Homeschool Winner
From Homestar Runner Wiki
Homeschool Winner is a rejected character, appearing visually similar to Homestar Runner. Though never properly appearing with a significant, identifiable role in a toon, Homeschool Winner has been the most frequently referenced of the site's rejected characters — likely due to his resemblance to the site's title character.
The name "Homeschool Winner" came about when a friend of the Brothers Chaps misremembered homestarrunner.com as "HomeschoolWinner.com". In keeping with the connection to Homestar Runner, his design is an intentional distortion of Homestar's—similar white skin, lack of arms, and general proportions, but with an overbite instead of an underbite and blue shirt and red-soled feet rather than a red shirt and blue-soled feet — in a manner somewhat similar to Homsar (though thinner than Homestar, compared to Homsar's squat proportions). In Quickstart Overview, it is implied that he may be Homestar's stepbrother. In contrast to Homestar's status as a "terrific athlete", Homeschool is described as a "big nerd" — depicted in the Sketchbook holding a calculator or in Why Come Only One Girl? winning a "Quiz Bowl" trophy. While "everybody loves the Homestar Runner", Homeschool seems less popular: Matt Chapman remarked that the character has "a creepy edge to him", while the narrator of Why Come Only One Girl angrily calls him a "weaselly know-it-all".
Despite early appearances in the Character Cards and in a Dancin' Bubs background, Homeschool did not make further appearances on the site. In a 2003 interview, Matt Chapman described Homeschool as a "joke character", indicating that the Brothers Chaps were unlikely to continue developing the character. In Sample of Style, Matt suggests that Homeschool Winner had been killed off; a skull resembling his head was seen underneath Strong Badia in buried. However, he has continued to make cameo appearances. He appeared alongside several other rejected characters in A Decemberween Mackerel. In 2019, he appeared in Powered by The Cheat form in Quickstart Overview. Four days later, an animated GIF tweeted by @StrongBadActual marked the first time Homeschool Winner appeared in the site's modern animation style.
Arcade Guy
In Dangeresque Roomisode 2, the silhouette of the arcade game player in the window bears a striking resemblance to Homeschool Winner, and has a voice vaguely similar to Homestar's without the rhotacism. In addition, Dangeresque mentions the silhouette's behavior being "creepo", presumably referencing the aforementioned "creepy edge" to Homeschool's character.
Appearances
- Character Cards
- Dancin' Bubs
- Sample of Style (mentioned)
- Why Come Only One Girl?
- Sketchbook (February 28, 2008)
- Email buried (mentioned)
- A Decemberween Mackerel
- Quickstart Overview
- @StrongBadActual (April 30, 2019)
- Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate
