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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 121: sup

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Introduction

< Part 120 | Part 121 | Part 122 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4, Part 4 of 8

Pages 7100-7162

Yes, “sup”. That’s what I’ve chosen to title this post.

Sorry this post took so long! Schoolwork has been ramping up this semester, so don’t rule out the possibility of me continuing to be slow.

It’s so weird to process that John completed his planet quest at long last.

The Pipeorgankind flash is followed by a callback to the Myststuck games, with John exploring his newly cleared planet that he warped into the middle of nowhere. The fireflies are no longer confined by the fourth wall and now fly about through the screen’s space, which is quite a charming sight.

All the old setpieces from LOWAS, like the Parcel Pyxis and the salamander village, are still there, which must be a strangely nostalgic sight for John. Not an unwelcome one, though, because he still has plenty more adventures to go through.

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Cookie Fonster’s Homestuck Reflections Part 118: The End (or So It Seems)

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Introduction

< Part 117 | Part 118 | Part 119 >

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4, Part 1 of 8

Pages 6944-7006

God, this part is so sad.
Also shippy. But mostly sad.

Before I begin going through A6A6I4, let me get something out of the way that I perhaps should have said much sooner, like over a year ago. I hope it doesn’t come off as transphobic.

I do not plan on discussing June Egbert in my Homestuck blog post series. The reason why is simply because I see no reason to, especially considering that the canonicity of June presently goes no further than a single Twitter post by Andrew Hussie. While I have no problem with headcanoning characters to be transgender—so long as you aren’t an asshole about it, or an asshole to those who do—John Egbert being a transgender woman is simply not an idea I can personally make sense of. I do have lots of complicated thoughts and feelings about the topic of gender identity, both my own and in general, but I’d rather stray from using a fictional character as a vessel to explore those thoughts. Note that I may change my mind about this if June ends up appearing in official Homestuck media in some capacity, in which case I’ll try to keep an open mind.

With that out of the way, let’s begin Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4! We’re in the home stretch, folks. The fifth last subdivision of Homestuck, and the second last one that’s of substantial length.

(Oh yeah, I noticed after publishing this post that I published post number 118 on 1/18, January 18. Pretty lucky coincidence.)

Nice job there, Aranea.

This image is not a promising one to start A6A6I4 on. It shows us the catastrophic fate of the pre-retcon alpha session, with evidence aplenty of who all caused this mayhem: first Jade foolishly swapping her planet with Derse, then Aranea and the Condesce smashing all the players’ planets into each other in their final face-off… well, all but two of them. It looks like all the destroyed planets’ Seven Gates were severed in the process of all this, which is pretty messed up.

The two surviving planets are symbolic of the two players who survived this timeline: the token heterosexual couple, John and Roxy, who I would be a complete and utter liar if I said I don’t think they’re insanely cute together.

John’s perception of the glitches reminds me of his perception of Caliborn’s commands in Homosuck. Perhaps it’s indicative of his unique relationship with the narrative that no other character has.

… yeah, yeah, I know it’s probably just Hussie doing cool things with the glitch effects that he hadn’t done prior, but fuck it, I can interpret Homestuck the way I want to.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 109: The Part I’ve Been Waiting to Get to for Over Four Years

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Introduction

< Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 >

Pages 6447-6474

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1, Part 5 of 5

Hell.
Fucking.
YES!!!!!!!

This is probably going to be my last Homestuck post for at least a few weeks, depending what content we get on this year’s 4/13. I’m honestly kind of nervous for it, it might be something really cool or it could just be more unreadable meta drivel.

Anyway, as this post’s title says, I’ve been waiting to get to this part for over four years and now I’m finally here. I was so excited to finally make this post and I’m just as excited now to finally release it.

Oh my god, this is happening, it’s happening, it’s actually happening!!!!!! I seriously can’t believe I’ve made it to John’s first conversation with Roxy in my Homestuck post series after all this time, but I really shouldn’t waste any time rambling about how I never thought I’d get to this point until I finally got there, oh wait, I’m rambling about it right now, oh you know, whatever. Let’s jump right the fuck in.

Wait for it… wait for it… (also, note the pumpkin)

Here we GO!

JOHN: hello?
JOHN: is uh…
JOHN: anyone inside that thing?
ROXY: who goes thr

Roxy is humorously making it clear that she’s making the most of her time in prison by goofing around in a pyramid she made using void powers. All through these three words, “who goes thr”, it’s clear that…

I don’t know what it’s clear that, actually. Nor do I have any idea to phrase that sentence in a way that sounds like proper English grammar.* I’m just… like, wow. Now that I’m finally here, I don’t even know what to say. This is pretty much a special post in my Homestuck post series, like a holiday special episode of a TV show or whatever else might constitute a “special episode”.

* I actually do (“I don’t know what’s clear”), I just thought it would be funny to say I didn’t. Though it’s probably not very funny at all.

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Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 90: Tsundere Vacillation Station

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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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Homestuck Epilogues Addendum Post: The Deal with Jade

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Content warning: This post contains some discussion of sexual content, starting from the header “The Candy (in Candy)”. Read at your own discretion.

In the past week, I’ve barely thought about my blog at all and will probably continue not thinking about it for quite some time. My Homestuck post series’ hiatus might last longer than I initially thought; I can’t see myself bringing it back anytime soon.

But despite not thinking about my blog much, I’ve most certainly continued reading the Homestuck Epilogues over and over again. And I think I know exactly who it’s time to talk about.

The Not-So-Wonderful World of Shafted Characters

Enter Jade Harley, the character who’s been an odd spot in the comic’s sprawling cast since day one. She starts as basically just a plot device but becomes a genuine wonderful character in Act 5. But after that point, she gets an upsettingly small amount of screen time and is rudely stripped from the on-screen dialogue reunions most everyone else gets. And by the time Collide and Act 7 happen, the comic has done away with dialogue. Yeah, that sure is fun.

So obviously, one of my biggest hopes for the epilogue was that Jade would get a full strong resolution, perhaps with dialogue “reunions” she should have gotten or with a major new role in the storyline. Jade did get plenty of dialogue early in Meat and some in Candy and it was pretty great, but what ultimate resolution did her character get? Fucking nothing!!! No resolution in Meat, no resolution in Candy.

The epilogues did a LOT of things right, don’t get me wrong. Each of the twelve creators on Earth C gets a good share of screen time and I think the epilogues are reasonably balanced in that regard—far more balanced than late Act 6 was. But the epilogues are incredibly imbalanced in giving characters resolution. Some characters had an astounding resolution arc that far surpassed my already high expectations!!! But for one reason or another, some characters get the opposite of resolution arcs—you probably know who I’m talking about. I’ll have to talk about those another time. And as I said before, Jade doesn’t even get a resolution. I’ll discuss exactly how she doesn’t get a resolution, first in Meat and then in Candy.

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[Experiment] Annotating the Start of the Homestuck Meat Epilogue

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I still plan not to resume my Homestuck posts until I purchase my own web domain. Hopefully that’ll happen soon, maybe in June? After I have a summer (hopefully not just summer) job and start making money for real. I could purchase it right now but I’d feel guilty dumping out money for a cool personal website before I get a job.

So in the mean time, I might as well flex my Homestuck annotating muscles instead of leaving them in the dust for so long like last time my posts were on hiatus. I’ve decided to go ahead and write my usual annotations/dissection of the first three pages of the Meat Epilogue. I’ve chosen this part because the epilogues are still quite recent and hard to take off my mind. They would absolutely cloud my thoughts if I were to dissect any part of Homestuck proper and I don’t want that.

Meat opens exactly as the title suggests: the lovable 23-year-old John Egbert eating a hefty chunk of cold, raw meat. Then this happens:

> Think, suddenly, about all the many horrible crimes committed by Lord English.

God, that guy is the worst. The memory of his stupid face and his terrible art and all the abominable misfortune he has caused across multiple universes and time lines makes your meal start to curdle in your stomach. The meat sits there like a big, lardy mass—a black hole bursting the universe apart around it. You feel like rocks are churning in your gut and your mouth begins to water, hot and sour. The flavor of the afternoon air changes around you and it’s too hot, almost suffocating. You swallow back a mouthful of pungent bile as your eyes swim and lose focus.

John’s sudden thoughts about Lord English come out of nowhere and the story knows it. This is an interesting situation that occurs in both sides: Meat with John’s sudden motivation to save all of existence after seven years of inertia, and Candy with John’s sudden motivation to go outside and make friends. Calliope’s meat and candy may both be empowered with some form of cherub magic, which is probably the actual explanation for this abrupt motivation. But both sudden changes stick out too hard for me to just dismiss them through canon, wait I mean ambiguously post-canon means.

The sudden change quoted above came across to me as a natural progression in the plot. But the start of Candy, where all the stuff in Meat was abruptly “cancelled”, came across to me as a change so absurd it may as well be fanfiction, which caused my initial burnout. Upon further reflection, I am almost certain my first impressions would have been swapped if I had read Candy first. I think most of us can agree that the epilogues’ intention to tell two wildly different stories depending which side you start with was an absolute success.

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The Homestuck Epilogues: Initial Thoughts

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Happy 10th anniversary to Homestuck (again)!

First things first, the title of this post is a lie. My initial thoughts were as follows:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I’m glad I was home alone reading this. I have something of a pattern regarding screaming at media while home alone. I was home alone when I fought Omega Flowey (or is it Photoshop Flowey?) in Undertale, and I screamed all the way through. I was home alone when I played all the way through Doki Doki Literature Club, and again I screamed all the way through. And I am so goddamn lucky that I was home alone when the beginning of the Homestuck epilogue went up. In the last few minutes leading up to 1:00 PM EST (EDT? fuck if I know), I listened to Sburban Jungle at full blast, so that near the end of the song the epilogue would go up. And that was when I started screaming.

My thoughts about the epilogue so far after all the screaming though… oh boy. Oh boy.

Wait fuck, I keep forgetting. It’s not the epilogue. It’s the epilogues, plural. Calling it “epilogues” instead of “epilogue” will take some getting used to.

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Homestuck Mini-Post: About John Egbert and Shipping

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NOTE: If you’re reading this, my Homestuck post series is back on hiatus until some time before 4/13/2019. Maybe you’re looking for post number 82, my latest post? More information on the pause can be found there.

I purposely scheduled this post a few days later than I actually wrote it, which was pretty much right after I released post 82.

Also I recently updated my post series’ introduction post again!

In the past few days, I’ve been rereading a lot of my old posts about Homestuck. One bad thing about the posts that really sticks out to me is my discussion of romantic relationships and foreshadowing thereof, which I kind of read through gritted teeth.

This is strongest when I reread my discussions of foreshadowing ships involving John Egbert, the comic’s protagonist. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote all of that; now, I can definitely say there is no conceivable way John had genuine feelings for Rose or Vriska, nor is it very likely Hussie thought super far in advance to set him up with Roxy*. While it is fun to point out early instances that can be seen as ships that you like, it was incredibly misinformed of me to think of these instances as anything other than John not knowing what he’s talking about, and I kind of hate how biased I was in that regard, while denying anything about some of the more controversial ships. It is painfully obvious he doesn’t understand how romance works until maybe some time before he meets Roxy, and that is only because the comic blatantly sets them up as a pairing.

* Probably a fair bit in advance actually. But definitely nowhere near before any conception of Roxy existed.

The main point is: I take back at least 90% of what I said about things being foreshadowing for ships. Also I fully admit to being guilty of double standards in those posts. Maybe when I make the abridged edition, or deluxe edition, or whatever I want to call it, of my blog posts, I’ll scrub them of this bias. I won’t change the original posts, but instead not have as much bias in the new posts (or webpage? this really hasn’t been thought out yet).