Tag Archives: homestuck

Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 9 Rewritten: Air for Eclectic Fursuits

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Introduction / Schedule <- still using, for now

< Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 >

Pages 759-835 (MSPA: 2659-2735)

Act 3, Part 1 of 5

Link to old version

A few days (feels like a few months) later edit:
I am really fucking glad I made this post BEFORE the epilogues came out. Dear god Jade, what happened to you.

Augh…

I so badly wanted to finish Act 6 Act 3 in my classic posts before 4/13. That didn’t work out, so I wanted to finish it at least before I started Act 3 in my rewritten posts. But I can’t help myself from dwelling on the past more. Maybe it’s best that way, actually. Act 3 is light on dialogue and won’t make me sad to reread considering the nostalgic content in the epilogues so far, definitely not as much as Act 1 or 2. And this post focuses on Jade, who we haven’t heard from in the epilogues yet, so it all works out. The bit that’s left of Act 6 Act 3 is two big flashes, one last pesterlog, and a WHOPPER flash. As much as I love those three flashes, I don’t think I have the investment to dissect them right now, especially not without the readmspa.org storyboards handy. I’ll figure something out later, OK?

Oh who am I kidding. Nobody gives a crap which posts I prioritize. But I know for sure that there’s lots of people who give a crap about my posts in general, even if they don’t say as much. Come out, come out wherever you are!

Enough of me being an idiot. Let’s get on with this post.

Before Act 3 proper starts, we take a look inside the old copy of Sassacre’s, where old lady Jane wrote a note for her grandson.

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The Homestuck Epilogues: Initial Thoughts

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Happy 10th anniversary to Homestuck (again)!

First things first, the title of this post is a lie. My initial thoughts were as follows:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I’m glad I was home alone reading this. I have something of a pattern regarding screaming at media while home alone. I was home alone when I fought Omega Flowey (or is it Photoshop Flowey?) in Undertale, and I screamed all the way through. I was home alone when I played all the way through Doki Doki Literature Club, and again I screamed all the way through. And I am so goddamn lucky that I was home alone when the beginning of the Homestuck epilogue went up. In the last few minutes leading up to 1:00 PM EST (EDT? fuck if I know), I listened to Sburban Jungle at full blast, so that near the end of the song the epilogue would go up. And that was when I started screaming.

My thoughts about the epilogue so far after all the screaming though… oh boy. Oh boy.

Wait fuck, I keep forgetting. It’s not the epilogue. It’s the epilogues, plural. Calling it “epilogues” instead of “epilogue” will take some getting used to.

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4/13 project is here!

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https://sites.google.com/site/homestuckcommentaryabridged/

^ My 4/13 project is finally out! It’s refined, polished commentary on the first two acts of Homestuck in a website that should be much easier to navigate for this kind of stuff than Blogger is.

I can’t even begin to process that real content is going to come out today. Or that Homestuck began ten years ago today. 

EDIT ~10 AM EST: Epilogues, plural? I have only two words to say:

oh fuck

One day left… (an analysis of vfromhomestuck’s tweets)

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Weekly Friday posts are still a thing, probably. My 4/13 project is basically done, aside from the video trailer and some finishing touches. I’m super excited to release it to the world!!!!!

In the countdown to 4/13/2019, the tenth anniversary of Homestuck, a mysterious figure known as “vfromhomestuck”, who took part in the Hiveswap Friendsim and probably its most controversial installment, has been posting a lot about Homestuck on Twitter. Normally the words “Homestuck” and “Twitter” will make me rage if seen together, but this case is way different. V isn’t just doing your usual obnoxious shitposts or fantroll memes. She speaks intelligently about Homestuck and Hiveswap and seems to be a bit reserved about discussing its controversial aspects. V recognizes the dislike fans have for parts of the comic and tends to question their reasoning and motives, or how much they really know at all. The strangest part is that nobody knows who V is outside of her involvement in Homestuck and Hiveswap. It feels strange that she is currently taking the reins of hyping Homestuck material, but it’s also a welcome change of pace from getting info out of Hussie’s more shitposty friends (looking at you, James Roach).

For the past two weeks, V has been hyping up something that must be HUGE, which most people assume is the epilogue. She has posted some mysterious and vague lines that give me a strange form of hope I don’t know if I’ve ever felt before. I’ll go over those tweets in chronological order.

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Announcement about plans leading to (and after) 4/13

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As I said in this schedule post (for now, still my dumping ground for small announcements), I’m currently sticking to a schedule of new Homestuck blog posts (usually) every Friday morning. But today I don’t have a Homestuck blog post in store, so I’m going to write an announcement post instead, slightly longer than the random updates I’ve added to that schedule post.

Classic Posts

Homestuck post 85 is currently planned for 4/19. I wanted to get Act 6 Act 3 done before 4/13, but I’m not sure if that’s possible. Over the next week I’ll focus more on my 4/13 project, watch a certain anime, and maybe make some videos if I’m feeling up to it such as the Futurama 20th anniversary tribute that I badly need to finish. Probably no more numbered Homestuck posts before the comic’s tenth anniversary.

I have fully planned out how to divide the acts up to Act 6 Act 5, but I don’t feel like posting that plan here; it’s not really all that interesting. Post 100 will be some point early in Act 6 Intermission 5.

Please note that all my plans are subject to change! Even though that’s probably obvious if you follow this blog, I feel obligated to restate it anyway.

Rewritten Posts

I have some rough plans for the next few acts of my rewritten posts. I’ll start Act 3 right after I release post 85. Intermission posts I already did, so I will do a recap post for those, then go on to Act 4.

I will not start my Act 4 posts until I have a physical copy of the Act 4 book. This is because the book commentary there gets very long at parts and is inconvenient to read with Homestuck Companion; I can tell that it’s far better read in book form. That’ll be a good way for me to experience the Homestuck books firsthand.

Act 5 Act 1 (the trolls’ arc) is the opposite case. In those rewritten posts, I will have a policy of not consulting the book commentary. The main reason for this is because the trolls’ arc is one of the acts I forget the most about, so I think rereading it will be interesting enough without Hussie’s commentary alongside it. I want to make my own judgments about that act’s characters and pacing as I go along; I don’t need Hussie telling me that Nepeta is a prototype for Calliope or whatever.* Maybe in the future I’ll make versions of my Act 5 Act 1 posts where I consult book commentary, but in this rewrite project I think I’ll do without it. Also worth noting that the next Homestuck book after Act 5 Act 1 won’t be released until September.

* Though I am eager to see if I end up agreeing with that idea.

My rewritten posts are really only mapped out up to Act 5 Act 1. After that point, my plans are nothing more than “we’ll see what happens”, especially considering what I have planned for my 4/13 project.

Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 84: Cherubic Gloats and Confused Glances

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Introduction

< Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 >

Act 6 Act 3, Part 10 of 11

Pages 5137-5237 (MSPA: 7037-7137)

But no coconut guns, sadly.
If there were any, you’d better believe they can fire in spurts.

Lucky coincidence: today is the first anniversary of Homestuck’s migration from MSPA to homestuck.com!

I made this GIF myself, please appreciate it.
Why didn’t I think of making my own GIFs for these posts sooner? There’s plenty of non-[S] Flash pages I could have done that with.

Once again, last post ended with Calliope and this post starts with Caliborn. This selection screen gives us teasers of what he looks like. It leaves out just enough not to outright confirm that he is Lord English.

undyingUmbrage [uu] began jeering uranianUmbra [UU] 
uu: HEY. 
uu: I WOuLD LIKE TO PLAY A GAME. 
uu: IT’S CALLED “BOND WITH AN IDIOT SISTER OVER SOME BuLLSHIT SHARED INTERESTS BEFORE SHE DIES FOREVER.” 
uu: DOES THAT SOuND FuN. 
uu: HERE’S A GOOD PART OF THE STORY I THINK. 
uu: YOu MuST KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. 
uu: LET’S TALK ABOuT IT TOGETHER. 
uu: SHARE SOME THEORIES. 
uu: DO SOME FAN GIRLING. 
uu: PRODuCE SOME. 
uu: “FAN ART.” 

We got more than enough story told through Calliope speculating already, so it’s only fair that now we get a big dump of Caliborn’s speculation. Both cherubs’ speculation is surprisingly reliable and accurate; you’ll never fully understand how much those two have in common unless you dig deep into the stuff they say. Or if you have a realization that you were in denial about being a fan of something. I mean, purely hypothetically of course. It’s not like I was ever in denial about liking something people like to trash on, haha what are you talking about!!!!!

(I was in denial about liking something people like to trash on. Let’s not dwell on it, OK?)

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 8 Rewritten: Mayorly Foreshadowification Station

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Introduction / Schedule (outdated)

< Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 >

Pages 666-758 (MSPA: 2566-2658)

Act 2, Part 5 of 5

Link to old version

My rewritten posts lately have alternated between me making a new post title and me keeping the old one. I’m keeping the old one here again.

Random thing about the community reread that isn’t worth putting in its entire separate post: I decided to join in again yesterday to reread John and Roxy’s first conversation, at the end of Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1. It’s just as funny and heartening as I remember it being and is one of many things recently that made remember that they are the best ship in the comic. Look forward to me praising that ship in future posts, probably.

You are now the Wayward Vagabond.

The final portion of Act 2 is a stretch of pages focusing on the Wayward Vagabond. On this page, the book commentary explains that although Hussie already had rough ideas for this character’s story role, he decided to improvise and have fun with this arc, letting readers drive the story a bit more than before. You probably know that when John was commanded by WV, he was blocked off from being commanded by readers; playing as WV for the first time gives us a fresh start and a bit of a return to the old days. This “fresh start” idea is done even stronger in the Midnight Crew intermission, which I already covered in my rewritten posts because I skipped to that part after finishing Act 1. Once I finish Act 3, I’ll do a post recapping the intermission before I go to Act 4.

> WV: Retri…

Got em already.

No arm shenanigans here; just quickly getting this joke out of the way before any nonsense can happen. Probably meant to get readers at the time to think, “hm maybe I should be creative for once instead of reiterating the same old commands again”.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 7 Rewritten: What Sword?

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Introduction / Schedule (outdated)

< Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 >

Pages 562-665 (MSPA: 2462-2565)

Act 2, Part 4 of 5

Link to old version

Haha… haha… ha ha … ha …….

Dave explores the rest of his living room and here’s where the creepiness factor escalates. It all starts with this moment:

> Dave: Take expensive ninja sword.

What sword?

This page is a shockingly simple way to establish the day-to-day nature of Dave’s home life.

As I said in my first rewritten post, early Homestuck has a habit of revisiting the running gags of the prior adventures and giving them a new context. Every instance of the “what pumpkin?” gag in Homestuck has some broader reason behind it, sometimes involving technology. This instance of the gag is a character establishing moment for Dave’s bro.

When I got these pages in my old posts, I was nothing short of creeped out. Maybe it’s because two pages in a row show Bro flash stepping and moving stuff around, subverting all expectations in the process.

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mspaintadventures.com is currently down

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Remember to check my schedule post for when I’ll release my next Homestuck posts!

Also, as of 3/27/2019 MSPA is up again.

Homestuck, Problem Sleuth, and some miscellany were all hosted on mspaintadventures.com until April 2018. After that point, they were moved to homestuck.com and any URLs on mspaintadventures.com would redirect to their corresponding homestuck.com pages. 

Today the mspaintadventures.com domain went down. I trust Viz Media (or Hussie himself?) to fix this issue soon, but for now this creates lots of dead links which is of course bad news.

Thankfully, MSPA being down doesn’t affect my blog posts very much. Most of the images in my Homestuck* posts before April 2018 are hosted on cdn.mspaintadventures.com, which is still up and running. Exceptions are screencaps from flashes, which I either took from readmspa.org or grabbed myself. The only thing that is now broken would be links to pages in Homestuck*, which I didn’t do all that often. As such, I won’t bother with changing those links unless MSPA is still down after let’s say a week.

I don’t know why MSPA itself is down but the CDN subdomain is intact, but it’s certainly better than everything being down. I asked /r/homestuck about this situation; hopefully someone there will have an answer. 

* Here, “Homestuck” is shorthand for “Homestuck and Problem Sleuth”.

New schedule for Homestuck posts! + miscellaneous rambling + other updates

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I’ve finally decided on a schedule for my Homestuck posts again! If I’m going to commit to it for a good stretch of time again, I might as well have a proper schedule. This new schedule is: new Homestuck posts every Friday morning. These new posts could be either rewrites of old posts or new posts and I have a full out plan for the next month, followed by a rough plan after that.

The schedule isn’t exactly “new”; it’s a pattern I’ve been following for the past few weeks. I just decided to make it an official schedule.

Here’s my current schedule in calendar form. Dates italicized are not Fridays and deviate from the schedule. I’ll also use this schedule to give progress updates.

02/25/2019 – Part 4 rewritten [done!]
03/01/2019 – Part 83 [done!]
03/08/2019 – Part 5 rewritten [done!]
03/15/2019 – (schedule announcement) [YOU ARE HERE]
03/22/2019 – Part 6 rewritten
03/29/2019 – Part 7 rewritten

04/03/2019 – Part 8 rewritten*
04/06/2019 – Part 84 <- OUTDATED, now shifted ahead
03/18/2019 – Part 6 rewritten [done!]
03/22/2019 – Part 7 rewritten [done!, delayed one day]
03/29/2019 – Part 8 rewritten [done!]
04/05/2019 – Part 84
04/12/2019 – Part 85** <- shifted ahead again
04/02/2019 – Part 84 [done!]
04/06/2019 – Part 85 [possibly later?]
04/13/2019 – Secret mystery project
04/19/2019 – Part 85

* Part 8 rewritten covers WV’s portion of Act 2; Part 84 covers mostly Caliborn gloating and Dirk confusing everyone. Both probably won’t take all that long so I moved them around like this. EDIT: I changed things up anyway.

** Part 85 was originally going to be for 4/13 but I moved it ahead a day so as not to overwhelm myself with releases. 

After my project for 4/13 is released, the weekly posts are a bit more up in the air. I’ll probably decide on a whim whether each weekly post is a brand new post or a rewrite of an old one. I like this idea because if I hit a roadblock on a new Homestuck post I’ll rewrite an old post instead, and vice versa. It’s just like the days when I worked on both Homestuck and Problem Sleuth posts; maybe if I’m feeling up to it one of my weekly posts might even be a Problem Sleuth post? Don’t count on anything yet, just know that bringing back Problem Sleuth posts is a distinct possibility.

Everything below this text is either rambling or other random updates (or both). This post is going to me my dumping ground for such updates for a while.

4/20/2019: nope never mind fuck everything back to hiatus for a long time probably

4/19/2019: Part 9 rewritten is out! And apparently the entire rest of the epilogue is coming tomorrow???? I have a burning suspicion V is hiding something and that isn’t quite all of it, but I’ve prepared for the worst and taken measures to avoid spoilers; I’m way too busy this weekend to read any Homestuck stuff, especially of this length. Maybe I could finish post 85 for real this time next Friday, as I blissfully avoid spoilers through next week. Yes you read that right: part 85 is planned for 4/26.

4/13/2019: The big day!!!

4/12/2019: Wrote up thoughts on V’s tweets.

4/7/2019: Just had a big discussion on hopes and worries for the Homestuck epilogue, as well as all the stuff vfromhomestuck has been teasing. I am now more cautious and nervous about it than ever before; maybe I’ll write a blog post about my epilogue fears. Also I just ordered a copy of Homestuck Book 3 (Act 4).

4/6/2019: That one anime I mentioned is an absolute blast to watch, holy shit.

4/5/2019: Made a longer announcement post. The most important part I haven’t said in this post yet: I will make a point of going through Act 5 Act 1 without book commentary.

4/3/2019 (my birthday!): Yeah, I think I’m going to delay post 85 to 4/19 for the time being. I am very busy watching a certain anime; one that will let me fully grasp the notion that fun things are fun. Please note that I don’t normally watch anime; please also note that “weeb” is a stupid word that should not exist.

4/2/2019 [2]: Maybe it’ll be a bit too tight of a squeeze to both release part 85 before 4/13 and get what I wanted to done for the 4/13 project. Or maybe it won’t be too tight, we’ll see what happens. I estimate a 25% chance that part 85 will be delayed, either to before or after 4/13. If it’s delayed to after 4/13, it’ll come out on let’s say 4/19, sticking to my plan of posts on Fridays.

4/2/2019: Part 84 is out! Hopefully soon enough I can start part 85; it may be a tight squeeze!

3/29/2019: Part 8 rewritten is now out! I’m pushing posts 84 and 85 ahead a bit, to encourage myself to work on my 4/13 project after that. I’ll start 84 this weekend; it probably won’t take long.

3/26/2019: Part 8 rewritten is already close to done! Which is good, gives me more time to work on my 4/13 project and maybe other things. Keep in mind that by 4/13, I plan to be finished with Act 6 Act 3 in my normal posts and Act 2 in my rewritten posts and not start the next acts until after that date.

Also on this topic, my next rewritten posts will be four posts for Act 3, an intermission recap post, and then I won’t start Act 4 until I have a physical copy of the book. This is because that act is where flashes and pesterlogs get long and Homestuck Companion (browser extension I’ve been using) isn’t totally convenient for reading long commentary.

To my knowledge, Homestuck Companion is the best way to digitally read Homestuck. You can read with book commentary if you want and it contains some handy notes about broken links and removed content. Also makes pesterlogs only openable with right CTRL key, fixing an annoyance I had with writing these posts.

3/18/2019: Part 6 rewritten is now out!  On Monday instead of Friday. I think it’s polished enough already. Other posts have been pushed forward so the weekly Friday posts are still intact, they didn’t go anywhere. Actually the weekly Friday posts are now more intact than they were before; previously there were some off-schedule but now those are moved to Fridays.

Why am I so awful at sticking to a schedule? Either I’m way too fast or way too slow. But I’ll try to stick to Fridays anyway; Part 7 rewritten is scheduled for this Friday.

3/17/2019: Part 6 rewritten is finished already, oops. The good news is, by “finished” I simply mean I got to the last page of that post’s stretch of pages, which means I’ll have plenty of time the next few days to revise and polish it.

3/16/2019: Today I worked a bit more on the 4/13 project! Not much so far but I roughly know how I’ll go about the whole thing.

3/15/2019: Here’s some miscellaneous rambling. The more I look at any of my old Homestuck posts before Part 80, the more I want to rewrite or make updated versions of all of them. Almost all of those posts have some major revisions I want to make, which makes me not want to cut that project short at just rewriting the first 27 posts. I don’t want to get too carried away, so I’ll just say: we’ll see what happens after I finish Part 27 rewritten.

An additional benefit to working on new posts and rewrites of old posts in tandem is that after Act 6 Act 3, I’ll have to go through the Openbound trilogy. You know, the long and rambly walkaround games featuring the pre-scratch trolls. I have no idea how long it’ll take me to write those posts, so it’s good to have some other blog post content to output alongside that.