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

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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 34: Villain Caninification Station

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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 32: The Bard of Fuck I Forgot

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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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