Psycholonials is an episodic visual novel by Andrew Hussie that released from February 3, 2021 to April 20, 2021. It's a weird alternate history novel, where influencers create an opportunistic clown cult that borrows anarcho-socialist aesthetics. I do not recommend this novel.¹⁾

The story follows two young adults, Zhen(JEN)²⁾ and Abby, that live on the island of Nantucket during the early 2020 pandemic. One day, Zhen goes drunk driving, falls asleep and crashes, then it suddenly escalates to Zhen snatching a cop's gun and killing him. Zhen proceeds to hide in Abby's mansion, where she would reset her online identity to a 'clownsona' and spreads her Jubilite Manifesto across social media.

The general idea for Psycholonials surfaced in a 2019 zine of Hussie's Discord messages, where Hussie proposed a left-wing 'clown movement'⁷⁾ over unspecified drama.⁸⁾ As the pandemic began, he envisioned revolutionary potential in a lockdown scenario and wrote a 140,000 word draft of Psycholonials, from April 20, 2020 to May 25, 2020,⁹⁾ that was incidentally before the George Floyd protests began.¹⁰⁾

Despite protests manifesting nationwide, Hussie continued with the novel and hoped it'd still be a worthwhile read.¹¹⁾ Then in late 2020, he began posting cryptic images of himself to promote the game and show he intended to 'move on' from his previous work. The first trailer was uploaded on December 20, 2020,¹²⁾ then the second trailer dropped after all chapters released on April 20, 2021.¹³⁾

On November 11, 2021, Polygon published an interview with Andrew Hussie on Psycholonials, saying the story is 'anti-cult' and an allegorical critique of fandom culture.¹⁴⁾ Hussie would notably defend his reclusive nature, insisting that actively engaging with fans will fuel their 'obsession' and 'radicalism', then discovered that suddenly doing nothing invites 'rampant speculation' and oddly strengthens the parasociality.

From here, Hussie criticizes fandom culture,¹⁵⁾ insinuating that fans are blinded by obsession, hyperfixation, and a desire to fit in that their bad internet habits subconsciously fuel the machine, but then he makes this unusual argument that fans becoming disillusioned critics or wishing to distance themselves from the fandom entirely is proof of how fandoms can turn 'destructive' at any moment.

Considering how people generally approach articles, leaving it half-read or relying on a summary,¹⁶⁾ you will find people who genuinely think Psycholonials is about Hussie's life despite him saying it wasn't the case.¹⁷⁾ Hussie does explain that his earlier theatrics of moving on from Homestuck, the e-boy to clownsona arc, is only similar to Zhen in this regard, but notes that his own life is merely a small inspiration.

The Gender Pyramid, or Gender Triangle, is a concept in Jubilitism which strangles the gender spectrum into a pyramid. It builds onto a presumed horizontal male–nonbinary–female axis, then adds the vertical clowngender–horsegender axis on how much an identity resonates. Of course, some issues have been raised, such as the placement of nonbinary and how 'clowngender' is just agender.

For social media, these gender identities are expressed through emojis, with a grey triangle being followed by some combination of: '🤡' (clowngender), '♂️' (male), '🇳🅱️' (nonbinary), '♀️' (female), '🐴' (horsegender),¹⁸⁾ then there's '🥺' used by Mizzlebip and the Secretary of Japes heavily implied to be Mizzlebip. The entire cast has a gender identity and we even see the 'boaters' change theirs in their clownsona form.¹⁹⁾

• I'll save you the calculation work: Hussie was 41 when he wrote it and 42 once it released.
  • If you're reading into the political angle, Psycholonials came after the Skaianet Systems joked about a Hitler–Einstein relationship,²⁰⁾ long after a certain comment on his Formspring.²¹⁾
• Upon release, Psycholonials was published by 'The Silence Mill', a shell company in Delaware that was likely set up to evade taxes.²²⁾ The publisher was silently removed about three years later.²³⁾
• Zhen is a second generation immigrant, whose parents were initially shown as these ominous grey corpses with blood coming out their eyes. It's explained that her immigrant father had overworked himself to death, so her mother freaked out while Zhen dropped out, then her mother caught COVID-19 and died on April 20, 2020. Their eyes stop bleeding once she gives up the lifestyle.
• Early in the story, Zhen mentioned being cancelled over homophobia accusations that she attempted suicide.²⁴⁾ We later find out that she attributes this to a former classmate, Candace/Joculine.
  • Given the context clues, we're led to believe that the two were former Homestuck fans that had a falling out and she pushed an unrequited 'kismesis' relationship on Zhen that kinda went too far, as said attempt had occurred over backlash for an opinion about a same-sex Homestuck ship.²⁵⁾
• The fact that her Instagram account remained online feels unrealistic, as social media platforms often rush to hide the accounts of a suspect in a high-profile incident from public viewing. Of course, it's meant to be a fictional metric that demonstrates “social media bad”, as she continues to gain followers with each time skip, but allowing it to stay online kinda dampens the bloodshed's impact.
  • I mean, the authorities would've known that Zhen was “potentially armed and dangerous”, yet we don't really see them make any efforts to secure the perimeter and conduct a search party.
• By Chapter 6 and 7, the political nature of Psycholonials begins to shine, but it's glaringly obvious that the story presents an flawed view of politics in general, perhaps Statesian in nature.
  • Psycholonials is revealed to be a portmanteau of 'psychic colonialism', a method that Riotus uses to propagate his civilization across the cosmos without the use of traditional invasions.
    • I would have to assume this is where the allegorical critique of fandom culture had came in, or rather, the novel's attempt at an analogy for the Richard Dawkins definition of a meme,²⁶⁾ without explicitly saying it like Metal Gear Rising did,²⁷⁾ but it's just a fucking mess.
  • During the embargo, which is arguably the biggest test against hegemony, the Jubilites don't have anything resembling mutual aid or production. Their focus is restoring electricity, so Zhen signs a treaty and nonaggression pact with their adversary. See the issue? In reality, its legitimacy would be in shambles,²⁸⁾ especially when they don't change the status quo in any meaningful way.
• For a full minute, Zhen reenacts Revolver Ocelot's gun-twirling from Metal Gear Solid 3 before she conducts a summary execution. This lets the reference pay off, but it's kinda just lame.
• In a recent Homestuck community survey, over 3/4ths of the respondents didn't read Psycholonials.²⁹⁾

• Psycholonials - The front page of Psycholonials which, again, is now a free game.
  • Psycholonials on Steam - A more direct link to the page, if you prefer.
  • Psycholonials with Gio's Commentary - A transcribed version with Gio's commentary.
• Psycholonials on VNDB