Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 37: I Killed Your Grandpa And I Like You

Introduction 

Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 10 of 32

Pages 3048-3074 (MSPA: 4948-4974)

Picking up from where we left off, Jade has an extremely awkward conversation with Tavros.

AT: i SPENT SO LONG SLEEPING AND DREAMING AND PLAYING ON PROSPIT, 
AT: tHAT BEING AWAKE WAS MADE TO FEEL WEIRD, aND i DIDN’T LIKE IT FOR A WHILE, 
GG: yeah i have done a lot of sleeping myself 🙂 
AT: oH, yES, i KNOW, bUT, 
AT: i SAW YOU, yOU WERE AWAKE A LOT TOO, 
AT: aFTER A CERTAIN MOMENT, i SPENT JUST ABOUT EVERY WAKING HOUR BEING ASLEEP, 

just realized something. Breath and blood are thought to be an opposing pair of aspects. Karkat, the trolls’ hero of blood, did not sleep at all during the trolls’ session; Tavros, the trolls’ hero of breath, slept almost the whole time during the trolls’ session after a certain point.

GG: what did you want to talk about? 
AT: i WANTED TO ASK YOU PERMISSION, 
AT: i WOULD HAVE ASKED PERMISSION THE FIRST TIME, 
AT: bUT AT THE TIME YOU WERE NOT ABLE TO GIVE IT, oR TALK OR ANYTHING, 
GG: permission for what? 
AT: tO COMMUNE WITH YOUR LUSUS, 
GG: with bec? 
GG: uh…. 
GG: what do you mean by commune? 
GG: and 
GG: what do you mean the first time! 
GG: you did it before? 
AT: yEAH, 

Tavros is asking if it’s OK for him to commune with Bec, even though he had already did so before, and as we’ll see, it wasn’t any good.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 36: Lava Is Not Better Than Snow

Introduction 

Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 9 of 32

Pages 2997-3047 (MSPA: 4897-4947)

From where we left off, Jade gets out of bed and it does appear that maybe it is indeed a sprite magic bed.

In a callback to Bec’s debut flash. Jade sees a Bec-prototyped imp and strifes it in an interactive page.

The music in this minigame, titled Sunslammer, is one of the best songs in the whole comic. It’s the kind of music that only when you listen to it on loop do you realize how awesome it is. Seriously I’ve listened to that song (and many others from Homestuck) on extended loop. As for the flash itself, it’s a lot of fun seeing a Bec imp teleport Jade around the whole incipisphere—yet another ramification of Bec prototyping himself, in action. It also has the same “review of what’s going on everywhere” feel that walkarounds have: the windy thing on LOWAS, Bec imps thrashing John’s bedroom, Rose no longer in the study room, three instances of Dave seeing Jade, how huge the kids’ houses are, and a bit of a tour of LOFAF.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 35: Backwards Logic and Nightmare Faces

Introduction

Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 8 of 32

Pages 2942-2996 (MSPA: 4842-4896)

Continuing the exile arc, WV recognizes the Bec-shaped base, and only then does he remember that he had previously met the boy he commanded a while back. How come he only recognizes John now? PM recognized both John and Jade when she saw them on her command screen.

John sees WV? in the dream he told Rose about and then wakes up and does stuff we already saw. WV returns to commanding John as he promised way back in Act 2.

The whole scene is one of those moments where exile commands are shown on scenes we’ve already seen; such things are often meant to show us that exiles were behind certain things we’ve already seen, which reminds me of how Vriska is behind some stuff that happened in the kids’ session. I don’t think John mentioned having the exile voice return in his conversation with Rose, which makes sense because John couldn’t “hear” the voice.

John doesn’t listen to WV’s commands so he presses caps lock despite the narration telling him not to, locking him in the command station. Here’s an exile thing I’d like to discuss. When exiles give commands, apparently they’re sent to both characters and their own narrative prompts. The mechanics behind this are kind of a meta thing and aren’t really explained that clearly.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 34: Villain Caninification Station

Introduction

Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 7 of 32

Pages 2891-2941 (MSPA: 4791-4841)

“The villain is a FUCKING DOG WEARING SUNGLASSES.”
—Andrew Hussie

Back to Jack’s duel with a wicked rad dude, his creepy puppet, and his bird son/brother, we get some panels like the one above that are creepy but crazy awesome. See, if this lightning ninja freak is fighting a villain, that’s when he’s pretty cool, like an impossibly rad character from Street Fighter or something.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 33: Cthulhu Acid Trip Dreams

Introduction

Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 6 of 32

Pages 2841-2890 (MSPA: 4741-4790)

Yes, this really is a scene in Homestuck. I promise you, not all of it is an LSD tri—oh wait you should know this, because this post series is made on the assumption that people reading it have read Homestuck.

In which I decide against the “in which blah blah blah” thing because that would be stealing an idea from the blog that inspired this post series, and stealing ideas is a bad habit I’ve had in my creative projects for as long as I can remember; and also because I went fine adding title pictures to my older posts without any text immediately following.

Continuing from where we left off, we see what Jack Noir is up to. He yanks the ninja sword out of the beat mesa record thing, and I wonder where exactly Dave’s bro went. I actually don’t remember. I think he escaped and somehow went to LOWAS offscreen but I’m not sure. I guess I’ll see and find out.

Then comes a famously bizarre and nightmarish flash in which Jade wakes up from her dream. I’ll comment on it with the screenshot method I’ve seen livebloggers use.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 20: Enjoy Your Nap While It Lasts

Introduction

Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 >

Act 4, Part 6 of 6

Pages 1909-1988 (MSPA: 3809-3888)

Once again I use this same picture later in this post but it’s SUCH a perfect heartwrenching panel.

This may or may not be a Vriska thing. Wait, who am I kidding, it totally is.

Last post we went through the origin story of our heroes, and some other stuff. This post yet again opens up with AR’s past self, stopping to notice a meteor carrying the frog temple, because Dersites have this thing against frogs. He goes to see a time capsule and a computer screen in which we can see baby Nanna raised by Colonel Sassacre, who investigates an explosion outside his house. It’s a crater with baby Grandpa who shoots the Colonel with his gun, the kids thereafter raised by their dog Halley and Betty Crocker. Thirteen years later teenage Grandpa leaves his adoptive sister behind. Then DD appears as AR? watches, coming to throw away the wizard book and the Sburb betas next to the time capsule and into it respectively, and uses the MEOW code book with the machine. There’s a plot loop tied together: we now know the whole story of how Jade got Dave’s Sburb discs. It’s a pretty enjoyably convoluted sequence fueled mostly by mishaps and random choices, but unlike the paths of other objects that go through complicated journeys, this one doesn’t seem to have much relation to the forces of causing the events destined to occur.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 17: Coolkid Duplication Station

Introduction

< Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 >

Act 4, Part 3 of 6

Pages 1578-1659 (MSPA: 3478-3559)

Rose kicking ass.

Continuing from where we left off, John finds his dad’s car, and then talks to Terezi who, like I said in the last post, he always has had an enjoyable dynamic with. Right away they snark at each other:

GC: JOHN DONT M4K3 FUN OF MY H4ND1C4P 
EB: which one, the blindness or the leetspeak. 
GC: 1 4M S3NS1T1VE 4BOUT BOTH 


[…]


GC: B3FOR3 YOU K33P TYP1NG MOR3 STUP1D O’S 1N TH4T WORD 
GC: JUST L1ST3N 4ND DO WH4T 1 S4Y 
GC: YOU KNOW YOUR3 GO1NG TO 3V3NTU4LLY 4NYW4Y 
GC: B3C4US3 YOUR3 4 N1C3 GUY 4ND K1ND OF 4 TOT4L W33N13 PUSHOV3R 

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 16: Paradox Eggs and Alchemy Bacon

Introduction

Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 >

Act 4, Part 2 of 6

Pages 1455-1577 (MSPA: 3355-3477)

Link to rewritten version (unfinished)

This title picture matches even better with the post title than I thought it would.
Look at that little egg on the alchemiter. Better still, the cruxite dowel to the left of the egg looks kind of like bacon.

Once a dutiful lawyer, always a dutiful lawyer.

Time to start the exiles’ backstories. Before becoming an exile, the Renegade was an authority regulator (noted AR?) and the Mendicant was a parcel mistress (PM?). AR? is hanging around LOWAS and finds John’s dad’s car sitting there parked illegally, marking the scene with caution tape, and giving the owner a ticket. He loots the green package and John’s server copy of Sburb from the car. PM? is also walking around there, and sees AR? with the green package.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 15: Ditzy Dreamers and Exile Cookouts

Introduction

< Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 >

Act 4, Part 1 of 6

Pages 1358-1454 (MSPA: 3258-3354)

Link to rewritten version

Can’t think of a caption other than “The Land of Wind and Shade”, which would be redundant.

Act 4 of Homestuck, like a few other acts, opens up with a minigame. In this game, John explores his planet, a cloudy blue world named the Land of Wind and Shade, fights imps, gathers information about his denizen and the imps and stuff from salamanders, somehow talks to Nannasprite from afar, and like in the game where he explores his house, has a voice in his head give him commands, but the voice is definitely someone different from the Vagabond. It is very similar to the game very early in Act 2, but instead of exploring his house, he explores the planet he entered. This minigame really is rather complicated, with features such as sylladex access and sending objects through a mail system and multiple attack methods and a button to talk to Nannasprite and so on. 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).

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 12: Where Making This Transpire

Introduction

< Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 >

Act 3, Part 4 of 4

Pages 1052-1153 (MSPA: 2952-3053)

Link to rewritten version part 1 / part 2

It’s like fucking Christmas up in here.

Last time, we literally examined the world of Jade’s dreams. This time, we’re going to round out act 3 of Homestuck with lots of stuff falling into place. First off, John alchemizes a bunch of things out of his possessions, a pattern that happens with all the kids, and which Jade doesn’t subvert. I’ll list the most notable things he makes: a green Wise Guy suit, Spy Kids-style computer glasses, several hammer weapons, ghost arms to lift bigger objects at long range, and a Cosbytop. I really like the alchemizing system, and how weird combinations can make awesome things; my favorite combination is fake arm + Nanna’s ectoplasm + Dad’s PDA = the remote ghost gauntlet (the arm which he can control from afar). I should also note that we don’t actually go through John first using each of the alchemy devices in order with captchalogue cards and cruxite dowels and all that nonsense; rather, he’s just repeatedly commanded to combine a few items and bam, he does so. Unlike in Act 1, at this point we take much less time to dwell on John using the captchalogue mechanics. I think the main point of the captchalogue stuff may have been to put readers in the right mindset to feel comfortable with the regular usage of the Sburb interface.

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