Decemberween in July on Halloween!

First things first, to address the elephant in the room – there’s actually been three Homestar updates between my previous post and this one. If you haven’t seen those yet, then holy crap dude, check them out. But yeah, with previous updates (or signs of life), I’ve started my posts by reviewing the new toons, just to be on-topic and whatnot. But in this case, since the site seems to be getting back into a semi-regular groove, I don’t really feel the need to do that yet. I’m just going to keep truckin’ along with my 2004 material, and assuming I manage to keep this blog going for long enough, I’ll eventually be getting to the 2014 material sometime around the time that SBEmail 300 gets released. So with that not-actually out of the way, the next toon for me to check out is the main reason I’m forcing myself to write this before November (so I can have that awesome post title) – Decemberween In July.

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

Well, this is something different. As I completely failed to point out, 2003 didn’t actually have a Decemberween toon of any kind. This was because Mike and Missy got married around that time, and they didn’t have enough time to put together anything major. A few ideas were tossed around, and so this collection of shorts is basically what those ideas turned into. The menu itself doesn’t really need any comment, but I’ll mention something anyway. It’s based on an old Strong Bad Email menu (which I might have linked to at some point, I don’t remember, but here it is again anyway), and much like that one, there’s a secret if you click on a specific light. Except in this case, it’s actually something pretty major, so I’ll have to go over that. Let’s actually start with that one – click the green light above the “w” in Decemberween and you’ll find Homestar vs. Little Girl.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/dween_puppet2.html

This thing has no right to be as funny as it is. Generally the puppet toons rank between mediocre and not-so-great in my opinion, but I’ve always loved this one. Matt ad-libbing Homestar while playing off of Little Girl’s general cuteness and strange responses equals instant comedy. For the record, her name is Astrid Renee, and she’s Matt and Mike’s niece. She also appeared in that weird “Matt cake” from the Message Bored, and coined the names “Gron Sad” and “Graw Mad”. But anyway, getting back to the toon, I’d list my favorite parts, but it would pretty much just be me quoting the entire thing. If I had to pick one best line from it, it would be “it sounds like funny, but it’s not”, though “I like space show DVDs the best” comes close if only because of the callback. One interesting thing to point out about this toon is that while this one is an Easter egg, it actually spawned a few sequels, which were not. So Homestar vs. Little Girl 2 is just sort of found in the Toons menu normally with no obvious original in sight. It’s interesting to think that now, “Little Girl” is ten years older than she was in this toon, and could be part of a squad of teen girls. But hopefully not one that does the stupid kind of crap exhibited in Teen Girl Squad Issue #6.

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

Eh. Not one of the better TGS issues, in my opinion. The first half was a bit too redundant, and the second half had some funny bits, but was still not quite up to par with previous issues. I can’t complain too much, since this was only one of several Decemberween shorts released all at the same time, but as a TGS on its own, it falls a bit flat. As a random bit of trivia, there's actually two versions of this on the site - one for the TGS menu, and one for the Decemberween in July menu. The only difference between them seems to be the page title and where the "back" button at the end leads.And… yeah, that’s about all I can say about this one.  Not sure what was up of the wave of babies, but it doesn’t deserve much of my attention. So I’ll just move on to That Time of Year (just called “Kid’s Book” on the menu).

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

Just like the original kid’s book email, I think this thing is awesome. Like with most other genuinely funny shorts, there’s not much I can really add to this in terms of intelligent discussion. I just think the concept of drawing over an innocent story and making it incredibly mean-spirited and violent is hilarious. This one also takes a bit of a step beyond the original “Everyone is Different” by having alternate versions of some of the pages. I guess they just had a lot of funny ideas and couldn’t choose between them. Speaking of which, there’s an unused alternate version of the “robots bursting out of people” page that appears for a single frame in the official Youtube version of this toon, which I went ahead and made the sample screenshot for this one. I was going to go with “Greta is feeding the mouse bug spray”, but this way I don’t have to link to a second image. Huzzah. So, are you ready for another SBEmail callback? Good, because here’s Cactus Coffee and the No Tell Motel.

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

…or just “Decemberween Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes”, according to the HR Wiki, but if the previous toon can be called That Time of Year, after the book, then whatever. There’s no consistency there. So… this is the first appearance of the Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes gang since the original crazy cartoon SBEmail/PBTC toon, unless you count the Main Page based on it. And off the top of my head, I can only think of two other times in the future that they’ll show up again (other than random Eh! Steve cameos, which happen from time to time). It’s not a major mainstay of the Homestar series as a whole, and Strong Bad pretty much explains why. It doesn’t make any sense. It can be funny for very short bursts like this one, but that’s about it. I do like how they brought back Ready For Primetime from the haircut email. That was a nice addition. Also, the demo that Keyboard Strong Bad plays here was totally on a keyboard that I actually owned back in the day. I thought that was pretty neat when I first watched this. But anyway, there’s two shorts left, and both of them are kind of weak, so I’m just going to tackle them both at once. Let’s wrap this up with Homestar and the Nice Present and Seasonal Sweaters. 

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

http://www.homestarrunner.com/dween_puppet1.html

Definitely not ending on a high note here. I’m not sure why Homestar vs. Little Girl was hidden, and yet the Santam’n toon was displayed normally, since the former is far superior. I can’t really pinpoint anything there that was actually funny, except for the very beginning when Homestar tackles the present and tears it open, which was at least somewhat amusing. Other than that… pass. Then we have Seasonal Sweaters, which in pretty much any other context would be a standalone Easter egg that doesn’t really need its own specific mention, but it is technically a separate toon with its own page, so I have to at least address it. It’s basically the “Oh Yeah Yeah” thing from the marzipan email, and the best thing I can pinpoint about it is the terrible shapetween that I captured in the screenshot to be preserved for posterity. Also, it’s worth noting that it was actually added to the Decemberween in July menu a week after the rest of it was put up. Not sure why they felt the need to tack it on, but I suppose it’s not hurting anybody. I’d just much rather watch a music video that isn’t terrible, such as the big Homestar/TMBG collab, Experimental Film.

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

I probably won’t be able to do this toon the justice it deserves, since this is a really nice animation to go along with a really nice song. Obviously the song is by They Might Be Giants, in their third and largest collaboration with the Homestar series. This actually is an official music video for the song (I’m not sure if it’s the only one), and it has aired on TV. It’s definitely cool to see Homestar leak into the mainstream every once in a while like that. Now, I suppose I should probably talk about the animation a bit, since I can’t claim to know the inspiration for the actual song, and I’m not going to try and argue its significance or meaning. As far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty much just about making a pretentious experimental film and thinking it’s going to be great, when it most likely isn’t. From the little I know about TMBG, I don’t think they’re really the type of band to put deep metaphors in their work. I could be wrong, so don’t get offended if I am – I haven’t looked into this at all, since that’s not really my focus here. But I can talk about the video.

I enjoy the blend between Strong Sad’s titular experimental film (not the last one he’ll make, either, if you look way into the future at SBEmail 203) and The Cheat’s usual sloppy style. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a hidden commentary track that plays over the music video if you click on the credits at the beginning. During the commentary, Strong Sad points out some of the symbolism of the two different worlds and “Rondell’s transformation into a new man”, which I’m pretty sure is just more bogus symbolism that they made up to make it sound deep. The “fantasy and reality colliding” part does make sense in terms with the visuals, but I still don’t think it actually has anything to do with the song. All in all, I think the commentary is more of a reinforcement of the idea that the song is really just supposed to be about an experimental film that tries to be overly artsy and doesn’t really make any sense.

But whatever. I like the animation, I like the song, and I like the commentary. As long as it doesn’t make my face implode (or “implood”, as they pronounce it), I’m fine with it. And like I said earlier, I probably didn’t do it justice, but I’m not a music buff, nor do I claim to be one. So I’mma move on to the next toon, a SBEmail called pom pom. And wait a second, wasn’t that one about… oh. OH. Well, crap. Let me rewatch that one.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail108.html

Well, I wasn’t going to talk about any of the new toons yet, but this email is highly relevant to the 2014 Halloween toon that just came out, so I have to at least mention it. This is going to be spoilery if you haven’t seen it yet, but I assume most people have. If you haven’t, go see it now, I’ll wait.






Ok, we good? So… I feel stupid for asking this, but is Pom Pom actually dead now? Normally I wouldn’t think much about Homestar “canon”, since things are rarely consistent between cartoons, but I don’t remember a time that they’ve just flat-out killed off a character in a non-hypothetical situation like that. Homsar’s been crushed by a heavy lourde, dropped off a cliff, and wasted away (in homsar, cliffhangers, and A Decemberween Mackerel, respectively), but he’s, well, Homsar. And he’s apparently still fine in I Killed Pom Pom. And to be fair, Pom Pom’s still ok at the very end of that toon too, but that’s just the “stand around and face the camera” scene, which doesn’t necessarily count. So I assume that he’s coming back, but you never know. He hasn’t exactly done much in the series in ... ever, and this could be the start of a new storyline or something. Those don’t happen often in this series, but they’re not unheard of.

I’m going to assume that Pom Pom’s ok until further notice. Still a weird coincidence that I happened to reach this email on the very day that toon came out, though. But anyway, back to the subject at hand. Strong Bad gets an email (I know, right?) that asks what would happen if he murdered another character, and he just kind of rolls with it. I’m a bit concerned with the fact that he doesn’t seem to have any issue with testing it out, so I guess it’s a good thing that he isn’t the most competent person to take on the task.

I can’t really think of anything else to say about the main subject of the email, so instead, let’s focus on some minor, unimportant stuff. Like the fact that Strong Bad can’t type well with a blindfold even though he’s an extremely fast typist otherwise (and therefore can obviously type without looking at the keys) and has managed to type things with his feet and head before. And during the “email card game” Easter egg, Monkeydude (the sender of the crazy cartoon email) is represented by Monkey D, which is actually a different thing entirely. Given the subject of that email, I think this would actually be a good stopping point for now, but instead, I’ll end it on a preview of things to come. Not much of one, since I assume most people reading this are very familiar with the series, but I still hope that there’s some newbies out there who are using this as a way to progress through an otherwise daunting amount of material. But yeah, here’s the Peasant’s Quest Preview.

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

This trailer succeeds on two different levels. It manages to make fun of really old games like this and the hardware that they would run on, while simultaneously getting you excited to play it, despite how crappy it looks. Because hey, it’s not actually crappy if it’s meant to be that way, right? The joys of “retreaux” games. (Does anyone actually use that word?)

I’m finding it difficult to comment on the preview very much, because unlike most commercial-type toons, this is a legitimate trailer for something that exists, and so I can’t really point out something like “that part with the ‘throw baby’ command was hilarious”, because that’s an actual thing that you do in that game. Speaking of that specific moment though, I’m reasonably sure that it was included in this preview specifically because nobody would have figured it out otherwise. As far as completely new content is concerned, there’s the short clip of “Rabbit Algebra”, which is a funny concept, and there’s some shots of the game being played or developed on actual old computers. And also bad moustaches. I am a fan of the conversation from the Easter egg at the end, particularly the last line – “I’m supposed to release a video computer game on TV without this graphic.” I’m not sure that even he knew what that was supposed to mean.

But that’ll be it for now. As you can tell from the fact that I just covered the preview, Peasant’s Quest is coming up soon. I’m not sure if I should record a fresh playthrough of that. I did already contribute to a Let’s Play of it back in the day, guiding my now-wife (who I had just met like, a couple days before making that video) through the game blind. I probably said about everything that I wanted to back in that series, so there’s probably not any need to record a separate thing for it. And speaking of videos of Homestar games, I do actually have the footage for Thy Dungeonman II still (at least, I did last time I checked, hopefully it hasn’t been deleted for real this time), I just haven’t done anything with it. So maybe I’ll actually edit that thing together and put that up next time. Until then, keep an eye on the official site for new updates! Hopefully they’ll still continue at a decent pace.