The birth of SBEmail - Remind me again why this caught on?

Previously on Homestar Rerunner, we watched some of the last toons made during the website’s simple age, where Strong Bad reading text of a screen and making fun of viewer submissions wasn’t necessary for a good time. All that is about to change, for better or for worse, starting with a little something called some kinda robot.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail1.html

There you have it, folks: the humble beginnings of Strong Bad Email. If you’ve never seen any modern SBEmails, you may wonder why on earth these ever became popular. Well, let’s just say that things grew from this basic template until eventually, the only difference between a SBEmail and a regular toon is the fact that the idea for a SBEmail cartoon is based on a viewer submission, and they involve scenes of Strong Bad reading the email, replying to it, and making fun of grammatical errors along the way. I can’t say I really have a major preference for either type. I do like how generic toons can focus on other characters a bit more, but they show up in the emails also, and sometimes Strong Bad’s smartass comments are legitimately hilarious.

I’m not exactly sure where this email came from. Obviously, there was no “Click here to Email Strong Bad” option before this toon (Unless the paper on the old Games Menu originally did that, but I have no proof for this). If I understand the DVD commentary correctly, Abdi was one of a few people who had emailed Matt and Mike, and so I guess they sent out some replies to the effect of “hey, you should send an email to Strong Bad and we’ll pick one for him to answer”. I guess this was the best one from the original batch. It’s not a bad question (at least it’s not “how can you type with boxing gloves on”), but Strong Bad’s reply is a little lacking I suppose. Oh well, I can’t fault it too much, they did have to design the whole format of the toon from scratch, so obviously there was no desire to make anything extravagant out of it just yet. But now the prep-work is done, so all that’s left is to wait for some emails to come in and pick a really dumb one to have Strong Bad answer. What follows is history in the making. I present… homsar.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail2.html

This one email is a major reason why I wanted to stick with the chronological order when reviewing the material on the website. And then of course, the stupid Who Said What Now game kind of ruined that. But hopefully some of you took my suggestion and skipped that, and so this is your first exposure to Homsar, just as it was originally intended. I think this email is pretty straight-forward, but just in case anyone’s confused, yes – the email was supposed to say “Homestar”, and yes – Homsar was invented for the sole purpose of making fun of this typo, and then was immediately killed off. Except he gets better, somehow.

I think it’s awesome. Someone who has watched other stuff on the website where Homsar makes appearances might miss the point of this email, but that’s why I stuck to this format, so the joke could be appreciated by a new audience. Remember, I didn’t actually discover Strong Bad Emails until I had already watched everything else on the website several times over and assumed that there was no other material to see. It wasn’t until email #44 that I became enlightened. I think the only other place Homsar appeared at the time was in the Where’s The Cheat? cartoon, but I had mostly forgotten about that, so I did appreciate this joke for what it was.

There’ll be more on Homsar later on, once he makes some more appearances. For now, let’s just move on to some more emails. The next one is called butt IQ.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail3.html

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of this one. A lot of these older emails are like this, but every once in a while a gem like homsar will show up to keep us interested. Really though, there’s not much to say about this. It’s the origin of “crapfully yours”, which gives it some bonus points I suppose, but otherwise, someone was just taking Strong Bad Sings a little too literally. Also, keep in mind how terrible the graphics were for the Homestar picture in this email though, because the next email is about to disregard that completely. Let’s take a look at homestar hair.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail4.html

I completely believe without a doubt in my mind that the Tandy 400 with its ancient, green-lined screen and text-based OS would be able to display a full-color image like this Hairstyle Runner screenshot. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be a stick in the mud and complain about it being unrealistic, it’s just funny that they followed up the previous email’s block graphics with this. Temple of Apshai has color in it too, but at least it has extremely primitive graphics that you’d expect to see on an old computer like this. For the record, the wiki says that this game is actually called “Chaos: Battle of the Wizards”, and that Temple of Apshai looks completely different. I’ll take their word for it. So anyway, not much else to say about this one (as simple as it is, I did laugh at his reaction to the attachment), so uh… making out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail5.html

Oh hey, it’s the least funny email ever. I’ve never really been a fan of Strong Bad’s attempts to act like a ladies’ man, and this email is no exception to that. The one thing that could have saved it would be if he actually sang a bit of his “hit single”, but alas. So no point in dwelling on this one, let’s just move on. Before SBEmail #6, let’s take a look at Marizpan’s Answering Machine #5.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer5.html

I think this is the best Answering Machine yet. I do hope other people enjoy these as much as I do, because there’s a ton of humor to be found with this. I think that Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call was sort of weak here, but the rest of them more than make up for it. Coach Z’s call on its own is pure gold. I mean, there’s really nothing more you can say about that, but I find his downward spiral from just being sort of silly to breaking down and sobbing over absolutely nothing to be absolutely hilarious. I’ve never been drunk myself, nor have I associated with anyone who was, but I’m not sure if that matters. Bubs yelling about bananas in the background just makes it even better, because I for some reason find it funny whenever someone’s rambling in the background. And then of course, Coach Z calls back and offers a blanket apology for whatever it is he may have done. And yet somehow remembers that he claims to be a poet. Yeah, I’m not sure either.

Homsar’s back! Apparently being crushed by a heavy lourde didn’t kill him (I point the blame squarely at tight pants … or cartoon physics), so he’s able to make reappearances in the future as 12th main character. I’m still not quite ready to address Homar’s characterization yet, because he’s only had a couple lines, and neither of them indicate what he’s going to be like in future appearances. Right now he just has an extremely goofy voice, and that’s about it.

Now as for Homestar, his message is really not all that special or laugh-out-loud funny, but I do have to address it for some of the truths in telemarketing. In my personal experience working for AT&T DSL sales and U-verse retention, we are in fact supposed to address whoever we’re talking to with a gender-specific title, but oftentimes it is impossible to tell who you’re actually talking to, so I usually omit this and just carry on. We do actually do the “Mr. or Mrs. whoever” thing on answering machines, because we don’t know who will pick it up, but yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone actually did the “sir or madam” thing. And I can also relate to him not knowing what the rates actually are. You have no idea how many times a customer will ask me “so what are these discounts you’re offering”, and I have no choice but to answer “well… I don’t actually know until I get your account open.” I mean, I know what we’re offering, but it really does depend on the customer, and we have to go through a ton of stupid mandatory statements and crap before we’re allowed to actually discuss what the customer is eligible for.

Whew, kinda went on a tangent there, sorry. So that just leaves us with Strong Sad’s message, which yes, does loop for all of eternity if you let it. That’s another thing with work – there are times when you hit an answering machine, and you’re about to hang up (we can only leave messages after 5 failed attempts to reach them), and then suddenly the person picks up the phone and catches you completely off-guard. It’s kinda weird that way. I haven’t had anyone pick up while I was leaving a message though. And I have been tempted to do Strong Sad’s continuous “Hello? Hellooooo....?” thing before. But I have resisted this urge. Alright, so one last email, and then that’ll be the end of today’s entry. And I saved a downer for last – depressio.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail6.html

I don’t think Strong Sad is dumb or a crappy guy. But that’s not really the focus here. While this email isn’t awful, it pales in comparison to the original Easter egg that was featured in it. This will no longer work, but when it first came out, if you actually did send an email to Strong Sad, you could get an automated reply with a link to something called The Secrets That I Keep. And it’s… well, I’ll link to it first, and let you form your own opinion before I say anything. 
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sadjournal/wonderyears.html

I know I can’t be the only one that finds this page to be legitimately sad. And by that, I mean that I actually got misty-eyed over this. I’m not sure if this was ever meant to be funny, but to me, it certainly isn’t. I’m sure there’s people who are going to tease me for getting all emotional over a stupid internet cartoon, and if it was any other page on the website, I’d pretty much agree with you. But just think about it: Strong Sad’s collection of happy memories consists of exactly four things: a photo and short film reel of him getting along with Strong Bad as kids, a card made (unwillingly, and very hatefully) by Strong Bad, and a snow globe. I’m going to assume that the snow globe was also a gift from Strong Bad, since it makes sense with the other items. So basically, even though the card is very mean-spirited, and the snow globe was probably an extremely cheap gift that he picked up just for the sake of having something to give (no matter how meaningless), Strong Sad still treasures them because they’re the only gifts he’s ever gotten from his brother. I don’t care if it’s just an online cartoon, this is some seriously depressing stuff here, and it almost kind of disturbs me.

The dynamic between Strong Bad and Sad is probably the most interesting between any two characters on the website. On the surface, it seems like Strong Sad pretty much accepts his fate as the constant victim, but at times like this, you can tell that once, the two brothers did care for each other, and that Strong Sad would like nothing more than for things to go back to the way they used to be. There will be far more evidence for this as time goes on, so it’s something to keep an eye out for. I do believe that at its base level, this web series is just about being funny, and the characters aren’t nuanced to the point where every line can be analyzed for motivation or some deeper meaning, but I feel like even Strong Sad’s sense of sarcasm and dry humor was probably picked up from Strong Bad, and he’s unconsciously doing it as a way to gain acceptance.

If this was a more serious cartoon (and if he wasn’t so funny all the time) I’d probably dislike Strong Bad as a character for being the cause of this much emotional pain. But luckily, I’m not THAT much of a Strong Sad fanboy that I’m going to harbor a grudge against a fictional character. And don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into some huge philosophical rant every time that Strong Sad is mistreated or shows his depression – he’s just a character, and his most defining trait (of which he is named after) is the fact that he’s sad. I just think that there’s a bit of subtext that is easily missed, and this one shoebox of memories speaks volumes.

Next time, we’ll cheer up a bit with some holiday toons, and if that somehow doesn’t manage to fill enough time, then I’ll continue with some more emails. Hopefully I didn’t scare anyone off with my over-analysis of that last bit.