Andrew Hussie

seddiwy:

raven-dreaming:

things-im-afraid-to-say:

yourfaveisproblematic:

• Drew some very racist, misogynistic comic which contains rape jokes.
• Made Trickster Mode characters in Homestuck canonically white, despite claiming that the characters were aracial (but also says they definitely aren’t black). When fans were upset about this, he included a page stating how one of the characters was “feeling CAUCASIAN” with a dramatized protest from another character. He later changed the panel not because it was offensive, he claimed he didn’t mean it as an attack on those with PoC headcanons for the characters and that he still found it funny, but because racist fans were using the panel as an excuse to attack PoC fans and fans with PoC headcanons.
• Made fun of people on the Autism spectrum
• Defended use of PTSD/Trigger Warning jokes in his comic by saying it was satire
• Created an entire character to make fun of “sjws” and trigger warnings
• Appropriates AAVE with the character Condesce (here, here, and here) and portrays her as a racist stereotype (here, and here)
• Used lynching references/imagery in comic
• Has used homophobic slurs in comic
• Repeatedly uses ableist slurs in comic (here, here, and here)
• Another character who’s a racist stereotype is Damara, who’s a promiscuous Japanese school girl. 
• Describes human reproduction as exclusively heterosexual
• Well known for some of his very fatphobic answers to formspring questions

Okay, so I see this post around a lot and it always makes me sick with stupid.  Gonna explain why in detail.  The primary thesis of this rebuttal – people need to stop reacting to these sorts of issues with a baseline reaction of offense and indignation, and look for context.  Hussie is a satirist.  He often comes down firmly on the “good” side of the issues in these examples!!!  It’s just masked by layers of meta.

• Those comics are super old, and Hussie has taken them down.  Can’t even read them properly in that resolution to judge.  What I remember about reading some of them before, is that Hussie loves making “crappy” webcomics.  He gets a lot of kicks out of mocking the lower forms of comedy used to make “jokes” in some artist’s work out their, and that baser “comedy” often involves misogyny and racism.  For example, one of the few I can read, with the guy dunking the welfare check – that’s not him making a racist punchline.  That’s him using racism as a punchline, exaggerating the bluntness of racist jokes to fire off a mock-shitty comic.  Another one literally ends with the line “This is so fucking racist.”  The racism is not being played straight.  The TeamSpecialOlympics stuff was all very out there, and I think Hussie took it down largely because the current majority of his fanbase wouldn’t be able to contextualize it.  Think of “Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff” as a more streamlined version of all that business.
• For one, Hussie has since argued extensively that there’s no reason the Harleyberts couldn’t be black, reprimanding a fan for boxing them in in that regard.  He has mentioned that it’s unlikely for the Strilondes to be black, simply because natural blonde hair is a bit too uncommon to be a valid character design for largely ubiquitous characters.  Secondly, the “Caucasian” debacle has an extremely simple explanation: the characters are all still aracial, but they achieve a bizarro-puppet-acid-trip mode where they take on a Caucasian skin tone, SOLELY BECAUSE A PLOT-VITAL CHARACTER NAMED LIL’ CAL IS A CLEAR RESULT OF A CHERUB ENTERING THAT MODE.  It serves a purpose in the story, and it actually reinforces the araciality!  The “Caucasian-ness” or “peachy-ness” is seen as alien and unwelcome by the characters populating this world where race was a complete non-issue.  For the record, I think changing the panel was unnecessary, but it did show maturity and sent a good message straight to the fanbase.  If the OP is trying to twist that into a character attack, they haven’t succeeded.
• The “on the spectrum” joke is the one of the only things here that irks me a bit, and I’d say it’s pretty friggin’ mild.  Not to mention, his sensitivity to the terminology suggests that he’s familiar with the situation; I’ve read tidbits implying that he himself is actually on the spectrum.  So at worst you’ve got a guy joshing himself and his friend by using a poorly-chosen term, and at best you’ve got a guy actually making a joke about his own brain,which is a thing you’re totally allowed to do.
• A) The assumption that every application of trigger warnings by Tumblr users is valid is a very dangerous one.  If you don’t actually have PTSD or a similar condition that triggers are actually used to help prevent recurrences of, you are actually appropriating mental health issues for your own comfort.  So when people mock the use of triggers by Tumblr users in general, they often aren’t mocking what they’re meant to do.  They’re pointing out the fact that they are now held hostage by teens who don’t actually suffer from mental health issues and who are diluting the practice entirely.  Satirizing that kind of thing can actually be important.  B) This tweet was part of a string of jokes.  The user who appears to be upset went on to gush over Hussie being “so sarcastic and charming.”
• Kankri is not a critique of social justice as a whole.  He is a critique of assholes who use social justice terminology and tactics as a weapon for their douchebaggery.  He uses convoluted language to subtly insult and degrade those he’s sticking up for (mocking Mituna’s speech impediment and style choices), he helps deplorable people like Cronus achieve “special snowflake” status, he discredits Porrim’s concerns about gender inequality based on his own hangups on his failed crush on Latula and his clear disdain for Porrim’s promiscuity… The list goes on and on.  And at the same time, he’s a 3-D character.  He possesses the boldness and articulation of a philosopher saint.  In another universe, he was an inspiration to millions.  But here he feels his potential is utterly wasted, so he lashes out.  Readerswho fail to comprehend his words are really missing out on a valuable perspective.
• Condy’s personality clearly takes a few cues from sassy, flamboyant rap queen Nicki Minaj, a much-parodied cultural figure.  So there’s that.  Also feeding into her portrayal is the English cult’s connection to the Insane Clown Posse and white juggalo culture, which Hussie is actually mocking partly for its rampant appropriation of AAVE in everyday speech.  The ICP are dancing all over her friggin’ folder in the linked “racial stereotype!  How can anyone take a criticism of her as a BLACK stereotype seriously when she idolizes a CULTURE OF WHITE RAPPERS???  And regardless of all this… who says it’s appropriation to have a CHARACTER use AAVE?  Real people in the real world speak that way.  There’s nothing particularly offensive and degrading about the way Condy uses it.  She herself is a complex character who struggles with issues of fatalism, attrition, and the destruction of her beloved species. Why must there be a rule forbidding a totally valid character from speaking a certain dialect just because the author is white?  This is some really arbitrary stuff.
  
• The “sudden and disturbing lynching references” lose a lot of punch when you remember, as the calloutstuck mods utterly failed to, that the effigies are jujus used by the Felt member Stitch, which have been previously been seen hanging by their necks in-comic.  I guess they skipped the Intermission.  The joke here (and it is a very brief and inconsequential one, as the items in this section blaze by super fast; the OP is being quite misleading by implying that it’s such a haltingly huge deal) is that Meenah almost killed someone by offing their juju, because she is casually brutal, as we are getting to know in this introduction to her character.  If there IS a statement being made, it’s that you SHOULDN’T BE CASUALLY BRUTAL WITH PEOPLE’S LIVES AND IMAGES, LIKE MEENAH IS, and that you SHOULDN’T TAKE PEOPLE’S LIVES INTO YOUR OWN HANDS.  "Nah, that’s a bit morbid” is Meenah’s thought process.  Obviously it’s more morbid than that.
• I really can’t fathom what the OP’s issue with the “homophobic slur” thing is.  It’s a very brief but valid satire of the slur itself.  Karkat notes that the term has zero meaning in troll culture, just as no one really understands the true meaning of the slur today.  He then goes on to note that people’s hatred of a legitimately-hatable person like Vriska will probably catch on, encouraging people to use the term liberally without any comprehension of where it actually came from.  It’s a clever play on the fact that actual internet trolls use the slur constantly with zero respect to its dark origins.  It’s a comment on how word use changes and adapts over time.  It has absolutely fuck-all-nothing to do with the author being homophobic. 
  
• Look, I… I dunno how to break it to you, but.  This is how some teens actually talk????  Especially privileged and not-very-sensitive-to-social-issues teens like Feferi, or dweebs that employ mock-gangsta swag like Dave.  It’s a slur that is only recently being phased out or even identified as a slur.  Many of us in Hussie’s age group grew up with it as just kind of an everyday word.  Is it good that it crops up frequently in Homestuck?  ‘Course not.  Does its use mark Hussie’s character as utterly venomous and hateful, as the OP implies?  Not by a long shot.  I will point out that the use of the slur has gone way down since Act 6 began, with only two uses in the entirety of the mega-act, and the only one since 2012 being said by Caliborn, who… well, everything that guy has ever said has been explicitly pointed out as dumb and wrong by Hussie’s author avatar, so there ya go.
• OP desperately needs to learn the difference between bare stereotypes and trope subversions.  It takes only a cursory understanding of Damara’s role in affairs to understand that she’s more than just a “sexy Asian” stereotype.  She speaks in violently vulgar terms, but is blatantly clear that she does this because no one can understand her dialect!  Her conversations with Rufioh are crassly tinged, indeed, but they’re much more restrained because they’re actual conversations.This is because she clearly still has a spot in her heart for the guy that shattered it.  That’s the thing – she’s complex!  She was cheated on and harassed to the point of insanity, lost all of her trust in her friends and turned to the solace of English’s cult!  She’s got wayyy more going on than the “me so horny” hentai trope that acts as her 2-D template.  Anyone who asserts otherwise is either bad at reading comprehension, or pushing an agenda regardless of the facts, or… just as racist as they claim Hussie is.
• Human reproduction is defined scientifically as heterosexual.  There’s asexual and sexual reproduction, heterosexual being the union of a sperm and egg.  The OP’s beef is with 6th grade biology, not Hussie.  Note that he didn’t say “human reproduction is between men and women,” or anything of that ilk. THAT could have been construed as cissexist, and only in the vaguest, most unintentional and conversational sense.  Again, your beef would have to be with the great majority of the population that would only describe human reproduction that way without ever feeling like they were saying something wrong.  This one is really, really pushing it to embarrassing levels.  I’m ashamed.
• The fat Vriska one is a bit douchey as well, I’ll admit.  But it was based on an inside joke with fans shipping him with a fetishistically chubby Vriska.  He was playing into this fantasy to make it sound as absurd as possible, especially since Vriska generally comes off as a spritely, athletic, attractive, and unlikely to be morbidly obese to the lengths he describes.  It’s unpleasant, but it’s not the same thing as mocking actual fat people just for their size.  It’s several levels deep in a fake fan fiction.  And, like a lot of stuff on this list, it’s all been deleted.  He regrets his association with the Fat Vriska Debacle.  That’s okay with me.

I’m not defending the guy as perfect.  He’s not.  No one is.  No one should be held to rigid behavioral standards just because he’s an artist.  This kind of hate-flinging is what makes more introverted content creators like Hussie retreat from the public eye and share less with their audiences. Let’s do less of that.  Please?  Don’t let hateful bullshit slip by.  But don’t make up and distort your own bullshit to push an agenda to put someone down.  It’s a very selfish thing to do.  (Looking at you, mod for yourfaveisproblematic.  This is post either negligently under-researched or full of intentional fabrications.)

, 

YES THIS RESPONSE
I actually love Kankri and Damara and actually most of the dancestors for the reason described here– they’re based off of stereotypes and made actual characters

i initially reblogged with my response in the tags, but this is worth saying out loud.

OP cherry-picks to the point of fabrication For the Drama. you don’t have to dig very deep to see it, and honestly it should be a given from the username itself.

stop letting people exploit your discontent and rage on bullshit. if you care enough to get angry about it, you ought to care enough to know what you’re talking about.