Welcome to the first episode of Mutt-day news, a weekly round up of news stories from the past week, with a comedic bent, at least where possible. This week reporting on the odd confluence of stories around Homestuck, the growing issue centralized platforms like Itch and Stream are presenting in their own right, and a quick fire round up of global fascist policies pushed in just the last 24 hours.
Sources:
Gio’s article: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2025/08/08/uhc-end/
Brandon Jay’s (Katkar) IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8225844/
(Homestuck is under upcoming)
Transfeminine Review Breaking the Itch story: https://thetransfemininereview.com/2025/07/24/itch-io-nsfw-ban/
Mira Lazine Article for Trans News Network: https://transnews.network/p/i-feel-violated-queer-creators-lose-livelihoods-in-itch-io-bans
Wikipedia dismissal: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/08/11/wikimedia-foundation-challenges-uk-online-safety-act-regulations/
Rueters report with Israel confirmation: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-strike-kills-al-jazeera-journalists-gaza-2025-08-11
Script I was reading from:
Welcome to the very first episode of Mutt-day Morning News, I’m Phenn, the titular mutt, and oooooh boy was there some news last week, so let’s dive in.
Hey, have y’all heard of Homestuck?
Don’t worry, if you yet remain ignorant, cherish that and I’ll do what I can to aid you while informing on this buck wild ass story.
Homestuck, which ran off and on from 2009 to 2016, is generally referred to as a webcomic, but it was more of a multi media experience, including numerous flash animations and occasional browser games.
So, back in 2019 the imminent death of flash was kind of a big deal to the Homestuck community, archivists, one would assume Andrew Hussie, the IP’s original creator, and Viz Media, it’s publisher since 2017. Despite that, homestuck.com has degraded over time to the point that it looks like… well that now.
Since 2020 the best way to read Homestuck has been the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. The UHC was made up two parts. An offline reader program developed by Bambosh and Gio And the asset pack, an archive of all the assorted material that made up the once freely available comic.
That last bit obviously put the collection in sort of a weird space. They were hosting both a program they owned and an asset pack of Andrew Hussie’s copyrighted work on the same github page. But until recently, Hussie actually recommended the collection himself on twitter and his link tree.
So, background mostly established, on Friday august 8th every link that used to host the UHC suddenly redirected to an in-depth article written by Gio titled The Unofficial Homestuck Collection Taken Down. See, in addition to being a programmer, archivist, and major Homestuck community member, Gio is a writer with the level of journalistic rigor and integrity I find hard to make a joke about.
Aside: He actually writes about a wide variety of topics, so, if you, like me, only heard of them from their previous reporting on Hiveswaps… I’ll be kind and say troubled development, I recommend checking out his archive.
In the article Gio lays out a timeline of lies, aggression, legal threats, and weirdly obvious cat’s paws, with the receipts to back it up. In brief, back in 2023, Bambosh and Gio were contacted by a representative of the Homestuck IP looking to collaborate in someway regarding the collection, going so far as to say Andrew wanted to add to it. Bambosh and Gio responded favorably after making sure it was clear Gio was not an optional part of any collaboration.
I alluded to it before, but Gio has been a target of Hussie’s ire in the past. They have a history of uncovering mind game played within Hussie associated enterprises, which have generally not responded favorably. If you’d like a more complete break down and have time to kill I recommend the two videos by Sarah zed, A Brief History of Homestuck, and it’s follow up, Homestuck Sent me a Legal Threat, And Then It Got Worse.
As for the current thing, according to Gio’s article, over the next two years Andrew, through barely veiled proxies, people pleasers he’d placed in management roles, and an incessant use of ridiculously overreaching NDA’s, systemically isolated first Bambosh, then Gio, in an attempt to gain direct ownership of the UHC and force Gio to not only recant years of reporting, but effectively play PR manager for Andrew Hussie.
This obviously didn’t happen. Instead, Hussie, who stripped of other proxies, refused to communicate with Gio except through lawyers, where he was obviously obliged to only refer to Gio by thier deadname, used legal threats and DMCA claims to demand the take down of UHC, leaving only the fork made by the Homestuck Independent Creative Union available. A fork Gio had already took issue with when it proclaimed itself to be an intentional successor to the UHC without his input.
The HICU are allegedly a group of creatives titularly independent from Hussie, who have rights to create within the Homestuck IP. Gio’s reporting, and some remarkably inept shell games by the offending parties, have revealed it’s functionally indistinguishable from Homestuck Inc, aka Andrew Hussie.
And normally, that’s where the story would end. A big deal in some decently large circles, but not likely to break containment. until, things got weirder.
On august 9th SpindleHorse, Vivienne ‘VizziePop’ Medrano’s studio, hosted a panel at Animate! Orlando. Viewers were forewarned of two announcements, one major, one minor. Hellaverse fans were fairly disappointed that neither announcement was for them, while others were confused how the minor announcement was an entire second studio in Australia. Turns out, the major one was a homestuck animated trailer.
Partnering with VizziePop was always going to stir some folks up. Like Hussie she has obsessive and fervent fans and the same can be said of her haters, but it was rather impressive how quickly folks also noticed one of the 6 people credited on the trailer, had worked on the terf wizard sports game last year. Namely, Brandon Jay, the voice actor playing Karkat.
In short, Andrew Hussie managed to get everyone talking about the animated version of his comic, connect it to an ontologically evil IP, another controversial creator, and to do all that the day after the links used to answer every instance of “how do I read homestuck” asked since 2020, now explain in detail Hussie’s abuses.
Y’all should go read Geo’s article, but I’ll end this story with a quote from it. I remind you, this is the person who has been keeping Homestuck accessible at no small personal expense, for years.
“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.”
In other news,
While the payment processor censorship story continues to develop and add fun new wrinkles, there is a secondary issue fermenting in the background, the tyranny of platforms. Digital store fronts like itch and steam offer some solid benefits. They centralize access to games, they come with a built in user base as well as community management tools, and they can provide discoverability, especially as GenAI and sponsored searches before it enshittified search engines.
But many, especially trans and lesbian authors, have had their faith in Itch shaken. When the Transfeminine Review broke the story on July 24th, they included a verified list of dozens of books that been delisted from itch, many, though not all, quickly returned. Others like The DeeDee Calculus only returned on August 6th, though many remain missing. This does seem to indicate deindexed content is getting reviewed under some new standards, but for some reason they’re hidden standards.
Many were also concerned about payouts. Itch has a one strike no appeals policy for creator’s who content violates their terms of service, though it would later be announced Itch would not be using it against those affected by this special situation. It was cold comfort when many of the same authors started reporting payout delays. On August 7th several authors reported payouts that had been delayed 10 to 17 days were finally clearing.
Oh I forgot a sort of important detail, on August 6th Anego Studio’s paused itch sales of it’s game, Vintage Story, one of the best selling games on the platform. They allege Itch quote, “are withholding a six figure sum of our revenue share.”
Rather brave to pull with a studio who need an faq about why they’re not on steam, where they explain how the discoverability and drive for unchecked growth, as well as legitimate criticism of the indefinite – license rental as a purchase, game sales model it uses, and the price parity locking it forces while taking a 30% cut.
In her piece covering the itch.io bans for the Trans News Network only yesterday, Mira Lazine spoke with dozens of queer game devs, authors, and cartoonists who no longer felt safe on the platform.
But what can we do about it? Well, we can yell at payment processors, we can demand better from Itch, but we can also learn from the past. I’ve seen a few old school cartoonists talking about doing old-school mail-order forms with payment via cash, check or money order to circumvent pay pros.
If you’d like a more Web 1.0 method, Anego is a great example, selling their game directly from their website. While that’s an answer, it’s not so simple for those making queer, transgressive, or sexual artistic works. It’s also asking a lot of say, a solo developer or a self published first time author to handle just to sell their art.
And then there’s the Conjured Ink project, an effort out of trans authorial circles to centrally decentralize. Their plan is pretty unique, the main site isn’t to be a platform from which anything is sold so much as a hybridization of a web ring and a searchable catalogue. The idea is that once the project is up and running, creators will be able to use their tools to build a simple shop enabled site, or just plug in their own site if they’re already self hosting, then get connected with pay pros comfortable handling whatever level of sexual or other content the creative expects to want to sell.
We have options, they’re not the most convenient, but when living under globally encroaching fascism I’ll take what I can get, or carve out. And I’d be lying if the idea of getting cash in the mail with an order form all to email someone the epub of my poetry or smut doesn’t sound fun to me.
And, for our final scripted story this week, well, I hope a round up of global fascist policy developments won’t be how I regularly end this show, but given the world… it very well may be, so let’s get to it.
After signing an executive order last month seeking to criminalize homelessness and mental illness, US President Donald Trump has had federal agents terrorizing the country’s capital city all weekend, before an unhinged, even by his standards, rant on Truth Social, where the repeatedly impeached man called for a mass forced exodus of DC’s homeless. This morning, between a curfew and mobilization of the national guard, the US President looks to be attempting to declare martial law in the district as he attempted to do in LA earlier this year. As such it’s important to remind you all that LA has not stopped protesting, despite police and military brutality, despite an intentional lack of coverage, LA has not been bowed, it’s unlikely DC will be either.
In less hopeful news, Wikipedia’s challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act was dismissed early this morning. The free online encyclopedia has historically refused to bow before censors, but it’s hosting of queer information as well as “adult images” which is to say, frank deceptions of genitals on the encyclopedia pages that covering them, has landed the entire site under the Online Safety Act’s most stringent, Category 1 regulations. Not only has this already locked those in the UK out of the encyclopedia without submitting to id verification, cutting everyone under 18 off from the largest shared informational repository on earth, but it would also require Wikipedia catalogue and maintain a database of their contributors, many of whom volunteer anonymously to protect their identities from stalking, law suits, or even imprisonment. OSA is also causing issues for previously mentioned Itch, as in addition to the whole payment processor snafu, itch also failed to get a system ready for OSA, so in the UK large sections of the site, notably the pages of queer writers and artists, simply display a page informing the user that the content there is blocked in their country.
And as the last update on global fascist movements over the last 24 hours, it was confirmed late last night that Israel assassinated 4 members of the 5 person Al Jazeera team still on the ground in Gaza City, including the reporter Anas Al Sharif. The reporters were killed in an airstrike on the journalist tent, just outside al-Shifa hospital. Israel has also confirmed the deaths, though they have already begun spinning a narrative that Anas Al Sharif was a member of Hamas, which of course justifies bombing a tent full of journalists covering Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, to say nothing of the clear threat a hospital yet left standing in Gaza poses to Israel.
Thank you as always to my supporters for making all of this possible, as a reminder I really only make about $80 a month between Patreon, Ko-fi, and Twitch, so please consider throwing me and other creatives you enjoy a few bucks. I can honestly say every time I get a new $5 supporter I have to fight back tears, and I know plenty of folks are in the same boat as me.
