Psycholonials

by Andrew Hussie

While in communication with supernatural forces, two influencers launch a daring new social media brand. After getting in trouble with the law, they must consider how to navigate stardom as scrutiny of their project intensifies. The visual novel begins on April 20th, 2020, taking place on an island off the coast of New England.

Genres: Comics, Fiction

300 pages, Unknown Binding

First published February 3, 2021

About the author

Andrew Hussie is the creator of MS Paint Adventures, a collection of webcomics that includes Homestuck, as well as of several other webcomics, books, and videos.

Reviews

[Lien · Rating 4 out of 5]

With every single one of Andrew Hussie's stories I read, my aversion for clowns increases exponentially

[Max]

I dont know. Shy smile

[Clover · Rating 5 out of 5]

To any Homestuck or ex-Homestuck thinking about reading this: do it. It's got the same distinctive writing style and clever-yet-stupid humor but it's much more concise and takes way less time to get to the emotional beats. Also, there's some familiar music in it and the animations are absolutely stunning as always. It's incredibly heavy and modern, so only play if you're prepared to think about current issues (2020+), but it's also cathartic and sweet and extreme. I cried a LOT reading this, it touched my heart in a way I wasn't quite expecting.

[Catherben (Noah) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm probably going to be updating this review a lot because this story is going to be stuck in my brain for a while.

I loved the depiction of grief and isolation induced psychosis in this. I saw so much of myself at my worst in 2021-2022 in Zhen. I didn't try to overthrow the government but I was definetly self destructive and blew up some of my relationships in ways that I still haven't been able to repair 2 years later.

It was painful to watch Zhen lashing out out of fear and paranoia and to see her destroy the things dearest to her thru her actions that were meant to protect them.

Not to compare every visual novel under the sun to Umineko, but "so are you saying love will save you? Yes and no." Is rewiring my brain like "without love it cannot be seen" did.

Will love save you? No, and you need to accept this to find ways to save yourself.

Will love save you? Yes, and you need to accept this to stop pushing away people who love you and want to support you.

Will love save you? Yes a better life is possible even when it seems impossible.

Will love save you? No. What does being saved even mean? What does a better life even look like? What does getting better and being in recovery look like? Are you being realistic? Are you taking on other people's ideas of what direction you need to be heading in? Do you really want that?

Second playthru:
1. I swear i still read books ive just been in visual novel mode lately.
2. God ive read this twice in 4 months and it might not be the last time i read it in 2024
3. I related to Abby more than Zhen this tine around. Ive both been the person having a life destroying mental breakdown and the person helplessly watching a loved one going through a life destroying mental breakdown. She sticks by Zhen through it all, at a deep personal cost to herself. She tries to help Zhen out of the hole shes digging for herself but knows when to set boundaries to protect her own mental health. From her perspective ther narrative of Psycholonials is horrifying. Her best friend, who she's always been in love with and who loves her back but isn't ready to acg on those feelings due to unprocessed trauma, has a grief/isolation induced mental break during the height of the pandemic and millions of people online and offline are gassing her up and feeding into her deslusions until she is manipulated into declaring war on the united states government. Abby handles it as well as she can and in the end she's the one who is there for Zhen when she is ready to ask for help.

God i love this game

[Surly Gliffs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hussie steps outside the Homestuck universe with Psycholonials but maintains his inimitable style, a mashup of MS Paint styling and verbose textboxing spiced with meta/interactive elements. His typical obsessions are there, though the Juggalos have been toned down to generic clowns (probably for political reasons).

Our protagonist Zhen is the omega to her girlfriend alpha Abby. Inspired by weird trans-galactic visions, Zhen embarks on a social-media-fueled takedown of global capitalism. Strip away the clowns and the social media and you have an re-imagining of Fight Club (which per first rule will not be spoken of further). Like anything Hussie does, there are plenty of ways to deconstruct the work.

You can look at it as straight-up satire, if not outright trolling, of the simps. I'm sure that the fanbase will spend years plotting themselves on the horse-clown gender spectrum, where "horse" is the strongest possible expression of gender and "clown" is the most capricious.

But Zhen is also an unapologetically violent psychopath. With a flash of magical realism, Hussie (through his alien interlocutors) asks his readers to decide whether Zhen is truly being inhabited by aliens or whether her delusions are self-made. That tension also creates an interesting backdrop for the love story between Abby and Zhen, which has surprisingly more gravity than you might guess.

Should you read Psycholonials? If you made it this far through the review, and haven't been abjectly cheesed off by clowns, horses, gender, and Fight Club, then probably yes. Also much worth of mention, the score by Clark Powell is superb and almost justifies the purchase by itself (groovy oversampled electronica with hat tips to Satie). Strongly recommended for Hussie fantypes and with reservations for the squares.

[Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The exaggerated but not entirely implausible story of a depressed, radical leftist influencer who shatters the status quo of global capitalism and imperialism. The amateurishly expressive drawings are as DIY as the revolution Psycholonials conceives. Despite garish overtones, the second half in particular shows believable aberrations of a global upheaval in the age of the Internet. Psycholonials doesn't care about formalistic rules of storytelling. By referencing hot-button phenomena like COVID-19 and lacking respect for any prominent names, faces or trademark rights, Psycholonials is more immediately relevant than few other visual novels or video games in general. Though, lacking any interactivity, Psycholonials is less game than daring literature that embraces its digital dilettantism. (Which is also the reason why this is the only visual novel I ever tracked on Goodreads.)

[Jucá · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eis que depois de muitos anos e algumas tretas, o Hussie, FINALMENTE decide fazer outra coisa que não seja homestuck. Inclusive que não se parece nem um pouco com Homestuck.

A história foi 100% traduzida para português (!!!!!) porém, com um errinho ou outro aqui. Mas no geral a tradução foi ÓTIMA.
Ela é uma visual novel (um jogo que você basicamente só precisa ler e ver algumas cenas) e é dividida em capítulos, que está disponível na steam e nas lojas de aplicativos para telefone.

Psycholonials segue a história de Z, uma jovem, no meio da pandemia, entediada, deprimida e procurando um sentido na vida enquanto joga conversa fora com sua melhor amiga Abby.

Logo no primeiro capítulo já nos deparamos com visões estranhas, um grande evento essencial para a história e personagens extremamente carismáticos (e irônicos).

Se tem uma coisa que o Hussie sabe fazer bem, é retratar a internet e a atualidade. Assim como é impossível ler Homestuck sem pensar no que o Tumblr era nos meados de 2010, foi impossível ler Psycholonials sem associar a forma como as pessoas se comunicam no whatsapp/twitter hoje em dia. Os personagens são ácidos, irônicos, debochados, e ao mesmo tempo, extremamente sinceros e reais.
Vi muitos comentários falando sobre os personagens se comunicarem mal, ou serem "cringe", mas honestamente? Eles são apenas um reflexo da forma que nos comunicamos na internet hoje em dia.

A história começa simples e introspectiva, e rapidament escala para patamares que eu NUNCA imaginei que seriam tópicos nessa história. Os assuntos mudam de discussões de gênero para críticas ao capitalismo e estados unidos em questão de minutos. Claro, o Hussie não é nenhum especialista nos assuntos, mas a meu ver, os assuntos foram retratados de forma simples e compreensível, ao mesmo tempo em que se mostram importantes para o plot principal.

No fim das contas, a história da Z em psycholonials é um retrato da nossa geração: irônica, revoltada com contextos sociais e muitas vezes contraditória e perdida, e é claro, com um GRANDE toque de fantasia ali no meio com a revolução Jubilita e todos os surtos associados à causa.

Queria muito falar mais, mas vou me controlar para manter a review livre de spoilers.

Recomendo fortemente a leitura sem mais grandes explicações. É o tipo de história que merece ser lida às cegas.

Nota 5/5

Honk :o)

Ps: Uma estrelinha extra pro Hussie por ele ter dedicado algumas páginas única e exclusivamente pra chamar a J.K. de transfóbica.

[Navya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in 2024, but didn't want to include a VN towards my reading challenge.
I think this visual novel is honestly a poor use of the medium-- extremely wall-of-text dense which would be fine if the larger majority of them were at all useful contributions to my appreciation of the story. Actually, I think it's entirely disingenuous to even call it a VN. There's only one element of "game-play" (and I'll get to that later) that could even be argued makes it any more interactive than a graphic novel, which I honestly might have liked better if it were one.
Z, our, to put it lightly, completely unhinged protagonist, got WAY too much characterization. It really convoluted her character and the more the story really tried to explain away why she was so fucked up, the less I understood? It's completely okay to have a morally dubious protagonist, refreshing even, but goddamn I cannot believe that she, of all people, tried to give me a motivational speech to fix MY life at the end. Moreover, the focus on Z banished Abby's development to the margins of this novel. At the beginning, it really seemed like we were setting up Abby to be this really interesting foil to Z, but her character just ended up being a poorly utilized yes-man.
So many elements of this VN ended up being a waste, many of them surrounding Abby and her place in the plot. I literally felt like I was being teased whenever Abby showed growing apprehension of Z and then just... stayed? Not out of fear or complacency, but because she thought Z needed her. Z is an infuriating character not just because she is an awful human but because her plot armor is so aggressively aggravating. I would have excused it all if Abby left her, gave her one genuine feeling of utter, irreplaceable loss. I think she would have learned something substantial.
As for what she did learn, I thought it was kind of... anticlimactic? She always, constantly monologues about institutional power struggles that her movement struggles with, that she, internally is eaten alive by, literally constituting pages upon pages of dialogue, and then she...
Doesn't care about it anymore? She lets it go completely to find peace. To be clear, it is not with her finding peace that I take issue with, but it reveals such a larger problem with this story that I feared was true from the start: nothing mattered.
I fear this was actually the central theme.
After each main chapter occurs an interlude where we're teased by a omniscient voice, speaking to who we can assume to be Z in second person, asking us to intervene in her story and choose her next action, only to be blocked from doing so and being told we aren't worthy of choosing yet: we aren't the "SUCCESSOR" yet. Until chapter 9, I was entirely fine with this, I thought it justified being literally only able to click forward and back the whole way through and having to sit through the slow page turns with no fast-forward option. I'll get my one story-interactive moment eventually, I thought to myself, and it'll be so climactic.
Until we're actually at the big climactic moment, Z, now Zhen, is now before her ascended godhood clown form, who is now Z. (Ok I know it's confusing at this point but the review is almost over) Z (the god-clown not the one I was talking about this whole time(yeah ik it's going to be over soon I'm sorry)) reveals herself to be the omnipotent voice all along, and gives us the option of a sword or a crown-- the option to leave Zhen's terrorist-freedom fighter life behind, albeit with the ghosts haunting her forever, or continue to fight a fight that will only destroy her, and worst of all, leave Abby behind.
Whether you want to see the diverging storylines or not, you can't, because they don't exist. Zhen self-actualizes, picking the sword, eventually stops giving a shit about the death count(now in the hundreds(???) above her head, and lives with Abby happily ever after. We never ended up getting to choose after all. What we wanted for Zhen didn't matter. The consequences of her actions didn't matter. Anything she ever spent 12 dialogue boxes talking about. Did. Not. Matter.
The murders, the insurrections, the power trip-fueled homicidal streak, the manipulations, the collapse of modern society into clown-themed chaos, the feeling that we could do anything to change the timeline at all-- none of it mattered.
Given the design of the game: the illusion of VN, the illusion of player intervention, I guess it all makes sense.
But it also means I wasted my goddamn time.

2.5 stars(rounded up) for Mizzlebip helicopter gun-down scene.

[M Cornell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wild and interesting read, oddly hard to put down, but basically Hussie working extremely indulgently and manically through their complicated feelings about becoming a cult leader of personality on the internet via metaphors about capitalism, colonialism, clowns, and cosmos. Some decent things to say about the way internet and cyclical trauma impacts mental health that can't be reduced to "internet is bad, being a gen z'er with little capacity for support is hard." Seems like a lot of rhetorical wool spinning in the mouth of a character at times, bordering on straight up venting, but that also feels like #thatstheirart historically, so don't go thinking "ah, this is their politics/100% true facts" when its metaphors or thought experiments based on real events, feelings, and situations. Basically only the protagonist gets any development since this is a long self reflective piece of Hussie working through their stuff via Zhen, but I wouldn't say the VN suffers for it; the work knows what it is, and its about Zhen's/Hussie's development and "struggle for survival" in the hostile, absurdist media/actual landscape of 2020 America, which "cult leaders" have a dubiously responsible and mentally taxed hand in shaping.

[Roan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be biased as a fan of Homestuck, but I loved this visual novel! It's a shame more people haven't read it either because of Hussie's reputation, or they haven't heard of it. But it's pretty awesome! I found it so touching and the plot is just super fun. Also the soundtrack by Clark Powell is an absolute banger. I'm still listening to most of the tracks, I love them. I enjoyed Hussie's iconic MSPA art style, and the dialogue is great. I do suggest keeping it to one chapter per day since it gets a bit heavy! I really recommend Psycholonials <3 Definitely worth the €2.50 I spent on it.

That was damn beautiful I loved the ending. I don't really know what to think of it but I really enjoyed the plot and Zhen's development. I loved the humour too! Percy 💔 I love how Zhen and Abby commemorated him. Escaping to Fiji and Zhen throwing her phone in the sea... love it. Wasn't expecting her and Abby to get together but it's very sweet. I think the message is that we should do what's best for us and our loved ones instead of trying to tackle huge problems out of our control. And that everything will turn out okay even if the world is colonized by clowns, hahaha.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

All socialists are clowns. Bravo Hussie.

But seriously, this was a fun 70k-word ride, but the ending is such absolute garbage. It goes right from a satirical tragedy about the corrupting influence of power - both in revolutionary politics, and social media/the internet - and then throws that all away for some feel-good lesbian horse moms escaping all of the consequences of their actions because these two abusive assholes apparently "love" eachother. There is no evidence of this, but Andrew Hussie apparently believes this is what love looks like. God help him.

I know this story also says something about Hussie's experience with Homestuck. I don't care. I never read Homestuck. Until the ending, this VN almost convinced me to give it a try, but the ending is so laughably bad that I have, luckily, just saved myself a lot of time that would have been wasted on Hussie's previous work.

It's a fun ride until then though. For what it's worth. It just throws out all artistic merit at the end. Oh well.

[Kenning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up years after it was relevant and years after I'd kind of given much of a care about Homestuck or Hussie. And it made for a very interesting read!

Let's get the negative out of the way. In my opinion, the only thing keeping it from a 5-star review is, I think... a personal exhaustion on everyone needing to write about Cancel Culture. And I do get that wasn't EVERYTHING the book was about. But I think there's a core theme about how sometimes we sit and work ourselves up about Who Said What and if they were right, or if WE were right for the stupid things we said and did. But there is a very heartfelt message at the core there about sometimes we just... need to stop caring about that. Log off and find the people or things that love us not because of what we can give, or whether we can say the right things to earn it. They care because they want to see us be our best selves, whatever that means. And I think that's something a lot of people need to hear.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his first venture since the completion of Homestuck, Andrew Hussie goes balls deep into a clowncore apocalypse led by a webzine-writing troll (not a species) whose prophetic visions from a celestial clown alien inspire a cult of militant juggalos to burn the entire global structure to the ground. It’s bonkers, but also as emotionally complex and character-driven as you’d expect from the author of Homestuck.

[Divi · Rating 4 out of 5]

there's a lot that has been said about hussie and I'm sure a lot of that is true. but one of the things that is true is that they are in fact a very good writer and storyteller

a weird, interesting clown story. it's hard to not read elements of hussies experience in this, which is interesting, but it's not the only interesting thing. I don't agree with everything presented - I think I have more hope about the world - but it's hard not to love zhen


oh also the music is very good

[Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine a joke gone too far. So, you do the only sane thing, and double down on the joke and ride it out like a champ, 'cause tsunamis were made for surfing. Whew! Chapter 1 complete, and only 8 more tsunamis to go!

I would read anything squawked out of Andrew Hussie's gurgling multitasking muscular funnel.

[bog g]

suprisingkly good. reminds me of homestuck from how it goes from 1 to 100 in 300 pages. didnt expect the clowns to take over the world

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond cromulent.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

on one hand wow and on the other hand what the fuck