Tag Archives: caliborn

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 140: The Circle of Stupidity Is (Not) Complete

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Introduction

< Part 139 | Part 140 (the end!)

Act 7 + Credits + Closing Thoughts

Pages 8127-8130

This is it, folks. This is the end of my Homestuck post series.

Are you ready for the grand finale of my Homestuck blog post series? After six long years going in and out of working on my Homestuck posts, I have finally reached the finish line. I cannot overstate how amazing it feels to get started on my final Homestuck post. It feels far more amazing than I could have ever imagined to actually be at the final point, not just imagining when I might reach that point.

There’s many ambitious projects that I’ve started over the years—since I was a child, in fact—but most of them fizzled very early on. A fair portion of those projects I got quite a good way through, but a much smaller portion of those did I successfully finish. On the day this post is published, I can proudly say my Homestuck blog post series has joined the elite club of personal projects that I have finished. The post series spent almost two straight years being a project that I thought I would abandon forever, but eventually I somehow had it in me to resume it after all, and from then on, it was an on-and-off climb to the finish line, which is where I am now.

After one year and five months working on this post series, one year and ten months putting this post series on pause, and two years and nine months working on and off in months-long bursts, I proudly present to you Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 140: The Circle of Stupidity Is (Not) Complete. What better way to name my last Homestuck post than with a reference to an anime that I haven’t seen? I sure can’t think of any.

(By the way: happy sixth anniversary to my first Homestuck post! A fitting day to release the last one, if I say so myself.)

Alright, now let’s begin this post with Act 7!

Act 7, as you should already know, is a nine-minute animation that concludes Homestuck, released on the comic’s seventh anniversary. You should also already know that it is a very divisive ending that is often argued to leave a lot unresolved, and that it is animated in a style heavily inspired by anime, giving closure to the long-running misconception that Homestuck is an anime. Before writing any of the text from this paragraph onwards, I rewatched Act 7 in its entirety, and one thing is immediately clear: I had somehow never appreciated before how stunning the animation is. This may have something to do with the fact that when the flash came out in 2016, I knew nothing about any anime, and was expecting Act 7 to be… please don’t laugh at me for this… a gigantic walkaround with every character interaction possible. In retrospect, I think my dissatisfaction with Homestuck’s ending came mostly from the unresolved character interactions!

Now of course, my more positive reaction to Act 7 today no doubt relates to how the epilogues resolved the threads it left open in a way that brutally deconstructs the concept of plot resolutions. The epilogues allowed me to appreciate Act 7 much more for what it is: a beautiful animation that mostly shows things we already knew would happen, but in a fashion that’s stunning enough to be a worthwhile ending flash. But even putting aside the epilogues, I think I’ve outgrown all those childish complaints that I once had about Homestuck’s ending content. I guess that’s what happens when you’re 22 years old, huh? You realize that some things really aren’t worth getting hung up about.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 138: Emotional Memories and Fight Preparations

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Introduction

< Part 137 | Part 138 | Part 139 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 12 of 12

Pages 7939-8086

I’m so close to the finish line… SO CLOSE.

My eyes aren’t deceiving me, are they? Will the next Homestuck post after this one really be the second last, as the text “Part 139” above so indicates??? If this is true and I’m not hallucinating, then all I can say is god DAMN. This has been one hell of a wild ride—a ride with numerous excessively long bathroom breaks, but a wild ride no less. I think it’s fair to say we’re now in the home stretch’s home stretch!

Finishing up the pages I had wanted to cover last post, it’s time to go through Terezi’s monologue to Vriska, which together with the following flash was the last Homestuck update before the Omegapause began.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]

GC: H3Y
GC: YOU TH3R3?

I love the choice of making this monologue a pesterlog instead of a dialoglog, and not just for nostalgia reasons. The dialogue format is a great way to remind us of the turbulent relationship Terezi and Vriska have had since the trolls’ arc and how far back their dynamic goes… OK, fine, it’s also nostalgic.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 126: CLAYMATION REVELATIONIFICATION STATION.

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Introduction

< Part 125 | Part 126 | Part 127 >

Act 6 Act 6 Act 5

Pages 7409-7448

Because “CLAYMATION REVELATION STATION” wasn’t spicy enough.

Since I’m bored out of my mind, semester finished and all, there’s no better time than now to start the last leg of my Homestuck blog post series! Not to mention that I have all the rest of the season 1 posts for a different post series queued and ready to release… Before we begin, let me quickly recap what all is left in my Homestuck posts:

  • Act 6 Act 6 Act 5: 1 post (126)
  • Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5: 12 posts (127-138; last one covers everything post-Omegapause before [S] Collide)
  • [S] Collide and following pages: 1 post (139)
  • Act 7 and credits: 1 post (140)

I had said in earlier posts that I planned to immediately follow the ending of my Homestuck posts with a full-out epilogues analysis in the same style, but I don’t really feel like doing so anymore. My Homestuck blog post series has been going on for five and a half years already, and I’d rather give it a clear-cut ending than continue with its further media. I already made quite a few posts talking about the epilogues anyway, including my epilogues review post. And there’s no way I would ever want to do blog posts analyzing the absolute trainwreck that is Homestuck^2. If I keep a reasonable pace of about five Homestuck posts every month, I’ll finish this post series around the middle of August! It’s going to feel so amazing finishing these posts, but to get that feeling, I actually have to, you know, finish these posts.

Now, let’s begin Act 6 Act 6 Act 5, or as it’s better known, Caliborn’s Masterpiece.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 5 of Homestuck begins with a flash, featuring Caliborn’s crudely drawn curtains fading into the same design pasted on somewhat more realistic-looking curtains. This shows how far Caliborn has come as an artist while retaining at least some of his roots and his bizarre sense of humor… which is to say, Hussie’s bizarre sense of humor.

Speaking of Hussie’s bizarre sense of humor, I’ve been meaning to play Psycholonials, which will perhaps allow me to put a brand new layer of analysis on my Homestuck posts.

The curtains open to reveal a stage that parallels Calliope’s stage in the dream bubbles, with a purple spiral drawn with Caliborn’s old jagged art style instead of a smooth, artistic yellow spiral. Well, the purple spiral is artistic too, just in a different way. There isn’t much of a story behind the stages, and I don’t think there needs to be; they’re both just suitable places for each of the cherubs to tell stories.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 117: TRAGIC ENDS AND NEW BEGINNINGS.

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Introduction

< Part 116 | Part 117 | Part 118 >

Act 6 Act 6 Act 4

Pages 6921-6943

Always fun to follow an extremely long post with an extremely short post.

Picking up from where we left off in Act 6 Act 6 Act 3, Caliborn goes to sleep and dreams in his crude pre-Homosuck art style. He ruminates on his humiliating defeat and presents us a pseudo-emotional monologue, starting as follows:

A TEEN DIDN’T LIKE THE DIRECTION OF MY STORY, SO HE CAME AND BEAT ME UP.

Ah, this line. A line often quoted in response to people aggressively complaining about Homestuck media, typically used in arguments that go in circles with such magnificent, original points as “if you don’t like it, then don’t read it”. The fan satire here is off the charts already.

> THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

AND BEAR IN MIND THAT ONE TIME, MY LEG WAS BITTEN OFF. AND I TRAGICALLY LOST A SISTER TO MURDER.

Here, Caliborn is parodying people who plead for attention and support by fabricating bad things that happened to them. But since this is Caliborn we’re talking about, he doesn’t come up with total lies; rather, he omits details to imply lies. Lying through omission is a long-running theme of such characters as Doc Scratch, Lil’ Hal, and of course Caliborn himself. In this case, he’s implying that someone other than him bit his leg off and murdered his sister. Well, his version of Jack Noir did murder Calliope’s dream self, but his wording is still very misleading.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 116: What the Fuck Happened Here?

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Introduction

< Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117 >

[S] GAME OVER and the rest of Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 3

Pages 6901-6920

^ This image is how I feel about Karkat wearing short sleeves.

Time to finally analyze [S] GAME OVER, a flash that came out on October 25, 2014, the third anniversary of [S] Cascade. As the title may suggest, the flash consists of most of Homestuck’s living main cast either dying or getting critically wounded, so that they may soon be replaced with post-retcon versions of themselves. This retcon character replacement is a very controversial move and for many people weighs down Act 6 in its entirety. I’ve always been bothered by it myself, but a major goal of mine in these posts is to see if it’s really that bad in retrospect.

A cool detail in the Unofficial Homestuck Collection’s version of this flash is that the browser interface switches color schemes along with the website’s background.

Game Over alternates between taking place in Act 6 Act 6 Act 3 (John fighting Caliborn) and Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 3 (everyone else in the alpha session fighting each other). The flash begins on an incredibly silly note, with a callback to John’s mental breakdown when he discovered his father wasn’t a clown, and his further mental breakdown when he discovered Betty Crocker made Fruit Gushers. The callback is very fitting, because John has mental breakdowns over the absolute stupidest things.

The manga drawings surrounding John clearly indicate that they’re his principal source of anger at Caliborn, which is both amusing and fitting. Honestly, it makes more sense to be angry about those drawings than whatever impact he had on the kids’ story as Lord English, because as Dave said in A6A6I1, he’s responsible in some ass backwards way for them all existing.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 115: ILLUSIONARY YAOI FINE ART.

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Introduction

< Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 >

Pages 6853-6900

Act 6 Act 6 Act 3 (before GAME OVER)

Caliborn’s manga drawings are not for the faint of heart.
Neither is my commentary on them, probably.

Welcome to the fourth and final section of my Homestuck blog post series, Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections! This is the point where I start going over the portion of Homestuck that I read as it came out. As I said at the end of the last post, expect a lot more reflection on how I reacted when those updates first came out, as well as some criticism towards the direction Homestuck started going in.

I should also note that I’ve finalized the subdivisions of my Homestuck posts from here on out (though I haven’t decided on firm cutoff points for each post yet). Here goes:

  • A6A6A3 before [S] GAME OVER: 1 post
  • [S] GAME OVER and the rest of A6A6I3: 1 post
  • A6A6A4: 1 post
  • A6A6I4: 8 posts
  • A6A6A5: 1 post
  • A6A6I5: 12 posts
  • [S] Collide and following pages: 1 post
  • Act 7 and credits: 1 post

Under this plan, my Homestuck series will end consisting of a nice, round 140 posts. 115 posts down, 25 to go! I can get through this final stretch, I know I can.

WELCOME BACK.
(AGAIN.)

To start things off, you may wonder how I initially reacted to this update, which was the first Homestuck update I experienced live (and the start of Act 6 Act 6 Act 3). I didn’t think much of it; I just found it all humorous and absurd, long before I realized how inspiring Caliborn’s evolution as an artist is. Now, seeing Caliborn’s curtains open on the How to Draw Manga book that had befuddled him so much before, it’s already clear he’s going to show off his new artistic skills that the book taught him.

Thanking readers for their “unimpatience”, Caliborn proudly reveals that he has indeed succeeded at learning manga. Lil’ Seb presents him a cool trophy that I can only assume was alchemized. Or maybe it’s a game construct from his severely distorted journey through the standard Sburb player progression? I’m asking some REAL questions right here.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 110: THE ALPHA MALE’S IMPORTANT BOY JOURNEY.

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Introduction

< Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 >

Pages 6475-6530

Act 6 Act 6 Act 2

Have I ever said before that I fucking love Caliborn?

I was lying (or at least, retroactively lying) when I said John and Roxy’s first conversation would be my last post before 4/13 2020. Please enjoy this post about the second act of Homosuck before… whatever ends up happening for Homestuck’s eleventh anniversary.

Right when Act 6 Act 6 Act 2 of Homestuck (or Act 2 of Homosuck) starts, you’ll immediately notice that Caliborn is trimming the fat in his retelling of Homestuck—the fat being wasteful individualized introductions to useless klutzy bimbos. He cuts to the chase and introduces the next male character in line, as you can tell by his command “BE A DIFFERENT MALE.”

THE LAST TIME THAT THINGS HAPPENED. THE MALE STORY HERO BLEW UP. SO FORTUNATELY. WE WON’T SEE HIM EVER AGAIN.

THAT MEANS WE NEED TO BE A NEW MALE TO LEAD THE STORY. HERE HE IS. WITH HIS DUMB BLACK GLASSES AND EVERYTHING.

HERE TO ONWARD. I WILL REFER TO THIS MALE AS. THE ALPHA MALE.

THE ALPHA MALE IS LESS BAD THAN THE ORIGINAL MALE. HE IS NOT AS ANNOYING. AND HAS NO TENDENCY TO RANDOMLY APPEAR AND BOTHER PEOPLE. HE ALSO LIKES COOL SWORDS. AND “IRONY” I GUESS. AND LIKE MYSELF. HE HAS CULTIVATED A TASTE FOR FINE ART. HENCE, HE WILL BE MY MALE OF CHOICE ON THIS ADVENTURE.

Unlike in Act 1 of Homosuck, Caliborn gives us a somewhat earnest introduction to his newly favored protagonist without diverting to his own journey through the god tiers. Much like Homestuck’s first two acts, Act 1 of Homosuck ends with a deadly explosion and Act 2 opens the meat of the story.

BUT I WILL ADMIT. THERE IS ONE REASON ABOVE OTHERS. WHY I HAVE DECIDED TO FAVOR THE ALPHA MALE.

> HE HAS EXCEPTIONAL TASTE IN PUPPETS.

YESSSSSSSSSSS.

Homestuck’s lineup of male lead characters works in Caliborn’s favor as he reveals here, thanks to Lil’ Cal’s unnervingly strong presence in Dave’s childhood. Could it be that the order of the beta kids’ introductions was another thing Caliborn retroactively made his doing?

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 104: BEDROOM SCREWAROUND SESSION, REIMAGINED.

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Introduction

< Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 >

Pages 6243-6277

Act 6 Act 6 Act 1

A YOUNG MALE HOMO SAPIEN IS TRAPPED IN HIS ROOM…

Welp, this is happening. There’s no turning back now. Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck has now finally reached the Homosuck section. You BETTER be ready.

Act 6 Act 6 of Homestuck starts with the comic’s website getting a makeover in Caliborn’s style, with a flash that begins like Act 6’s opening flash…

… until the curtains fade to crudely drawn dark green ones accompanied by a fart noise that leads to Caliborn horribly playing piano, ending with an obnoxiously long applause that he won’t let you skip (I remember being caught so off guard by that my first time reading Homestuck). I’m glad to see this flash was successfully preserved in the move to homestuck.com; either it was translated to HTML5 or was already in that format, I don’t know which. Website gripes regardless, [S] Act 6 Act 6 does an excellent job preparing readers for a saga of utter hilarity.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 103: Mobster Reformation with Additional Throwbacks

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Introduction

< Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 >

Pages 6111-6242 (I think I’m going to stop listing the MSPA page numbers, just makes it more cluttered and I already forgot to do so the last few posts)

Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 5 of 5

John’s triumphant face represents me finishing my posts for part 3 of Homestuck.

I’m officially putting my Homestuck post series back in the swing of things once again! The reason why has to do with two circumstances: (1) the coronavirus pandemic that’s affecting the entire world and causing so much to go on lockdown and forcing everyone to be homest-*gets shot* and (2) me finishing a musical project and getting burnt out on making musical stuff, which led me to get back into this project that isn’t about making music. The first 40% or so of this post I wrote back in January of this year, but the rest I wrote just yesterday over the course of a few hours because I was kind of bored. Right now I’m in an extended spring break, and the rest of this spring semester will be all online classes which is still difficult for me to even process.

Anyway, now that I’m done with Part 3 of Homestuck (A6A1 to A6I5), I’m going to roughly list out my plans for Part 4 of Homestuck:

  • A6A6A1: 1 post
  • A6A6I1: 5 posts
  • A6A6A2: 1 post
  • A6A6I2: 4 posts
  • most of the rest of A6A6: up in the air
  • [S] Collide and following pages: 1 post
  • Act 7 and credits: 1 post

I’ll also go ahead and confess that I’m really, really looking forward to covering a certain part of A6A6I1 that introduces us to a certain token heterosexual romance (John/Roxy if it wasn’t obvious). I’m very glad I didn’t get to that part before the epilogues dropped.

I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE I HATE PUPPET PEOPLE.

Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 5 starts off with a humorous callback to a memorable scene from the Midnight Crew intermission, where Hearts Boxcars was swamped with clones of Eggs and Biscuits (which is how he ended up spending the majority of the intermission). It’s also a humorous way to demonstrate Caliborn’s ever-changing names for the Felt’s species.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 102: The Great Metafictional Nostalgia Trip

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Introduction

< Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 >

Pages 6055-6110

Act 6 Intermission 5, Part 4 of 5 (probably not 6)

I’ll only split Act 6 Intermission 5 into six parts if I feel I absolutely have to, like if the next post becomes insanely huge. Really don’t want to ruin my Pitbull pun from my last post.

This is my first Homestuck post of 2020!!! As I’ve said on Twitter, I intend on releasing posts regularly (on my usual once to twice a week basis) throughout at least the first half of the year, and boy am I excited to get back in the swing of things. I’ve estimated that I’ll reach Caliborn’s Masterpiece (a significant landmark point) in May or June, which means I’ll be able to make lots of progress on my Homestuck posts this year. And if I get bored of those, maybe I’ll even resume my rewritten post series.

KANAYA: …
KANAYA: …
KANAYA: …
KANAYA: …
KANAYA: …

Picking up from where we left off, we’re about to see what everyone’s favorite lesbian couple is up to in the meteor.

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