Tag Archives: metafiction

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 58: Puppeteer Mythologification Station

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Introduction

< Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 31 of 32

Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 6 of 6

Pages 4036-4083 (MSPA: 5936-5983)

I can’t believe I’m this close to Act 6, with only two posts to go that likely won’t each take a week to make.

This girl was originally drawn without horns by mistake.
Hussie joked that Doc Scratch revoked her horn privileges.

Doc Scratch turns off the fifth wall and then Damara, I mean the Handmaid, I mean the mystery girl who looks like Aradia (I’ll just call her Damara for now), throws a chair at him. It’s always hilarious and satisfying to see people beat up Doc Scratch, even though I don’t really hate him.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 53: Scratch Doctor Narration Adventures

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Introduction

< Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 26 of 32

Doc Scratch Intermission, Part 1 of 6

Pages 3763-3832 (MSPA: 5663-5732)

NOTE: For once I managed to release a post ahead of schedule! God damn am I proud. I will leave for vacation June 9, so you should expect about three more posts before then.

Where we left off, Homestuck Disc 2 was taken to Doc Scratch for repair. Now, Doc Scratch takes over the narration for the second time, and helpfully changes the color scheme of the website so that his white text is easier to read. I think the color scheme change does a really nice job at changing the atmosphere of the site to a very different mood for Scratch’s section of the act.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 52: Metafictional Disc Glitch Madness

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Introduction

< Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 25 of 32

Pages 3717-3762 (MSPA: 5617-5662)

NOTE: This post took longer than I hoped because it goes through a lot of flash pages and those always take longer to cover than usual. For some reason it didn’t occur to me until yesterday that I could take screenshots from flashes far more easily by taking them from these fan-made storyboards. See the image above for how I feel about that.

Terezi is starting to surpass Karkat as my favorite troll.

Proceeding from where we left off, we have what appears to be yet another walkaround game, except it doesn’t work because the disc is missing. A weird big “Objection!” referencing Ace Attorney appears out of nowhere, our first hint that something isn’t right with the disc missing.

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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 49: Therapist Manipulation Station

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Introduction

< Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 22 of 32

Pages 3614-3635 (MSPA: 5514-5535)

alternate post title: Stop Listening to Doc Scratch You Imbecile

alternate alternate post title: the “I wish this was my 50th post” special

We once again switch perspectives to Doc Scratch, who controls the narrative for a while. He says:

[In fact, I think it would be for the best if I commandeered the narrative completely for a while. I trust you won’t mind if I speak in white. It’s not actually negotiable, but as a courtesy I will enclose my words between a pair of visually audible brackets.

I am doing this because I can.]

(god I can already tell it’s gonna be a pain in the ass to format his pesterlogs when I quote them)

(even more now in WordPress than in Blogger, actually)

As we learn here, Scratch is the only character so far who is aware that he is in a story. Well, I guess also Hussie’s self-insert, but that’s a special case. What role does this fourth wall awareness play in the story? Mostly just meta shenanigans I believe. They can be fun, but it’s important to note that they are NOT the main point of the story. People often come up with meta justifications for why Act 7 was an unsatisfying ending (e.g. the idea that the kids escaped the story by entering the victory door), but I feel that escaping the story is no excuse for leaving so much stuff unresolved.

Also regarding this, Let’s Read Homestuck cleverly handles Doc Scratch’s fourth-wall narration which doesn’t make sense in video. Scratch says in the videos that the idea of “visually audible brackets” makes no sense to people watching the videos rather than reading the comic, but as an excellent host he must remain faithful to the comic’s script. I think that speaks for itself, going along very nicely with the theme of his fourth-wall awareness.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 26: Seadwweller Drama and Meta Madness

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Introduction

< Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 >

Act 5 Act 1, Part 6 of 7

Pages 2407-2542 (MSPA: 4307-4442)

NOTE: I recently updated some of my old posts. Mostly some little tweaks, adding some extra information and opinions of stuff, and adding more labels to the posts.

NOTE 2: Going on vacation, so no posts next week. Next post will be Friday around noon, and next post will be either next Sunday or Wednesday depending on when I get back.

(excessively long evil gloat omitted)

Rule of thumb: if it doesn’t say the scene will abruptly switch, it will switch.
If it says it might abruptly switch, it won’t.
Same goes for any recurring gag.

Time to meet the last two trolls in a 2x transition combo. Both have their names given to us, then have a character establishing moment. First Eridan kills someone’s giant whale lusus with his harpoon gun, riding his seahorse lusus like a boss. Then Feferi catches the dead lusus with her net and feeds it to her giant tentacle monster lusus, Gl’bgolyb. Feferi’s moment is establishing because it’s her response to being asked to do something adorable; I think that may establish her odd view of the world, where everything is a lot more positive in her mind than it really is. I love the way that monster is given a sense of scale, with a giant whale lusus dwarfing the size of a troll, which itself is DWARFED by Glb’golyb (am I the only one who reads the name phonetically rather than as “glub glub”?) which I’ve seen estimated to be about 20-30 miles in length. Then we learn the interests of each of those trolls, and that’s where I’ll say stuff about both of them.

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