Happy first birthday to my Homestuck post series

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My next Homestuck post, which will be the post series’ anniversary special, will be released Tuesday or so. For now enjoy this cool picture I made to celebrate:

As you can see, I’ve come a long way since starting my post series, with my posts becoming ever more detailed analysis and commentary on the comic as time passed. At first, new posts covering 100 pages twice a week was kind of a slow schedule for me; now, even new posts covering 50 pages every week is a bit much for me to keep up with, because my posts are just so detailed these days. And it’s all thanks to me getting carried away with projects.

If I keep posting at the rate I’m going, this post series will last for maybe another year and a half before I reach the end; that is, if the epilogue doesn’t happen by then, which I highly doubt. At the end of year 2, I’d probably be in early Act 6 Act 6 (around page 8400), going by a rough estimate of 40 pages covered each week. This means I have quite a way to go before my posts devolve into endless rants about the problems with the retcon and Vriska and the ship I always moan about and Act 7 and all that shit. Will I live up to those predictions? Only time will tell.

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 68: Dream Decapitations and Smug Brain Clones

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Introduction

< Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 >

Act 6 Act 2, Part 3 of 6

Pages 4538-4568 (MSPA: 6438-6468)

My anniversary special post is coming up next, either on Sunday or on Tuesday. Are you ready?

We now switch focus to Dirk’s dream self, and the big thing I notice here is that all but a few items are tinted red: the ones that aren’t are the rocket board, Minihoof, the Dersite newspaper, Cal, and Dirk himself. My guess as to why that is is because the colored objects are items specific to the dream world, not just projections of his own possessions. The deal with the apparently “real” version of Cal in his dream self’s room is never explained, which is a bit of a plot hole: we don’t know if it’s empty or full, let alone what happens with it, and I can only assume it isn’t a projection because of its coloring.

As for the other objects being colored, Minihoof is probably colored because it’s a living being, the Dersite magazine is obvious, and I’m not sure about the rocket board. I do recall that he later uses it to travel to Roxy’s home and decapitate himself and all that and…

Wait a minute. I think I know why it’s colored like that. I’m pretty sure his dream self uses that thing in the Unite Synchronization sequences as well to pick up Roxy and Jane, and it’s definitely distinct from the waking world rocket board. With that in mind, maybe the board is colored because of its use in that sequence and how it’s taken to the real world in Jake’s island? My bet is that the waking and dreaming world rocket boards are one and the same, with the dream one making it to Dirk’s room with a reckoning portal and becoming the waking one.

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Homestuck posts are now every Monday

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Except for the next post after the one I’m presently working on, that’ll be my anniversary post and will be released on the 18th if I can make it on that day.

My next post is currently about two-thirds finished and should be done tomorrow Tuesday Wednesday, because I’ve got a lot of homework to do today (September 12). Post is 80% finished as of Monday afternoon.

God I hope I can get the anniversary post done on time. If I don’t make that date I could post it two days after that (September 20), the anniversary of my first Homestuck post not counting the introduction post.

EDIT: As of September 13, the next post is 95% finished, and I should have it done tomorrow.

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 67: Meet the Rad Dude with Rad Shades

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Introduction

< Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 >

Act 6 Act 2, Part 2 of 6

Pages 4437-4469, 4517-4537 (MSPA: 6337-6369, 6417-6437)

And a rad title refrance.

NOTE: My next few posts for Act 6 Act 2 will be divided as follows:   

  • One post for the rest of Dirk’s half of the selection screen (might be a shorter post than usual?)
  • One post for Roxy’s half of the selection screen
  • Two posts for the rest of the sub-act

I’m not sure if I’ll keep going with the every Sunday schedule or do something a bit faster. I keep forgetting that I stopped being able to maintain a steady posting schedule months ago, when I had that big school project in April and May. But I still feel tempted to say how often I’ll release posts regardless.  

You’ve clearly got some time to kill before your bffsy gets back from her emergency. Might as well do some casual reading. 

Rather than going through sylladex mishaps while waiting for Roxy to get back to her, Jane decides to read some books instead, presumably because she’s so “mature”. Seriously, everything she’s done so far has come off as unbelievably childish. The only thing that prevents her from reaching Vriska levels of immaturity is feeling bad about leaving her dad in suspense.

But there’s nothing casual about hoisting even an abridged Sassacre’s up to your lap, so forget that. There’s always GAME GRL. But the articles are all a bit vapid, and in your view, somewhat demeaning to female gamers, and women in general. You and Ro-Lal are convinced the whole thing is just written by the same odious d-bags who write GAME BRO. Which is exactly what makes it GOOD 4 THE ELL YOU ELLZ, her words. 

It’s clear that Game Grl is a completely satirical magazine, perhaps even more so than Game Bro considering how sexist it supposedly is. Its purported intended audience is gamer girls, but its actual intended audience is the same sorts of people who enjoy stuff like South Park.* This brings to mind the whole thing of layers of irony, which itself brings to mind Dave. With that in mind I have a new headcanon: in the scratched universe Dave is the creator of all those satirical gaming magazines.

* Roxy would probably fall into both categories (i.e. be motherfuckin’ both things).

Alright, it’s finally time for Detective Pony. Before we begin, I’d like to note something: for the sake of this post series, I’ll consider the fanmade full version of Detective Pony to be canon. Even though I consider it to be canon regardless.

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Homestuck posts will now be weekly

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And in addition to that, my next post will be delayed by one day, so that it’ll be released September 4 September 5, which means my plan for at least the next month is to release Homestuck posts on Sundays; this will include releasing a post on the 18th, this post series’ anniversary.

Here’s why: I think this semester, I might legitimately be somewhat swamped in school work. During the start of 2016, I talked about how I haven’t really experienced the effect of school work dampering all the cool fun Internet stuff, but now it has sort of affected work on my blog, at least to some degree. And it’s not just because of school work; alongside that, I’ve been participating in making music for the ever-growing Cool and New Webcomic soundtrack, which is one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long time. But what’s important is, I actually do have a decent load of homework and stuff to do each day, a load that I have a feeling may get bigger as my classes progress. With that in mind, I think weekly posts may be a reasonable thing to do for the time being.

You may be wondering, how far am I with my next Homestuck post? As of today (September 1), I am about 30% done; I’ll be sure to update this number as I go along. Though I’ve been sluggish on the post the past few days, I’ll probably be able to get quite a bit more done on the weekend, especially considering it’ll be the Labor Day weekend.

EDIT: I just made a cool ASCII progress meter to track how far I am with that post. Last updated September 5, 10:05 PM.

                                           100%
Start █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ Finish

EDIT 2 (September 3): My next post will either be delayed by a day or cover a little less content than I originally planned. I haven’t decided which yet but I’m leaning towards the latter.

EDIT 3 (September 4): I think I’ll have to end up doing motherfuckin’ both things. Next post coming tomorrow.

EDIT 4 (September 5): OK, next post is almost done done. I shortened the amount of pages covered even more than previous because god damn have I delayed this post long enough. Because of this, Act 6 Act 2 will be split into six parts instead of five, which I’ll explain further when I finish the post.

"Mulholland Drive" and Puzzle Stories

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I just watched the movie Mulholland Drive for my English class and I have some possibly interesting thoughts on it.

For starters, when I looked up stuff about the movie, it was talked up as “the best movie of the 21st century” in some very recent articles. After seeing it, I can give it credit for one particular thing: it’s the hardest to describe movie I’ve ever seen. Whenever I watch a movie, I read about it on Wikipedia or TV Tropes afterwards; the TV Tropes page on Mulholland Drive has a lot of stuff on it that sounds to me like crackpot theories, like the weird cowboy dude being a reality warper (what the hell?) or everything up to that one lady opening the box being a dream (how and why would that make sense?). Those theories are so bizarre that they make the movie even more confusing, which I am convinced is the point. It purports to be a mystery film of sorts with murder stories, but what’s confusing is, a lot of time is spent on one of the main characters trying her hand at being an actor, which seems to be a pointless interlude to me, but I’m almost definitely missing something. Not to mention that the murder scenes themselves also don’t clearly tie in to whatever semblance of a plot the movie has. Long story short: this is a confusing bizarre movie among confusing bizarre movies.

I believe Mulholland Drive is meant as a story that’s also a puzzle for viewers to decipher on their own. My solution to the puzzle is presently a flat and simple “I don’t fucking know”, which is only compounded by the fact that I’ve never been very good at understanding movies. Maybe that’ll change when I talk about it in class tomorrow? But for now that’s all I can say about this strange movie.

However, I’ll also say this: the “story that is also a puzzle” idea is a common interpretation of what Homestuck is. The present ending of the comic (which I’m not really a fan of) may especially have such a puzzle interpretation, with a lot of cryptic ambiguous events whose true meaning one can only deduce. There’s an “obvious” happy ending interpretation of those events, but that relies largely on a large number of leaps of logic, not to mention disregarding other story points (like the deal with the events of the claymation section); meanwhile, the less obvious interpretations, which I largely buy into, makes more logical sense but also makes the ending even less satisfying.

This may be an alright thing for the comic to do if not for the fact that as confusing as it can get at times, Homestuck still makes a clear effort to be comprehensible to readers most of the time; for instance, many animations or otherwise confusing events are followed by a character recapping what went down. So in this case, the ending as it stands could be thought of as an especially bizarre way to suddenly incorporate the Mulholland Drive puzzle story principle. The weird thing is, not only the events of Homestuck’s current finale themselves have a variety of interpretations, but why it’s the way it is also can be interpreted a number of ways. That’s something I’ll talk about another time but I’ve already discussed this sort of thing throughout my Homestuck posts.

Another Homestuck and Problem Sleuth post update

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First I’ll talk about my next Homestuck post, then my plans for the Problem Sleuth post series.

My next Homestuck post will be released Saturday, September 3. I’m choosing this date because that’ll put me right back on track for releasing a post on the anniversary of this post series, assuming I’ll keep posting every five days. Sorry the date’s so late, but as I’ve mentioned before, that’s because it’s kind of long. It’s also sort of because I’ve been busy with some stuff, mostly keeping track of everything and getting used to stuff as I’m starting my last year of high school.

Now what’s up with my next post exactly? The bottom line is, dividing Act 6 Act 2 into posts ended up a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. Originally I wanted to do something like this:

  • One post for pages preceding the Dirk/Roxy selection screen
  • One post for Dirk’s half of the selection screen
  • One post for Roxy’s half
  • Two posts for the pages following the selection screen

As I soon discovered, the problem with that idea is, the first post here would cover about 80 pages, which is just way too much to write about in five days. So I ended up covering a little over half of those pages, and I’ve decided to revise the plan as follows:

  • Part of the pages preceding the selection screen
  • The rest of those pages + most of Dirk’s half
  • The last part of Dirk’s half + Roxy’s half
  • Two posts for the pages following the selection screen

I think that’s a fairly even way to divide up all these posts. I’ll let you know when I’m close to finished with the one I’m working on by updating this post.

As for my Problem Sleuth post series, I’m really not sure what to do with that. The commentary thing worked well with the first few chapters of the comic, but now, not so much. I do want to keep on re-reading the comic, but I think I might do the following: instead of writing up commentary the way I do with my Homestuck posts, I might start just writing down more general thoughts on the comic. Maybe there will be some parts I feel are really worth commenting on; I don’t know. I think I should see for myself how that’ll go.

Cookie Fonster’s Problem Sleuth Commentary Part 4: Liquor Explosions and Skull Puzzles

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Introduction

< Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 >

Chapter 5 + part of chapter 6

Pages 328–422 (MSPA: 546–640)

NOTE: Next time I’ll try to release a Problem Sleuth post only slightly late rather than this. Sorry about all the delays.

10/1/2019 NOTE: This was my final Problem Sleuth post before I shelved the project, deeming it a failed experiment. Past the first few chapters, I couldn’t remember enough about the comic’s plot to write much meaningful about it; as such, this post isn’t really up to my quality standards. I do want to pick up my Problem Sleuth posts again someday, perhaps if I’m on a hiatus with my Homestuck posts.

5/10/2025 NOTE: On second thought, from rereading my Problem Sleuth posts I was right to deem the project a failed experiment. I started off decent enough, but starting from part 3 it became clear that I wasn’t able to analyze the comic in the same way I could Homestuck. Sorry to all the Problem Sleuth lovers.

When Pickle Inspector wakes to see his office flooded, the area with the elf is flooded as well. I’m kind of confused again—is that area part of the material world or not?

When Pickle Inspector is commanded to save the drowning elf, the narration says:

It is too late for him. There is nothing you can do.

First death that’s actually kind of sad.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 66: The Miracle of Another New Beginning

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Introduction

< Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 >

Act 6 Act 2, Part 1 of 6

Pages 4391-4436 (MSPA: 6291-6336)

NOTE: The first 30 or so pages covered in this post are technically between Act 6 Intermission 1 and Act 6 Act 2, but it makes the most sense to consider those pages part of the latter act.

NOTE 2 (8/25/2016): Happy birthday, Andrew Hussie!

You are Jane Crocker again. 

And once again, you have woken up on the moon of Prospit, without any recollection of how you fell asleep. You think you were going outside to get the mail? You can’t remember.

Here’s a bit of dream self weirdness in action. Waking up in the dream world and taking a while to remember stuff that happened is one of the defining motifs of dream bubbles, but not of dreams in Prospit or Derse. Jade’s dreams never worked that way at all, with her essentially sleeping on and off in sort of a dual state of existence, sometimes forgetting that she’s even asleep. But in fairness, Jade has always been a special case in that regard.

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Progress report on next Problem Sleuth post

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My next Problem Sleuth post covers about 120 pages, and I have 30 left to cover. I’ve kind of been working on it on and off, but now I’ve figured out a good way to make Problem Sleuth posts and Homestuck posts at once without sticking to one or the other for too long.

Sometimes in both post series, I reach a part where I’m not sure what to say about it. This happened about a week ago with my Problem Sleuth post series, where I reached a point where I thought, “man I don’t have anything to say about these next ten pages” and pretty much hit a roadblock. But just earlier today, I went back to those pages and thought up commentary easily, something I probably could’ve done a day or two after hitting the roadblock. And now I’ve also hit a similar point where I’m not sure what to say about the next bunch of pages. So I’ve decided to start doing the following: when I hit a roadblock on my next Problem Sleuth post I’ll work on my next Homestuck post, and vice versa. My next Problem Sleuth post should ideally be released tomorrow, two days before my next Homestuck post. EDIT (8/23): Actually, it’s more feasible to release both of those posts on August 24, leading to a 2x BLOG POST COMBO.