Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 41: Jade’s Adventures in Dumbtimeloopland

Introduction

Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 14 of 32

Pages 3250-3294 (MSPA: 5150-5196)

NOTE: Next week is spring break, so the next two (possibly the next three) posts will be posted at a faster rate than usual: on March 15, 18, and possibly 21 respectively. Never mind, that’s a really time-crunchy schedule. Let’s just say the next three posts will each be posted at most five days after the previous.

Hilarious every time.

Back from where we left off, Jade answers Karkat and talks about her sprite. Speaking of which, here’s another pattern Jade breaks that I should’ve mentioned last post: (21) her sprite is not a long-lived entity.

GG: i made the mistake of prototyping my dream self who has been dead for years 
GG: and shes completely crazy and theres no talking any sense into her 
CG: HMM. 
GG: hmm? 
CG: YES. “HMM.” 
GG: hmm what 
CG: HMM AS IN HMM INTERESTING. 
CG: AS IN HMM HOW VERY, VERY FUCKING INTERESTING INDEED.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 40: The Miracle of a New Beginning

Introduction

Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 13 of 32

Pages 3192-3249 (MSPA: 5096-5149)

Jade tries out her Christmas presents, continuing the Christmas special theme, I guess like the episode following the Christmas special.

First off, Jade shows us what John and Rose are up to. I really like how both pictures above show some future knowledge device showing Jade with her spectagoggles, signifying that pretty much everyone now has some way of knowing future stuff. The narration says “You wonder why…” or “You wonder what…” a lot of times, which I think signifies that knowledge of the future does not equate with omniscience.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 40 (Recap 3 Annotations)

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Here are my comments on Recap 3 of Homestuck. It’s pretty long so I’ve decided to put it in a separate post. Are you ready for lots of words? If so, then here we go.

  • The recap doesn’t dwell much on the events of Hivebent; it just says a whole bunch of stuff happened and the trolls created the kids’ universe but had their entry to it cut short. Then it goes straight to recapping Act 5 Act 2 so far. This is notable because it kind of acknowledges that much of the trolls’ arc isn’t too relevant to the greater story line; I discussed this in more detail in post number 27.
  • After the first paragraph, the recap first lists events from Karkat’s perspective, then John’s, then Rose’s, then Dave’s, then Jade’s. I suppose it’s the most convenient way to list a huge array of events that went down in Act 5 so far.
  • The scratch is referred to as a “spacetime rift” that “forced [Jack] into the trolls’ session”. More scratch red herring stuff I guess. Later, Doc Scratch outright states that the scratch is not a rift used to banish Jack; another one of those “making false theories explicitly wrong” moments.
  • The section about Karkat’s perspective makes much reference to events back in Acts 3 and 4, which I guess is for the sake of reminding people of the order of the trolls’ events.
  • John is stated to be “oblivious to the true nature of [Vriska’s] schemes”. What is the true nature of her schemes? I guess as the point talked about at this point he is oblivious, but later Vriska makes it clear that it’s for self-aggrandization, involving herself in a boy’s path to heroism, and everything else for that matter.
  • I’ve mentioned several times that it’s a bit fuzzy whether John almost prototyped the blue doll because of its missing eye and arm or just removed its eye and arm. The recap seems to point to the former idea, saying that he “resolve[d] to prototype with the blue doll, missing an arm and eye, to deliberately disable Jack”.
  • Rose’s study of the Green Sun leads to a subsection on Doc Scratch and Lord English, talking about events in the trolls’ arc like Scratch making Vriska kill Aradia and himself being used to blow off Vriska’s arm. This shows that the trolls’ arc isn’t entirely irrelevant; the first paragraph just gives the gist of it and its ultimate purpose, and later parts I guess recap it further.
  • Terezi helping Dave is stated to be “in part due to her rivalry with Vriska”, which I guess answers the question of whether the Terezi-Vriska competition is just one-sided Vriska misconceptions.
  • Terezi is stated to heave led Dave into a pot of soup only because it “needed to happen on his timeline”. I don’t think that was stated when I read that part, though I could be forgetting stuff. In Act 4 Terezi said to John that she wanted to see what happens if she tries messing with the timeline even though they say you can’t mess with the timeline, so it’s a bit weird that now she’s apparently just following through stuff.
  • It’s stated that Terezi and Vriska are “partaking in a dangerous game of rivalry fueled flirtation”. Is it supposed to be flirtation with each other or with the kids?
  • Dave’s section of the recap does a decent job clarifying stuff about the order of events in his timeline. I’ve seen multiple attempts to sort all pages in chronological order from each of the characters’ perspectives, and there are pretty clearly some hard or ambiguous parts. The recaps probably help with that.
  • Apparently Jade couldn’t remove her entry item blindfold, which serves as evidence that maybe it does have first guardian properties or something? I’m not sure.
  • Finally, Hussie is apparently the second most important character in Homestuck. Even though he’s kind of a joke character, he’s involved in Caliborn’s rise to power, just like Gamzee, his rival in supposed importance.

I didn’t give these extensive comments on the first two recaps, though look at how long this bullet list is. Make of that what you will.

Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Commentary Part 39: the CRISMATS SPECAIL

Introduction

Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 12 of 32

Pages 3133-3195 (MSPA: 5033-5095)

HO HO HO

WV, thinking John is dead, tries to escape his command station but the door jams because the station is out of fuel.

Of course you still have your secret treasure, but it will almost certainly prove to be of no use to you in this dilemma whatsoever. It clearly serves no significant purpose other than to be pretty, and to make your hand glowy.

Sure, whatever you say, Mr. Narrator! Some time later in the exile arc, we learn about plans for dealing with Jack Noir where it’s made clear that the ring will be used for stuff. With that in mind, PM being the final wearer of the ring is quite the plot twist.

Oh yeah, there’s another thing you forgot about! You ate that delicious green nuclear rock earlier in the day, even though it feels like it was more than a year ago.

Here’s something Homestuck occasionally does: linking to earlier pages in order to remind people of things they might have forgotten about. I think this probably should be done more often; for example, I’ve seen people reading Homestuck completely forget about the time Karkat told past Jade her robot will blow up when it is referenced several times later. In this case it’s a reminder of the Chekhov’s uranium. The “more than a year ago” bit is another one of those things that made the most sense to serial readers. But I guess that could make sense to archival readers (most especially those reading at a slow pace) given that as the link reminds us, the uranium was eaten over two thousand pages ago.

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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’s Homestuck Commentary Part 32: The Bard of Fuck I Forgot

Introduction

Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 >

Act 5 Act 2, Part 5 of 32

Pages 2793-2840 (MSPA: 4693-4740)

I am debating with myself whether it’s clichéd to start putting in “Where I…” between the title pictures of my posts and the first pictures. Because I want to have something between those pictures or it just looks awkward. Then again I have nothing between the title and following pictures in many of the posts where I retroactively added title pictures.

John connects to Jade and gets ready to do some important stuff until…

She’s back!

Nanna makes her classic pranking entrance and summons a bed to catch John and his stuff.

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