Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 91: Drunken Smooches and Costume Parties

Introduction

Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 >

Act 6 Intermission 3, Part 6 of 6

Pages 5399-5437 (MSPA: 7499-7537)

Featuring the best psycheout in all of Homestuck.

If only John and Vriska knew how much their friends nearby miss them…

You reach the end of the game to find an intriguing convergence of outrageous personalities. You are just dying to see what these heavyweights of badittude have to say to each other, but somehow you discover within yourself the superhuman restraint to hit pause. 

When I got to the end of Openbound Part 3 in the last post, I already knew that the walkaround ended right before Meenah could talk to Vriska, John, and Tavros but I was still a bit disappointed to remember it cut off right there. But upon further consideration, I think it’s fair to cut things off here and resume this arc with something other than a walkaround because we’ve been overdosed with walkaround content this whole intermission. You probably know that Homestuck doesn’t have any more full walkaround games after Openbound. I’ll discuss this point at the end of this post, where I recap Act 6 Intermission 3.

There is a whole world of fucking around going on with the meteor crew during the second year of their voyage, and it would be a criminal act of negligence to end this intermission without at least having a peek at their tomfoolery. A weaker person would just want to see what happens with Meenah and Vriska right away. Thank goodness you are a player with a strong sense of responsibility and discipline.

Every scene on the meteor so far in Act 6 has been hilarious, so I’m totally down for checking out what those characters are up to even though we’ve already seen plenty of it in this intermission so far.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 90: Tsundere Vacillation Station

Introduction

Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 >

Act 6 Intermission 3, Part 5 of 6

Page 5398 (MSPA: 7298) [Openbound: Part 3]

In which I definitely don’t underhandedly vent about school projects.

This post is extremely long. In fact, it’s my longest Homestuck post yet! Hope you enjoy.

Here’s my plan for the next few acts:

  • Act 6 Act 4 + Act 6 Intermission 4 – 1 post
  • Act 6 Act 5 – 6 posts
  • Act 6 Intermission 5 – 5 posts

I estimate that I’ll reach the end of Act 6 Intermission 5 around November 1, give or take a week. After that, we’ll see what comes next.

Time to start the third and final part of Openbound, where we meet the last three Beforan trolls!

The chest next to Rufioh has some Fiduspawn cards, which brings back long-gone memories.

First off is Rufioh Nitram, the homage character to Dante Basco. He’s alright I guess, which is way more than can be said about most of the other Beforan trolls.

Meenah’s conversation with him doesn’t waste much time establishing absurd archetypes. Rufioh says he had wings since birth and never ascended to god tier, then starts to bemoan how people think he’s braver than he actually is. Right after that, Rufioh dives into his backstory which is WAY darker than anything else we saw with the alpha trolls.

MEENAH: alright so you never god tiered but i still dont get somefin
MEENAH: didnt you have a totally fuckin stupid robot body at some point or did i just imagine that
MEENAH: that whole period of time in our session was reel foggy to me i guess because i was dead for a while there
 #maybe i got the ghost madness #could SWEAR you was a metal horse tho
RUFIOH: yeaaah…
RUFIOH: no, the robot body was def1n1tely a th1ng… 1 k1nd of blocked that out of my memory too, haha… that was… that sh*t was someth1ng else, yo! crazy…
RUFIOH: 1’m sure you remember how all that started… back when damara and 1 were st1ll dat1ng… r1ng any bells?
MEENAH: yeah
MEENAH: fuckin megido
MEENAH: do we really need to rehash that ancient bullshit drama
 #bull #lol #wait… #why dont you ever do bull puns? #FAIL
RUFIOH: no, no… heh, just say1ng 1s all… 1t was that whole th1ng… anyway, that’s when horuss was k1nd of mack1ng on me, remember… and 1 wasn’t all about to vac1llate w1th h1m and her cause 1 knew how she was… d*mn, so jealous… so f***1ng crazy…
RUFIOH: so she made me a cr*pple, remember?
MEENAH: tag that shit homie
 #abaloneism
RUFIOH: d*mn, yeah… 1 mean, she busted me up… couldn’t move a muscle… well, could st1ll flap my w1ngs well enough, haha…

And you thought Vriska was a HUGE 8ITCH, huh???

Unlike what we learned prior about the Beforan trolls’ backstory, this is WAY worse than the Alternian trolls’ backstory. Tavros was only paralyzed from the legs down and Vriska even had the courtesy to make him some sick flying equipment. Damara paralyzed Rufioh’s entire body save for his wings, all because of romantic jealousy.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 86: Oh God, It’s Those Characters

Introduction

Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 >

Act 6 Intermission 3, Part 1 of 6

Page 5263 (MSPA: 7163) [Openbound: Part 1]

Welcome to eternal hell, as the saying goes.
Also, this is my first Homestuck post to only cover one page.

Time to begin Act 6 Intermission 3 of Homestuck! This act is unusual because most of its content is in three walkaround games focused primarily on Meenah and her Beforan friends. Those walkarounds are collectively referred to as Openbound; individually as Openbound Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3; and they’re one of the most polarizing parts of the comic. Many people hate Openbound with a passion, and it is my goal to see if it is really as bad as people say.

These walkarounds are interspersed with regular pages focusing on the beta kids, plus a flash at the end called Ministrife. I’ve said this before, but to reiterate, each walkaround game will take up an entire blog post; the intermittent pages will also take up one blog post each, including the pages after Openbound Part 3. This means Act 6 Intermission 3 will be divided into six posts total.

When I first read Homestuck, Openbound was two years old.
Now it’s almost seven. And everyone thinks it’s called Meenahquest now.

The Openbound loading screen gives me immense nostalgia. When I first read this part in 2014, I remember waiting ten minutes or more for it to load. Now it barely takes ten seconds. Oh, how the times have changed.

Openbound Part 1 starts with a little Flash cutscene where Meenah Peixes watches the Furthest Ring’s destruction and runs downstairs in excitement. Although when I initially wrote this post, it was still possible to view this cutscene if you made extra sure Flash was enabled, there is now no way to view the scene on homestuck.com. In fact, I highly advise that you don’t use homestuck.com to read Homestuck. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is the new definitive way to read Homestuck, preserving all of Homestuck’s content (yes, even the flashes) in an offline format.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 72: Gray and Purple Plot Dumps

Introduction

Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 >

Act 6 Intermission 2, Part 1 of 3

Pages 4667-4708 (MSPA: 6567-6608)

Delicious plot dumps if I say so myself.

EDIT (12/14/2016): Shit, I forgot to rant about how weird illogical the supposed retconned version of the penis fight scene was. Better luck next time I guess.

EDIT (10/5/2019): After a really good streak for over 30 posts, this is where my Homestuck posts start reading like garbly nonsense again—makes sense because this is where my posting schedule started to slow WAY down. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote about half the stuff I said in this post, so I didn’t even bother making many edits to it, just so you’re warned.

Hold still, Slick.

After a terrifying montage of the world turning into a flooded alien queen wasteland, suddenly Hussie is trying to feed Spades Slick lusus milk. I must say, this sudden mood switch makes for a surprisingly good transition device.

Amidst all this hilarity, if you stop to pay attention to things a whole bunch of stuff is happening. First off, Hussie is cosplaying yet again, this time as an interpretation of what Calliope might look like. He presumably rescued Slick from the destruction of the trolls’ universe, and gave him some robotic upgrades. The deal with Slick is that the comic consistently refuses to kill him off*, and now Hussie displays a comical obsession with keeping him alive, full out making fun of this recurring motif. I swear to god if he doesn’t turn up alive once again after being killed off in the stupidest way possible…**

Oh, and Aurthour is alive again too somehow? As with Minihoof that’s yet another weird inexplicable horse thing.

* I knowwwwww 😦

** That sentence can also be read as Slick turning up alive in the stupidest way possible, which is semi-intentional. But getting more stupid that self-insert shenanigans requires a bit of creativity.

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

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 56: SBES Vol. 2 – Of Sports and Snake Monsters

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 48: Bored Superdogs and Memory Revelations

Introduction

Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 21 of 32

Pages 3546-3613 (MSPA: 5446-5513)

Only in Homestuck could this picture make any sort of sense. Even then…

NOTE: I’m really blitzing through Act 5 now (by which I mean going about 30% faster), and boy am I proud of that.

NOTE 2: As school is ending, I have a big project over the next few weeks which I have to work a lot on. This means that I’m slowing down posts somewhat, with the next three posts weekly instead of every five days. Next post coming Sunday.

: (

We now focus on what Jack Noir is up to. He just killed Dad and Mom offscreen. As with Nepeta, it’s a bit of a relief we didn’t have to see them die onscreen; showing a guy killing two loving parents of main characters in love together would obviously be even more heartwrenching than anything we’ve seen so far. Compare this to Bro, who got an onscreen death scene. This is probably not because he is (arguably) not as likable as the other guardians, rather because his death was the culmination of a fight, while the other two were just on a date when it was suddenly interrupted. If John’s dad was in a fistfight with Jack and lost when Jack became more powerful, he would no doubt get a full death scene.

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

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 43: The Evil Juggalo Nightmare

Introduction

Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 16 of 32

Pages 3321-3359 (MSPA: 5221-5259)

NOTE: Sorry the post’s two days late. So much for spring break giving me a faster schedule.

Up next is another walkaround, similar to Alterniabound but with a somewhat different, more worrisome tone. If you take a moment to examine the items scattered across the floor, there’s so much dramatic irony (thinking Vriska is harmless and Tavros is alive and well) and worries as to where everyone is, especially Gamzee.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 42: Password Weirdness and Frog Breeding

Introduction

Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 15 of 32

Pages 3297-3320 (MSPA: 5197-5220)

Fitting that post number 42 (the answer to the Ultimate Question) is where we finally get an answer to a very fundamental question in Homestuck: how exactly universes are made.

First here is a flash, titled [S] Wake, that I could’ve ended last post with but didn’t. I’m not sure if it’s more thematically appropriate to end a post with the start of Murderstuck or start a post with it. Last post was getting long so I stuck with the latter.

If there’s anything about Homestuck the average person is likely to know, it’s the story behind the song Megalovania (a version of which is used in this flash). There’s really no reason to rehash it all over again, nor is there any reason to point out for the ten millionth time how funny it is that so many people got into Homestuck through the iconic Undertale song.

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