Tag Archives: john egbert

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 65: Karkat Freakouts Ad Infinitum

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Introduction

< Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 >

Act 6 Intermission 1, Part 2 of 2

Pages 4346-4390 (MSPA: 6246-6290)

alternate post title: Don’t Turn Your Back on the Juggalo

As promised, I’ll go right ahead and discuss the thing of kids and trolls meeting.

The very notion of all these characters here meeting in person marks a transition in the beta kids’ storyline, one that applies to John and Jade as well. After leveling up and earning Gift of Gab, all four beta kids no longer receive commands and are only occasionally playable or narrated. This is because in the whole first half of Act 6, the beta kids’ sections are not so much about getting through the game as they are about checking up on their new daily life in the three-year intermezzo between the old and new sessions, often with discussions of plot stuff to keep the story interesting.

I have mixed feelings regarding this narrative transition. After arrival in the new session, I think it would have been ideal for the kids and trolls’ story to return to being more like getting through a video game, but Act 6 Act 6, the subdivision where that stuff happens, ended up being kind of a mess instead. Not counting Caliborn’s narration interludes, it starts off with everyone really confused about what’s going on, and instead of having the characters work through it all, things get even more messed up to the point of the survivors having to fix the whole timeline. And after that happens, the versions of the kids who do get all the stuff done are from a different timeline (with only a few exceptions), different from the ones we followed for all of Act 6, while the original versions are shafted off to irrelevance. Even disregarding that disparity, a lot of stuff in the retconned session is glossed over (things like planet quests and denizen meetings), and at times it seems just too orderly. I think all this is a result of the story trying too hard to get through events in an even more convoluted way than previously, to the point of destroying certain major story points.

But just for the sake of things, I’ll comment on this whole kid/troll meeting sequence for what it is, without acknowledging that the retcon is a thing. As I’ve done in the past, this lack of retcon discussion will be a self-challenge of sorts, something I’ll see how easily I can stick to.

Alright, let’s begin.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 64: Triennium Battleship Mindfuckery

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Introduction

< Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 >

Act 6 Intermission 1, Part 1 of 2

Pages 4285-4345 (MSPA: 6185-6245)

NOTE: My next Problem Sleuth post is still in production. Stay tuned for it I guess.

One down.

The curtains closing in on a tragic explosion transition us to robotic Hussie, who completely destroys all drama with a humorous line, “One down.” I think I’m getting the hang of this black comedy thing. Though he immediately says he’s referring to the curtains, not the kids, it’s still funny regardless.

So, uh… what about all those other kids?

Huh? Who? 

Oh, yeah. Those people. 

Aren’t they all dead?

Hussie is a master at pretending not to really care that much about his comic. Some people think that due to many parts of the late comic being unsatisfying, after a certain point he actually did stop caring as much as he used to; if so, his lines above may be taken as an exaggeration of his future self.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 59: The Jumbo Act Five Finale

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Introduction

< Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 32 of 32 + Intermission 2

Pages 4084-4112 (MSPA: 5984-6012)

This is my final post about Act 5, which ends right around the halfway point of Homestuck (unless the upcoming epilogue shifts this point’s position significantly). Needless to say, this is a major milestone point for this post series. I’m pretty proud of myself for making it this far in such a massive project, and not just because that means I can finally dissect Act 6; also because reaching such a major point, with a 13-minute dramatic animation that has left me floored every time I watched it (except maybe in my first read, when it was just plain confusing), seems like something I’d only get to in the far future. Now, nearly ten months after starting this post series, it is the far future, right here in front of my eyes, not a point I dreamt of reaching early in my other projects but abandoned long before getting there. If I had made this post series a few years ago I probably would have forgotten it by now, but I haven’t forgotten it at all. So, you know, it’s kind of cool that I made it this far.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 56: SBES Vol. 2 – Of Sports and Snake Monsters

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Introduction

< Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 29 of 32

Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 4 of 6

Pages 3936-4001 (MSPA: 5836-5901) (not in order)

NOTE: SBES stands for Scrapbook Examination Station.

Welcome back to my Homestuck post series. After nearly three weeks without any such posts, I guess it’s time for more scrapbook pages. I will do this selection screen left to right (boring order, I know), so I’ll start with Nannasprite.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 55: Scrapbook Examination Station (SBES) Volume I

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Introduction

< Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 28 of 32

Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 3 of 6

Pages 3874-3935 (MSPA: 5774-5835) (not in order)

NOTE: Remember, no new posts until after the 23rd because of vacation.

Here’s how this whole 250-ish-page scrapbook section is going to work. I said a while back that I will always avoid doing the selection screens in the normal order. The scrapbook pages, which are in fact the first selection screens, are an exception, not because I will do them in the normal order, but because there is no normal order; from what I can tell, readers do them in various orders. To spice it up regardless, for each of those selection screens, I will go by a different rule for which order to read the scenes.

There are six such selection screens total, each directly following the previous. This post and the next two will each go through two of those selection screens. I was originally going to do something different so that I’d be sure it’s all split evenly since some selection screens take up more pages total than others, but I figured it’s easiest to just split it like that.

For the first selection of scrapbook scenes, shown above, I will do them in order of smallest to biggest picture. This means I’ll start with the one on the bottom left, the Dersite battleship.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 54: Vriska the Bus Driver

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Introduction (now updated!)

< Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 27 of 32

Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 2 of 6

Pages 3833-3873 (MSPA: 5733-5773)

Just warning you, this post is EXTREMELY long.

NOTE: Sorry about the late post. To make up, this is another really long one. I’ve decided to do only one more post, which will also probably be pretty long. This one took a while partly because I spent the past several days preparing for the SAT and applying for summer jobs, and all that should be mostly out of the way now.

NOTE 2: You probably have no idea what the title of this post is supposed to mean. It’s explained later on.

Where were we? Never mind, I figured it out instantly because the previous post helpfully listed where I was. Accompanied by a shot of various mind visions, we get a paragraph detailing the description of an ideal seer. I’ll analyze it thoroughly, specifically some parts that stick out, because of how much unlike Rose it sounds.

A Seer would support her allies in battle not with her weapons, but her vision. 

Rose fought with weapons very much, and while Terezi assisted largely in vision, she too is noted for skill in weapons. However, this is a pretty spot-on description of the Sufferer—also a seer by way of Kankri’s title—who had visions of a peaceful life on the other side of the Scratch.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 51: A Tale of Two Vengeful Seers

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Introduction

< Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 24 of 32

Pages 3695-3716 (MSPA: 5595-5616)

Before we begin, here’s a fact that probably no one who isn’t me cares about: when moving these blog posts to WordPress in 2019, I edited this post far more heavily than I did prior posts, some edits regarding the painfully basic John/Rose ship, and others just smoothing out faltering wording (which there’s plenty of up until about post 70-some). I’m not sure why I went so much heavier editing this post than any before, but looking back, most of the edits are just clearer wording, so I’m leaving them as is while I go through these posts in order in 2021 after having finished writing (but not yet publishing) the final post.

It’s time for [S] Seer: Descend, a walkaround game that tops all others in chilling mood and rivals Alterniabound in scale while completely dominating it in plot relevance. Like some others, it opens with a flash sequence with, as the title suggests, Rose descending into the castle. I can’t help but notice the giant black squidmonster aura surrounding her, which just utterly dwarfs anything she did before going dark, and that includes glowing three different colors to my recollection.

Another part of the flash opening sequence that is pretty much impossible to screenshot: we very briefly glimpse both the green sun and a color-inverted pink sun. I’ve heard of theories that there’s a pink sun to complement the green sun, just like Alternia’s green and pink moons, though those are dismissed by many as a ridiculous crack theory that makes no sense. Only through catching the glimpse after rewatching that sequence did I notice that glimpsed pink sun. It’s really probably just a color-inverted green sun though.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 50: The Sad, the Silly, and the Self-Indulgent

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Introduction

< Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 23 of 32

Pages 3636-3694 (MSPA: 5536-5594)

So I’m halfway to 100 posts now. As with my inactive large number website, I’m impressed with myself by how much bigger this project is turning out to be than I first envisioned.

NOTE: I have officially decided to split Act 5 Act 2 into 32 posts, arranged like so:

  • Two more posts before the Doc Scratch intermission
  • Six Doc Scratch intermission posts
    • Two posts before the scrapbook section
    • Three posts for the scrapbook section
    • One post after the scrapbook section
  • One post after Hussie snaps out of the intermission; this will include Cascade and Intermission 2.

Note the flashing Bec symbol in the alert bubble.

TT: Sorry for the delayed response. 
TT: Answering seems to be what to do right now. 
GG: rose jeez!!! 
GG: finally 
GG: you sure seem to be absorbed in whatever youre doing on that computer… 
GG: were you talking to someone? 
TT: Oh, right. I forgot I gave you the code for the crystal ball. 
TT: And here I was thinking I could safely delay responding to messages without seeming like an ass, the way it usually works.
TT: Oops. 

Rose remarks that it’s kind of rude of her not to answer her friends’ messages. It’s weird, how throughout what I’ve covered last post, Rose realizes what she’s doing is bad but does it anyway.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 47: Fairy Psychopomps and Sudden Vampires

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Introduction

< Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 20 of 32

Pages 3479-3545 (MSPA: 5379-5445)

And wordy journals.

Terezi just went missing after having caught up with Sollux when all of a sudden, we’re back to a flashback of Dave fooling around on his bro’s Xbox gaming system. One hell of a mood whiplash alright.

The puppets are all like, haha did you miss me?

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 46: F33lings Jams A8ound

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Introduction

< Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 19 of 32

Pages 3438-3478 (MSPA: 5338-5378)

NOTE: I’m really sorry about the late post today. Walkaround games always take a good while to write commentary on because I need to capture pictures and use online transcripts and everything. To make up for it, this post is a pretty long one.

It’s time for a third troll walkaround, this time focused on Equius and Nepeta. The main point of this walkaround is to give those two trolls a decent final scene before they bite the dust. And their dialogue really does flesh out both of them. Arguably it’s bad that they got some heavy dialogue and then promptly got offed, but Hussie said that if they didn’t get any such parting dialogue the complaint would be that they got no parting dialogue. 

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