Unpopular Opinions Quarterly

Last time (about three and a half months ago), I covered the Peasant’s Quest Preview, and mentioned that I could potentially record a new playthrough of that as my way of covering it on this blog. Instead, I choose to ignore it completely for now, and come back to it eventually. Just like Thy Dungeonman II, actually. Remember how I said that I actually did record something for that, and just never did anything with the footage? Well, it turns out the footage was accidentally deleted, so I’ll have to come back to it at some point. So I’ll keep those in mind, but for now, let’s just go over some regular toons and emails. To start, here’s the ever-overrated crying.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail109.html

I personally consider this to be a middle-of-the-road email. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t think it’s all that great either. People in general seem to disagree with me on that, since this is generally considered … well, maybe not “one of the best”, but at least a very good and noteworthy email. As far as I’m concerned, it’s alright. The crying gags kind of went on a bit too long, I feel, and they were never all that funny to begin with. I guess the humor just comes from the fact that Homestar goes completely hysterical over such a stupid thing, but I dunno, it just never clicked with me, I guess.

So, what do I feel this email did well? Out of all of Homestar’s blubbering, I did enjoy the “male modeling” and “sound financial advice” lines, just due to the absurdity of them. And while Li’l Brudder didn’t do much for me, for some reason I found Tendafoot pretty funny. If anything, it was the sudden reveal that Strong Bad just happened to have a second drawing around for that specific purpose, plus the next couple lines are classics as well. Amazingly, I don’t know if I’ve ever used the “I could power a small city with my whining” line within context that would actually make sense. Such as when one of my own li’l brudders was whining about some asinine thing and I wanted them to shut up. It apparently never occurred to me, but I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future.

Also, even though this is completely irrelevant, I have to take this opportunity to complain about the general usage of the abbreviation “li’l”. It’s annoyed me ever since I was a kid, for whatever reason, possibly because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually pronounce “little” that way, so it’s just kind of unnecessary. It’s not like “wanna” or “cuz”, which are things that people do say. If anything, I just say “liddle”, because most people in my region don’t really pronounce their T’s in the middle of words. Anyways, the next few updates according to the timeline are things I’m going to skip over for right now. For the record, there’s a few menu updates, the full Peasant’s Quest game, and a Videlectrix game called Hall Runner. I’m thinking at this point that I should probably just dedicate a full post to these games (plus Duck Guardian, another game that will be coming up soon), so I’ll be holding off on that for now, but will get to them soon. For now though, let’s keep the pace moving along with a family-friendly email: for kids.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail110.html

Now this one, I definitely did enjoy. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen many a kids’ show in my day, and this was a pretty accurate parody of some of the crappier ones. But this email is sort of broken into a few parts, so let’s start from the beginning. First off, there’s the Peasant’s Quest bit, in which Strong Bad makes use of some secret commands that were not actually part of the original game. They were added in at some point after this email, albeit with different results. I like the opening of this email because it’s different from the usual song and dance routine. It would be cool to see him playing other games now and then, but I guess that would sort of kill the novelty of it.

Moving on to the show that Strong Bad hosts – the wiki sort of describes this bit as an inverted Blue’s Clues, in which the host knows exactly what’s going on, and the kids in the audience don’t. That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. I’m still not sure why Strong Bad starts freaking out over the kids not finding The Cheat, when nothing that they’re saying indicates that. Earlier on, there was the whole “Christopher Columbus” thing, which was pretty dumb (but funny), but when he asks where The Cheat is hiding, they all say things like “he’s over there”, which is not necessarily a wrong answer. It’s not like they were saying “in the toilet” or anything else that would be objectively wrong. I dunno. I’m also not sure why he threatens to kill all their dogs, but I’m just going to roll with it.

The Homsar segment of this email is definitely my favorite, if only because of its unfortunate accuracy. The theme song was pretty sweet too, and I sing it far more than I have any reason to. But the show itself is sort of a hybrid of Teletubbies and Boohbah, which (to go on a bit of a tangent here) honestly aren’t even that comparable in my opinion. Teletubbies, while painfully stupid, at least attempts to have some elements of storytelling to it. Nothing I’ve ever seen of Boohbah leads me to believe it is anything more than a bad acid trip. But anyway, all the elements are here. Pointless visuals with nothing happening, check. Abrupt cuts to unrelated crap, check. Ridiculous amounts of repetition, check. The “Stave it off” gag was excellent, and probably one of my favorites on the site. To quote Futurama, “before we go, let’s do everything we just did two more times.” The “Stave it off” gag was excellent, and probably one of my favorites on the site. And instead of thinking of a transition to the next email, other days, let’s just cut to it abruptly.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail111.html

This email was just kind of a mish-mash of stuff. Which kind of makes sense, given the subject of the email, so I can’t exactly fault it for that. It was just a fact that became evident to me when I tried to pick a screenshot for the email, since I wanted it to be something that stood out from the norm, and the other cutaway segments didn’t really have much to distinguish themselves.

So let’s take a look at what we have here. The snail mail segment was pretty meh, but the song at the beginning kind of redeems it. I also feel the need to point out that Strong Bad makes a joke about the BMW lighter, even though you’d have to be pretty familiar with the lighter from previous emails for the reference to make any sense at all. I don’t think the logo on it was ever really pointed out before, and it’s so small here that it seems like a weird type of joke to make. But enough complaining about that. The “lecture” segment, once again, was kind of meh, but was saved by Strong Mad yelling “I’M THE HUMP!”, which was pretty hilarious.

Comm serv thurs and biz cas fri were what they were. I don’t really have anything further to say on them, aside from the observation that apparently their office only has business casual dress code on Fridays, whereas the place I work has that for the majority of the week, and then Friday/Saturday are just completely casual. And then there was some battle axe thing and some weird Polish thing. Yeah, I didn’t really have very much to say about this email, I guess. It had a couple funny quotes, and the rest was sort of forgettable. The Easter eggs were pretty good though. Next up, we get to see something else that Strong Bad does that was not mentioned in that email – Teen Girl Squad! Specifically, Issue #7.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs7.html

I don’t mean to sound like I’m whining about every single toon lately not being up to snuff, since I honestly don’t have anything against them, but I can’t think of any other way to start this one out rather than “not one of my favorite TGS issues”. So instead of focusing on the parts that were not so great in my opinion, I’ll just list off the parts that I thought were funny.

• This was the first appearance of Tompkins, who I find generally pretty amusing. Apparently he was based on Matt and Mike’s cousin, who at one point did actually threaten to push them down into some snakewater. Whatever that means. Sounds about right, though, as I have had similar experiences with my own cousins when I was little. No snakewater though.
• Tompkins’s death was amusing in its own little inexplicable way. I just like the concept of Strong Bad running out of ideas. I thought the first thing that showed up was pretty great too. It was just some sort of arm with a ring and a bowler hat, not sure what that was all about.
• This isn't really so much "funny" as it is just interesting to note, but the background in this TGS is the dotted line paper that kids use to learn to write. Fits with the theme.
• Mrs. Commanderson, just in general. Nothing more really needs to be said there, other than the fact that I wish I had used that name (a shortened one, anyway) for my Archeops back in Pokémon White.

As you can tell, I like the more bizarre things in TGS. The more down-to-earth parts, like the overly long song at the beginning, tend to not be as funny. You have to have a mix though, as random stuff being thrown at you constantly just leads to stuff like animutations and Youtube Poops, which … well, I generally enjoy anyway, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing, and subsequently, too much of an awesome thing. Anyway, here’s an Answering Machine. I don’t think I could possibly segue into that with any sort of relevant statement.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer11.html

There’s some pretty good messages this time around. No all-time favorites or anything, but I have no complaints here. Strong Bad’s was sort of the generic prank call, but still had some parts in it that made me laugh, such as “move the ocean” and the competing candidate, Cory. And then in the final message, we learn that Marzipan actually did leave some stuff out (though it’s arguable if she did it because of the first message or if it was for something entirely different). Not sure why Strong Bad wants to melt a hamster cage, though. I guess it’s about as random as setting a fax machine on fire, but then again, clearly he wasn’t the one who did that.

Homestar’s message was kind of mediocre here, but I did enjoy the ending of it. Both the “beep” being an answer for the puzzle and him calling Marzipan a broomstick. Because she totally is. There’s also some Polish in this Answering Machine for whatever reason. I guess they just liked putting it in the other days email and decided to bring it back. I’d mention something about the person who actually did those lines, but it’s not particularly interesting, so I’m not going to.

Believe it or not though, I think the King of Town actually has the best message in this set, if only because of how over-the-top it was. “The Flamingo” is an excellent name for a thing, but my favorite part was the delivery of the “fifty frickin’ wings” line. It’s almost like a toned-down version of the “Precision F-Strike” trope, in the sense that the King would usually never speak that way. It was unexpected and hilarious. But now, I’ll move on to an email where The King of Town’s unfunniness is actually the main subject: old comics.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail112.html

This is kind of the opposite of crying for me – this email doesn’t seem to be very well-liked, but I thought it was pretty good, myself. The subject material wasn’t funny, but that was kind of the point, and that somehow makes it go around full-circle and become funny again. It’s hard to describe, but most things involving humor are. Mainly I just like the art style that the comics have. It’s very accurate to its source material. I’ve never read newspaper comics myself (not very much, anyway), but I’ve seen a few over the years, and The Castlefunnies fits right in with the crowd. It’s the noses, mainly.

I feel the need to mention that there’s a subtle, yet frequently revisited concept that shows up in this email, and that is the silhouette panel. I actually don’t think HRWiki even has an article on that, which is surprising, since they have an article for freaking everything. But basically, there’s a number of things on the site (books and comics usually, but not always) that will occasionally cut to a scene where the characters are silhouetted, usually with a yellow background. This happens in at least five places – the original book (and Strumstar Hammer by association), Lookin at a Thing in a Bag, flashback, this email, and unnatural. The Chapmans have mentioned it in the commentary as being based on old Dennis the Menace comics, which would do the same thing. Kind of a useless fact, but I like to point those out.

Other funny things in this email: West Islip, “Mushy Chamberpot” and the dialogue box of commas, the pencil moistener, and the “Put Pasta Salad in Strong Mad’s Underdrawers Drawer Scare of ‘04” (both the name of it and the Easter egg associated with it). So I’m not completely sure why this email is disliked. Also, I like how it completely disregarded the subject of the original email. At no point does Strong Bad even attempt to answer why the King has a Poopsmith. I get the feeling that the Chapmans just had this idea and picked an email that was vaguely related to the subject, and just ran with it. Next up, we have some Puppet Stuff. Or is it a holiday toon? I guess it’s both. Here’s Labor Dabor.

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

This is a short toon, so this will be a short review. Plus, it seems to be in the spirit of the holiday that this is celebrating to not put much work into the write-up. So uh… this was a thing. The puppet segment was pretty much exactly what I’d expect it to be. I guess they just wanted to bring back Col-o-nel Homestar, and he rattles off some of the usual stuff that he did from army. Then Bennedetto pukes up a bunch of popcorn and they flail around for a while. And then there's a song, which is admittedly pretty catchy.

The highlight of this one was definitely the weird bowling animations that The Cheat made. When I first saw these, I wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to be, but once I saw someone explain it, it suddenly clicked and I’m not sure how I missed it the first time around. I don’t know if all bowling alleys have them, but most of the ones I’ve been to have similar little animations that play on the scoreboard screens when your turn is up. I don’t remember seeing any that have sound, but if they did, I’d imagine them to sound something like this. The last one (with the cell phone) in particular just has this weird, off-putting quality to it that reminds me of the Gene Deitch Tom & Jerry cartoons. And then I ended up Googling him and found that he directed animated shorts based on the “Krazy Kat” comic series. This would be irrelevant if it wasn’t for the fact that the style that The Castlefunnies uses is apparently inspired heavily by Krazy Kat. I’m not even sure what happened to my train of thought there, but it was an interesting coincidence.

I’m not sure how to follow that up, so I’m not going to. Abrupt ending.