Poor John remains eternally oblivious to how crucial that honk is.
Second last post of A6A6I4! After my next post, I’ll go on another pause (probably my last pause) as I finish my final college semester before I graduate.
Picking up where we left off, John continues his retcon journey and encounters Dragonsprite, Terezi’s lusus sprite.
DRAGONSPRITE: sniff sniff DRAGONSPRITE: sniff sniff sniff sniff JOHN: (hey, would you quit it!) JOHN: (i’m trying to keep a low profile here.)
Spritelogs with the trolls’ sprites probably weren’t high on the list of things people expected to return in A6A6I4, but they return here. John’s statement about trying to keep a low profile doesn’t refer to hiding his presence from Terezi entirely, but rather returning the favor with some subtle retcon pranks of his own.
In five words: Season’s overarching gala arc introduced.
Premise: Princess Celestia gives Twilight Sparkle two tickets for the Grand Galloping Gala, but she can’t decide which of her friends to give the second ticket to because they all have different reasons for wanting to go.
Detailed run-through:
The episode starts with Twilight Sparkle helping Applejack gather apples, then Spike burps out a letter from Celestia inviting Twilight to the Grand Galloping Gala, plus two tickets. Both ponies are excited to go to the gala, while Spike insistently dismisses it as girly nonsense he wants no part in. His dismissal is humorously performative and reminiscent of the many people who are in denial about being a brony, like I was for years. More on Spike’s hammy denial when I get to the end of the episode.
Analyzing Homestuck is as easy as 1, 2, 3! (Just kidding, it isn’t.)
Only two posts left of A6A6I4 after this! I’ll probably finish A6A6I4 before this month ends, then put my Homestuck posts on what will hopefully be my last hiatus before I finish them.
Just like my last post, this one begins with a Vriska/Meenah dream bubble scene. This time, it’s somewhat more morbid in tone, taking place in what looks to be the same dream bubble that the Openbound games started in. But just like last time, I’m going to sidestep the fact that Hussie forgot all about their age difference.
MEENAH: BOOM MEENAH: there goes another one VRISKA: Wow, yeah. MEENAH: dude sure is busy today VRISKA: I’ve got to hand it to him. VRISKA: As far as indestructi8le, reality-destroying monsters go, he really is tireless. VRISKA: Even though on some level I can tell he’s pro8a8ly a complete moron, his dedic8tion and persistence is actually pretty admira8le. MEENAH: holla
This is exactly what I keep saying about Caliborn. He’s dedicated so much energy into improving his art skills and becoming as powerful as can be, and as Lord English it’s on some level admirable how relentless he is in his quest to kill his sister.
Before I begin, I’m going to explain how these posts reviewing every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic will be organized and scheduled. Hopefully this statement will make me come across as a bit less of a lunatic than if I just dived right in.
Organization: Each post will cover two to three episodes, depending on how much I have to say about the episodes covered. This division means that each season will be divided into anywhere between 9 and 13 posts, except for season 3 which is half as long as each of the others, and thus will take up about half as many posts.
Schedule: My current plan is for these posts to be weekly, coming out every Friday at 9:00 AM EST. Unlike with prior post series of mine, these will work under a scheduled queue system, allowing me to work on them at what should be a reasonable pace and perhaps even mitigating the lengthy pauses my creative projects tend to run into.
Now let’s begin!
Season 1 Episode 1: Friendship Is Magic, Part 1
(Yes, I know it’s capitalized “Friendship is Magic” in the title card, but I consider it proper formatting to capitalize all verbs in titles, even short ones like “is”. Despite this, I’m very much used to typing the show’s acronym as MLP:FiM with a lowercase i.)
In five words: A fairly typical first episode.
Premise: Twilight Sparkle, along with her sidekick Spike, is sent to Ponyville and meets the rest of the show’s main cast. You know, the usual first episode.
“W3 M4K3 OUR OWN LUCK 4ND YOU’R3 4BOUT TO PROV3 TH4T” —Terezi Pyrope, 2014
I would say not to expect the rest of my A6A6I4 posts to come out quickly, but not even I can predict my own work ethic. For me, motivation comes and goes like the wind.
I can tell that few things give Hussie more joy than joking about juggalos.
Time for the first of several Meenah/Vriska scenes in A6A6I4! Better known as “scenes where Hussie forgets about Meenah and Vriska’s significant age difference and then awkwardly backpedals in A6A6I5”. It’s a shame the author ended up forgetting something so significant, because this is quite a fun scene giving insight into both of these characters in a more casual setting than adventurous quests to take down Lord English.
VRISKA: Hey Meenah. VRISKA: Any idea where we are now? MEENAH: iunno VRISKA: Do you think… VRISKA: This could 8e the “Dark Carnival”?? MEENAH: nah MEENAH: that shit aint real MEENAH: its a made up religious belief pimped out by trash clowns VRISKA: Are you sure? MEENAH: shell yes MEENAH: be fake as shit MEENAH: of course the religious beliefs themselves are real MEENAH: makin it convenient for anyone who wanna exploit those delusions for her own badass objectives MEENAH: like pulling in clams hand over flipper and ruthlessly subjugating the general public MEENAH: i mean MEENAH: not that id ever bother with a dope scheme like that MEENAH: just saying
Meenah is contrasting herself against the Condesce when she says she wouldn’t ever bother with using clowns for public subjugation. Clown nonsense is so prevalent in Homestuck that I can’t blame Meenah for not wanting to get involved in it. Perhaps Meenah’s apathy towards clowns is because Kurloz, her group’s resident clown, is nothing more than a pious servant of indecipherable juggalo schemes that relate to Lord English tangentially at best.
I didn’t have any good ideas for a new name for this post, so I kept the old one.
Before my motivation inevitably drifts to something totally different, I figured I’d resume my rewritten Homestuck posts and try to at least do Act 4, if not all the way through Act 5 Act 1 (which is my planned ending point for the rewritten posts).
But before I start going through Act 4, I’ll quickly recap the intermission, which I reread before starting this post.
The Midnight Crew intermission is awesome as fuck. It’s a throwback to the story style of Problem Sleuth that blasts your face with extreme time shenanigans to prepare you for the somewhat lighter time shenanigans in the act that follows. It characterizes the quartet of Derse agents, two of whom we hadn’t ever seen before, through the Midnight Crew, as well as the black queen through Snowman. Most notably, the intermission cleverly drops hints about the trolls and the Midnight Crew’s past until it punches you in the face with the reveal that the intermission took place on the trolls’ planet. It also has a few hints about Lord English, an overarching villain we very gradually learn more about. All in all, the whole intermission is executed beautifully and lots of fun from start to finish.
Act 4 is one of several acts that begins with a walkaround game. The game’s music is called Doctor, composed by the deceased George Buzinkai* and remixed many, many times throughout Homestuck’s music. Doctor holds an extremely special place in my heart—it’s one of only three tunes that I managed to remember through my first read of Homestuck, the other two being Karkat’s Theme and Elevatorstuck. I’ve always held the sentiment that among Homestuck’s most iconic tunes, Doctor was the one that best captured the comic’s nostalgic spirit, better than even Sburban Jungle or Showtime. I can’t quite explain why I feel that way; I suppose Doctor just has this powerful, nostalgic feeling that transcends words.
* Read this Reddit comment by a Homestuck music team member for information about Buzinkai’s name.
As for the walkaround itself, you play as John exploring the Land of Wind and Shade, fighting imps, playing around with his sylladex, talking to Nannasprite from afar, and gathering lots of information from consorts about his planet’s lore and denizen and all that jazz, all the while receiving commands from an exile who is clearly not WV. This walkaround is very complicated and weird to come back to considering the heavily simplified format and pixelated art style of later walkarounds; playing it, I can really see why Hussie chose to rework the style of walkarounds in Act 5 Act 2. According to my past self, “Hussie has said that this game is somewhat experimental and that it probably could’ve been presented in a more effective way (which is what the famous YouTube series Let’s Read Homestuck does).” I assume I was referring to Hussie’s Formspring then, but I’ve decided not to bother with playing through the walkaround in full and instead consume it using my physical copy of Homestuck: Book 3 (the Viz Media print).
I’ve decided to start a project that I’ve wanted to do in some form since as far back as 2014. This project is to review and analyze every single episode from all nine seasons of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (MLP:FiM or MLP for short), a highly successful TV show in the My Little Pony franchise that ran from 2010 to 2019. I shouldn’t have to tell you that the show is notorious for becoming very popular among people far outside its target audience, particularly teenage and adult men. I also shouldn’t have to tell you that yes, I am one of those people who likes the show despite being far outside its target audience (21-year-old man as of this writing). It’s a fact that I’ve had to come to terms with after years of denial.
MLP:FiM is good, like it’s actually good, not even the meme kind of good. It’s fun to watch, it has a good sense of humor, unique and varied characters, cool musical numbers, awesome action scenes (especially in season premieres/finales), lots of overarching story arcs, and most of all, valuable lessons (friendship-related and otherwise) to take away from every episode. Many of those lessons are just as applicable to adults if not more so than they are to children. The show, from my understanding, was designed as something that parents would be able to watch and discuss along with their children, but it ended up with a much wider appeal than that.
I suppose I should also talk about when and how I got into the show. I’ll phrase it as a quick timeline:
Finishing Act 3 in my rewritten posts was long overdue.
Been a while, hasn’t it?
I figured with me going back and continuing on reformatting my posts before I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress, now would be a good time to resume my rewritten Homestuck posts, or at least finally finish Act 3 of those, especially as I’m taking yet another break from my regular Homesuck posts. And especially considering my next regular Homestuck post would be number 122, which is 12.2 without the decimal point.
Anyway, I’m going to pick up where I left off like nothing ever happened. Where were we?
Time to be the Aimless Renegade, who is a very well-loved character by those who remember he exists. He’s one of the few characters who is killed off for real as the story goes on, with no resurrection or alternate self relevance and therefore no screen time in the increasingly controversial sub-acts of Act 6. His per-exile obsession is law and justice, which is played out very humorously as exile obsessions tend to be.
… Yeah, I must sadly admit I don’t have a lot to say about AR’s subplot so far. We learn that he harbors the Dersite hatred towards frogs and that Grandpa Harley had this absurd collection of guns and ammo that AR has been making use of. Grandpa Harley has absurd collections of everything though, which I suppose comes as a result of combining his status as a guardian with his status as a page with his fully realized potential.
Yes, “sup”. That’s what I’ve chosen to title this post.
Sorry this post took so long! Schoolwork has been ramping up this semester, so don’t rule out the possibility of me continuing to be slow.
It’s so weird to process that John completed his planet quest at long last.
The Pipeorgankind flash is followed by a callback to the Myststuck games, with John exploring his newly cleared planet that he warped into the middle of nowhere. The fireflies are no longer confined by the fourth wall and now fly about through the screen’s space, which is quite a charming sight.
All the old setpieces from LOWAS, like the Parcel Pyxis and the salamander village, are still there, which must be a strangely nostalgic sight for John. Not an unwelcome one, though, because he still has plenty more adventures to go through.
You would not believe your ghosts if 120 Homestuck posts were written by cookiefonster
(120 is pronounced “one twenty”)
Before we begin, have an obligatory plug of my 8-bit cover of Fireflies. Also an obligatory statement that this post includes the oil retcon scene.
Alright, let’s begin this post!
Jade and Calliope commence their storytelling session for real, wielding pens in their respective text colors. Jade tells the two stories about John as promised in their last scene.
JADE: im starting to remember the things she told me so vividly now JADE: its amazing what a creative project can do to get your mind turning CALLIOPE: ^u^
I know exactly what Jade is talking about regarding creative projects. These posts have gotten my mind turning about many matters, Homestuck and otherwise, definitely not to an excessive or distracting degree or anything.
CALLIOPE: what shall i draw first? JADE: the land of wind and shade! JADE: that is where the story starts CALLIOPE: i see. CALLIOPE: which story, exactly? CALLIOPE: her story, or yoUrs? JADE: hmmm JADE: both, as a matter of fact JADE: my story began with a tragedy on lowas, which led to meeting her in the first place JADE: and then, she used my memory of that tragedy as a starting point for her story, which turned out to be related CALLIOPE: ooh, fascinating! CALLIOPE: (i love stories) JADE: (i know)
All three voiced cherub characters in Homestuck—I consider the regular and god tier Calliope separate characters—display a strong affinity for circumstantial simultaneity. In their many stories, they frequently tie together seemingly distant events using common points; in this case, the stories about pre-retcon John and post-retcon John are tied together using their visitations to LOWAS.
Cookie Fonster's stuff 