The birth of SBEmail - Remind me again why this caught on?

Previously on Homestar Rerunner, we watched some of the last toons made during the website’s simple age, where Strong Bad reading text of a screen and making fun of viewer submissions wasn’t necessary for a good time. All that is about to change, for better or for worse, starting with a little something called some kinda robot.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail1.html

There you have it, folks: the humble beginnings of Strong Bad Email. If you’ve never seen any modern SBEmails, you may wonder why on earth these ever became popular. Well, let’s just say that things grew from this basic template until eventually, the only difference between a SBEmail and a regular toon is the fact that the idea for a SBEmail cartoon is based on a viewer submission, and they involve scenes of Strong Bad reading the email, replying to it, and making fun of grammatical errors along the way. I can’t say I really have a major preference for either type. I do like how generic toons can focus on other characters a bit more, but they show up in the emails also, and sometimes Strong Bad’s smartass comments are legitimately hilarious.

I’m not exactly sure where this email came from. Obviously, there was no “Click here to Email Strong Bad” option before this toon (Unless the paper on the old Games Menu originally did that, but I have no proof for this). If I understand the DVD commentary correctly, Abdi was one of a few people who had emailed Matt and Mike, and so I guess they sent out some replies to the effect of “hey, you should send an email to Strong Bad and we’ll pick one for him to answer”. I guess this was the best one from the original batch. It’s not a bad question (at least it’s not “how can you type with boxing gloves on”), but Strong Bad’s reply is a little lacking I suppose. Oh well, I can’t fault it too much, they did have to design the whole format of the toon from scratch, so obviously there was no desire to make anything extravagant out of it just yet. But now the prep-work is done, so all that’s left is to wait for some emails to come in and pick a really dumb one to have Strong Bad answer. What follows is history in the making. I present… homsar.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail2.html

This one email is a major reason why I wanted to stick with the chronological order when reviewing the material on the website. And then of course, the stupid Who Said What Now game kind of ruined that. But hopefully some of you took my suggestion and skipped that, and so this is your first exposure to Homsar, just as it was originally intended. I think this email is pretty straight-forward, but just in case anyone’s confused, yes – the email was supposed to say “Homestar”, and yes – Homsar was invented for the sole purpose of making fun of this typo, and then was immediately killed off. Except he gets better, somehow.

I think it’s awesome. Someone who has watched other stuff on the website where Homsar makes appearances might miss the point of this email, but that’s why I stuck to this format, so the joke could be appreciated by a new audience. Remember, I didn’t actually discover Strong Bad Emails until I had already watched everything else on the website several times over and assumed that there was no other material to see. It wasn’t until email #44 that I became enlightened. I think the only other place Homsar appeared at the time was in the Where’s The Cheat? cartoon, but I had mostly forgotten about that, so I did appreciate this joke for what it was.

There’ll be more on Homsar later on, once he makes some more appearances. For now, let’s just move on to some more emails. The next one is called butt IQ.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail3.html

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of this one. A lot of these older emails are like this, but every once in a while a gem like homsar will show up to keep us interested. Really though, there’s not much to say about this. It’s the origin of “crapfully yours”, which gives it some bonus points I suppose, but otherwise, someone was just taking Strong Bad Sings a little too literally. Also, keep in mind how terrible the graphics were for the Homestar picture in this email though, because the next email is about to disregard that completely. Let’s take a look at homestar hair.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail4.html

I completely believe without a doubt in my mind that the Tandy 400 with its ancient, green-lined screen and text-based OS would be able to display a full-color image like this Hairstyle Runner screenshot. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be a stick in the mud and complain about it being unrealistic, it’s just funny that they followed up the previous email’s block graphics with this. Temple of Apshai has color in it too, but at least it has extremely primitive graphics that you’d expect to see on an old computer like this. For the record, the wiki says that this game is actually called “Chaos: Battle of the Wizards”, and that Temple of Apshai looks completely different. I’ll take their word for it. So anyway, not much else to say about this one (as simple as it is, I did laugh at his reaction to the attachment), so uh… making out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail5.html

Oh hey, it’s the least funny email ever. I’ve never really been a fan of Strong Bad’s attempts to act like a ladies’ man, and this email is no exception to that. The one thing that could have saved it would be if he actually sang a bit of his “hit single”, but alas. So no point in dwelling on this one, let’s just move on. Before SBEmail #6, let’s take a look at Marizpan’s Answering Machine #5.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer5.html

I think this is the best Answering Machine yet. I do hope other people enjoy these as much as I do, because there’s a ton of humor to be found with this. I think that Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call was sort of weak here, but the rest of them more than make up for it. Coach Z’s call on its own is pure gold. I mean, there’s really nothing more you can say about that, but I find his downward spiral from just being sort of silly to breaking down and sobbing over absolutely nothing to be absolutely hilarious. I’ve never been drunk myself, nor have I associated with anyone who was, but I’m not sure if that matters. Bubs yelling about bananas in the background just makes it even better, because I for some reason find it funny whenever someone’s rambling in the background. And then of course, Coach Z calls back and offers a blanket apology for whatever it is he may have done. And yet somehow remembers that he claims to be a poet. Yeah, I’m not sure either.

Homsar’s back! Apparently being crushed by a heavy lourde didn’t kill him (I point the blame squarely at tight pants … or cartoon physics), so he’s able to make reappearances in the future as 12th main character. I’m still not quite ready to address Homar’s characterization yet, because he’s only had a couple lines, and neither of them indicate what he’s going to be like in future appearances. Right now he just has an extremely goofy voice, and that’s about it.

Now as for Homestar, his message is really not all that special or laugh-out-loud funny, but I do have to address it for some of the truths in telemarketing. In my personal experience working for AT&T DSL sales and U-verse retention, we are in fact supposed to address whoever we’re talking to with a gender-specific title, but oftentimes it is impossible to tell who you’re actually talking to, so I usually omit this and just carry on. We do actually do the “Mr. or Mrs. whoever” thing on answering machines, because we don’t know who will pick it up, but yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone actually did the “sir or madam” thing. And I can also relate to him not knowing what the rates actually are. You have no idea how many times a customer will ask me “so what are these discounts you’re offering”, and I have no choice but to answer “well… I don’t actually know until I get your account open.” I mean, I know what we’re offering, but it really does depend on the customer, and we have to go through a ton of stupid mandatory statements and crap before we’re allowed to actually discuss what the customer is eligible for.

Whew, kinda went on a tangent there, sorry. So that just leaves us with Strong Sad’s message, which yes, does loop for all of eternity if you let it. That’s another thing with work – there are times when you hit an answering machine, and you’re about to hang up (we can only leave messages after 5 failed attempts to reach them), and then suddenly the person picks up the phone and catches you completely off-guard. It’s kinda weird that way. I haven’t had anyone pick up while I was leaving a message though. And I have been tempted to do Strong Sad’s continuous “Hello? Hellooooo....?” thing before. But I have resisted this urge. Alright, so one last email, and then that’ll be the end of today’s entry. And I saved a downer for last – depressio.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail6.html

I don’t think Strong Sad is dumb or a crappy guy. But that’s not really the focus here. While this email isn’t awful, it pales in comparison to the original Easter egg that was featured in it. This will no longer work, but when it first came out, if you actually did send an email to Strong Sad, you could get an automated reply with a link to something called The Secrets That I Keep. And it’s… well, I’ll link to it first, and let you form your own opinion before I say anything. 
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sadjournal/wonderyears.html

I know I can’t be the only one that finds this page to be legitimately sad. And by that, I mean that I actually got misty-eyed over this. I’m not sure if this was ever meant to be funny, but to me, it certainly isn’t. I’m sure there’s people who are going to tease me for getting all emotional over a stupid internet cartoon, and if it was any other page on the website, I’d pretty much agree with you. But just think about it: Strong Sad’s collection of happy memories consists of exactly four things: a photo and short film reel of him getting along with Strong Bad as kids, a card made (unwillingly, and very hatefully) by Strong Bad, and a snow globe. I’m going to assume that the snow globe was also a gift from Strong Bad, since it makes sense with the other items. So basically, even though the card is very mean-spirited, and the snow globe was probably an extremely cheap gift that he picked up just for the sake of having something to give (no matter how meaningless), Strong Sad still treasures them because they’re the only gifts he’s ever gotten from his brother. I don’t care if it’s just an online cartoon, this is some seriously depressing stuff here, and it almost kind of disturbs me.

The dynamic between Strong Bad and Sad is probably the most interesting between any two characters on the website. On the surface, it seems like Strong Sad pretty much accepts his fate as the constant victim, but at times like this, you can tell that once, the two brothers did care for each other, and that Strong Sad would like nothing more than for things to go back to the way they used to be. There will be far more evidence for this as time goes on, so it’s something to keep an eye out for. I do believe that at its base level, this web series is just about being funny, and the characters aren’t nuanced to the point where every line can be analyzed for motivation or some deeper meaning, but I feel like even Strong Sad’s sense of sarcasm and dry humor was probably picked up from Strong Bad, and he’s unconsciously doing it as a way to gain acceptance.

If this was a more serious cartoon (and if he wasn’t so funny all the time) I’d probably dislike Strong Bad as a character for being the cause of this much emotional pain. But luckily, I’m not THAT much of a Strong Sad fanboy that I’m going to harbor a grudge against a fictional character. And don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into some huge philosophical rant every time that Strong Sad is mistreated or shows his depression – he’s just a character, and his most defining trait (of which he is named after) is the fact that he’s sad. I just think that there’s a bit of subtext that is easily missed, and this one shoebox of memories speaks volumes.

Next time, we’ll cheer up a bit with some holiday toons, and if that somehow doesn’t manage to fill enough time, then I’ll continue with some more emails. Hopefully I didn’t scare anyone off with my over-analysis of that last bit.

32 Glasses of Melonade and 147 Marshmallows

This is it, everyone. I firmly believe this is the best thing on the website, and I imagine that there are many people who agree with me. The past sentence was TOTALLY not sarcastic in the slightest. I’m not even going to provide a screenshot for this one, because it would spoil the absolute awesomeness that you are about to witness. Whenever you think you’re ready for it, just click the link and prepare to be blown away.

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

Truly magnificent. Ok, yeah, I’m not sure why I even bothered linking to that, since there’s nothing worth discussing about it. But anyway, as I said last time, today we’ll be looking at some quality material. I hope you like Marzipan’s Answering Machine, because there’ll be a lot of that, but also a couple other toons that still hold up pretty well today. I invite you all to The Luau.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/luau2.html

Maybe I’m just juvenile, but I find Homestar’s implied explanation for the wood not catching fire to be hilarious. It’s definitely the highlight of the toon for me, with Marzipan’s complete unawareness of her surroundings being a close second. Remember the bit from A Jumping Jack Contest where Homestar peed in the jar? I think this gag works way better, because even though you can tell exactly what happened, you don’t really see the …evidence. I do have to wonder how Strong Bad and company failed to notice that the wood was wet when they were stealing it though.

This cartoon uses the older animation style that we’ve seen a few times before, and was apparently supposed to be updated like Jorb was, but for whatever reason that never happened. I’m fine with this – like I said, I think that the fatter-looking Homestar from back in the early days is somewhat cuter than the current one (is it ok for me to call a male character cute when he’s decidedly non-human-like?), but some stuff like Strong Bad’s incredibly exaggerated walking animation does look a little … off.

At the end, we get to see yet another main page. Those things have been creeping up all over the place lately. I kinda wish this one was accessible normally, but I guess it really doesn’t make any sense out of context. (Who am I kidding, most of the other ones don’t either.) The main interesting thing about it is the fact that it’s incredibly out of date. Other “special” home pages like the Strong Bad one still use the same template as the rest, so the buttons in the top-right are up to date, and they include links to all the other pages in the bottom left. This one does not do that, so it cycles through some particularly ancient “new” material, and doesn’t go beyond the 10th main page. Weird fact – if you go to the page directly using this url, it actually shows more material than the one the toon links to. But it’s still really old and out of date.

I don’t think there’s much more to say about that one. I enjoyed it, but it’s nothing that I have a strong connection to, nor does it have any major place in history for the site as a whole. But that’s ok, I’d rather have little to say about a good toon than lots to say about a bad one. It’s definitely a classic, and one that I’ve enjoyed showing people in the past. And I can’t think of any good way to segue into the next toons, so whatever, have a bunch of Marzipan’s Answering Machine toons. Go ahead and watch all of them in a row, I’d rather just talk about them all at once.

Marzipan's Answering Machine - #2, #3, #4

Answering Machine #2 is kind of dull, in my opinion. The prank call left by Strong Bad was pretty good (not his best, but I laughed nonetheless), the series of messages left by the King were pretty … meh, and the other two weren’t particularly funny either. I can tell that the one with Pom Pom was attempting to bring in the type of humor where you can’t tell what he was saying, and the viewer is left to interpret it on their own. That sometimes leads to some funny situations, but I don’t think it worked that well here. I’d rather have someone intelligible start to repeat something terrible that Homestar said, and then have Homestar try to cover up for it, rather than just hear the second half.

Number 3 is a definite improvement, but oddly enough, Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call is probably the least funny part of it this time around. The rest of them form a nice little story of sorts, delving a bit into character interactions. It must be tough for the other guys to know that the only girl available is already taken, so you can’t blame them for trying. Poor Homestar of course is oblivious towards what’s going on until it’s already too late. I’m not sure why Coach Z had to ask for Marzipan’s number, since he should already have it from when he called about cheering Homestar up a while back. And while it’s possible that Strong Mad got the number from Strong Bad, I like to imagine that Homestar gave it to him, completely forgetting what just happened with Bubs and Coach Z.

Luckily, number 4 continues with the increased quality and sequential storytelling. Homestar fails to remember a TV joke, and also fails to dial the right number, since he was apparently looking for Pom Pom. I just like how even though he clearly already forgot what the joke was, he still felt the need to call Marzipan and tell her about it too. I’ve been in that situation too, where I attempt to explain something that I’ve already forgotten all the details of, and I just end up making an idiot of myself.

I don’t have much to say about Strong Sad’s calls here, other than the fact that I’ve been in that situation too, where I get some false hope that some girl I like might be contacting me soon, and I sit around for ages waiting for something that never happens. Yeah, I’m kinda pathetic that way. But somehow I ended up getting married. I’m not sure how that happened either.

And lastly, we have the great little bit with Strong Bad and the King of Town. Strong Bad didn’t seem to have his heart in it here. His impression pretty much consisted of speaking normally but saying “doo hoo hoo” a lot. The King’s impression was way better, and when you realize that Matt had to voice one character imitating another character, that’s pretty impressive. I would like to know how the King knew that Strong Bad framed him for the prank calls though. And then Strong Bad attempts to make the situation even weirder by convincing Strong Mad to try a prank call of his own, but that didn’t go quite as planned. Even though that call follows a similar format to the Homestar/Pom Pom one from machine #2, this one came out a lot better, I think.

There’s one more good toon that I’d like to cover today, but first, let’s get this lame one out of the way. There’s no proper way to set this up, so whatever – A Mother’s Day Message.

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

I kinda forgot this existed, to be honest. There’s really only one joke, and the screenshot of it pretty much gives it away anyway. Oh man, Strong Bad sure does look silly in that outfit. Tee-hee. Notice how this is taking place in the same auditorium as A Holiday Greeting (except palette-swapped), the title is practically the same, and both involve Strong Bad being not particularly funny? At least this one isn’t controversial, but then again, that at least made the other one somewhat noteworthy. The only reason I’m even covering it is because it exists, and I did promise to at least briefly acknowledge every part of the website. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, I can move on to the far superior Fluffy Puff Commercial.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/fluffypuff2.html

Of course, the major thing to address about this would be its similarities to the First Time Here cartoon, although this one actually predates it by almost a year. I’m not sure which one I’d say is funnier overall. “Bloopers” that consist of nothing more than someone forgetting their lines or saying them incorrectly are rarely funny to me, but I do enjoy it here because of Homestar’s attitude towards the whole thing. And then there’s the moments like the bird crapping on his head (ruining an otherwise perfect take) and Homestar just flat-out forgetting to speak. And what’s up with the terrible little ditty at the end?

This cartoon has a very bizarre easter egg in it. Usually, you can find these by holding down the Tab key throughout the toon, and it will highlight them in yellow. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed any yet. I’ll let you know when a cartoon has one, at least up until the point where there’s expected to be at least one per toon. But no, in this case, you access the easter egg by pressing the “L” key. Make sure you have caps lock off when you do this. I’m not going to tell you what it does, because it’s incredibly stupid and useless and I want it to be a surprise.

Alright. With the exception of some stuff that I’m intentionally putting off until later, I think I’ve managed to cover everything added to the website between its beginnings and August 22, 2001. Why is that date important? It’s because that was when a certain cartoon was added to the website. A cartoon that’s only 45 seconds long, features really simple animation, and honestly isn’t even that amusing. But it marks the start of a new era – the era of Strong Bad Email. And I’ve got plenty of things to say about those as a whole, but that’s going to have to wait until next time. I hope you enjoyed Homestar’s time in the spotlight, because it’s not going to last.

Super Old Games n' Such (...And Coach Z)

Making a game in Flash is quite different from making a cartoon. And since I have no real experience in either (I’ve made a couple very basic Flash animations that lasted a few seconds, and that’s about it), I don’t really have any way of judging how difficult it would be to make a decent game. I’m guessing that it’s relatively difficult, or at least requires a set of skills quite distinct from animating. I say this because even though Matt and Mike have proven themselves to be pretty good animators, these early games are pretty awful. And they’ve admitted this in the past, so I’m not trying to be extremely critical of their work or anything. I think the site is still quite enjoyable without any type of games, but it was definitely a good day when Jonathan Howe decided to help them out with that.

So let’s go ahead and look at some of this stuff. Rather than link to each game individually, I’ll just provide the Old Games menu. This is actually the … fourth menu they used for games, I think. The third was the stack of board games that I showed in the last segment with Marzipan’s Answering Machine, and the first two are in the Museum. This one was around for a while until the more playable games started being released, and so this was relegated to the sub-menu for older, less interesting games. I think it serves its purpose quite well, and is a nice callback to old Tiger handhelds and Game & Watches. But enough about that, let’s just go through these in order.

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

Dancin’ Bubs

• Well, the music in this one isn’t half bad. I like the crappy little tuba song that sounds like it comes from Veggie Tales, and the fhqwhgads song is always fun to listen to. Oh right, new viewers would have no idea what that is. Yeah, it’ll be explained eventually. Back when this game was first released, it must have used different music (since the two Strong Bad songs weren’t made yet), but there’s no definite record of what they were.
• The first background includes two rejected characters – Homeschool Winner and Champeen. Homeschool has shown up in a couple places, including an old unused characters page, while Champeen was intended to be a new female character but was eventually dropped for whatever reason. Possibly Zelda-related.
• This is one of very few places where Bubs is shown to be a good dancer (or maybe not a good dancer, but someone who enjoys trying it). This character trait sort of vanishes over time.

Homestar Talker

• Pom Pom and Strong Bad are totally going out, but Homestar can win the stupid competition.
• Uh… what? Yeah, not sure what Homestar is talking about there. I’d like to know more about this.
• Originally, the correct phrases were “Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome” and “Homestar is nothing but a stupid loser”. I believe these were changed around the same time that the Toons and Games menus were changed from the old Chinese food and board game ones. I do distinctly remember those being the old answers, because I was telling them to my cousin over the phone, and he said they didn’t work anymore, so I checked the site again and realized that some stuff changed.
• So just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, put in the phrases that I mentioned in the first point to unlock “secrets”, ending with the hidden Strong Bad main page, which is, surprisingly, not accessible through any other means. In it, we get to see Nighttime Driving Type Game, Gavin the cockroach, and we get to hear some weird “Poot Slap” song… and Strong Bad’s old Hispanic accent.

Audition With Marzipan

• Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of this one. I don’t believe the game actually recognizes if you follow the beat of the song, so there’s no real point in trying. Gotta love spamming the goat though.
• The “Thoughts on a Bird” song is kinda cute, I guess. I dunno, I’m really stretching for something to say about this game.

Bronco Trolleys

• Behold, the one and only time that “Homestar’s favorite snack” is ever mentioned on the entire website. One day I should actually try one of these things, but you’d have to take the peel off the orange, and it sounds like too much trouble for me.
• This may be the most mindless and irrelevant game on the whole website. It’s also particularly easy to break if you screw around with the tab and enter keys, or right clicking in general.

Strong Libs

• Eh, these have the potential to be funny sometimes. I made a madlib thing on my freewebs site, which I believe turned out fairly well, but the problem with these is that in most cases, you can put in pretty much anything you want and it will turn out as funny as any other combination of words, unless you pick really boring stuff or words that make no grammatical sense.
• Calling it now, at least one person reading this made the first Strong Mad Lib say “Justin Bieber”. Because hating on him is the cool thing to do nowadays.

Homestar Quiz

• Oops. The first question asks about a toon that I didn’t actually cover yet. Well, the answer is Dokle II. And … oops. The second question isn’t actually answered anywhere on the site, currently. However, this one I actually did link to at one point – it was in the Yearbook Characters page.
• Aaaand several other questions have answers in things we haven’t watched yet. Whatever, just guess on stuff. The best responses are probably for 5-6 correct answers, all correct, and none correct at all. If you want to go for the other ones, then go right ahead.
• Prinicpal.

Hairstyle Runner

• I don’t have anywhere near the amount of patience required to make anything interesting with this thing. So the only real enjoyment I ever got out of this was looking at the gallery. I like the one with a really tiny patch beard. The alt text of it says “smartass”, a rare instance of swearing on the website.

Fortune Cookies

• I’m not sure if this actually qualifies as a game, but it’s somewhat entertaining, so I’ll give it points for that, at least.
• The cookie on the right has a chance of linking to http://www.thoraxcorp.com, a weird side project made by Matt and Mike. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go over that site in detail, so if you feel like looking around on it, feel free.

Who Said What Now?

• Hey, if you’re still new to this series and haven’t looked around at a lot of stuff on the site, would you mind skipping this one? I don’t want it to ruin a really good joke later on.
• This thing has some funny quotes on it, but again, it’s not really much of a game. It’s the origin of such classics as “I have more than two problems”, “Each day we die a little more”, and “I’m the only girl”. There, if you skipped over this one, I just told you the funny parts.
• I have nothing else to say about this one. … Well, actually, I have quite a lot to say about this, but I will resist the urge. There’s only one more game left, let’s just get this over with.

Astro-Lite 2600

• Oh, thank God we’re done with these. As with the Hairstyle Runner, I lack the patience to make anything worthwhile with this thing. I’d rather just draw stuff in MS Paint, it’s a lot less tedious.
• The old version of this game is actually somewhat more interesting than the current one. It lets you trace some characters, and also has a flashing light feature. You can find it here: http://www.homestarrunner.com/litebrite3.html
• I liked the Lite Brite. Construction paper + plastic pegs + warmth = the smell of nostalgia. I’m sure anyone who used to play with one of those will agree with me that those had a very distinctive smell to them. Play-Doh’s got nothing on Lite Brite. 

And with that out of the way, we can focus on some decent old toons. The first new one of 2001 is a little something you may have heard of called A Jorb Well Done. Remember back when the First Time Here cartoon recommended this one and I said it was pretty decent? I still stand by that remark. There’s one scene in particular that still sorta creeps me out, but overall, it’s a solid effort, and I have some stuff I’d like to say about it, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, go do so now.

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

Coach Z has always had a pretty weird accent going on, but this is the first time he kinda fails at pronouncing words. In this toon, it seems to be a legitimate problem that he suffers from, which will not always be the case in the future. Also of note is the fact that he is actually seen coaching something (although what it is, I have no idea. Any game that gives you points for bouncing on Strong Sad has to be amazing though), which, as I mentioned in his character bio, will eventually fade away. Coach Z’s just a weird character in general.

One thing I must point out about this cartoon is the animation style. Several of the characters, Homestar being the main example, are using their modern designs. But that’s only because the cartoon was actually George Lucased later on – the cartoon was originally animated in an older style, and later on they inserted the newer models to make it seem more up-to-date. So if you’re a stickler for detail, you’ll notice that when going through the cartoons chronologically like this, the models will sort of regress back to the older style for a bit and then come back to this. I dunno, personally I think the old fat Homestar looks fine, and it probably should have just been left alone, but whatever works. Speaking of animation weirdness, the scene with Homestar and the chalkboard has Coach Z facing the wrong way. I think they were going for a black silhouette and just didn’t darken the model enough, possibly due to a dark computer monitor. Wouldn’t be the first time that faulty equipment led to mistakes (the examples I’m thinking of haven’t been looked at yet, though).

So what the crap was up with that Strong Bad scene? Never before or since have I seen Strong Bad laugh maniacally like that, and thank goodness for that. It was creepy and unnecessary. But I think the rest of the toon turned out pretty good. The ending reminds me somewhat of the “Omelette Du Fromage” episode of Dexter’s Lab, but to a much lesser extent. And it has a cameo by Tom Servo in the theater scene, which took me many years to understand and appreciate.

Speaking of creepy things, here’s a couple old pages of weird, unfinished stuff that were never actually linked to anywhere on the website. I don’t really have any good reason for bringing these up, other than Strong Bad’s little ditty from the Homestar Quiz reminding me of the Sing Along.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/singalong.swf
http://www.homestarrunner.com/needlepoint.html

Fun times. The needlepoint thing actually inspired me to make my own Homestar cross-stitch. I haven’t actually worked on the thing in a few months, but here’s a topic showing the progress I’ve made so far: http://spritestitch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5425

I did kind of want to cover one other toon in this segment, but the next one chronologically is kind of long, and I think I’ve already covered a pretty good amount of material today. I’ve got a pretty good amount of stuff planned for next time, so look forward to fewer poorly designed games and more classic Homestar Runner humor.

Early Experiments and Holiday Hijinx

After the nice little distractions of main pages and character summaries, I think it’s about time to get back to some good old-fashioned toons. There’s still a fair amount of material from 2000 to go through, so let’s dive in and try to finish it off… with a few exceptions. I’m still going to skip over a few things, since one’s in the Museum, one used to be, and the other probably should be. We’ll be taking a look at those sometime later when I deem it necessary to take a look back at more of the site’s history. Instead, let’s enjoy some very … unique toons, starting with Kick the Can.

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

Wow, ok. I’m not sure where to start with this one. It’s obviously a parody of really old cartoons where the fact that it’s an animation is enough to keep people entertained – it doesn’t have to actually be entertaining in its own right. Never mind the fact that Felix the Cat is 14 years older than this thing claims to be, and it had actual story structure. But anyway, as stupid as this may sound, I actually find these terrible 1930s Homestar cartoons to be really funny in their own way. Not this one in particular (though a couple of them did make me at least crack a smile), but there will be more where this came from, and they just keep getting weirder. I’ll save most of my thoughts for when we get to some actual voice-acted ones.

If you don’t feel like going through all 15 reels of film in that, don’t worry, you’re not really missing out on anything terribly exciting. There are a few that stand out above the rest, particularly the ones in the stack of three. If you’re going to watch any of them, I’d say go for those. Once you’re satisfied with watching Homestar kick around a can and have weird crap happen, we can move on to another really bizarre old cartoon, The Reddest Radish. My excitement cannot be underestimated.

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

I really have no idea what I just watched. It’s been a while since I watched this … thing, since I remembered it being really stupid and not funny, and … well, I did laugh a little, but mostly because it was so dumb I couldn’t help it. I want to know what inspired this cartoon, because it seems to be based on something, but I have no idea what. The crayon-colored paper doll art style is never used again, and I don’t think the canned laughter is either, except for places where it’s actually somewhat appropriate. So let’s just look at some things worth noting here.

• Strong Bad is still obsessed with winning competitions. I think this and A Jumping Jack Contest are the last ones where this is a major part of his character. (I’m going to consider “needing to be the center of attention” to be a separate trait)

• Homestar kicks a can in this cartoon. Because we haven’t seen enough of that yet. He does it in Where My Hat is At also. It’s kinda weird how that’s a recurring theme in these old cartoons.

• I don’t know why, but the part where Strong Bad and company run off and leave a ghostly image behind that also runs off is probably the funniest part of this cartoon. It’s like… seriously, what?

• I think at this point, The Brothers Chaps just like exaggerating and making fun of their characters. They did it a lot in Yello Dello, and here, Homestar’s voice is very whiny and elongated. After this, the animation style and voice acting will more of less reach a level that they’re comfortable with, and the weirdness of these old toons starts to slowly disappear.

Alright, so that’s two really weird experimental animations out of the way, now time for a third. Except this one doesn’t really qualify as an animation, and this one actually spawned quite a few follow-ups. Behold, the first iteration of Marzipan’s Answering Machine.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer1.html

I’d say this one is so-so. It’s not the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, and it’s easily topped by many of the future Answering Machines, but it’s not too bad. Coach Z’s message is definitely the highlight. I just like the mental image of Marzipan doing a silly dance and sticking something in Homestar’s pants, and Coach Z nodding approvingly as this happens. Strong Bad’s secret soft spot for baking shows itself again, and Strong Sad attempts (poorly) to be assertive and get his CDs back. I like to picture him giving Marzipan the new CDs and hoping that she would realize he wants his old ones back, but being too afraid to actually mention this in person. I think that some people would rather see these things happen in an actual animation, but I think it’s interesting just hearing about it too. It’s a good way to put in funny conversations without worrying about animating lip sync and having interesting visuals to go along with the scene. Having it just be the audio every once in a while like this is fine with me.

I’ve also got a bit of a personal story with this one. Back in the day, the menus for the Toons and Games pages were totally different than they are now. They used to look something like this:

Notice how Marzipan’s Answering Machine is on the Games page? So is Strong Bad Email, actually, and it isn’t even labeled as such. It just says “E-mail Strong Bad”. So way back when I first started looking through the site, I got to the Games page, tried “Audition with Marzipan”, since it was the one on the top of the stack, and I found it to be pretty boring. I don’t remember if I actually went to Marzipan’s Answering Machine or not, but if I did, I think something led me to believe that it was just for recording your own voice and then playing it back. Somehow I missed the fact that it actually had sound clips on it that were worth listening to. And likewise, after going through the other games and finding them somewhat mediocre, I managed to skip over the “E-mail Strong Bad” option as well, since I figured it wasn’t worth bothering with.

And then this is the part where anyone who knows anything about Homestar starts laughing at my misfortune. Thanks to me overlooking something on the Games page that looked like it would be for sending a fictional character an email and then getting an automated reply, I managed to miss the majority of the cartoons on the website. I don’t know what my excuse is for ignoring it in the First Time Here thing. My guess is that I only watched it once, didn’t actually choose any of the options, and then forgot about it. But yeah.

Next time, we’ll be looking at those older games. But first there’s still a couple other toons I’d like to get through, one of which is actually pretty decent. It’s the first Holiday Toon on the website – Homestarloween Party.

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

With every toon that I’ve covered so far (with the exception of Strong Bad Sings, which I showed out of order specifically to interrupt less funny cartoons), I’ve had to give make some sort of a statement like “well, this one isn’t that funny, but give it a shot anyway…”, or “this one has a couple funny parts in it, so enjoy it for those few moments…”, but I don’t believe I need to make any sort of statement like that for this one. It’s the first of the annual Halloween cartoons, and it’s a pretty dang good one, I think. My thoughts and other random comments:

• The egg-throwing game thing at the start is really bad. The collision detection sucks majorly, and even if it didn’t, I still can’t imagine it being any fun. Good thing the rest of the toon makes up for it. I’ve gotta point something else out though – the game was put in to play while you’re waiting for the cartoon to load. Remember when Flash cartoons like this actually took a couple minutes to load on dial-up internet? Good times.

• The Gremlin has a flux capacitor in it. Bubs’s rambling description of it (apparently from the movie Dazed and Confused) does not mention this.

• This is the first appearance of The Goblin, the Gremlin, the sad kids, and that particular robot. Yes, they will all reappear in the future.

• The character models in this one are still a little dated, but they’re pretty close to the current ones. It’s kinda weird that this would be the first cartoon they appear in, since everyone’s wearing a costume that will never be seen again.

• I know I’m biased, but I think Strong Sad’s part of the story was the best. Yes, it’s incredibly depressing, but that’s exactly why it’s hilarious. I particularly love the way he says “And none of them lived”.

• I recognized about half of the costumes in this one. When I watched this 12 years ago, I had no idea who Flavor Flav, Rerun, Kurt Cobain, Slim Goodbody, or Gorbachev were. And even now, I only know them because these costumes inspired me to look them up. This will be a trend for future Halloween cartoons – expect there to be at least one really weird, obscure costume per year.

Just one more toon for today, and then we’ll almost be done with the relevant material added to the site in 2000. Remember how I said I wasn’t going to need to give a warning before most cartoons anymore, because most of them are going to stand on their own pretty well? Yeahhhhh, this one does need a bit of a disclaimer. First of all, I didn’t find it all that funny (except for a part at the end), and secondly, some people might actually find it a bit offensive. Let’s just get this one over with. A Holiday Greeting, everyone.

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

To address the elephant in the room (not Strong Sad), I personally don’t think Strong Bad (and by extension, Matt and Mike) was calling Jesus stupid or making fun of him in any other way. The song wasn’t exactly church material, but really, all he was doing was saying that “they said he was stupid”, which… yeah, “they” did. I’m not going to get into a religious argument here, especially since the song doesn’t even address Jesus by name, and it could easily be some nonsense that Strong Bad made up. But the point remains that this cartoon is sort of dumb and I personally wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, especially since there’s way better holiday cartoons on the website. Halloween got off to a pretty good start, but Christmas is going to have to wait another year before it gets something worth watching.

So next time, like I said, I’ll be taking a look at some old games and stuff, and then, depending on how long that takes, probably go straight into some 2001 toons. It’s either that or go through the Museum (and other old stuff that isn’t actually linked to anywhere on the site), but I’d rather watch some more quality material before looking back at the old, unfunny stuff. That can wait for a while longer.

Let's get to know the cast of characters

In today’s super extra long version type style, we’ll be looking at each of the Character Videos, and I will give my own thoughts on each one. The characters, that is, not the videos of them. If you want my reviews on the various videos, then here you go: they’re all pretty good. There’s not too much of a point in me going more in-depth than that. And just for the record, these were made in mid-2003. At that point, most of the characters had fully evolved into their distinct roles, with the awkward early years behind them. If you want to see an earlier version of the Character page, complete with odd nonexistent character traits, check out the old Yearbook: http://www.homestarrunner.com/yearbook.html

 

http://www.homestarrunner.com/characters2.html

I always find it a bit interesting to look at old pages like that, but I don’t want to get too distracted from the main subject today, so let’s just ignore that for the most part and move on to the collection of VHS tapes. Now, I have a tendency to put characters from tv shows or whatever into a certain “order” (Fry, Leela, Bender, Farnsworth, Zoidberg, Amy, Hermes), but I’ll resist that temptation today and just go through these in the order that they’re stacked on the page. Without any further ado, let us begin.

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

Homestar Runner
 
I’ve already talked a little about Homestar in the first entry to this blog-thing, but it bears repeating. Homestar is a good “main” character. I can understand why he became overshadowed by Strong Bad, but that doesn’t make Homestar any less likeable. Like any typical “dumb oaf” character, Homestar is pretty well-known for spouting weird phrases at inopportune times, though he’s not exactly the master of that. Fans of the site probably know who I’m talking about.

Your standard idiot character is usually blissfully unaware of his surroundings and others’ perceptions of him, and Homestar is no exception to this. Homestar gets along with nearly every main character, and yet at the same time, barely gets along with any of them. It’s mostly a one-sided relationship in most of these cases, most especially with Strong Bad. It’s this near-constant optimism that really makes the character work. And when he does get angry with someone, the sudden shift in tone is funny in itself.

I won’t be discussing the actual design of each character, but in some cases, I feel as though I must, and Homestar is one of these cases. Homestar, quite simply, doesn’t look like anything else I’ve ever seen. From his derpy little hat to his underbite to his lack of arms, Homestar is just a really fun character to watch. Just looking at him and listening to his goofy voice is usually enough to make me smile.

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

Coach Z

Coach Z is a complete train wreck of a character, and I enjoy watching every second of it. It’s hard to explain what exactly happened to the poor Coach. He started out the way his namesake would imply – as a sports coach (what sports exactly is somewhat unclear), mainly to Homestar, who is “a terrific athlete”. As Homestar’s character trait of being a dumb jock sort of faded into being just plain dumb, Coach Z’s coach-ness sort of faded as well. And now we have a wannabe rap artist who gets drunk off Listerine and has more than two problems including gender identity issues and general creepiness. What the crap happened?

I’m not complaining about this, by the way. Coach Z, along with Bubs, is one of those characters who rarely shows up in a lead role, or even as a sidekick to anyone (except for Bubs, and there aren’t really any toons where they as a duo are the main focus). And this is a good thing, because too much Coach Z at once could easily become really, really dumb and bad. He’s best used sparingly, to pop in, make some sort of bizarre remark about butt-patting, mispronounce a few words, and then pop back out. There’s a bit of debate among fans if “Creep Z” is preferable over the original Coach Z who actually did act like a coach and mainly just offered bad advice to people, but I think both work in their own way.
 

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

The Cheat

In the cartoons that I’ve covered so far, The Cheat hasn’t really been seen doing much. He will get a much larger role once the era of Strong Bad Emails begins, despite the fact that he kinda can’t speak English (and this character video is the only place where you’ll see subtitles. Kinda like Island of the Giant Pokemon, actually.) Out of the three characters that don’t speak English (not counting the several others who have really odd speech impediments), The Cheat is definitely the one with the most personality.

The Cheat (and yes, the “The” is mandatory) is a being of mischief and trickery, hence the name. He’s often used as Strong Bad’s faithful lackey, but has operated as a free agent on many occasions as well. When not messing around with the rest of the cast, The Cheat is often working on a new Flash cartoon, which are notoriously poor in quality of animation and voice acting, but amusing nonetheless. He also fills the “cute but troublesome pet” role present in many cartoons, which is an easily exploitable niche, but I believe his other personality quirks allow The Cheat to grow beyond that role. The difference between Gary the snail and Perry the platypus is that one is clearly a member of the main cast, and the other is sort of forgettable. The Cheat is definitely a Perry.

And as with Homestar, I have to draw some attention to The Cheat’s design, because seriously, what are we looking at here? Strong Bad’s description of “He looks like a … a cheese. Or maybe an anvil” is pretty accurate. Personally, I don’t see the resemblance to Pikachu, and yet somehow, he always gets compared to it. I enjoy drawing The Cheat because he’s immediately recognizable to anyone who knows the series, and an absolute “what the crap is that thing” to anyone else.

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

Strong Bad 

As I’ve stated before, I wouldn’t consider Strong Bad to be my favorite character, but I can’t imagine anyone else being the king of the website. Homestar does come close, but where Homestar excels in stupid statements and niceness, Strong Bad does even better with his quick-witted remarks and (often unwarranted) mean behavior. As Matt Chapman said in an interview once, “everybody loves an asshole”.  Whether he’s responding to emails or just chatting with the locals, Strong Bad always has something funny to say.

I believe what makes Strong Bad really work is his ego. On a subconscious level, he realizes that he isn’t as cool and awesome as he claims to be, but that’s just it – he claims to be the expert on basically everything, the pinnacle of physical perfection, and has to beat the ladies off with a stick. And you’ve gotta give the guy some credit, he does at least attempt to fake it, and watching these failed attempts at gaining everyone’s approval is exactly what makes us like him. Of course, not everything that Strong Bad does is some bullcrap he made up – some of my favorite emails involve observational humor on some mundane aspect of life.

A lot can be said about Strong Bad, but most of it doesn’t really need to be. Even in just the few cartoons that I’ve covered, you can already pretty much tell what sort of character Strong Bad is. I think everybody knows someone who acts like this. He talks a big game, but has very little evidence to back up any of his claims. And when someone calls him out on this, he just continues to act like a jerk, because he already knows he’s awesome, and what anyone else thinks doesn’t matter.

 

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

Marzipan 

I don’t know what it is about writing female characters that men have so much trouble with – myself included (not that I write, but … shut up). In a lot of cartoons, the majority of the cast is male, and the female characters have very little of an identity outside of being the token girl with maybe one or two exaggerated character traits. And for some reason, female characters are usually written as the “normal” ones. They’re not allowed to be goofy or stupid (because that would be sexist, oh noes), and rarely make jokes.

Marzipan unfortunately does sort of fall into this stereotype. I don’t think many people would consider her to be their favorite character, because her appearances are usually overshadowed by others, who tend to steal the scenes they’re in. This is not to say that Marzipan doesn’t have character, though. She’s sort of your typical hippie, always preparing for some sort of nonsensical protest or writing equally nonsensical songs with her guitar, Carol. Her humor is a lot milder than the in-your-face craziness that the other characters exude, but once you realize that Marzipan really isn’t all that smart, and that her environmentalism is often taken to extreme and often counter-productive measures, you may gain more appreciation for her character.

One other issue with female characters in fiction is they are very often defined by their relationship, or lack thereof. And indeed, Marzipan is Homestar’s girlfriend. But the relationship they have is one of the most bizarre ones I’ve ever witnessed. Neither one of them seems to have any respect or attraction to the other, so it’s unclear why they put up with each other. I guess when there’s only one girl, you take what you can get, and Homestar probably makes a better boyfriend than Coach Z or Strong Bad.

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

Pom Pom 

One thing you’ll start to notice as we get further into this series is the fact that Pom Pom will show up less and less. He was one of the first characters created, and was originally designed to be Homestar’s inseparable best buddy. But when said best buddy only communicates through a single sound clip of bubbles blown into a glass of milk over and over again, it becomes difficult to do anything worthwhile with the character.

It is possible to make a silent character funny. The Cheat manages it (well, he’s not silent, but you know what I mean), but he also fills some roles that Pom Pom does not. When writing a scene and deciding what character should be accompanying Homestar, choosing one who can actually speak makes things a lot easier, I’d imagine. Pom Pom’s humor usually comes from what is not heard (and seeing others’ reactions to it), or occasionally a bit of prop-based humor (suggesting the gun in Yello Dello, for instance), but again, most other characters can pull that off just as easily, so it gives him a bit of a disadvantage.

The one personality trait that Pom Pom does have, which becomes greatly exaggerated over time, is that he’s the “cool” character with a lot of money, connections, and girlfriends. Basically, he’s everything that Strong Bad wants to be, but these facts are just sort of stated without any proof of their existence. And unlike with Strong Bad, where the fact that these are false claims is the reason why it’s funny, here we’re meant to actually believe it. Overall, not the most interesting character, and probably the most “normal” out of the entire cast.

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

Strong Sad 

As some people may have already guessed, Strong Sad is my favorite character. If I was a character in the Homestar Runner universe, I would totally be this guy’s friend. Maybe we wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, since I’m not much for poetry or some of his other interests, but I love his dry, often depressing sense of humor, and I think he just really needs a friend. Except then I’d probably get beat up by his brothers simply for being associated with him. Strong Sad has it rough.

For the first couple years of the series, Strong Sad pretty much existed as his namesake would imply. His only defining character trait was his constant depression, and while it is funny (in a very pathetic sort of way) for a while, it does get old pretty quickly. But over time, it became apparent that Strong Sad is the only truly intelligent (speaking) character in the entire series. Now, rather than becoming the standard annoying geek character, Strong Sad actually behaves in a way that makes sense based on his environment. He’s not depressed because he’s written that way, it’s because you’d be depressed too if everyone else around you was extremely stupid and bullied you on a daily basis.

And so as the series goes on, Strong Sad develops an interest in various parts of geek culture. He’s a very creative person, and expresses this in various ways such as really pretentious poetry, fan fiction, and amateur films. As much as I did enjoy the old, whiny Strong Sad, I do prefer the newer, incredibly cynical one who isn’t afraid to speak his mind about the other characters. He’s simply exasperated that nobody appreciates his genius. And one day, they’ll pay for that.

 

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

Bubs 

We haven’t seen very much of Bubs yet. He’s not a particularly complex character, but he doesn’t really need to be. Basically just combine every money-obsessed character you can think of (Mr. Krabs, Eddy, etc) and the outcome will probably be pretty similar to Bubs. He sells basically everything you could think of, whether it’s something you’d actually want to buy, some sort of shady black-market item, or some cheap piece of junk that he passes off as the greatest new thing.

Honestly, there’s not much more to say. I don’t dislike Bubs as a character, but he really is sort of a one-trick pony. Generally when he makes an appearance, he’ll be working in the Concession stand, performing some sort of shady business practices, which is always funny to watch, but doesn’t provide much in terms of intelligent, thoughtful review. So I guess we’ll just move on to the last few characters.

 

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

Strong Mad 

If you think I didn’t have much to say about Bubs, I probably have even less to say about these last three. Strong Mad is the oldest of the Strong brothers, but also the least interesting, as you can probably tell by his particularly short character video. At first glance, it seems like he’s the epitome of “brawn over brains”, and … well, yeah, that pretty much describes Strong Mad in a nutshell. Whenever he speaks, it’s by yelling, usually in pretty short and simple sentences, and only on rare occasions does he say anything remotely intelligent.

However, Strong Mad isn’t always the violent hulk that he appears to be. When not being ordered around as Strong Bad’s muscle, he does actually get along with the majority of the cast, and he is best friends with The Cheat. Strong Mad will never tolerate anyone hurting his little buddy. And although his efforts still yield pretty childish-looking results, he does have a creative side just like his two brothers, having dabbled in various arts and crafts and even movie-making. I guess to summarize, you could say that Strong Mad is very passionate about everything he does. The guy just doesn’t have a volume button or the ability to handle anything gently. 

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

The Poopsmith 

And thus we come to the living embodiment of toilet humor. I’m not sure why The Poopsmith exists as a character, to be quite honest. Remember the King of Town DVD, and how Homestar questioned all of the King’s men? The Poopsmith was just one of the bunch, and other than being the one that was quite random and out of place, it’s not as if he did anything to step out of this role. And indeed, he’s one of the three “silent” main characters of the cast, but in Pom Pom and The Cheat’s defense, at least they do speak in some kind of language, as intelligible as they may be. The Poopsmith has for reasons unknown taken a vow of silence, and so he’s just kinda… there. Shoveling poop.

No, really, there’s not really anything else to be said about this character. He does sort of work as a gag in and of himself, but as I don’t find scatological humor to be funny, I can’t say it’s particularly effective. I can’t think of a time that I’ve laughed at The Poopsmith, and his only real positive contribution to the series is when another character acknowledges his general uselessness, or when he does something outside of the norm. Which is very rarely.

 

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

The King of Town 

We’ve saved the worst for last. Well, not really, because I firmly believe that The Poopsmith is by far the worst character in the main cast, but Kingy here isn’t all that great either. I already mentioned that the only time the Poopsmith is funny is when someone is making fun of him, and the King operates in sort of the same way. Strong Bad in particular will never turn down an opportunity to point out how he’s the least popular character, and he never does anything other than eat and pretend he has any authority over anything.

Now, like I said with Bubs, I don’t actually dislike this character. If I did, that would mean I think any cartoons he appears in would be better off without him, and that’s not the case. But I would have to agree that yes, he is kind of a waste of space, and his particular brand of comedy is extremely simplistic and almost never expanded upon. But hey, a lot of shows have a “butt monkey” that everyone loves to hate, and The King of Town fills that role fairly well.


Good lord, that was a long one. But now that I’ve finally talked a little about all the main characters, I can focus on going through some more actual content. And since I know many long-time fans of the website are probably wondering, yes, we’ll get to the twelfth main character later on. New people, don’t worry about that too much, it’ll make sense eventually, I just don’t want to ruin a good joke. So next time, I guess we can look at some more of the cartoons added to the website in 2000. There’s not too many left, and if I have to go out of order to break up the boring ones with something actually funny, then I may do that. I guess we’ll find out soon enough. And just for the hell of it, here’s my personal ranking of the 11 original main characters, from favorite to least.

1. Strong Sad
2. Strong Bad
3. Homestar
4. Coach Z
5. Bubs
6. The Cheat
7. Strong Mad
8. Marzipan
9. The King of Town
10. Pom Pom
11. The Poopsmith