Monthly Archives: July 2021

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 134: The Ultimate Strider Feelings Jam

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Introduction

< Part 133 | Part 134 | Part 135 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 8 of 12

Pages 7733-7765

This post is dedicated entirely to one of the most touching scenes in all of Homestuck, if not THE most touching.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Contrary to what I said last post, I ended up also publishing this one while on vacation. I won’t work on more Homestuck posts for the rest of my vacation (until August 1), but rather get on the grind to finish reformatting my old posts from May to September 2019. Those posts have had messed up formatting on this site for almost two years, and fixing them is long overdue.

It’s time to go over the ninth selection of the fake character select screen: Dave and Dirk, round 2. This section will take up the entirety of this post since it’s (1) a very long scene and (2) one of the most emotional scenes in all of Homestuck. When you hover over the first option of the fake select screen, you see Dave and Dirk back where they began: sitting side by side, ready to have their reunion at long last. It’s the exact same image we saw in the second fake select screen, which is thematically fitting.

I love how happy Rose looks fantasizing about shoving a pillow in Jasprose’s face.

Aside from Dave and Dirk, most of the groups of characters listed in the select screen are no longer in the same place, so the fake select screen has developed an interesting system for who to show in which section:

  • The six-way conversation shows whichever characters are presently on the frog platform.
  • Vriska/Meenah shows Meenah having Condesce-esque (Condesque) fantasies while the Vriskas face off.
  • Roxy/Calliope round 1 shows the frog platform zoomed out.
  • The four-way conversation shows the frog platform characters, but drawn more crudely.
  • Roxy shows Roxy (obviously).
  • Jasprose/Jane at first showed Jane, but now it shows Jasprose.
  • Roxy/Calliope round 2 shows Calliope.
  • Dave/Dirk round 2 (in the next select screen) shows Dave and Dirk but drawn more crudely.
  • Roxy/Kanaya is the last option, and the fake select screen ends after their conversation.

This system of showing characters has gotten a little cumbersome, but it’s still very fun and adds a lot of visual humor to A6A6I5. But enough humor now: time for some extreme FEELS.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 133: Tenuous Illusions of Free Will

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Introduction

< Part 132 | Part 133 | Part 134 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 7 of 12

Pages 7672-7732

No, this isn’t a part where characters have an existential discussion on free will.
The title of this post simply refers to this fake character select screen.

It’s time to go through the second of A6A6I5’s character select screens in this post… except this time, it’s a fake character select screen, which the reader must go through in linear order.

Wow, 10 path options!!!

Wait a minute. You click and click, but nothing happens. This path selection screen seems to be broken. Looks like “free will” got greedy and overloaded the thing with “choice”, rendering the graphic up there completely useless, except you guess as a cool rollover thingy. For the first time EVER, in the over 9000 page history of this website, you begin to feel slightly deceived. Oh, how you would have loved to taste the fruit of free will one last time before this wild ride jerks our bodies to a deadly stop. Alas it is not to be. You must proceed through all of these options linearly, one by one. You click the link below, as usual.

Although this passage initially makes the fake select screen seem like a brutal prank, we’re instead going to be treated to a fun spin on character select screens: instead of going through options in whatever order you want, you go through them linearly, and after each option, you can hover over all the prior options to check on each group of characters. So this fake select screen isn’t completely fake: it’s more of a twist on select screens that focuses more on the rollover aspect.

Given the contents of the select screen shown above, it makes sense for it to be in linear order as I just described. Roxy/Calliope and Dave/Dirk both show up twice in the list, and there’s a lot of bias towards Roxy in there. Most of the conversations feature characters presently on the victory platform: the only ones that don’t are the two Dave/Dirk sections and Meenah/Vriska. Note that I will not be going through the entire fake select screen in this post: rather just the first eight options. I will go through the ninth (Dave/Dirk) in the next post, and the tenth (Roxy/Kanaya) up to the true final select screen in the post after that. After that is three more posts going through the rest of A6A6I5, the Collide post, and the Act 7 and credits post.

Now let’s begin the fake select screen with Dave and Dirk!

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I have only eight Homestuck posts left…

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… and as such, here are some reflections.

I’ve said many times that once I finish my Homestuck blog post series—the same one that I started in 2015, paused for almost two years, and have worked on since then very on-and-off—finishes, I will never have to think about Homestuck again. Now, this is obviously an exaggeration, but I’m still starting to view the completion of my Homestuck post series as the end of an era for me. Why might that be, you may ask?

For one thing: Homestuck means a lot to me. I first read the comic in 2014, in the summer between my first and second years of high school; I was 15 years old then. I gradually got more invested and obsessed with Homestuck in the following years, participating in online discussions and fan projects aplenty. I had a steady stream of Homestuck interest going until late 2017 (months after my Homestuck posts initially fizzled out), and then it went on and off from there, with me moving to different interests—SiIvaGunner, SRB2, and MLP:FiM to name a few—but often coming back to Homestuck regardless, and finishing my Homestuck post series bit by bit. I resumed my Homestuck posts on a day in December 2018 where I was so bored that I wanted to resurrect that old project, and later Homestuck media since then (most of all the epilogues and new book commentary) has continued to fuel my motivation to continue those posts. Now, the fuel of new Homestuck media has fizzled out, but I think I have just enough remaining Homestuck energy to finish those posts!

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 132: Leadership Doubt and Feline Boisterousness

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Introduction

< Part 131 | Part 132 | Part 133 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 6 of 12

Pages 7635-7671

Rose represents my reaction to all Homestuck fandom drama from this year.

Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. I have less than 500 pages left of Homestuck to go through. 500 pages may sound like a lot, but it’s quite a small portion compared to Homestuck’s full page count, which slightly exceeds 8000.

Anyway, we left off at Calliope getting revived by an increasingly saccharine Roxy. Now, a lengthy scrolling panel with denizen sound effects showing Echidna in person (but not her face) takes us to Kanaya and Karkat, having finished their meeting with Echidna. It’s quite a fun and detailed panel giving a good sense of scale for Echidna’s monstrous size, drawn by an external artist.

For Kanaya, the denizen meeting was brief and successful, but Karkat is still befuddled at the purpose of his presence. Kanaya says she and Echidna talked about Karkat but is reluctant to explain what they talked about, which is some withholding that Karkat isn’t too happy about. With Karkat lost on what he stands for or what his purpose is, the two discuss their aspects, and we start to learn new things about them—some directly, some indirectly. This conversation in general features us learning a lot of new things about the Alternian trolls’ session.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 131: Meeting of the Contrasting Muses

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Introduction

< Part 130 | Part 131 | Part 132 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 5 of 12

Pages 7561-7634

I feel like I should mention that a friend of mine who doesn’t know anything about Homestuck recently joked about me doing blog posts analyzing Danganronpa, which I don’t know anything about.

(I really hope I didn’t jinx myself there.)

Finishing the transition from last post, Skaian clouds take us to Jade, Jane, and Calliope on the yellow spiral cherubic stage thing. The zoom-in is much less grandiose than the zoom-out from the victory platform was.

*sigh*

It’s not that I hate the dream bubble scenes in A6A6I4 and A6A6I5 with Jade, Jane, and/or Calliope. It’s just that when I try to comment on and analyze those scenes, I spend big chunks of them being completely stumped as to what to say about them, so I kind of just end up going through them quickly and picking out a few bits of dialogue that I do have something to say about. And this scene is no exception: Jane asks when and how she can wake up, Calliope offers to wake her up the same way she woke Rose and Roxy to cut short their reunion in Act 6 Act 5, but then something else happens to the stage and spiral.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 130: um i guess this is the one where vriska devises the battle plan

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Introduction

< Part 129 | Part 130 | Part 131 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 4 of 12

Pages 7515-7560

I couldn’t think of a good name for this post, so I’m left with a shitty name instead. Sorry about that.

The character select screen is officially over, and now we’re back to business with a comedic callback to Gamzee playing with dead trolls’ heads in [S] Flip. As much as A6A6I5 lays it thick with callbacks, I can’t stay mad at this one.

VRISKA: Ok every8ody, time’s up!!!!!!!!
VRISKA: Wrap up your convers8tions. Our tactical meeting is officially 8ack in order!

This passage combined with the panel above briefly portrays Vriska’s style of leadership in a more comedic light than usual.

This is a pretty fun group picture. I love how Vriska is standing on top of a fridge to indicate her leadership.

Vriska goes over the battle plans for our heroes to take down all remaining adversaries: the Condesce, Jack Noir, Jack Noir, Jack Noir, and possibly the Prospitian Monarch. She goes over them one by one, and so will I.

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My MLP episode review posts will be going on hiatus…

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… until I finish my Homestuck posts. I only have 11 Homestuck posts left, and I should be able to finish them well within the end of this year. Once I finish those posts, a huge weight will be lifted off my back, and I can move on to other insanely ambitious projects that no normal person would ever think of doing!

That’s all, bye.

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 129: Four More Massive Walls of Text

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Introduction

< Part 128 | Part 129 | Part 130 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 3 of 12

Pages 7502-7514 (not in order)

This is the sort of bullshit that happens when you turn your back on the body.

As the Homestuck franchise continues to collapse in on itself due to yet another storm of fandom drama, Homestuck itself is here to stay, waiting to be read or reread by anyone who just wants to enjoy a good webcomic by Andrew Hussie. As for me, I just want to get my Homestuck blog post series done, and then I never have to think about Homestuck again! Of course, that doesn’t mean I will never think about Homestuck again, just that I will never have any reason to. I have only 11 posts left. Only 11 posts. ONLY 11 POSTS!!! And I’ll finish what I wanted to for the rewritten posts… oh, I don’t know, some other time.

Continuing from the last post, it’s time to go over the bottom half of the eight-way select screen: Roxy/Dave/Rose, Kanaya/Karkat/Vriska, Arquiusprite/Vriska/Terezi/Dave, and John/Jake. I think I’ll start with Kanaya/Karkat/Vriska, starting the post with a conversation consisting solely of trolls just like last time.

Ah, the two trolls whose zodiac symbols are fancy-looking M’s.
It’s been forever since they last conversed!

This is honestly one of the weirder conversations in the selection screen. It’s not much of a long-awaited reunion or new strong relationship between two characters, but rather like, “OK, this exists I guess”. I feel like I can mostly skim through this conversation and pick out interesting bits here and there.

First, Vriska talks about how wildly enthusiastic all the humans are to have their reunions, setting this conversation as one largely about comparing humans and trolls. Vriska brings up Rose as an especially good example, because her long-awaited motherly reunion has washed away her usual dry and aloof demeanor.

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