Hiatuses

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 07:36, 25 July 2018 by RickTommy (Talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search


This is not intended to be an official wiki article, simply a service to our users who wish to know more about hiatuses within the body of work.

The Brothers Chaps have sometimes put the Homestar Runner body of work on hiatus, especially in recent years.

Minor hiatuses occured occasionally between 2005 and 2009, with the first major hiatus starting in 2010 and continuing until 2014. Since then, homestarrunner.com has still been on hiatus, but now with several toons released a year.

Contents

Minor Hiatuses

"What is it, like, mid-May or something?"

With the exception of Homestar Runner's early years, the first hiatus to last over a month from December 5, 2005 to January 8, 2006, between the releases of the Strong Bad Emails portrait and highschool, 34 days in total— the longest hiatus at the time. That record was broken by the 48-day hiatus from May 16 to July 3, 2006, between the releases of the email isp and Weclome Back, the latter of which explained what the characters were up to during that time. This was due to the birth of a baby to Mike Chapman and Missy Palmer.

The next hiatus was from December 18, 2006 to January 22, 2007, between the releases of Decemberween Short Shorts and looking old, a total of 35 days. There was later a 45-day hiatus from June 26 to August 7, 2007, between Ever and More! and Quality Time (during which Where's an Egg? and Main Page 24 were released), which was announced in a main page pop-up as a result of Matt and Jackie Chapman having also given birth to a baby. The next hiatus, as well as the first without minor updates, was from December 23, 2008 to January 26, 2009, with 34 days between the releases of A Death-Defying Decemberween and Hremail 62.

Strong Bad Emails

A comeback... or was it?

The first major Strong Bad Email hiatus was in between email thunder and hremail3184, lasting 280 days (nine months and one week). It was the longest Strong Bad Email gap at the time, and for a while afterwards, one Strong Bad Email came out each month. The release of videography on October 5, 2009 was the beginning of the longest Strong Bad Email gap in the history of the site (over five years).

During the hiatus, The Brothers Chaps released drafts for the email that eventually became geddup noise, as well as a calendar that documents the release dates of all Strong Bad Emails, along with an image and a quote from twelve selected emails. In addition, Matt Chapman revealed on his former Twitter page a partial image of scripting for the 206th Strong Bad Email, which he claimed would be released "someday, when you least expect it".

On April 1, 2015, the hiatus officially ended with the release of sbemail206, but there were no emails since until too cool was released in August 2017.

2010 - 2024

The original reason for the hiatus

After the release of Punkin Show in October 2009, the first major hiatus in the site's history began, with barely any material produced for nearly five months. This may have been because of the birth of Matt and Jackie's second baby, as noted on the FeedBurner page, and the possibility they were busy working on a different project. This hiatus ended for a short time with the release of the April Fools' Day toon Xeriouxly Forxe in 2010, with a Xeriouxly Forxe-themed main page shortly thereafter. The hiatus continued again after that, and most of the main page messages that year were Store offers. For the first time in the site's history, no Halloween cartoon was produced in 2010.

Strong Bad was later featured as one of the characters in the Telltale game Poker Night at the Inventory, released November 22. The first major update in over eight months, A Decemberween Mackerel, was released on December 14, shortly followed by Which Ween Costumes? on December 22.

Following the holiday break into the new year, the site was back on hiatus. The only character appearance during 2011 was Puppet Strong Bad appearing at an Aquabats concert in January. Since then, the last site update was a Store offer.

In September, Matt created a Twitter account called @ronginald in which he stated that Homestar Runner would be updated "sporadically and without warning". During this time, he also stated that he was working for the Nickelodeon program Yo Gabba Gabba, for which he had previously created an animated segment, as well as The Aquabats! Super Show and the Disney cartoon Gravity Falls.

December 22, 2011 marked the first time in the site's history that an entire year passed without any content. On February 27, 2012, Matt posted an out-of-focus image of the apparent script for Strong Bad Email 206 on his Twitter account, with the message "Someday, when you least expect it...". He deleted his Twitter account in January 2013.

Strong Bad and Homestar Runner made a surprise appearance at W00tstock 5.0 in July 2013, marking the first on-screen appearance of the characters in two-and-a-half years. The store was updated with the re-release of Decemberween cards around November 23, 2013.

"You got this, Homestar. This is nothin'."

For the first time in over three years, the hiatus was briefly interrupted on April 1, 2014 with April Fool 2014, the first toon since 2010, when the site stopped updating. At the end of that toon, Strong Bad and Homestar Runner discuss the possibility of there being a substantial amount of time before the next update. This toon replaced the normal index page until July.

In July, Matt stated in an interview that he planned to update the website again later in the year, which proved to be true with the release of Fish Eye Lens in October and the first posts from the @StrongBadActual Twitter account. I Killed Pom Pom, the first full-length Halloween toon since 2009, was also released at the end of the month. Later on, the Store was redesigned and switched to a different website, and the NavBar was updated with "youtube" replacing "subscribe". However, there were no more major updates until April 2015, when sbemail206 was released after a five-year wait. It was around this time that the Chaps started working on their Disney web series Two More Eggs, which was originally updated with a frequency equivalent to Homestar Runner in its heyday.

After that, toons started to come out semi-regularly, with new content every second month. Record Store Day, Flash is Dead!, Strong Bad Classics!, and The House That Gave Sucky Tricks were released during this time, followed by Fan Costumes 2015, the first Fan Costumes toon since 2009. There were no more major updates until Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2 on April Fools' Day 2016, which was the first true Marzipan's Answering Machine since 2009. On September 2nd, 2016, the Homestar Runner 20th Anniversary Show was performed, with a second show on October 7th. A new toon, Homestar Runner Goes for the Gold, was shown at both shows, and would be released on the website later in the year, as well as Later That Night... and Fan Costumes 2016.

In 2017, the site was first visibly updated in August with the release of too cool, the 207th Strong Bad Email; combined with the subsequent release of Skills of an Artist, along with monthly toons, it has been updated weekly for the first time since 2009. @StrongBadActual (and to a lesser extent, his Instagram account) has been highly active during this time, with new posts nearly every day; arguably even more so than the website in its heyday.

2018 saw the introduction of The Deleteheads Download, an updates newsletter not unlike the one used in 2001-2003. It has showcased the long-awaited tenth level of Stinkoman 20X6, as well as a Trogdor-themed board game. However, the only major update has been The Next April Fools' Thing.

STUB'D! This section of the page is incomplete. You can help the Homestar Runner Wiki by expanding it.


See also

Personal tools