“see, this is why the left needs a massive clown movement”
– Andrew Hussie¹⁾

Psycholonials is an episodic visual novel by Andrew Hussie that released from February 3, 2021 to April 20, 2021. It's a weird 'character study' of an opportunist in an alternate history novel, and a retelling of the original definition of meme. I do not recommend this novel.

The story follows Zhen(JEN)²⁾ and Abby on the island of Nantucket in the early COVID-19 pandemic. Zhen gets drunk, crashes her car, then snatches a cop's gun and kills him. She panics and moves into Abby's mansion, where she resets her digital identity to a 'clownsona' with a Jubilite Manifesto, coming up with new Jubilite concepts (e.g. gender pyramid, pranxis³⁾) until the police finally publishes her warrant.

The general idea of Psycholonials stems from Hussie's jokes about left-wing 'clown movement'⁶⁾ on Discord⁷⁾ and the 'early pandemic' psychosis. Hussie's initial 140,000 word Psycholonials draft was allegedly written before the George Floyd protests, from April 20, 2020 to May 25, 2020,⁸⁾⁹⁾ then he'd post cryptic images to promote the game, an attempt to 'move on', along with two trailers.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾

Following the Steam release, it was also ported to the App Store and Google Play. These mobile ports later became free by late 2021,¹²⁾¹³⁾ thus why a certain unofficial transcript was made during this time, then the Steam release lowered its price before it could be made free on March 13, 2024.¹⁴⁾ An official embed version of Psycholonials was later made available at the Homestuck.com website on April 20, 2026.

On November 11, 2021, Polygon published an interview with Andrew Hussie on Psycholonials's 'anti-cult' messaging and allegorical critique of fandom. He defends his newfound reclusiveness as a way of ending 'obsession', noting that 'speculation' and 'parasociality' fills the void, then he implies that disillusioned critics have this magical power to turn a fandom into a 'destructive' cult.¹⁵⁾

While he initially downplayed the 'personal allegorical elements' in the interview, Hussie would then publish a document about a niche color plug-in that he coded for Photoshop on April 6, 2026. In the document, Hussie brought up a female stalker who sent many 'violent' emails and it reached a point where she personally visited his sick father, but then he goes back to attacking all of his critics again.^16)17)18)

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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 Jubilites.

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),¹⁹⁾ then there's '🥺' used by Mizzlebip and the Secretary of Japes heavily implied to be Mizzlebip. The entire cast has a gender identity and the 'boaters' even change genders in clownsona form.²⁰⁾

• 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,²¹⁾ long after a certain comment on his Formspring.²²⁾
• Upon release, Psycholonials was published by 'The Silence Mill', a shell company in Delaware that was likely set up to evade taxes.²³⁾ The publisher was silently removed about three years later.²⁴⁾
• 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 "went insane" and Zhen dropped out, then her mother got 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.²⁵⁾ 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.²⁶⁾
• 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,²⁷⁾ without explicitly saying it like Metal Gear Rising did,²⁸⁾ 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,²⁹⁾ 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.³⁰⁾

• Psycholonials (Steam) - The front page of Psycholonials.
  • Psycholonials on Homestuck.com - The official embed version, released in 2026.
  • Psycholonials with Gio's Commentary - A transcribed version with Gio's commentary.
• Psycholonials on VNDB