All together now: Tooooooons. Games! EEEE-mail...

A brief word of warning: This post is going to be pretty much incomprehensible if you're unfamiliar with the source material that I'm talking about. Yes, more so than usual. Sorry.

Anyone who spends any more time than is absolutely necessary on the Internet is likely to have come across Homestar Runner at some point, even if just in passing. For a site without a vast amount in the way of content, and with zero advertising, this is pretty surprising. In fact, the entire site bucks the trend of almost everything else you'll find online - it hosts only Flash cartoons and games, all of which are created in-house, allows no user input whatsoever, and has retained the same basic design for years. Oh, and its creators make their living off it. Did I mention the complete lack of advertising?

So how does a firmly Web 1.0 site survive on a Web 2.0 internet? One possibility is that success simply begets success. HR has been running for over seven years now (for comparison, Google has been live for about eight), and consequently has a massive merchandise-purchasing fanbase. That kind of thing ends up being self-perpetuating. The other reason, and it's one that the site's fans would heartily agree with, is that the content is extremely good. Given the vast numbers of Flash cartoons floating around on the web, and their generally remarkably poor quality, it's refreshing to find a series full of well-animated and funny films and games.

The factor that I didn't mention just now is the characterisation. That's because the characters are undoubtedly the weirdest part of the site. Whether we're talking about nice-but-crushingly-dim Homestar, aloof and incomprehensible Pom Pom, or just plain disturbing Señor Cardgage, the HR universe is populated with people who make no sense whatsoever. That's partly because there's never been a formal character roster, with new faces being introduced as the story demands it.

You see that last sentence? The one with "story" in it? Yeah, that's where things get even more confusing. There is no story to the site as a whole. Of course there are storylines within each cartoon - usually, anyway - but there's never more than the most cursory of nods to continuity between them. Now add in the fact that the only ongoing series - Strong Bad's emails - runs at the same time as the one-off cartoons but is not related to them in any way. This leads to a huge back catalogue of minor characters, who appeared once for a specific gag and now get dragged out for an otherwise meaningless cameo every few episodes. Oh, and some of them (all the Cheat Commandos, for example) don't exist within the HR universe itself, but their own contexts are sometimes introduced to a completely different story.

Feeling lost yet? It gets worse.

As there are no humans in the cartoons (with some notable exceptions - we'll get back to them later), it would be tempting to assume that HR takes place in some kind of parallel universe, and all the weirdness is present because none of it is supposed to make sense in our context. The problem with that idea is that all the action very clearly takes place within our own world. The Strong Bad emails are real emails, sent in by fans of the site and used as raw material. Real-world people are referenced (Homestar does an impression of Ronald Reagan in one cartoon), US dollars are used for money, the internet is the same one that we know, and cars and buildings are recognisably from the human world. (With the possible exception of the King of Town's castle, but then the King is so incredibly weird he can get put into a separate category all by himself.)

Because of this duality, when humans started being introduced it produced a very strange vibe. In some cases, it was OK. The puppet videos, featuring Little Girl, were different enough to the usual content for it not to matter; similarly, the hair metal band Limozeen are so cartoonish anyway that they don't raise any hackles. It's Crack Stuntman who really sets my teeth on edge. Stuntman is supposed to be the voice actor for one of the Cheat Commandos, the show-within-a-show. Introducing a voice actor to a cartoon universe has some comedic promise, but the problem is that Stuntman apparently had to a) be a human, and b) interact with the usual cast. Suddenly the jarring strangeness of the HR universe became all too apparent - it couldn't be a colourful cartoonish alternate world if it actually was the world.

Once the idea that Strong Bad et al. exist within our world takes root, certain aspects of the characters begin to slip out of joint. Take Strong Bad's way of escaping his current life, for example. When a fan asks him whether the country of Strong Badia has a space programme, Strong Bad makes one up on the spot, creating a spaceship out of cardboard boxes and a CD player with "woosh" sound effects. Within the assumption that Strong Badia is in an entirely fictional universe, this is just pleasantly silly, but as soon as we realise that it's in our world, it becomes a child's fantasy in a world devoid of children. Strong Bad becomes either delusional or just child-like, which then jars with his generally adult-like behaviour in other areas.

Horrific though it may be for Strong Bad, the situation is considerably worse for some of the other characters. Coach Z, whose entire personality is based on his lack of any social skills or real friends, changes from a slightly pathetic comic relief character straight into a desperately lonely and depressed person. Strong Sad, supposed to be filling the "punchbag" role, suddenly seems extremely vulnerable when faced with his violent and psychopathic brothers. Marzipan (who has a great name) now seems to be trapped in a relationship with someone so recklessly stupid that he is a danger to himself and others. The list goes on, and even applies to the characters corporately as well as individually. For example, whenever a theatre of any kind is required by the storyline, the action moves to a deserted high school auditorium. Why it's deserted, who the usual students are, and why the characters are bothering to put on a show when there is no audience are all very worrying problems once we see HR in the context of our world.

In the end, does it matter? Not a huge amount. The cartoons are still funny, and frequently manage to either effectively satirise elements of popular culture or simply incorporate them into a silly story. I do think, though, that the site's owners are treading a fine line. If you haven't understood a word of this post, now imagine trying to understand the cartoons themselves; it takes a huge investment of time on the part of the viewer to get up to speed with the site's concept, and anyone who overthinks it is likely to, as I have, see the cracks in the stories and the worrying elements behind them. The creators are risking alienating new viewers, and in the process risking the next generation of merchandise-buyers.

For now, though, I'm just going to enjoy Strong Bad relentlessly mocking his viewers every week. Because really, is there any more to comedy than that?