FAQ

Most everything you wanna know bout HomestarRunner.com!!

This article is about the list of frequently asked questions on the official site. For frequently asked questions regarding the wiki itself, see HRWiki:FAQ.

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for HomestarRunner.com appears as a children's magazine, Frequently Asked Questions For Kids! similar to Highlights for Children. In addition to addressing common questions, the magazine features multiple activities for the reader to play with.

The answers have not been revised since 2006, and therefore some of the information on the page is out-of-date.

Date: February 15, 2005

Page Title: Ouch. What do you do?

Earlier Page Title: FAQ - Ouch. What do you do?

Contents

A "What's Wrong with This Mess?" puzzle features on the inside cover, opposite the table of contents. A scene of characters standing in the field, multiple random elements of the picture can be incorrect.

The subsequent ten pages feature questions and answers, reproduced below.

Page 12 features a fill-in-the-blanks puzzle, featuring six characters' eyes for the reader to identify.

The final page features a set of static figures that can be scaled, rotated, and placed on a field background graphic. These figures are:

• Homestar Runner
• Strong Bad
• Pom Pom
  • A "1 TON" weight (hidden beneath Pom Pom)
• Marzipan
• Strong Sad
  • A chicken leg (hidden beneath Strong Sad)
• The Poopsmith

FAQs

Cartoons & SB Emails

• Q. Are the emails Strong Bad answers real?

A. Yes, all of em. Except 'Mile.' The Cheat made that one up.

• Q. How do I get my Strong Bad email answered?

A. Pure luck. (Or try renting 'Pure Luck' with Danny Glover and Martin Short.)

• Q. Is there gonna be a full-length Peasant's Quest movie or what?

A. There already is one. Its 'full length' is 3 minutes.

• Q. Where are all the old emails and cartoons?

A. Try the museum section. Just click on the H*R logo on any of the homepages. If you can't find a Strong Bad email, just use the sweet, sweet scroll buttons on the email menu to scroll down. Most of the emails mentioned in 'personal favorites' were made up, so don't look for those so much.

• Q. I noticed a mistake or inconsistency in one of your cartoons!! AHHH!

A. It was either done on purpose or it's just a cartoon and you probably shouldn't worry about it.

• Q. What the crap is 'fhqwhgads' from?

A. It's from the Strong Bad email called 'i love you'. The Cheat also made a music video bout it. Check out the Powered by the Cheat section for that.

• Q. Where are Jumping Jacks and the wrestling one?

A. They were taken down temporarily. Much like Frosty, they'll be back again someday.

• Q. Why come the 'Joy of Painting' cartoon on the Toons menu don't work?

A. Cause it's not a real cartoon. We just wanted to show Marzipan with an afro and a beard.

Video Games of Distinction

• Q. There is a bug in the Games menu. My score never goes up.

A. The Games menu is a menu, not a real game. Try clicking on one of the ships to play a real game, some of which have working scoring systems.

• Q. I am stuck in Peasant's Quest or Thy Dungeonman. Help!

A. Maybe search the web for walkthroughs or hints. That's what we do.

• Q. Super Kingio Bros. is too hard. I can't even clear the first jump.

A. Keep trying. You might want to buy the Stragedy Guide.

• Q. Where can I buy the Super Kingio Bros. 'Stragedy Guide?'

A. Keep trying. You might want to buy the Stragedy Guide strategy guide.

• Q. No seriously, what is the deal with Super Kingio Bros?

A. Okay you caught us. It was meant as a joke and you can't play it beyond the first screen. You get the persistence prize.

• Q. Level 27 of Trogdor: Intentionally unbeatable?

A. Non. Just broken. We fixed it just for you.

Products

• Q. Will there be more DVDs? Like, ones with other cartoons on em?

A. Yeah! Totally. Totally yeah.

• Q. Are them puppets for sale?

A. Nossir, they's one of kind.

• Q. I have questions about an order I placed or want to place. Who I talk to?

A. Head on over to store.yahoo.com/homestarrunner and click on either 'Returns, Exchanges, and Refunds' or 'Customer Service and Order Processing.'

• Q. So wait, you guys make a living just by selling this crap?

A. Yup. Merch sales are fortunately enough to support ourselves and the site. Rock, rock on.

Tech support

• Q. Who does your hosting?

A. The fine folks at Caro.net. They set us up real nice.

• Q. Some cartoons or games won't load on my 'puter! What gives?

A. Make sure you have the latest version of the Flash player from Adobe.com. That usually helps.

• Q. Your updates don't show up and I cleared my cache and hit refresh even!

A. Your internet provider might need to refresh their DNS or something like that. Leastways, that's what we've been told.

• Q. You dudes use Windas or Mac?

A. We use Windows machines except for video and DVD stuff. That's done on a Mac.

• Q. Who does the voices for your dumb animal characters?

A. Matt does all the voices 'cept Marzipan, that's Missy. Mike does the voices when the Cheat makes his own cartoons.

• Q. How do you make your cartoons? Like what software and hardware?

A. We draw and animate everything in Flash. We run a mic through a USB preamp and record sound in Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro). Most of the music we make with old Casio keyboards or worse.

• Q. I need help making my own Flash cartoons. Any advice?

A. Flashkit.com is a good resource for Flash help. Also, the 'Visual Quickstart Guide' series of books on Flash are great.

• Q. Will you link to my website?

A. There's no real place for that sorta thing on our website. We link to a couple sites here and there but only when it's appropriate.

• Q. Can I hire you guys to make a special cartoon for me?

A. Homestar keeps us busy enough that we don't have time for freelance or personalized stuff. Thanks for thinking of us though.

Puzzle Solutions

What's Wrong with This Mess?

The What's Wrong with This Mess? puzzle is randomized. Among the things that can be potentially wrong in the picture:

• Character head and/or body floating in the sky in upper-left
  • Strong Sad's head
  • Strong Mad upside-down
• Strong Bad's right arm replaced.
  • The Stick
  • A kite
  • A The Cheat arm
• Object in bushes that doesn't belong
  • The King of Town's mustache
  • The plug-socket under Strong Bad's computer desk
  • Coach Z's Z
  • A t-bone steak
• Population: Tire sign wrong
  • Strong Sadia Likes: Corn
  • Coach Z's Lot Pop: Tore
  • Wrong Badia Pop: Type
  • Stop Sign Top: Pire
  • Super Place Pop: Mark
• Strong Sad's head has been replaced by another character's
  • Coach Z
  • The King of Town
• Character floating in upper-right, upside down
  • Bubs
  • Homestar Runner

Fill-In-The-Blanks

These are the answers to the Fill In The Blanks puzzle:

Homestar	Pom Pom
Marzipan	Strong Sad
Marshie	Biscuit Dough Hands Man

Easter Eggs

• The static figures can be rotated and scaled using the arrow keys.
  • If the static figures are sized small enough, they will turn upside down and start getting bigger.
  • Holding control (command on a Mac) and tapping the up or down arrow keys will stretch/skew the figures.
  • Holding shift and tapping the up or down arrow keys makes the figures wider.

Fun Facts

Explanations

• The magazine is "issue 2" because this is the second iteration of an FAQ page for the website.
• Refreshing (or "flushing") the DNS cache can ensure a user's browser is retrieving the latest version of a website from its server. This can be done on the user's end without needing to contact the internet provider.

Trivia

• The cover illustration is "The picnic" by fan Audrey Lopata. The colored pencil drawing was posted to DeviantArt on April 4, 2004.
  • The full illustration reveals Homsar is standing to the right of Pom Pom; he is cropped out of the FAQ cover.
  • The Thnikkaman has a fly stuck in his teeth, which is why Homestar is giving him an odd look. Though hard to notice at the Flash resolution, this is more apparent in the original drawing.
• The spelling of "Biscuit Dough Hands Man" was previously seen in a Quote of the Week. rock opera, released a week after the FAQ, was the first instance of the "Biscuitdoughhandsman" spelling that has since become standard.
• The static clings of the characters are stylized in comparison to the usual character templates.
• The white outlines of the static figures have small gaps, visible when resizing the figures:
  • Strong Bad has a small gap by his neck.
  • Strong Sad has a small gap between his legs.
  • The heavy lourde has two small gaps by the top ring.
• Most of the static cling versions can be reduced to the size of a pixel, with the exception of Strong Bad.
• On the Poopsmith static figure, the whatsit is on the tops, not the hands of his gloves.
• The hosting information was updated on October 10, 2006, from Sagonet.com to Caro.net.

Remarks

• Though interior pages can be navigated through forwards and backwards, it is impossible to return to the cover without refreshing the page.
• When using the Tab key to identify interactive elements in the Flash file, there is a button outside the frame which does nothing.
• Marshmallow's Last Stand and A Jumping Jack Contest have yet to return to the site.

Goofs

• "Powered by the Cheat" is written without capitalizing the "The" in The Cheat's name.
• In the "What's Wrong with This Mess?" picture with Strong Mad upside-down in the top-left corner, Strong Mad's teeth are white rather than the paper tone of the rest of the page.

Glitches

• Dragging a static cling to the corner of the page will not obscure the corner.
  • This also happens when zooming in on a figure too much.

Inside References

• The page background, a blurry image of The Field, is reused from the Email page.
• The design of the characters and background for the static cling activity is based on the stylized "Everybody! Everybody!" wallpaper in the Downloads section.

Real-World References

• The page title is a reference to the NES game The Goonies II, in which characters would respond with this Engrish phrase when attacked.
• Pure Luck is a 1991 comedy movie that co-starred Danny Glover and Martin Short.
• "Frosty" refers to the Christmas song "Frosty the Snowman", well-known for its television special adaptation by Rankin/Bass.
• Flash Kit is a forum used by Flash developers.

Fast Forward

• Several aspects of the FAQ are out-of-date:
  • The website is currently hosted by GoDaddy. Caronet closed down in early 2019.
  • "More DVDs" were released after this FAQ, including the three-part Everything Else series and the fifth and sixth volumes of strongbad_email.exe. Although both sets saw limited reprints in the 2020s, various tweets from @StrongBadActual have referred to the DVD format as nearly obsolete and appealing to a limited audience, and as of 2023 there are no plans to reprint the previously-produced DVD sets. At this point, the release of any more DVDs is unlikely.
  • The Yahoo Store was closed and superseded by the Shopify Store in 2015.
  • The Brothers Chaps have been using Macintosh computers for animation since at least 2017.
  • Flash is no longer supported by browsers as of 2021. The site has been updated to use Ruffle, automatically embedded and not requiring visitors to download anything.
  • Though not an exact replica of Puppet Homestar, a mass-produced plush Homestar Puppet was put on sale by Fangamer in 2024.

External Links

• See the FAQ
• See the Flash file for the FAQ

Preceded by: Email FAQ

Site FAQ Page 2005-Present

Succeeded by: N/A