04:48 PM
  • yeah i think we may or may not be doing one more meeting with bambosh, who has some paperwork of his own to look through, before we move forward

…

• GiovanH 04:50 PM
  • If that’s uhc-related paperwork that’s usually something I deal with and/or w/ bambosh, fyi
• Bambosh 04:51 PM
  • Yeah, that’s kinda where the discussions gonna go when I get back from lawyer stuff
• GiovanH 04:51 PM
  • <- fake internet lawyer
• Bambosh 04:52 PM
  • Like, even if the paperwork is good I can’t sign anything if I can’t even talk it over with this guy here
• GiovanH 04:52 PM
  • heyo
  • but yes definitely talk with real lawyers too
• miles 04:53 PM
  • yeah we wanted to give you a chance to go to like, an actual legal expert, who will be able to assure you that this license is legit LOL

The manipulation and pressuring comes in a number of forms: social pressures, pointing out the possibility of Viz Media going after unlicensed work, and ultimately making his own direct legal threats.

The line became that Bambosh had to sign a license before anything could continue. This is obviously untrue, not only because they just finished saying the opposite thing, but because the licensing details are heavily dependent on what the project is, which was yet to even be discussed. This time is not being used to try to continue project discussions without me or otherwise nudge me out of the project, Andrew is just blatantly trying to seize power via contract, and I’m being kept out to keep up the pressure and deny Bambosh any defense.

It seems like Andrew was under the impression they could exploit Bambosh as a single point of failure who could be pressured into giving up the project. But that didn’t work, and not just because Bambosh isn’t a fool, but because that’s simply not how the project is structured. Since we’re co-owners, this can’t happen. Neither of us can make any major decisions about the project without consulting with each other. Bambosh doesn’t want to and doesn’t have the authority to, and we designed it that way on purpose. Bambosh cannot legally sign anything without showing the paperwork to me, which Andrew insists the NDA prevents him from doing. There is no play here; neither of us could consent to any policy changes without the consent of the other, and a unilateral change in ownership was literally impossible.

So for an extended period of time Andrew and Miles don’t allow me to review the mysterious new documents Andrew is demanding Bambosh sign, and Bambosh can’t sign them until I can review them. All progress is stonewalled by Hussie. By breaking procedure and trying to bully his way into power, Andrew has deadlocked the project.

Baring Fangs

During this wheel-spinning, Homestuck ramps up the pressure.

November 15, 2023

…

• miles 06:16 PM
  • HEY. sorry im finishing up some work shit and i just today got back from vacation so ive been catching up
  • basically insofar as working with you guys on this goes, nothing has changed. we’re still amenable to your involvement on this, gio, and although i’ve seen the tone get sort of Legalesey i wanna emphasize that we’d still vastly prefer working with the UHC to any sort of takedown bullshit
  • that’s not at all what we want to happen

This is a huge shift and represents Homestuck completely backtracking on every assurance they’ve given up to this point. Suddenly my involvement is something they’re still “amenable” to, not something taken as a given. But most importantly Homestuck has started brandishing legal threats as a weapon. They have gone directly from “it’s your baby, we don’t wanna do anything you arent comfortable with” to “you can either do work under whatever conditions we dictate or we’ll personally attack you.” From “I’d never hurt you” to “don’t make me hurt you.” This is a clear threat: this is no longer about forging a collaborative relationship, they’ve started waving around a loaded gun.

Note the vacillation here. They loved us before, maybe if we’d just do what they say now we’ll stay loved and they’ll stop hitting us.

James and Beyond Canon Teasers – Jan-Feb 2023

James Roach was ostensibly leading the HICU, and his name was on the paperwork, but we still hadn’t talked about the UHC project. But apparently he was still optimistic about the project, judging by him teasing it in some newsposts:

Beyond Canon Newspost, posted on 1 January 2024 by James …
Speaking of updates on things… some of you sleuths may have noticed some changes. I’d like to go into a little more detail about them to the extent that I am able. I also wanted to do this in an official newspost, and not on socials etc, so that there is no question about it.

The contract with VIZ media has been restructured. What does this mean? Well, let’s start a little further back. We have gotten a lot of questions about Andrew’s involvement with HS:BC and Homestuck as a whole. I mentioned before that Andrew approached me to finish HS:BC. As many of you know a few years ago Andrew stepped back from having a creative role. This has allowed him to focus on oversight, and some behind-the-scenes stuff. A large part of that was regaining a sort of legal control of the brand as a whole.

So who “Owns Homestuck?” Well Andrew still does. Who has the publishing rights? We’re working on that! The HICU has a license to do what we want with the property, which is what has allowed us to do some of the more creative things we are trying to do. Is the Website going to be fixed? They’re working on that! I have very little to do with that, personally, but once there is something solid to announce there and the concerned parties are comfortable with it I’ll let you know. What does this mean for the commentaries? Behind the scenes, some ideas about how to handle the issues with the way Homestuck is going to be published are being discussed. Some of these ideas may include a new way to release the future book commentary in absence of the books themselves. Wow!
…

Hey, that’s us! Is the goal to use the Collection to fix up the Homestuck website? Who knows, maybe. James refers here to the Viz changes that allowed Andrew to involve themself in this project. And hey, there’s the commentary mentioned again.

Beyond Canon Newspost, posted on 2 February 2024 by James Hi, James Here. Another Month, Another Post. That is the way of the world sometimes. Not much to report this month, I don’t think? Andrew offered some new HICU licenses, but the one I was most excited to announce is still… being worked on? Some sort of legal situation being hammered out. Booooooooring. I used 8 o’s there for fun. I hope you liked it.
…

Always nice to be appreciated.

I hadn’t yet spoken to James about any of this before, which always struck me as odd. He was the one leading the HICU team, he was the one responsible for the project as a whole, his signature was on all the paperwork.

February 06, 2024, James

• James 10:52 PM
  • hows the stuff with the uhhh
  • collection going?
  • i was looking forward to tellin the community about that i think a lot of people will be real excited
• GiovanH 10:53 PM
  • I saw your newspost
• James 10:53 PM
  • i dont really like, ask about how things are going if they dont directly involve me LMAO
• GiovanH 10:53 PM
  • yeah
  • I’m assuming you’re not familiar with the details then but right now from what I’ve been told things are locked up with lawyers for some reason
• James 10:54 PM
  • aint that just the way
  • well, itll sort itself out

…

• GiovanH 10:55 PM
  • my understanding is there’s not much that can happen until I sign an NDA (which makes total sense) but they haven’t sent me one yet, so we’re stuck at the moment

James had some high-level knowledge that things were in talks but I don’t get the sense that he knew any the details or how things had turned sour. Of everyone involved, it seems like he should be the most motivated to make sure this was working well.

Andrew chases off Bambosh – May-June 2024

Eventually Andrew’s unfulfillable demands on Bambosh pass the breaking point as Andrew just directly starts threatening imminent legal action.

May 07, 2024, Bambosh, miles

• miles 08:10 PM
  • hey guys, not super happy i have to reach out like this but its looking like this is where this needs to go. i wanna preface this by saying that im not really interested in opening up a discussion tonight, so id like you to read this message and just think on what it is we have to say before you guys respond. we can talk more in the coming days if you want, but everything that needs to be said vis-a-vis our point of view is going to be said now.
  • andrew, HS legal counsel, and i all feel that your lawyer is essentially just stalling around and we’ve been making absolutely no meaningful progress, which honestly feels like a tactic you guys are playing at while you try to work something else out. communication is way, way too sparse to get anything productive done, we haven’t heard anything at all from your lawyer in three weeks (all while andrew’s lawyer has been pinging him weekly and getting ghosted more often than not throughout this entire process) and we’re getting fed up with it.
  • at this point we’re interested in only 3 courses of action from you which are essentially non-negotiable and need to happen within about a week:
    1: you get your lawyer to get back in touch with us seriously in a way that actually leads to anything getting done.
    2: you sign the current version of the license as drawn up and presented by andrew’s lawyer.
    3: if you don’t do either of the above, we start moving to issue a strike against the UHC, take it down, and replace it with a similar tool of our own design.
  • we’d rather things didn’t have to go the option 3 route at all, but we feel that you guys have made a process that should honestly have been fairly simple an extremely drawn out affair, eating up over half a year of time we could have been collaborating productively. all things considered, the offers we already made in terms of keeping you guys on the project, onboarding you to work with HS and the HICU, licensing you, and PAYING you have been extremely, extremely generous considering you’ve been publishing a giant hoard of almost the entirety of andrew’s body of work with no permission whatsoever, to say nothing of gio’s harmful behavior towards the hiveswap team that andrew was nonetheless fully willing to look past. we all sort of danced around this as you two were consistently trying to pull gio into talks before we were comfortable, but it’s something we all knew, and to be clear it is something we are going to expect gio to own up to and make amends on if we’re going to continue working together.
  • honestly speaking, andrew’s lawyers actually advised us before we even reached out to you initially to not even bother with any of this, copyright strike it, and be done with it. instead, andrew wanted, and still wants, to reach out and do something with you guys.
  • considering all of the above, however, and the way all our offers were essentially met with stalling and a lack of willingness to commit or to even have your lawyer communicate with ours in a timely manner, this is essentially the last chance we are willing to give you guys. in the event that you two decide not to play ball here, it’s looking highly likely that we’re just going to have to make moves to quickly copyright strike the UHC, remove it, and replace it with a tool of our own design. it’ll be inconvenient to have to do this, and the fans are going to be upset because the tool is great, but we can whip up a new one pretty easily if we need to.
  • we would still rather just work with you and the tool that already exists. that said, we are at the point where we feel like you are either not taking this seriously, or angling to leverage this in a way that we find unacceptable. we have given you two ample time, opportunity, and consideration, and we feel like you’ve returned that courtesy with a lack of effort to our faces and what we are starting to assume, as mentioned previously, is some attempt to spin this in a way that is advantageous for you.
  • i need to be clear here: there is no such spin. i mentioned before that if we have to take this down, we know that fans of homestuck and of your tool are going to be upset, but if that has to come to pass, we aren’t going to be shy about explaining to the fandom at large why it is we weren’t able to work together, and we are going to work as quickly as we can to provide them with a replacement ourselves. the long and short of it is that we reached out in good faith to you guys, offered you a license, and you sat on it for eight months.
  • we aren’t interested in dragging out this preliminary phase any longer. read this again, think on it, and please do get back to us soon.

The accusations here are all nonsense, of course. It’s a description of what reality would have to be for them to be in the right, presented as if the fiction were a given. There is still no “our” lawyer; Bambosh’s personal legal representation explained to them he wasn’t able to unilaterally sign a document in secret and Andrew simply refused to hear it. I was certainly not privy of any discussion about any money flowing any direction except from us to Andrew. It’s not true that they ever offered “us” anything. And once again, Andrew is trying to “good cop, bad cop” themself by claiming they’re against all the legal proceedings they’ve started and that they aren’t making the threats they’re making. Saying at the end that they’re acting in “good faith” is demonstrably false.

They keep trying to complain about delays even though the project has been held up by them at every stage. We didn’t need an NDA to talk about the project! There was clearly no NDA required for The Unofficial Homestuck Collection to operate well and collaborate with other talent, as evidenced by the fact that we’d already been doing it successfully for years. Almost every delay has been (and will be) from something expensive they tried to impose.

Most importantly, the reason no progress has been made and license has been signed is neither Bambosh or I can unilaterally sign a license without the other, something we’ve repeatedly explained and Miles had acknowledged. Communication is sparse because they forced it to be! In the same breath he complains about insufficient communication Miles manages to also complain about our making them “uncomfortable” by trying to talk, presenting communicating as an offense. We have only ever tried to work toward cooperation while they tried to put leverage on us, and yet Homestuck tries to spin it as us leveraging them.

Importantly, we get legal action followed by replacing it “with a similar tool of our own design” presented, explicitly, as a threat. As presented, the primary purpose of a future “official collection” without our involvement would be a punishment to spite the UHC, not to serve as a real tool.

And on top of all that Homestuck is trying to redefine its relationship with me yet again. Now they were never willing to work together unless I made “amends” for some ambiguous harmful behavior no one has ever been able to explain.

I wouldn’t bother to let myself slow down to refute obvious falsehoods except that it’s important to show how Miles and Andrew slide seamlessly into threats and ultimatums. Nothing he’s saying is true and he’s just forcing his way through it. There is a complete disinterest in integrity; it’s dismissively thrown to the side in order to pursue threats and bully tactics.

The net result of all this was that Andrew Hussie’s behavior was so egregiously bad it chased Bambosh off his own project. Andrew isolated Bambosh and subjected him to intense bullying and pressure tactics, and it was disturbing to see even from the outside. So, for legal purposes, Bambosh disconnected himself from the UHC project on June 18, just before Andrew could Actually Sue Him. This left me fully responsible to handle things from there.

June 18, 2024

• Bambosh
  • Okay, here’s my response:
  • I developed this project out of a love for Homestuck. I put everything I had into it, to create the version of Homestuck I wanted to exist. This project was for me above anyone else, and the fact that it resonated with the larger community was always less important to me than the fact that I enjoyed developing it. Once I released the 1.1 version, I was pretty much spent - I’d put everything I had into the project, and wanted to move on. The only thing keeping me attached to the project so far has been Gio’s involvement. If he hadn’t stepped in, it would have been stagnant since 2020. He has contributed every single piece of code to the project since the V1.1 release, and written more code in total for the project than I did. Discarding all external context, I personally owe him a great deal for doing a massive amount of unpaid work for my project.⁹ This is why I’ve been hesitant to proceed without him. After everything he’s done for me, I believed it was the right thing to do to figure out what his place would be in the project before proceeding.
  • You’ve claimed this to be a good faith outreach, and I was genuinely exited to join in.
  • [Redacted: Conversation regarding particular interactions ]
  • Every time I’ve tried to talk like a reasonable human being, you’ve shot it down. Every interaction we’ve had has been a thinly veiled threat legal threat towards me. I should think the fact that I’ve been spending my limited personal funds on a lawyer to engage with you on your terms would be enough to demonstrate that I really really wanted to make this work, but apparently not.
  • I developed this project out of a love for Homestuck. And thanks to this entire negotiation, that love does not exist anymore. Frankly, every time I think about the shit you’ve tried to pull over me in this negotiation, I feel physically ill. I cannot imagine a world in which I sign this contract and can just resume business as usual. The moment has passed. You’ve beaten the motivation out of me.
  • So, you’re getting what you want. I’m taking the project down, and abdicating all responsibility for it. I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. You guys can just make your own version. I wish you the best of luck. Don’t contact me again.

Making nice to me

What happens next is fascinating: they reset the board and try to run the cycle a second time.

June 18, 2024, miles

• miles 09:55 PM
  • hey man, do you have some time to chat?

…

• GiovanH 10:22 PM
  • Obviously you know Bambosh dropped out, and I wasn’t privy to the details on exactly why that happened, but I’m still amenable to talk
  • That’s just where I’m at right now

…

• miles 10:22 PM
  • so, to sum up whats happened, andrew decided today that he wanted bambosh to sign the license.

…

• miles 10:22 PM
  • and hes frustrated, and unfortunately the result of our conversation with bambosh tonight was that bambosh said he wants to wash his hands of all this and he torched the UHC off github, took it down, etc
• GiovanH 10:26 PM
  • So, to be clear, he dropped off the project and left the codebase to me. everything still exists but I’m leaving it down temporarily while we sort things out
• miles 10:26 PM
  • okay, thats excellent to hear.

…

• miles 10:27 PM
  • like again i want to be one hundred percent real with you here, it sucks that the UHC is down right now for the fans, but it also sucks to me on like… a personal level, insofar as i NEVER ever ever wanted bambosh or you to feel like we were trying to punish or be assholes about this.
• GiovanH 10:28 PM
  • I know the communication has been nightmarish
• miles 10:28 PM
  • the fact that this might have really hurt bambosh’s feelings sucks. i think hes a good guy and we value his love for homestuck.

…

• miles 10:36 PM
  • yeah..
  • anyway
  • like, last on this before we move on to a little business
  • i just want him to know that, i guess.
  • andrew has been frustrated, we’ve had to move in very official, stern, and sometimes cold ways, and i want him to understand that like… real people behind this do not want him to feel fucked up about this, and do not want him to feel like… forced out

For my part I explain the picking up of the pieces, which Homestuck didn’t seem to understand. Namely, we transferred mantainership or the project.

Also as soon as Bambosh was out of the picture, Miles immediately rubberbands back to fawning. We’re so sorry if he felt stressed, we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, etc. He even goes so far as to say “we’ve had to be cold” here. Nobody “had” to be anything; Andrew left the project alone for years, then they decided they wanted it and started throwing punches. The obviously neutral stance would be to simply stop making demands, but Andrew always goes out of their way to pretend that isn’t a possibility. I know the concern for Bambosh isn’t true, I see the attempt at manipulation, it’s gross.

My consistent position

OK, but what am I thinking here? Given how antagonistic and aggressive Andrew has already been, why am I playing this through instead of just letting Andrew very publicly dig his own grave, as they keep threatening to do? It’s still the same scorpion-and-the-frog dynamic, except we’re already down a frog and Homestuck’s stinger is already being brandished again. Homestuck isn’t going to be nice to Gio — is he stupid? Maybe.

If I act like a glutton for punishment that’s partially because my goal really was to work together and produce something cool and valuable, not to get some cheap-shot drama points. Even if Andrew had a tantrum they wanted to throw, maybe James would be there to put a hand on their shoulder. Heck, maybe once Andrew’s lawyer is in the room he’ll be the responsible one to temper Andrew with sound legal advice.

But I knew if they were going to blow it up, they were going to blow it up. I was not going to allow anyone any leeway to claim that somehow I was too demanding. I’m keeping everything scoped strictly to the collection project because that’s what was agreed on and that’s what allows us to work in the first place. Above all I’m going to be professional.

I still find myself trying to make excuses for Andrew. They’re Andrew! They are the god king of fiction. I know because they wrote themselves that way. Part of why I let this stretch on for as long as I did to my own detriment was to really definitively prove it to myself, that this wasn’t just in my head. I am a scientist and that means evidence before conclusion, and every blow I took was evidence.

If I were trying to farm offense I’d have had them dead to rights since the first takedown threat, but that’s never been me; I really did want to see them do this right if they possibly could. In stark contrast to Andrew I have no threats to make and no special pressure I can put on him. If I gave Homestuck every measure of grace anyone could give, would that be enough? Or was Homestuck fully radioactive?

Back to work – June-July 2024

So, with a pointless C&D off the table for now, we talked about how we could productively move things forward. Homestuck went back to lovey-dovey.

• GiovanH 10:59 PM
  • to talk shop for a sec, I see basically two separate projects here: licensing the collection so it’s not a risk is one, and then whatever further collaboration (i.e. official version or website work) is another
• miles 10:59 PM
  • and, preferably, get the UHC up ASAP
  • we can talk the deets of that going forward!

…

• miles 11:02 PM
  • like.... after the NDA, getting the license up is literally first on our list. all other projects we do with ya would be happening under that framework
  • ok yeah so as i was saying
  • in summary!
  • a: andrew and lawyers will reach out to you and lawyers soon, to get started on talking about the terms under which we’d like to work together
  • b: once those terms are set, which we really hope doesnt take too long for the reasons we’ve laid out already, the UHC will get licensed and become the OHC or something like that, we can play around with it
  • c: we settle a few new things as we figure out the Workflow Situation with the U/OHC and then begin new projects
  • bc again, we fuck with the tool mega heavily and are excited for new stuff to happen

Vitally, despite the threat of having lawyers send me a cease-and-desist order mere minutes ago, Homestuck made it overwhelmingly clear that they wanted me to continue to keep the collection up for now. I did too, of course, but getting explicit permission from Homestuck means they can’t turn around and threaten me of copyright infringement, because I was acting how they asked me to. So this was a step in the right direction.

• GiovanH 11:11 PM
  • I’m still pondering whether the replacement is the best option but we’ll talk and do whatever makes sense. depends if he’s looking for something very different or basically the same
  • but that’s deets
• miles 11:13 PM
  • for sure
  • in the immediate, we’d actually want to keep the UHC up or get it back up ASAP, if possible, because none of us want to punish the fans for this

…

• miles 11:13 PM
  • NDA will be first step, then we can chat about getting you set up with the U/OHC to andrews satisfaction and talk about the details of that arrangement and then finally do some fucking cool shit
• GiovanH 11:22 PM
  • And I will see about spinning up a mirror
• miles 11:23 PM
  • alrighty, awesome

…

• GiovanH 11:25 PM
  • Ok everything should be totally continuous now, just with name changes
  • I also want to avoid panic so long as nothing’s actually going wrong
• miles 11:27 PM
  • yeah definitely
  • ok yeah getting it up again is fine for now, we’ll figure out its final zone later but itll be good to have it available for folks now
  • so, right now id prefer if there was minimal to no public communication on this besides whats absolutely necessary

…

• GiovanH 11:31 PM
  • as far as I’m concerned all we’ve done is change the project maintainer
• miles 11:31 PM
  • wonderful
• GiovanH 11:33 PM
  • I 100% agree that having to announce at any point that we’re shutting down because we’ve had legal action taken against us is the Bad End and I’ll put in work to avoid that
  • as previously discussed
• miles 11:34 PM
  • yep!
  • glad we’re of one mind on this

Miles is overwhelmingly clear about Homestuck’s position here: they want the collection to stay up, they want me hosting the website and the asset pack, and my doing that constitutes actively working with them. We also have a schedule now, which is the same schedule from before:

1. I sign an NDA
2. I work with Andrew to agree on a license, which Miles also refers to as “terms”
3. Happy collaboration forever

Statement demand – August 2024

So now, starting in June 2024, I’m in a room with Miles and James, but no Andrew¹² and no lawyers.

With the NDA signed we can finally get things moving again. I can have that “interview” with Andrew that was promised a year ago, we’ll put together a license that covers the kind of project Homestuck wants to work on and then it’s smooth sailing.

Dear reader, that is not what happened.

August 05, 2024

…

• miles 09:34 PM
  • so, the next stage of all this is basically that before moving onto getting the license squared away, andrew wants to work on what’s referred to here as a settlement.

…

August 24, 2024, miles

…

• miles 05:50 PM
  • at any rate, in the meantime im just gonna summarize where we’re looking to go in terms of next steps
  • to lay the groundwork for working with the UHC, andrew wants to reach a settlement that includes a retraction/rewrite
  • the explicit details of this have yet to be hashed out and will probably be worked on in the coming weeks but its something andrew has made very clear he needs to see happen in some shape or form
  • note that the rewrite/retraction itself doesnt have to happen RIGHT NOW or even necessarily before we get to work on UHC stuff, but agreeing to do it with the settlement is something andrew needs to see first

August 25, 2024, miles

• miles 03:03 PM
  • but like. you GOTTA work with us, man
  • the alternative is that if andrew feels much more stalled¹³ or like you arent operating with him in good faith, hes just going to switch gears, have the UHC taken down, replace it, and sue.¹⁵ the whole point of the settlement is so he doesnt have to do any of that shit¹⁴, because none of it is desirable and we dont wanna waste our time or energy on it when we could instead be making productive strides together

…

September 01, 2024, general

• miles 01:19 PM
  • what i need to establish now before this conversation goes any further is that i think i’ve been pretty light in my rhetoric for the most part, barring some cases when i needed to try and hustle bambosh and/or you along, but for today i have to be really, really clear: right now the only thing we’re interested in talking about is the settlement, and why it’s necessary, full-stop, before we consider doing literally anything else with you.
  • im not gonna draw out a point i already made to you a few days ago, but just to recenter the conversation around this, we came to you guys 10 months ago open to collaboration (in the face of you guys publishing the UHC with no license) and we got put off and had all this drawn out for nearly a year so now more than ever, we feel like coming to an understanding about the settlement, what we want, and why its necessary to do before we get around to any work is like… mandatory.

…

Homestuck quickly moves from “we aren’t trying to do threats” to actually, they have demands and retaliation ready if their demands aren’t met.

This yields a series of demands from Andrew. The complaint in these demands has nothing to do with The Unofficial Homestuck Collection, but is instead rehashed Hiveswap whining. Before anything else can happen, I need to do whatever it takes to “repair my relationship”, and his first idea of how I can start to do this is releasing a public statement of confession. I as the wretched sinner must supplicate myself before Andrew the righteous god-king of Homestuck and confess my sins so I might be granted a tenuous stay into his glorious kingdom.

This is not the license discussion. In fact, this has been explicitly injected before the license discussion as a newly announced prerequisite.

Despite this being the stage for the scheduled interview, Andrew simply refuses to show up for this. Communication is still through copy-pasted text dumps and occasionally PDFs. It’s not a surprise but it is yet another breach of agreement.

September 01, 2024, general

…*

• miles 01:19 PM
  • what i want to get into today is more of the nitty gritty of why it is we feel this is necessary from a more human point of view. to be more direct, what i mean by this is today, and in subsequent discussions until you show us that you understand the necessity of this, i want to talk about why it is that we’ve gotten to the point where the options here are either settlement or lawsuit. there was a real human cost to the way things went down a couple years ago, to say nothing of the damage that was done to Homestuck and Hiveswap by the way that fiasco went down. you weren’t the only person involved in this, obviously, but regardless of your intentions (which to be clear andrew and much of the involved parties still feel were at least partially rooted in like… rabblerousing, to get old-timey about it), things went down really, really nastily for the Homestuck and Hiveswap teams. this is something we need you to understand and talk to us about.

…

• miles 01:19 PM
  • as detailed in the pdf i just sent you, and as i mentioned previously, real damage was done not only to Homestuck and Hiveswap as productions/brands/however you wanna look at it, but there was a huge storm of harassment and outright abuse of many staff members that was like… fucking unacceptable.²²
  • we’re not trying to hold you 100% accountable for all the bad shit that went down back then, but we’re also not about to pretend that your blog wasn’t a contributing factor of some significance that, among other things, “legitimized” sarah and emily’s video in the eyes of a bunch of rabid shitheads who weren’t interested so much in “accountability” or whatever the fuck reddit shit it was that they said as they were in dogpiling a group of creators just because they could. andrew also has made it clear to me, and wants me to communicate to you, that regardless of your intentions, he and other members of the team felt your behavior was stalkerish and unacceptable. there is history here that needs to be addressed.
  • all this preamble is to say that really, before we do anything at all, we need to get real indication from you that this is something you understand, something you’re willing to show remorse for, and something you are willing to Concretely Commit to amending with us. if we’re going to collaborate at all, there has to be some kind of trust built here, and the only way that’s going to happen is for you to address this shit personally. we’re not interested in dancing around this any longer.

The fact that there even is a Homestuck Collection is all but forgotten. The only thing that matters is Andrew feels “owed” for the consequences of my old writing. This is about the fact that he considers me, personally, to be a problem. He has not bothered at any point to contact me about any of this. But now we’re in a room together, and he hopes that maybe if he corners me and threatens me with a big enough gun I’ll be able to un-hurt his feelings.

I was always concerned he would leverage copyright as an excuse for retaliation over my past writing. What I truly did not expect is that it would be completely blatant. We have spelled out in writing quid pro quo retaliation. Andrew doesn’t even mention copyright here, that’s clearly not what they care about. It’s just a weapon to be brought out later if I’m not subservient enough.

The consistent thing about this sophistry is they can’t point to anything objectionable I’ve ever done. The best excuse they can make is that other people were bad to them in a way they won’t explain either. The options are not “settlement or lawsuit” — there is no Hiveswap business that requires any settlement, and there’s no new offense that would create grounds to sue. They’re just loud and angry.

All of my pushing towards collaborating on the project he said he wanted to collaborate on has been ignored in favor of this show-of-dominance song and dance. Fundamentally, that matters more to Andrew than anything else, and it’s disgusting.

Demand response

There’s so much anger here but nothing to do with anything I was responsible for, so I’m not eager to take responsibility for it. I’m not going to lie and post some statement lying about Sarah’s documentation of Homestuck threatening her just because Homestuck’s threatening me the same way. Integrity means standing by your work unless it’s wrong.

But even if this first set of demands had been somewhat reasonable, I’ve already seen that cowering in a subordinate role like Andrew wants would only lead to more demands, forever. Andrew uses people up.

I give Miles the same basic explanation I’ve given here. That’s not licensing or negotiating, that’s just dominance. This is not collaboration, this isn’t respectful, this is the scorpion stinging the frog. I make it clear I’m happy to negotiate and put together a license, but demands for specific performance like this that are not obviously reasonable will have to go through a lawyer.

This is responded to with an escalation of threats.

August 24, 2024, miles²⁰

• GiovanH 05:55 PM
  • I already have many thoughts about this but I’ll need to tag up with [my legal representation] first.

…

• GiovanH 06:02 PM
  • but also, at a high level, off the record, deciding to make UHC work dependent on some kind of rehashing of four-year-old drama is one of the few choices with the potential to sabotage the project, so a step toward that is concerning
• miles 06:03 PM
  • thats also something we’re happy to talk about
  • because ive had the same thought, we wanna do this in a way that doesnt just like
  • dredge up old bullshit unproductively²¹
  • so like i said, signing the settlement doesnt mean you necessarily have to do this rewrite before we get any UHC work done
  • it just means youve agreed to do it at some point as we work out the details and timing

…

• miles 03:03 PM
  • i dont know how else to put it, signing a license with us doesnt legally complicate anything
  • the situation you are in NOW, unsigned, and unafilliated with us, is legally complicated
  • originally amending that was as simple as licensing up with us and getting to work on UHC stuff, which we still and always have wanted to do
  • instead we are here, 10 months later, and only marginally closer to working together, and i dont know how else to put it, we feel fucked around here.
  • the fact that lawyers are involved at all is kind of an unfortunate artifact of the fact that instead of just working with us when we came to you guys with open arms, you held us at arms length for months while sitting on a public repository of like, most of andrew’s life’s work as an artist, unlicensed
  • and so the reason that we’re approaching you now with regards to a settlement is that, on top of the unfortunate business of all the hiveswap drama years ago that your writing did play a role in, when we came to you to try and just put that water under the bridge and work together, with some stipulations about your involvement that nonetheless were fully ready to make room for you, we were stalled
  • frankly, to work with you, andrew at this point wants not only demonstrations of good faith which we feel like weve been dancing around at best and not getting at worst, but he wants that settlement signed so that he knows that you are actually serious about working with us, doing cool shit moving forward, and also trying to amend for some of the unfortunate bullshit that happened in the past

…

• miles
  • the alternative is that if andrew feels much more stalled or like you arent operating with him in good faith, hes just going to switch gears, have the UHC taken down, replace it, and sue. the whole point of the settlement is so he doesnt have to do any of that shit, because none of it is desirable and we dont wanna waste our time or energy on it when we could instead be making productive strides together
  • i dont know what more there is to say on our end right now. im a pretty nonconfrontational person so i dont like laying down ultimatums at all but you need to at least like get in the server and start talking to me and james or andrew feels like hes just going to have to take the UHC down.

There’s a lot wrong here, most of it covered already. We have another threat of a takedown, another threat of a lawsuit, another sugar-coating “but we don’t want do! just do what we say and no one has to get hurt”. Despite everything that’s happened I’m still trying to give them the chance to work together, a show of good faith that crosses the line into folly on my part.

Homestuck claiming that we weren’t “working with us when we came to you guys with open arms” and that “you held us at arms length” is truly outrageous. This is the exact opposite of what happened. Bambosh and I both responded to their invitations eagerly, but Andrew kept throwing up roadblocks and demands, very conspicuously keeping us at arm’s length.

Seizure demand – September 2024

That was almost a productive conversation at the end there, right? What happens next is not “de-scapegoating” that we all concluded was reasonable. Instead, astonishingly, they begin the next conversation by using privileges they gave themselves in the Discord server they set up for these discussion to clean the productive parts of the slate.

September 28, 2024, general

• miles 02:19 AM
  • hey hey. you may notice we reset the general chat in here; we’re thinking of bringing in some more folks soon and we figure it isn’t productive to have the old discussion sitting there.

They privated the old general chat and made a new one. This is yet another exhausting power play, but when legal action is involved (like it is here) it also goes by the exciting name spoliation. (Also, I didn’t find this out until later, but apparently this is a practiced move they do regularly with people.) They never did return these records, but fortunately I’ve been keeping my own set too since I’m a responsible adult.

But perhaps despite this insane swing all the things they have to say now will be normal?

• miles 02:19 AM
  • vis a vis that, andrew and james and i sort of had a think about how things have been progressing, and we’ve decided to change course here. we’re gonna table the blog rewrite/settlement stuff and move on from it for now so we can get to UHC stuff instead of sitting around for months haggling over that; it’s not proceeding in any way that any of us find productive, least of all you, so we’re just gonna move past it until further notice.
  • what we’re thinking is within the next week or two, we want to get kohi onboarded to this chat so we can get back into more solid and productive discussions of Things We Could Do With The UHC, getting it into the HICU/Homestuck network. i know you’ve got ideas, kohi has ideas, ideas abound; at some point maybe we can just strike the U and it’ll become the HC, but that’s more future talk and better suited to when kohi is in here talking shop.

So this starts well enough. Demanding I make some absurd statement is indeed not a productive path. It would be much better to talk shop. I’ve already been talking with Kohi about the collection.²⁵ They’re great; I’d love to work with them, especially on UHC work. We have a solid gesture here in the direction of actually collaborating instead of letting Andrew posture.

But then Homestuck jams another stick into the spokes of the bike, because every decency they’ve given has just been an attempt to build credit to let them be awful later.

• miles 02:19 AM
  • to that point, however, there is something that was clarified in our last talks that has to be addressed before we move along with this any further. you mentioned, more than once, that you were aware that you had the potential to leverage our worst-case-scenario takedown of the UHC as a way to make us look bad in the eyes of the fans. that confirmed to us that you’ve considered the use of the UHC as a weapon against the Homestuck team if things don’t proceed in a direction that you’re satisfied with, which is obviously unacceptable to us. andrew has no interest in proceeding through talks while his own body of work is used against him as blackmail.
  • as i mentioned earlier, we’re going to step back vis a vis the rewrite stuff. in exchange, and considering the above paragraph, we need to see the UHC handed over to kohi. what that does is neutralize the threat implied earlier, as well as put the UHC in the hands of not only a member of the HICU but someone you yourself have mentioned you want to work with and someone you respect where these types of projects are concerned. andrew doesn’t want to see his own work held hostage and used as leverage against him, and putting the UHC into kohi’s stewardship eliminates that possibility in one simple move.
  • there’s still work we can do together, but for that to happen we have to be operating in a sphere where threats aren’t on the table, and that isn’t going to be possible until we know that the fans are going to have access to the UHC, and all of andrew’s work that’s on it, without the risk of its retraction being intentionally weaponized to cause drama that will hurt not only the fandom but the entire HS labor force.

They call it “The Art of the Deal.”

We’ve talked about the absurdity of this “blackmail” claim already; Andrew’s used the word several times to describe the scenario where they force me to take down the collection and I do so, and this is no exception. From my point of view it’s been intentionally hidden, but here’s the conversation they’re characterizing as a “blackmail threat”:

September 02, 2024

• miles 10:15 PM
  • [Andrew]’s looking for some kind of show of good faith from you that he’s just not getting

…

• GiovanH 10:20 PM
  • I mean, I am literally working very hard to give Andrew free stuff that makes his property more valuable. I choose to try to cooperate instead of trying to the situation as leverage for pettiness. I am paying for a lawyer. I do not have to do any of that, but I am doing it and so there is value you can take for free, if you don’t sting the frog.

…

• GiovanH 10:29 PM
  • I am here to collaborate on a whole panel of possible ways the UHC work can be more useful. I think there are lots of fun ways that could go.
  • I am also happy to license the collection in a form similar to how it is now so it can operate without tension. Again, multiple ways to approach that.

…

• GiovanH 10:38 PM
  • like, if I were a provocatour, the quick win would be to let andrew C&D the collection, go “oh! oh! andrew broke your toy!” and get a bunch of clicks on my web site or whatever it is that clout is
  • and this is me not doing that

…

• JAMES 10:41 PM
  • also yeah thats a good point, so thank you for that
  • anyway, a little progress even if it doesn’t seem like it. we’ll work on things on our end to see if we cant soften expectation a little bit, i can say im glad you’re willing to work with us and are like amicable and even willing to play along a bit for the sake of moving forward. appreciate that.

They asked about good faith, and I gave an example. I am already stretching myself to work with Homestuck, and if I stopped trying to force a peace at any point it would be Andrew who suffers. This is me finally pointing out the elephant in the room, which is that the case where they attack me is the case where they lose, something Andrew seemed unwilling to acknowledge. The response was “that’s a good point, thank you.”

But we get the same inane blackmail logic as before. I’m working hard to protect Andrew from themself, and eventually I might have to stop. This is not a trap I’ve imposed on Andrew, this is me as Atlas holding up the world while they keep knocking all the supports away. The fact that I might stop doing that is inconvenient, so it has to be turned into something offensive I’m doing to them.

And this supposed offense is the justification they give for a whole new absurd demand: that I simply “hand over” the project to them. It’s the full smartgeniusnewadmin. Kohi’s great. I’d trust Kohi with this entirely, except I’ve been shown very clearly that I can’t trust his boss.

This is the culmination of all the absurd power plays: just demanding, outright, that I give them everything for free. I was braced for him to try to slowly push me out in a plausibly deniable way. But no, the power-play is so important to him he keeps firing smoking guns. Andrew Hussie is not going to make me sign control of a fan project over to somebody they like more because they do not get to do that. No one in his position can ever be allowed to do anything like that.

This isn’t just a demand, it’s a pushy demand. They’re trying to get me caught up in the flow. The channel’s made, we’re about to invite Kohi in, everything’s all ready to go except you’ve got to real quick forfeit your work to people who have proven they can’t be trusted. Don’t think about it, let’s get moving, chop-chop.

HICU fork – Nov 2, 2024

The next attempt to just shut me down comes in the form of the HICU “Unofficial Homestuck Collection” fork. Unceremoniously, the official Homestuck github account forks the UHC project and puts up a sparce landing page that is essentially false.

About the Unofficial Homestuck Collection

Originally developed by Bambosh and Giovan_h, The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is a fan-created browser for reading Homestuck and other works by Andrew Hussie as they were originally intended to be experienced with native Flash support. The browser does not fetch content from the internet and instead utilizes an Asset Pack that must be downloaded by the user alongside the software for it to serve content. The UHC includes a “New Reader Mode” to present Homestuck as it was originally released, an inline media player for streaming music from the Homestuck Bandcamp, and many more features to enhance the user’s reading experience.

A new “Official” Homestuck Collection is now in development, and the original Unofficial Homestuck Collection will continue to be preserved and available here. It should be noted that while it remains open source, any official updates or changes will be made on a new Homestuck Independant[sic] Creative Union controlled GitHub fork that can be found here.

The HICU describes the UHC as being “originally” developed by us — stylizing my name incorrectly in the process — but explaining that it has been replaced by this new version, “controlled” by the Homestuck Independent Creative Union. This is done by the Homestuck Independent Creative Union under the official “Homestuck” GitHub account, because they’re functionally interchangable.

Even publicly, the fork is narratively framing itself as a “successor” to the original UHC, supplanting the original. And it only differentiates itself by having different management. The implication is they have some sort of consent or authority to make this decision, but they do not. The whole move is another example of Andrew trying to impose their will through force and pressure instead of treating the people around him with respect or allowing any sort of process that in any way empowers others.

The HICU and Homestuck Inc both claim ownership over the fork. What’s going on here? It’s actually very simple: there is no underlying separation between the two. A lot of work has gone into describing the HICU as separate from existing baggage but that simply isn’t how the organization is structured or how it acts. There is nothing independent about it and it’s certainly nothing like any union.

They wanted to control the UHC, or else replace it with something they controlled. So far they’d entirely failed on both fronts, so instead of working with the people they’d need to work with, they just made a new website declaring it true.

They’re also distributing the Asset Pack V2 package Bambosh and I constructed. This is an incredible move because not only are they distributing the only thing the UHC doesn’t have the right to distribute, they don’t have the right to distribute it either. Some of the copyrighted materials it contains are things they have the right to share, but the asset pack also has many resources they absolutely cannot freely distribute themselves, including Adobe’s flash binaries.

Like I’ve mentioned Kohi had previously chatted about Unofficial Homestuck Collection development work on the practical side. I am confident any involvement he had in the OHC fork was done in good faith without an understanding of how it fit in the larger puzzle.

At the time I made no complaint about this or demand that they cease. From a copyright perspective, this is actually fine. They are licensing the reader application from me, but so far they’re doing it more-or-less under the terms of the license. So long as they respect the project license, them distributing the asset pack like this would actually allow me to focus entirely on the reader application without needing any license from Homestuck.

DMCA Nov/Dec 2024

The next thing they do is once again refuse to respond with any of the ideas I’ve presented, but instead escalate even further in the form of a DMCA takedown.

December 02, 2024, followup

• homestuckicu 06:39 PM
  • Please read the attached DMCA notice. This was just delivered to your counsel by Andrew’s counsel.

…

• homestuckicu 06:39 PM
  • The future of the UHC will be made apparent once we see compliance with the DMCA. The intention here is not to kill the project. But it’s essential that you show a willingness to cooperate with the notice from Andrew’s counsel before the next steps are taken.
  • All of our correspondence has been turned over to Andrew and his counsel, including the conversations in this server, and all relevant DMs. We were asked to do this by Andrew and his counsel so that they had thorough background context to consider their approach. All conversations will remain confidential.
  • Andrew and his counsel have been extremely critical of many statements you’ve made, and the way you’ve handled yourself in general during this process. He’s asked that none of his remarks be quoted or summarized here. His view may be communicated through legal channels in the future, but starting now, the HICU will be fully disengaged from that process.

…

• homestuckicu 06:39 PM
  • We wish you all the best with your future endeavors, where they do not conflict with the interests of Homestuck, its creator, and its labor force.
  • Kind regards,
  • The Homestuck Independent Creative Union

This is the first message ever sent from the “homestuckicu” discord account, the account used to hide records earlier. God only knows who actually wrote this.

Note how the operating party here is the HICU even though the rightsholder is Homestuck, Inc. and the executor is Andrew. The labels aren’t placed carefully because they’re all functionally interchangeable.

The actual DMCA sent from Andrew’s legal representation is standard and concise:

[Andrew’s Lawyer], Nov 22, 2024 …
As you are aware, our office represents Homestuck Inc. (“Homestuck”). This letter serves as an official notification of copyright infringement by your client, [Legal Name] (your “Client”) pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) for infringing materials located on your Client’s website, https://homestuck.giovanh.com/unofficial-homestuck-collection/. We respectfully request that you forward this correspondence to your Client, or in the alternative, notify us that you do not represent your Client with regard to this matter.

Homestuck is the rights holder of the registered and copyrighted material that has been improperly displayed on and otherwise incorporated into your Client’s website, which consists of the copyrights of the webcomic “Homestuck,” the originals of which can be found at https://www.homestuck.com/. The infringing works are a direct copy of our client’s original copyrighted work or is substantially similar to our client’s work.

We have a good faith belief that Homestuck’s rights are being infringed and these materials are posted without proper authorization from Homestuck, any of its agents, or the law. The information in this notification is correct and we swear under the penalty of perjury that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of these exclusive rights. This includes, specifically, the copyrights that we allege to be infringed upon.

Upon receipt of this notification, your Client now has actual notice that the material on your Client’s system is infringing and, in order to avoid liability, it is incumbent upon your Client pursuant to 17 U.S.C § 512 to remove and/or disable the infringing materials immediately.
…

This is the anticipated request for us to stop hosting and linking to the Asset Pack, which does indeed contain a direct copy of some of Homestuck’s copyrighted work. Up until now I was only hosting it on the direct request of Homestuck itself, but they have the right to require its removal and so we remove it. This includes all links to the asset pack and the material it contains, but also required the removal of the live UHC webapp.

The only thing that was left was the project description page at https://homestuck.giovanh.com with the asset pack removed:

wow, look! nothing!

Importantly, this pairs with the HICU fork as an attempt at a particularly nasty Indiana Jones switcheroo. If I have to take my reader application down at the same time as they’ve created a copy, it looks like the project really did “move” to them, which is not at all what’s happened.

December 11, 2024, James

…

• GiovanH 04:34 PM
  • In general I’m just trying to get the legal demands properly addressed right now through the lawyers too

…

• GiovanH 04:35 PM
  • So I was kind of thrown for a loop by the announcement and various legal runarounds I’ve been seeing
  • if andrew wants to shut down the discord conversation and have the lawyers slowly put something together, I guess that’s okay, but that only works if you’re not also releasing big confident public announcements about what he’s guessing the results of that process will be
• James 04:37 PM
  • well from what i understand it represents a large bit of work you’ve done, so i can understand the apprehension in taking it down entirely. is there a specific issue with like a redirect etc (forgive me if im a bit slow on the uptake)
• GiovanH 04:40 PM
  • So, high level, from my perspective, what I’m seeing now is the “hostile takeover” scenario, where seemingly the main goal is to cut me out of my work and let andrew effectively take ownership of it
  • and if the way they’re trying to do that now is copy the whole project without me involved and then obliterate the original project, so from the outside it’s a sleight-of-hand where it looks like the same project but I’ve mysteriously left, I have some objections to that
  • and if whatever happens happens through overtly hostile legal action (as it’s leaning towards now) instead of any kind of working relationship, I’m probably going to be sour on the new thing
  • It’s not at all lost on me that I’ve been persistently trying to talk about collaborating on a project (which was the original pitch) and sorting out a licensing arrangement, and instead all Andrew has been interested in doing is talking about rewriting old hiveswap posts, and me writing the HICU blank checks, and then getting progressively more hostile when I say I’d rather do the HICU stuff they invited me to do instead.
  • It really seems like there’s a personal vendetta against me first and foremost, and the UHC is almost an afterthought to that.
  • I had a whole plan where I would pay homestuck/hicu/whoever a license fee just to continue providing the collection in its current form
  • and another where you and kohi and I would convert the project to something that looks more like the official collection they’re wanting now
  • and another where in addition to the UHC I help the HICU create their own downstream OHC fork
  • and I was never even given the chance to talk about any of that, because it’s just been 100% guns-to-heads, the whole time
• James 04:52 PM
  • yeah, seems like the whole things gone a bit south, despite any effort i had to keep it regular. is there any kinda statement you’d be fine with, i guess? since its already at this point
  • i think theres been a lot of “waiting to see how it goes” and then, this is how it went because of that.

…

• GiovanH 04:54 PM
  • notes in the official announcement that stood out to be as big red flags were how it was framed as a “moving” (again, that’s a sleight of hand, what they’re currently doing is this legally aggressive replacement thing), and also how they’re in “licensing talks”, when what actually happened is I tried to offer them a license and they threatened to sue me instead, then cut off the talks
• James 04:57 PM
  • dang, guess thats fair. sorry just as an aside how on earth does everyone just have a lawyer thats crazy
  • […] this lawyer shit is bonkers to me
• GiovanH 04:58 PM
  • i mean, just looking at the message from miles

  • Andrew’s intentions now are to have both of your counsels work together until the legal issues surrounding this matter are put to rest. This will take time, and any provocative gestures you make publicly will complicate that process and possibly put you in more significant legal jeopardy than you’d prefer. It will also incite drama within the fandom, which innocent members of the Homestuck creative teams will have to contend with.

  • again, this is fine, but this cuts both ways; when andrew makes provocative public gestures before stuff is resolved, that complicates the legal process and incites drama too

  • i can barely even afford rent this lawyer shit is bonkers to me

  • between you and me it’s been a huge burden that’s just made this whole process vastly more stressful
• James 04:58 PM
  • ok so basically just a timing thing, that make sense
  • i can see what i can do to like, at least let them wait til the dusts settled before making some sort of public thing.
  • which i guess will result in some sort of downtime, which sucks, but also probably the only real way to let it get sorted out
• GiovanH 05:00 PM
  • I mean, the discord conversation was the way to avoid that, but he’s cut that off
• James 05:00 PM
  • yeah
  • i mean im not like ignorant i know im the “smooth it over” guy a lot of the time, but thanks for talkin to me about it either way
• GiovanH 05:01 PM
  • if the thing andrew fundamentally wants to do is bully, there’s only so much comms can do about that

…

• GiovanH 05:25 PM
  • I know I keep saying I’m not interested in drama but literally the prospect of this ending in some legally hostile or forceful way and me having to untangle these events and put out some kind of post explaining what happened has me so stressed out I think it’s affecting me medically

…

• GiovanH 05:27 PM
  • this is why stuff like “Andrew and his counsel have been extremely critical of many statements you’ve made, and the way you’ve handled yourself in general during this process.” gets to me, because I have really been trying, here

“What is wrong with this guy”

I have people I have to call out for being aggressive and dangerous, which sucks, and I hate it. I hate that my time and energy is being consumed by protecting myself and others from predatory behavior, instead of getting to talk about art I enjoy.

Archival Disaster

It is obviously terrible for the archive to be unavailable, especially when the archive is the only usable copy out there.

Homestuck has communicated extremely strongly for years — both when Andrew was visibly in charge and now, when he’s a shadow leader — that they’re willing to cause however much damage they feel like causing. They do not see themselves as having any sort of responsibility, and don’t even see providing a good product as a goal that they have at all.

If Andrew is interested in taking the responsibility of custodianship for the comic seriously and making sure what they provide is the best thing for the community, that would be good. We already know for a fact they haven’t been historically: this is what necessitated we build the collection in the first place. And the union hasn’t been involved for long, but they have made it extremely clear that respect for their community is of no importance to them. They wouldn’t even begin a conversation about it, and when they sent the takedown request they said explicitly that the goal was the wealth of the corporation.

I cannot overstate how decisively Andrew choose the destruction of the archive over just being a decent human being. The Homestuck website could be up and fully-featured right now. Andrew could be selling copies of the UHC on Steam right now, for money. But the price tag for that was “please, please just be normal” and they spat on it. Homestuck had a clear choice here between doing right by people or maintaining an image of Andrew as perfect, and they chose the evil one.

Has to be said

I hate to be a negative voice, especially another time about this same franchise I love, but the only thing worse than exposing what’s going on here would be to cover it up and let it keep getting worse. Andrew would only keep harming and exploiting more and more people. We saw this same dynamic in the accounts from workers who were mistreated during the Hiveswap days: professional abuse was covered up, terrible practices were normalized, and so those practices and that abuse just continued to hurt more and more people, because no one would talk about it.

I don’t like the thought that this is going to negatively impact some of the good projects the HICU seems to be working with, but hiding what’s happening here would be grossly irresponsible and negligent of me. Although Andrew’s legal representative bizarrely asserted in writing that they don’t care about reputational damage, I still care about minimizing the harm this inflicts on innocents. I have done what I can to reduce collateral harm without covering up points people need to know. Ultimately I believe openness with the community about these incidents is foundational to real harm mitigation because it’s the only way to discourage the people committing the harm from continuing.

I am not throwing anyone under the bus here. Andrew Hussie and company have driven a bus over a crowd of people and I have to deliver the bad news to their grieving families. I know this news impacts a lot of people — some very severely— and so I don’t give it lightly. I promise I tried other avenues before it came to this. But Andrew doing this hurts more people than just themself, and as much as I want to I can’t protect everyone in his blast radius while being honest.

If Homestuck ever does come back and remedy the damage they’ve done that would change the story. But that’s a tall ask and I expect if they do anything they’ll do the opposite. Their primary goal is just going to be trying to socially isolate me, drum up more baseless rumors, and anything else to construct a plausible reason not to listen to my warning.

Freedom Motif

Because of the implicit threat of legal violence the relationship between a work’s copyright holder and its fan community is structurally antagonistic. The IP holder and members of the fan community have fundamentally different interests which sometimes align but sometimes don’t. This doesn’t mean the relationship has to be antagonistic in practice, but it means there is always an underlying potential for conflict that has to be reasoned with.

A fan community should be a symbiotic relationship. Fanwork can serve functions official work can’t, and the community surrounding a work is one of the main things that gives a work “value”, in a base economic sense. Likewise official recognition can be a good thing. Fan work can be elevated, talented creators can be brought on as part of official projects, etc. Official recognition can serve as a badge of honor.

But the deciding factor in whether the creator/fan relationship is healthy or exploitative is whether the community is allowed to be independent. One of the most important merits of fanwork, discussion, and criticism is a plurality of perspectives, and the ability to present and analyze work through truly pluralistic viewpoints. This is why things like fan comics, fan games, fan resources, and fan events (like Stuck At Home Con) have been so extraordinarily valuable. They represent legitimate plurality where the community manages and supports itself.

This is something Bambosh and I talked about in our conference panel. While it may make sense for there to be an official collection, this would be subject to the IP holder and their vision of how to work should be presented, potentially narrowing the focus and scope of the work. One of the obvious dangers is this can lead to the marginalization and demonization of specific viewpoints the corporate interest doesn’t agree with, regardless of their artistic and intellectual merit. The fan-centered archive and the creator-centered archive fill fundamentally separate functions.

If the IP holder insists that all aspects relating to discussion of a work go through one unifying authority, this is an assault on the community and represents an act of aggression against fan-run fan-space. If there is a demand that all work that exists be brought in under a single umbrella of control, this is a dangerous and precarious arrangement. It does not matter how much or how little work is encapsulated by official support. A unification of community spaces through a central governing authority with the ability to enforce policy and preference is an existential threat to that community.

This threat is a true danger even before that authority proves itself dangerous and untrustworthy by deed. The danger is structural; it is a trap prepared and ready to spring. Even if the current leadership is well-meaning, that power can be replaced and existing structures can be hijacked to suddenly abuse a good faith relationship.

Or, in extraordinarily blatant corruption like we see here, the control can be used to prevent valid criticisms of the work or the people involved in its management, as has happened here. In Homestuck’s case, not only is there this structural danger, Homestuck’s past and present leadership has proven itself to be not just potentially problematic, but actively and eagerly abusive of power it can acquire over community spaces. Especially toxic to fan spaces is Homestuck’s eagerness to blacklist and socially isolate people on its “enemies list”, leading to a sort of guilt-by-association virus that attacks the very foundations of community. Homestuck has consistently historically abused any power it can acquire for the personal enrichment of its few executives. It does this, like a parasite, directly at the expense of the people who support it.

Homestuck is Radioactive

The Unofficial Homestuck Collection didn’t have a right to exist. I’m not entitled to unilaterally distribute Homestuck. That’s why we took it down when we were finally asked. The problem here isn’t that I didn’t get what I wanted, the problem was the mistreatment and deception throughout, the inordinate amount of retaliatory violence that Andrew was willing to wield. The problem is the way Homestuck operates.

Homestuck is, at its core, a bad faith actor. They already were before this, but this incident has proven it beyond argument. People keep falling for the friendly act and keep getting irreparably harmed for their trouble.

Andrew is willing to be unimaginably hostile towards people. The problem is not that Andrew “hates their fans”, or is intentionally trying to destroy their community, or anything like that. The problem is that they’re willing to attack anyone if they see it as useful to the greater good of their own reputation. Over the smallest perceived sleight he will attack people’s careers, their professional lives, their financial stability, everything. I gave Andrew more chances to set themself right than anyone could have asked me to give him. I gave James every chance to set them straight. I gave his lawyer every chance to set them straight. If the leeway I gave him to be angry was not enough, no amount of leeway will ever be.

This is not an exceptional situation, this is the capstone to a long and consistent history of controlling and violently litigious behavior — not just over copyright issues, but for any whim Andrew is willing to pursue.

This primarily concerns fan spaces, but is in no way limited to them. I am convinced it is not a coincidence Andrew has seemingly never been able to work with people. This obviously includes big names like The Odd Gentlemen, Fellow Traveller, and Viz Media²⁶, but don’t forget about art/music team turnover, Requiem Cafe, or that Andrew has already burned through two management teams on Homestuck^2 alone.

Not only is Homestuck radioactive, Andrew has gone to great lengths to prove that no matter what they say has changed, it will always be radioactive.²⁷ I cannot overemphasize the fact that Homestuck will just lie outright. Whether this is because they’re confident they can retaliate against people who catch them or not, they freely do it. If Homestuck comes to you for anything, even if they’re nice, even if they make explicit guarantees in writing, even if they explicitly promise Andrew isn’t involved, their willingness to lie here shows you can’t trust any of it. They have gone through all the ways they could possibly be trustworthy, all the ways they could be expected to be reasonable, and systematically violated each of them.

If Homestuck reaches out to you to collaborate, to license work, or for anything else, cut bait on day one. If they start making takedown threats, let them follow through and announce what’s happened. It’s better than any alternative.

Don’t Support This

The point of this isn’t to get everyone riled up and angry. Don’t harass anyone over this, don’t start a manhunt. If you have a copy of the UHC please continue to enjoy it. I have no legal fund, even though I have paid multiple thousands of dollars out of pocket for legal defense during this time. (If Andrew still tries to sue me, perhaps I will need one.) But what you should do is not tolerate this behavior.

I still love Homestuck so much. I love the people, I love the community, I love the art. I love the various people on the Homestuck workforce! They’re not responsible for these problems, they’re just caught up in it.

Homestuck is art. It’s an important literary work. But it’s far past time for it to go full Hatsune Miku. Make the fanart. Love the comic. Talk about the work. Go to prom! Make conventions and celebrate the wonderful community Homestuck has fostered. Be excellent to each other. If you can get some sort of “free license” without putting yourself at someone else’s mercy, go for it. But it’s time for Homestuck-as-a-corporation to be fully over. Let the fan scene thrive, but if you see an outstretched hand, cut it off. For Homestuck to continue under any form of Andrew’s leadership is to condemn it to rot with the Harry Potters and Dilberts of history.

Andrew’s approach to this has put the Homestuck website and the possibility of an Official Homestuck Collection in an awkward position. Since Homestuck clearly approached me with the intent to use my work for these things, even an independently written Homestuck website rewrite is in the position of “scabbing” for this debacle. I would really like to be able to wish others luck in doing something similar, but instead I’m left in this position where if Andrew gets someone else to do this work, it’s more appropriate to call it out as an attempt to scab over this disaster. Whatever comes next will always only be “the thing that’s covering for what they did to the UHC.” I can only hope this was the worst such case in Homestuck’s history, but I fear there have been many others.

No one should be willing to work with disgruntled ex-cartoonist Andrew Hussie, including by proxy. At worst you’re at risk of entering into an abusive relationship and at best you’re propping them up and lending your credibility to someone who spends other people’s credibility like it’s money.

You especially shouldn’t support this right now, when the currently running major Homestuck project is running a Patreon whose money pays Andrew and Miles. Makeship Karkat isn’t worth having when he pays these salaries. Off the back of this story I’m just going to come out and make an explicit value judgment: you should not be giving Homestuck your money, and if you are you should stop. Homestuck has done half a dozen things during this process that individually warrant that. I wish they hadn’t, but they did. Putting them all together, I cannot possibly justify saying that continuing to financially support this behavior is reasonable. It’s not.

Hoping to go back to fun stuff soon.
With love,
- Gio