{"id":22760,"date":"2014-04-02T12:46:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T17:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22760"},"modified":"2014-04-02T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T18:06:31","slug":"skyrim-ep19-bottle-fairy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=22760","title":{"rendered":"Skyrim EP19: Bottle Fairy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CostZyUTVwA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CostZyUTVwA'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>I love how <del datetime=\"2014-04-02T16:34:52+00:00\">Kelly<\/del> <em>Mumbles<\/em> and I lament that the Homestarrunner site is dead, and then two days after the recording we get <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homestarrunner.com\/aprilfools_2014_final.swf\">the first new entry in three years<\/a>. High five, Mumbles.<\/p>\n<p>Next week we&#8217;re just going to play the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telltalegames.com\/strongbad\/\">Strong Bad game<\/a> and do nothing but bitch about how long it&#8217;s been since the last Strong Bad email. Maybe we can jump-start the site again.<\/p>\n<p>Ruminations on Homestar Runner follows:<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s actually hard to introduce people to Homestar Runner these days. The jokes mostly stem from this fractally complex meta-lore that grew over the years. The team would make new versions of existing characters as part of a one-off joke. Teenage versions of the characters. Anime versions. Mid-90&#8217;s &#8220;edgy&#8221; re-designs. Comic book version. Vaudeville version. Storybook version. Then the joke characters would grow in complexity until they had a little world of their own. Then there would be a joke that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homestarrunner.com\/sbemail150.html\">created a crossover between the worlds<\/a>, or made a new spinoff within the spinoff, or whatever. The jokes are impenetrable to people who don&#8217;t understand the origins and lineage of all these characters. Imagine a version of the Star Wars universe that you couldn&#8217;t follow unless you were familiar with all the movies, the novels, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Star_Wars:_Droids\">80&#8217;s cartoons<\/a>, the videogames, the arcade games, and the comic books. <\/p>\n<p>The longer the site ran, the more rewarding it was for longtime fans and the more impenetrable it was to outsiders. <\/p>\n<p>So obviously the way to experience the site is chronologically, right? Except, there&#8217;s no easy way to do that. The Strong Bad Emails form a nice orderly numbered progression, but they often make references to the holiday specials or one-off toons that aren&#8217;t part of any series. I&#8217;m not even sure how you&#8217;d go about watching the site in order. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrwiki.org\/wiki\/Strong_Bad_Email\">The wiki<\/a> would certainly help, but you&#8217;d still need to jump around quite a bit and understand the different types of toons and when they tended to appear.  <\/p>\n<p>Making matters worse is that a lot of the old toons are pretty rough by today&#8217;s standards. They were <strong>amazing<\/strong> in 2001 when animated, voiced content was hard to come by and the net didn&#8217;t really have the infrastructure for instantaneous video delivery. They&#8217;re much less impressive in a post-YouTube world. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to know how the Strong Bad videogame went over with people unfamiliar with the site. My guess is that the whole thing would feel like random nonsense, but I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s very hard to look at this through the eyes of an outsider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) I love how Kelly Mumbles and I lament that the Homestarrunner site is dead, and then two days after the recording we get the first new entry in three years. High five, Mumbles. Next week we&#8217;re just going to play the Strong Bad game and do nothing but bitch about how long it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[209,208,356],"class_list":["post-22760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-skyrim","tag-spoiler-warning","tag-strong-bad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}