#hussie critical

[generalbitchfest]

The thing about people saying that Roxy is canon transfem is that the same people then attack [insert whichever author of the Epilogues is the scapegoat du jour] for making Roxy transmasc in the postcanon, as if they somehow snuck it in behind Hussie's back without eir approval. By all accounts, transmasc Roxy was Hussie's idea in the first place! But noooo, our precious transfem icon Hussie would NEVER disappoint us like that, it must have been one of those filthy TMEs.

It's just… the hypocrisy that everyone is REQUIRED to accept transfem John even though that wasn't a thing until the post-canon, but you're a transmisogynist if you like transmasc Roxy even though that's ALSO post-canon "canon"… it wears me down. And I like transfem Roxy! I like transfem John! It's just the attitude that you're not allowed to see them as anything BUT transfem that bugs me!

Basically I'm wary of anyone who says that any given character is 100% canonically intended to be transfem/transmasc/whatever in Homestuck proper (as opposed to the postcanon). Frankly, I think it's pretty obvious that Hussie never considered that these characters could be anything other than cis until after Homestuck was over, so IMO there are no "wrong" headcanons about this. And lately I've seen people latch on to more and more characters and say that they are completely 100% canon transfem, and it basically always ends up being used as an excuse to attack people with transmasc headcanons. I'm so tired of it.

In regards to this post that I edited with more thoughts since I can no longer reblog lol (she did block me, which I super appreciate, and I also blocked her, and I appreciate you letting me know so I could do so!)

Anyway

TL;DR:

You're absolutely right. I was on the ground floor and it was fucking terrible and the queer community has only gotten more radfem pilled/anti-transmasc in the following years.

-> Not putting the long version under a read more since if this blog gets deleted, the read more goes with it and I have anxiety around the permanent loss of posts on the Internet lol

I could ramble about everything you said for years and years especially because like I Was There when it started you know? I was there when the Epilogues dropped and I was there when the discourse went the most toxic HS discourse had been in years (afiak maybe there was real bad discourse between the ending and then that I missed lmao). So please trust me when I say whatever I type next is me trying to be as succinct as possible without losing (what I consider to be) important context.

First paragraph:

IMO transmasc Epilogue Roxy was created explicitly to be fandom hostile and I don't really care who had the idea first.

Side note: My roommate sometimes talks about how she thought it would have been way cooler thematically for Roxy to be transmasc in one Epilogue and transfem in the other along with other contradictory stuff between the two and I have to agree.

Even more side note: I honestly didn't even vibe with transmasc Roxy BEFORE the discourse? Like I still got v upset when the people who called everything in the Epilogues capital C Canon still refused to recognize Roxy as transmasc (and I regret some of the takes I had about how people talked about Roxy tbh), but like, I am not a Transmasc Roxy As Canon Take It Or Leave It defender lmao. Roxy is only transmasc in the context of Beyond Canon. If people love transmasc Roxy that's great! Same for transfem Roxy or unaligned Roxy or cis Roxy. HC however you want! I personally love transfem Roxy!

The point of the Epilogues being written as they are with no clarification on who did what was to avoid this sort of discourse.

The re-imagining of Hussie as the most Woke is hilarious and IMO some heavy copium and refusal to engage with reality because they refuse to admit they're cherry picking (whether it's about what counts as canon or what good and bad things Hussie has said and done).

Like just a few months before the Epilogues dropped Hussie caused some "oh hey remember Hussie still has bigotry issues even if it's not malicious" discussions.

People who call Hussie transfem are misgendering them. Like if they are looking at ANY of the evidence of Hussie being trans ("any pronouns" in bio + Easter egg in Psycholonial credits clown gender clownsona, at least one post by WP team referring to them with they/them pronouns), much less all the evidence COMBINED (plus Discord logs with several people who work with Hussie only using he/him pronouns for them), they are doing an exorsexism by calling Hussie transfem and acting like "any pronouns" means "never he/him." Straight up.

(Let me know if there has been more information released about Hussie's gender, but the last I checked a few months ago, that's all I saw.)

Second paragraph:

Literally the mindset after the Toblerone "canonized" June was "if we had to accept transmasc Roxy then you have to accept June (:" as though they weren't harassing transmascs out of the fandom for MONTHS prior to that. Not even just over June discourse tbf.

An additional layer is Homestuck fans who only engaged with what is posted on the official Homestuck website would have zero way to know about June for YEARS. Like, as my tags on that post say, I'm a HUGE stickler about what counts as "canon queer rep" (with nuance for when people have to sneak it past censors and such and that simply does not fly as even post-canon rep until more recently!

(From my understanding — I dropped off HS2 pretty quickly and while I think I will eventually read it, I only get glimpses of what's going on and most of that is against my will lol)

While I'm not saying there were NO transfem John hcs before the Epilogues, June became popularized BECAUSE of transmasc Roxy, and I just don't think I could ever get into a character that was created out of spite over another trans character. And I say "created" because (as some of my other reblogs have talked about), the people at the helm of pushing June to the point of harassment warped her into Vriska lite. John as a character was not good enough for them.

Obviously there are people who make June content that do actually still have that good good Egbert essence in there, and it's not like trans people always have the Exact Same personality they had pre-transition! Nuance nuance nuance.

But yeah there was a lot of anti-transmasc harassment around John (and in general tbh). Because radical feminism has been alive and well in queer (even trans) communities for years.

Third/Final paragraph:

Yeah I def understand being wary of them. I guess I was naive to think I didn't need to be! I should have realized a post about "canon" transfem from 2023 was a different vibe than from like 2016. I just genuinely didn't think I said anything more than "slightly annoying" at worst in the tags!

Yeah no Hussie did not consider any of the characters trans except MAYBE Davepeta (who I love! But also did not organically become trans as much as was a fusion of people of two different genders).

I still don't think Hussie thought deeply enough about any of the characters to "consider" them trans as much as "oh yeah transmasc Roxy would be funny considering the main Roxy hc and this is the Be Careful What You Wish For story" and "oh someone told me about June? Yeah okay sure that seems like a neat direction to go."

Side note: June would have been SO MUCH COOLER if she was considered DURING the Epilogues and that could have been a conversation John had with Roxy in Candy!! But they also whiffed a bunch of cool conversations John and Roxy could have had so le shrug I guess.

Side note continued: I mean they also seem to not give too much of a shit about what was established in the Epilogues when writing HS2 so I guess that's in line with whatever they're doing now lol

But yeah no like I know of at least one trans guy on twitter in 2019 who changed his name from John due to the June discourse. I saw people who posted a lot of John art suddenly stop posting John art. I saw people stop adding John merch to their etsy shops.

I keep being told the fandom has gotten better since then, and I generally don't peek outside of my Strider obsessed niche to check, but really sucks to see that these people, while maybe not as common as they used to be, are still prevalent enough.

Though I guess considering the current state of trans discourse which has only gotten MORE anti-transmasc in the past 6 years, that shouldn't be a huge surprise.

My bullet points were absolutely not used as bullet points should be. They are basically just thought/paragraph breaks whoops lol

[mixterglacia]

On Homestuck. Let's do this.

Tl;Dr, while there was some good things to be found, this was a disappointment. Needed a few more drafts, you feel me?

Vivziepop|Spindlehorse Critical/Hussie Critical under the cut. You've been warned.

Okay, let's start with the good. The voice acting and music were stellar. The music in Dad Strife made me cry, and was such a beautiful touch. Rose and Jade were particularly awesome, the latter especially. Huge props to the vocal and sound crews, you did an absolutely phenomenal job with what you were given.

I'm not too pressed about the swearing, as the comic is full of it, but there were a few moments where they fell victim to the Spindle-Typical "HAH! WE SAID FUCK! LAUGH PWEASE!" deliveries. (Used well in the case of Dave, as it's well...Dave.) But it's not enough to upset me.

Here's were we get into the negative.

As I suspected, the style not only doesn't translate, but it looks -bad-. It's hovering in this weird in between zone of "we want it to look early 2010's, but also highly polished." and that just tanks it for me. It feels borderline soulless, and that's really heart breaking. For a comic that sells itself on its campy, cringy, charming, early internet style, this ain't it.

The decision to take text logs and turn them into phone conversations was expected, but annoying. There are other ways you could have done it, but it's a clear indication that this isn't going to work in a show format. In fact, I'd be curious to see how lost people who don't know anything about the comic are getting. I think it would have benefited to just have this be a character building short about John, because as it stands the pacing is all over the place.

It comes off as just having a plot gun go off in your face and they expect people to keep up. Rose in particular is a huge victim of this. While I know what's happening because I read the comic, I can't imagine that anyone who isn't familiar is going to understand why she's sneaking around the house.

Jade as well, her robot is introduced out of nowhere and it's almost whiplash. I knew they'd rush the first acts but putting almost all of the first act in one eleven minute video is crazy behavior. A lot of the early character work on Homestuck is why it works. Taking time for us to fall in love with the kids because they're just lonely and talking to each other while each goes through their own issues. But so much of that was lost here. Same with the jokes. So many of them were completely lost when you rushed the plot/took out the pesterlogs. John's issues with his dad/harlequins in particular.

I really don't like their decision to constantly jab at the narrator, because it starts to feel like you're making fun of one of your most identifiable aspects. The first time was funny, beyond that is irritating.

All in all, I'm disappointed but not surprised. Homestuck works best as a multi-media web experience. Just like how it barely works in book format, it barely works here.

If they wind up making a full series, I really hope they don't just start from where the pilot left off, and actually put in an effort to do this thing justice.

For Clarity: As I always say, these are just my opinions. I'm not the arbiter of what works and what doesn't. If you enjoyed it that's wonderful. Genuinely happy you found something you liked. Don't let me ruin your good time. You're not a bad person/wrong for liking it. You do you babes.

[r41nyd4yscritiques]

"The concept of the Alpha and Beta kids being anything other than white is laughable when you look at their designs, their names, and every single thing that they do." That's really interesting, I haven't heard that take before? Almost all discussion I've seen when it comes to race in homestuck is people complaining about people making fanart depicting the strider-lalondes as not Black*

(Which. Is kind of weird given how racist homestuck is. Every time I see someone trying to argue homestuck is good I'm like ?????? what about the racism ??????????)

* I also dont know when it got decided they were Black but apparently its canon? At some point

Is it canon? I haven't followed the news of Homestuck in a while but I can't really confirm or deny.

It can't possibly be canon in the animated series though because his voice actor is once again, NOT a Black person.

I doooo enjoy seeing the Strider/Lalondes as Black, especially Black albinos in the Striders case. But,,,,they are still very much white. It's painful for me too, but as a community we have to start being honest with ourselves and recognizing when something was not made for us, and if it refers to our culture its in a mocking way. I mean look at the Makaras. I'll always support works being made in spite, but the specific antiblackness that Dave Strider has attached to him can NOT be ignored.

[generalbitchfest]

This was originally a reblog to the June post I just recently reblogged (re: don't tag John as June) but I got deeper into it and I'm not sure of a good place to cut it into two separate posts without losing the context. So. Anyway.

This is more about Homestuck "canon" than June specifically?

-

I will always call June's canonization toblerone canon btw

I don't know how many fans from the past few years know that she was a high popular fanon for like 4 months I think and then Hussie sent people to find a toblerone and the person who found it tweeted at them asking if they could get the reward of making June canon and Hussie tweeted back that yeah she was canon

In the same sort of way they said all ships are canon

And then, of course, later WP staff were like "no they were actually super excited about the idea of June so this was going to happen we promise!"

Which like

I'm not trying to imply it's entirely a lie but if it's 100% the truth it just really shows the entire team's incompetence and/or willingness to add fuel to the fire that was the harassment that *some of them encouraged if not participated in*

Retroactively saying "this was planned for max 4 months but only got revealed here after being prompted by a fan" isn't necessarily out of line with real dumb shit WP and co have done forever but god damn

Anyway

Point is

It's not like she was planned since the Epilogues (or else they could have done some cool shit in the Epilogues but they really missed a lot of cool shit they could have done in them in general, esp with Roxy and John's relationship)

But, this is me, and I think anything after the Snapchat credits (maybe not even including them) are canon in the way there are books in the Catholic Bible that aren't in the Protestant Bible. Or like the addition of the Mormon Bible. Or, maybe more appropriately for Homestuck, the Gnostic scriptures.

So I guess people who accept beyond canon or dubiously canon or whatever the fuck it's called into their canon are Homestuck Catholics, Homestuck Mormons, or Homestuck Gnostics. Take your pick and/or do a theological discussion as to who should be what depending on which Post Act 7 material they consider canon.

Are those who like the Snapchat Credits Catholics since the addition doesn't super change the base canon? Maybe if they also include Hiveswap and/or the Skaianet lore drop?

Or do those belong to the Gnostics?

The Epilogues/HS2 fans are Mormons though, right?

[generalbitchfest]

Do you have an opinion on those Beforan ancestor concepts that got released semi-recently because I found a lot of them kind of off but I couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be somewhat of a joke on the audience in the same way the original Beforans were or if Huss and I just have very divergent takes on the Alternia trolls

Okay I'll be real I wrote up a whole long rant reply to this that really got off topic, so I'm going to try again and be more succinct, but let me know if I accidentally leave out needed context or whatever.

Please understand that this is not me being upset with you or upset that you sent in this ask! I am Just Like This.

TL;DR: No, I haven't seen it. I don't want to see it. I don't want it to exist. I am annoyed that they are canon AO3 tags (it's understandable like I don't blame AO3, I'm just petty). I want Hussie to fuck off from anything to do with Homestuck forever. Also yeah if you get a whiff that Hussie or something in Homestuck/related media is being audience hostile in anyway, 99% of the time you're right.

The full, but hopefully not too rambling, answer:

I have almost always ignored what creators have had to say about their work after the work is done, especially when it is adding to the lore and not giving further context to what was already in the work, especially when it's random posts that you have to be in certain places to find and not in a new work.

Hussie, especially, has had some dogshit word of god/lore drops. Even if we're ignoring their early stuff when they were still saying easily clockable racist shit, we still have the clusterfuck that was the Skaianet lore drop on Jan 1st 2019.

All of this adds layers on why, even in the best circumstances, I wouldn't really care much about any new info a decade after the piece of media ended.

Now let's add on that Hussie is a giant, toxic, abusive asshole! That is even more reason to ignore anything they have to say about anything, much less about Homestuck.

In my heart of hearts, I want any official Homestuck project or server or recognition to die in a ditch and leave the fandom to the fans. I want Hussie to never gain any money or attention from Homestuck and related properties ever again, unless the attention is "hey remember that person who tried to retcon their own racism even when they continued to be racist in less obvious ways? And ableist? Oh shit yeah you mean the person who actively withheld credits from their employees for petty reasons and threatened fans with legal action and weaponized NDAs so who knows how many more stories of toxic and abusive work environments are out there that we legally can't know about? Damn! Truly shows that we shouldn't idolize people to the point we let them get away with that pattern of behavior for literal decades!"

Okay yeah this is where I started going off the rails last time. Just way beyond your ask.

But yeah, again, without knowing anything about the Beforus ancestors, Hussie's probably fucking with the readers in some way. I keep seeing people in modern fandom try to act like they are someone you can take as a genuine person (for lack of a better phrase), but the more they say and the more things they publish that I am made aware of, the less it seems they have made huge strides in character since early Homestuck.

They just became less obviously racist and stopped throwing the r slur around.

That isn't to say that it's inherently bad; Homestuck is and has always responded to the fandom, sometimes literally, sometimes in appreciation, plenty of times in a "hostile" manner. That's just Homestuck.

But I again find myself about to go on a rant that has nothing to do with what you asked.

Again, I'm not upset with you or that you sent in this ask! I just have a deep, deep hatred of Hussie and their inner circle of fellow assholes, and it doesn't take much for me to go off about them.

And I also have very strong opinions about post-canon stuff, especially after how fucking terrible the fandom has treated people over it with WP staff/adjacent washing their hands of it, pretending it isn't happening, or even actively encouraging/enabling or engaging in it since the Epilogues dropped.

I do feel bad because I have friends who like post canon stuff, and I do feel bad being so idk angry I guess responding to asks like this, especially since I don't know what your feeling son all of post canon are, but anything Homestuck with an official stamp on it lost my respect years ago.

That's a weird way to phrase it, but that's what I've got, I guess lol

[generalbitchfest]

sorry in case this information catches you at a bad time, but michael guy bowman participated in a podcast talking about his time during homestuck. i havent had the chance to listen to it yet, but some reddit people discussed it and its essentially another source confirming andrew hussie has always been like this to everyone

https://old.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1twq2zo/frap_live_with_michael_guy_bowman_bowman_bites/

Clickable link and the link to the podcast

Thank you so much for sending this to me! I'll be real — I saw this was for the Fruity Rumpus Asshole Podcast and I hadn't heard about it before (even though istg I looked up Homestuck podcasts to listen to back in like 2020??) so I was afraid this was that official FRAF forum thing or whatever. Which wouldn't make sense. But you know. lol

I'll be real I won't be able to watch/listen myself (also being very nicey nice about a podcast that only exists on youtube and seems to be very visual (< podcast snob /silly)). But I won't be able to do it because having to sit and watch/listen to stuff that is kind of stressful makes the whole thing on million more times stressful. I'm hoping there is a transcript out there, or I might see if I can download the file and upload it to a transcript service. Definitely appreciate the summary and timestamps in the reddit post, though!

I'm also just going to send it to my roommate (who is VERY into MGB) and get some more takes from her.

I guess some of my takeaways from the takeaways? lmao And the discussion in the post, if there's anything new. (Also I'm not going over absolutely everything, so still check out the link for those of you who haven't!

Albums prior to Vol. 6 had a 50/50 revenue split between the musicians and Hussie, but for the Vol. 6 album Hussie inexplicably offered a lump sum that was allegedly going to cover a hypothetical year of revenue. When the comic was rapidly growing in popularity. Bowman recognized that was a shit deal and asked the music team not to sign it. Toby Fox was basically the only person who didn't join the walkout on this shitty deal, apparently because he didn't think they should treat Homestuck music like it was a job. (He was also 19, which is my best defense for this behavior.)

This is SO Hussie and such a sign of things to come. Also yeah I agree that Toby being 19 (I forget he was so young then!) really explains his take on this.

Toby Fox's appointment as the music team manager absolutely dried up the rate at which Homestuck albums were being produced. Bowman seems to blame this on being unable to directly communicate with Hussie anymore due to Toby's status as a proxy (sounds... familiar...) and thus making usable communications substantially more difficult.

Listen I get Hussie taking a step back from interacting with the fandom. Parts of the fandom were fucking weird and terrible to them, as fandoms can be. But you absolutely need to be more accessible to the people you work with! Or who work for you! Hussie is not some CEO of a crazy big company, and even then, they would have secretaries or other people delegated to respond about important shit!

James Roach was apparently extremely hostile to the entire music team except for Hussie and Toby, which is apparently independently verified by one of the FRAP hosts? Bowman's only in-person conversation with Roach was about the upcoming Hiveswap Act 1 soundtrack, and allegedly Roach claimed he got the job because "nobody else applied" which is a fascinating claim to say to a guy who had explicitly talked to Hussie about wanting to be involved with Hussie's upcoming game project like four years ago.

Apparently the reason Roach gave for why they were struggling to make the vinyl is that they couldn't get in contact with all the musicians, name-dropping Malcolm Brown. Turns out Malcolm was not actually hard to get in touch with at all, given his Showtime is in the fucking Pilot, but that's not remotely the most pressing complication regarding these matters. Bowman has to find Hussie's email on some fucking merch to get in contact, and Roach gets passive-aggressive about how he was totally going to contact Hussie but Bowman just found a way first. Roach also tries to confront Bowman with a single screenshot that would later feature in The Email.

Okay I don't know what The Email is referring to sooo I might have to dig into that unless someone has a link or reminds me that I do absolutely know what this is referring to lol

But! Yeah I mean I try not to talk about him too much but James Roach has just like Been kind of an asshole. I haven't been his biggest fan since 2019, when I first really started engaging more with the fandom and WP started to as well (ah, Twitter). But after he became another proxy between Hussie and the fandom and the shit we saw in Gio's UHC takedown blog posts, and hearing that he just left HICU for uhhh I forget like his health or something? I am Drawing Some Conclusions and even if I still think he's Kind Of An Asshole, and absolutely did some shitty things, the Conclusions disincline me to want to drag him up more than strictly necessary.

That is to say, yeah it's not surprising he was also an asshole about this shit.

Okay I found the email stuff so I will read through that and reblog with thoughts later. My work laptop has finally finished updating and seems to be working, and so must I! (In theory lol)

[mixterglacia]

So thankfully she's not writing or directing, but anything Viv' works with too much turns out mediocre at best and terrible at worst so I have very little hopes for this.

Beyond that many of the others are Spin employees, and that also doesn't bode well.

Unfortunately, I am contractually obligated (kidding, obviously) to see this through. I gave up on her other projects as it's just not even fun to critique anymore, but this is one of my og fandoms.

This is also a great example of why I say Viv' and Co'. In this case, Hussie will catch the most flack since he's more directly in charge. So I'll be introducing the tag #hussie critical so y'all have the chance to block it. I'll likely stop using the main tag once these actually turn into genuine crits, so don't worry too much about that.

Anyways, there's your crew list.

[generalbitchfest]

I can't believe Hussie created the worst representation of what gender is, the gender triangle, with man on one side, woman on the other, and clown gender (agender but if an edgy teen thought they came up with it first) at the top, saying nb are somewhere in the middle

And people STILL say "actually clown gender means woman adjacent somehow"

The exorsexism! It's astounding!

And these are people that LIKE and DEFEND Hussie!

To be clear: I absolutely do not think Hussie gives a shit (points back to clown gender).

But Hussie ALSO has a bad understanding about nb genders and them not giving a shit about the exorsexism in people's explanation and understanding of nb genders doesn't matter imo

It's still exorsexist.