amaya stan blog

sideblog for bcb - she/her

[itsaboutcats]

Sue clearly lacks coordination and isn't an excellent athlete, especially when compared to Paulo, but I really wish Sue was able to do a couple pull-ups here, not just to give her a respectable showing, but because she textually has a lot of upper body strength!

She successfully runs away from danger while carrying McCain. He may be one of the lighter cast members, but she still genuinely has to be quite strong to do it! She demonstrates that she has a lot of upper body strength and core strength. Plus, for the past several months, she's been on crutches, which force her to use her arms, upper body, and core to get around, further building muscles which would help with pull-ups.

This isn't to say she should have won the contest, and I know pull-ups are especially difficult for women, but Sue was written as strong, so let her be strong! But Sue just can't have anything... Maybe her arms were just spent from functionally already doing an arm workout all day with the crutches...

It's a chapter about challenging preconceived notions... except for the preconceived notion almost all audience members have that Sue can't lift. (I'm being kind of silly.... unless...)

[bittersweetcandybowl]

[tensecondstomidnight]

a future comic that's less lazy this time. happy 20th, BCB.

serious talks inbound, so i'll talk a bit about the comic first.

i've had this scripted out for a while, and in true pinkie fashion, i left it until the last week or so to actually finish it up. it was really difficult to get it done because i've just been too busy lately. there's been a whole lot i've been taking care of that i should've been handling months or even years ago. i'm glad i was pushed to do it, but that doesn't make it easier!

i'm glad it's finally done because i took out several long nights for it. i don't miss rushing to finish art projects. geezaloo.

so yeah, pinkie went missing for a few months again! the truth is, i kind of became super disillusioned towards my relationship with the internet and cut it almost entirely out of my life. this is, ultimately, something i actually recommend if you're having those kinds of problems.

the internet is built, basically from the ground up, to be a 24/7 dopamine machine that distracts you as much as it can. it will distract you from your life, it will distract you from the problems you face, and it will distract you from yourself. if you are someone who struggles with delusion, or someone who uses distraction as a coping mechanism, the internet is not something to be taking in as much as i was.

it affects the way you perceive events, it affects the way you perceive and treat others. it generally makes you a self-centered, unreasonable, unlikable person. especially if you're too young or too isolated to really know anything else.

and social media, as it stands, exists to perpetuate that as much as it can! every major app and website (instagram, youtube, twitter, etc) has spent years using their userbase as a bunch of guinea pigs to determine the fastest and easiest route to controlling the most people. youtube directs you away from what you're searching and towards what it wants to promote. twitter incentivizes engagement to the point where the best way to get ahead is to make people angry. reddit and discord streamlined forums and chatrooms and gamified them, to the point where, frankly, i doubt a generation raised on them would even have patience for those things as they used to exist. it affects everyone and it has made the internet far, far worse.

i, personally, am someone who struggles greatly with delusion and copes with what's wrong with me by distracting myself as much as i can. all of the internet's existing systems are built to prey on people like me. it is the end goal of tech billionaires to create an army of NEETs who push away all of their friends and sit alone in their rooms arguing about the ages of cartoon characters. people who contribute nothing to society except to create engagement on websites and push the profit margins up. people who cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy because, when everyone they know is a name and a profile photo, they can be fooled into believing they are the only person that exists and whatever they believe about the world and the people around them must be right.

this is maybe a strange thing to attach to my BCB fancomic, but it's the only thing i've posted publicly in a while and i just want someone, anyone to hear it before they go back to scrolling instagram reels or torturing their AI assistant. the internet as it currently stands is killing you. it is designed to kill you. it is designed to mold you into the worst version of yourself and the only way to facilitate your own recovery is to limit your exposure to it as much as possible.

so yeah, it will probably be a while before i do more casual BCB blogging here. dunno when that'll be. but for what it's worth, the time i've spent away has been the most productive and useful i've been in the past few years. i feel good about the way i'm living my life and i don't know if i've ever felt that way before.

if someone as pathetic and weaselly as me can break out and start actually evaluating my own behavior and lifestyle, then i am 100% sure anyone reading this will do it twice as easily.

stay safe.

[bittersweetcandybowl]

Veronica: I find this dynamic so INTRIGUING!!! I love it!! I really love how.. lighthearted Mike is throughout this, if that’s the right word to use? Being such a goofy charming guy who understands the absurdity of the situation but wants to try his best regardless. No wonder Lucy is giving him a chance—

I love the classic nostalgic dynamic of Mike and Lucy taking their relationship slow, just generally enjoying each other’s presence, not even considering dating, while Paulo and Daisy are like “WHERE IS THE RING”

Also congratulations on freeing yourself from the internet’s clutches! I totally agree with you that social media is a rot to the brain and a lot of it relies on your anger.. like it wants to ragebait you so hard and permanently keep you angry, because anger is engagement. Unhappiness is engagement. It’s why these days I’ve kinda accepted that I’m never going to be a Big Hit ™ twitter person with tons of followers/retweets/numbers, I don’t want to be, I don’t want to play that game (because a lot of it involves stress and anger).. so I pop in on Bluesky when I want to, read a HEAVILY curated feed (hide and block keywords aplenty), and then hang out with my internet friends in my personal discord! It’s great! I’ve been so happy with the internet these days!

It really helps a lot being able to curate your spaces, it makes your environment so much more hospitable. And in a lot of ways it helps you use the internet less! Win-win!

While I always look forward to your art, I am most excited about your happiness.. so like Mike and Lucy in your comic I look forward to all the achievements you’ll be able to make!

anyway--

[tensecondstomidnight]

[tensecondstomidnight]

a future comic that's less lazy this time. happy 20th, BCB.

serious talks inbound, so i'll talk a bit about the comic first.

i've had this scripted out for a while, and in true pinkie fashion, i left it until the last week or so to actually finish it up. it was really difficult to get it done because i've just been too busy lately. there's been a whole lot i've been taking care of that i should've been handling months or even years ago. i'm glad i was pushed to do it, but that doesn't make it easier!

i'm glad it's finally done because i took out several long nights for it. i don't miss rushing to finish art projects. geezaloo.

so yeah, pinkie went missing for a few months again! the truth is, i kind of became super disillusioned towards my relationship with the internet and cut it almost entirely out of my life. this is, ultimately, something i actually recommend if you're having those kinds of problems.

the internet is built, basically from the ground up, to be a 24/7 dopamine machine that distracts you as much as it can. it will distract you from your life, it will distract you from the problems you face, and it will distract you from yourself. if you are someone who struggles with delusion, or someone who uses distraction as a coping mechanism, the internet is not something to be taking in as much as i was.

it affects the way you perceive events, it affects the way you perceive and treat others. it generally makes you a self-centered, unreasonable, unlikable person. especially if you're too young or too isolated to really know anything else.

and social media, as it stands, exists to perpetuate that as much as it can! every major app and website (instagram, youtube, twitter, etc) has spent years using their userbase as a bunch of guinea pigs to determine the fastest and easiest route to controlling the most people. youtube directs you away from what you're searching and towards what it wants to promote. twitter incentivizes engagement to the point where the best way to get ahead is to make people angry. reddit and discord streamlined forums and chatrooms and gamified them, to the point where, frankly, i doubt a generation raised on them would even have patience for those things as they used to exist. it affects everyone and it has made the internet far, far worse.

i, personally, am someone who struggles greatly with delusion and copes with what's wrong with me by distracting myself as much as i can. all of the internet's existing systems are built to prey on people like me. it is the end goal of tech billionaires to create an army of NEETs who push away all of their friends and sit alone in their rooms arguing about the ages of cartoon characters. people who contribute nothing to society except to create engagement on websites and push the profit margins up. people who cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy because, when everyone they know is a name and a profile photo, they can be fooled into believing they are the only person that exists and whatever they believe about the world and the people around them must be right.

this is maybe a strange thing to attach to my BCB fancomic, but it's the only thing i've posted publicly in a while and i just want someone, anyone to hear it before they go back to scrolling instagram reels or torturing their AI assistant. the internet as it currently stands is killing you. it is designed to kill you. it is designed to mold you into the worst version of yourself and the only way to facilitate your own recovery is to limit your exposure to it as much as possible.

so yeah, it will probably be a while before i do more casual BCB blogging here. dunno when that'll be. but for what it's worth, the time i've spent away has been the most productive and useful i've been in the past few years. i feel good about the way i'm living my life and i don't know if i've ever felt that way before.

if someone as pathetic and weaselly as me can break out and start actually evaluating my own behavior and lifestyle, then i am 100% sure anyone reading this will do it twice as easily.

stay safe.

[tensecondstomidnight]

the part of Confrontation that has always made the least sense is when alejandro tricks mike into, like, getting drunk for no reason? he bets mike can't finish a bowl of alcoholic chocolates and gives mike the money when he wins... even though he's about to walk outside and rough the kids up anyways...? why did he do any of that? in the original he bets fifty dollars, but then it was changed to twenty. i guess that's slightly more realistic? but i wouldn't hand twenty bucks to someone i'm about to mug anyways.

speaking of things that weren't really thought out, sue goes to the bartender for directions in the original...

...but it would make a lot more sense for sue to simply call her mom, so she does that in the remake, asking to use the phone instead. it's such an obvious change that they even lampshade it comically here on page 3:

i feel like the way this is paced is funnier if you know it's a jab at the old version.

anyway, like i said, mike takes alejandro up on his nonsensical bet. mike says "well i don't wanna waste my money and the bowl is huge" and alejandro says "its just a game try it" and somehow that's enough.

i call this the "scott pilgrim panel"

the ensuing reaction shot is another thing that's maintained almost exactly from the original:

i like when sue gets pissed off here. she's a straight man character, but the kind that's fun to push to their limit. she's not really less crazy than anyone around her, she just plays the part of being the most reasonable. it wasn't even her idea to call home! this is why i miss having mccain around to play off her. he's the only one who's so straight-laced that she ends up looking frantic by comparison.

in the redraws, they changed her line here to "what are you doing" but i like this line better because its more emblematic of the "every girl is into mike" era. normally i'd LOVE physical contact with you but right now you're STUPID

in all versions of this chapter, daisy gets angry at lucy for not stopping mike, but she only gives an excuse in the original. i like how half-assed it is. not even "im not his mom" just "he wanted to."

before we leave the bar, special shout out to Scratching Balls Pedophile With A Scarily Human Face (who i never noticed was scratching his balls in this scene)

as well as this lady who seems to have been stood up. you'll get 'em next time, lady.

[tensecondstomidnight]

speaking of design adjustments, sue is Bald, like i've pointed out before.

this makes her pretty hard to tell apart from mike or lucy at a glance. that being said, sue with her hair cropped short almost looks balder!

ahahahahaa you're so weeeeeird. grow that hair out already you're not sue yet you're fake.

six panels (so a third) of the original second page of Confrontation is covered by its remake in about a page and a half. this makes sense though, because the remake boasts thirty pages compared to the original's twelve. that's more than twice as many! they use this real estate well, because they're always making cute faces at each other.

i have more to say on the faces in this chapter, but i'll get to it later.

after they all get off the subway, daisy accosts mike and tries to get him to invite her over. they have an interaction that i find interesting, having previously commented on how they interact in other early chapters.

specifically, they used to both be way more mean about the whole thing. daisy doesn't hesitate to call lucy a shitty friend, and mike says "well, if my feelings are stupid, your feelings are the STUPIDEST, FUCK YOU" and then in the redraw, she's just like "lucy is mean to you... im nice..." and mike is like "leave me alone brah..."

after this, paulo fumbles with lucy offscreen and then him and daisy have a conversation about lucy being a Huge Huge Bitch. the resulting sequence here is one of my favorites from these early chapters:

they just look directly at him and laugh really meanly about their mutual friend and then they just stare. they stare and go heeeeey budddyyyyy... i interpreted it as them just being dickheads, but looking at the original Confrontation, it seems like the intention was that they didn't know mike was listening.

i don't think the remake conveys this at all. like, it doesn't look like a reaction shot, because there's never a *plink!* of them noticing him like in the original, and furthermore, how far away could mike and lucy possibly be? they're all walking somewhere in a group. i know lucy's deaf in one ear, but they couldn't both be out of earshot of these two.

CASE IN POINT? like, what was the plan here?

this is the bit i was talking about in the last post. in this chapter, for some reason, the main four all fucking HATE each other. all they do is bitch about each other's behavior the whole time. you wouldn't be unreasonable for asking why daisy hangs out with lucy at all after this. seriously, what is their problem?

but the thing is, it's funny, so i like it.

[tensecondstomidnight]

CONFRONTATION

it's a big fat deal! we're gonna be here for several posts in a row, most likely. being a chapter that was redrawn for volume 1, this chapter has, woof, THREE versions, just like The Burden of Parenthood. it's going to be weird making comparisons, because the initial volume 1 redraw is quite the extreme change compared to basically anything done for the omnibus. it's barely recognizable! that means anything that gets maintained is gonna be interesting to see

as we'll see a lot throughout, omnibus Confrontation is also one of the more heavily-edited chapters in terms of dialogue. a LOT of lines are changed here, either to make them more verbose or specific, to change the wording, or- eventually- to retcon things entirely. it's nothing CRAZY, mainly just a plotline the author didn't have interest in, but it's there!

the original Confrontation doesn't have that many comparable lines for the first chunk here. same story, but everyone says different stuff.

funnily, the others are way better at tuning out the screaming match here. sue and daisy are able to hold casual conversation just fine, and we even learn that not only was it originally daisy's idea to take the subway, but they were taking the subway to the aquarium! this detail must be why Gone Fishing exists. maybe the author was redrawing Confrontation, saw that line, and thought "hey, that actually sounds like fun. why don't i just draw them going to the aquarium for one of these? there could be like, water and shit"

this interaction is basically intact from the original version of Confrontation, and the only changes to the wording is that paulo specifically says "SHADDUP" instead of "SHUTTUP" (which in my opinion is an obvious improvement) and there was a "can" inserted in the second line there. when i first read this, that line confused me. it sounded like paulo was calling mike "babe."

by the nature of reformatting one of the oldest chapters, some scenes are shuffled around a bit to fit a normal comic page format. originally, this scene where paulo and daisy fantasize about Getting Ass happens on page 1 after they've already decided to get off the train, but in the volume 1 redraw, they don't get off the train until the second page, so this little sequence happens first because it just kinda fits better i guess? also, it's pretty different from the original, where paulo and daisy hear one of them say "hate" and get really excited.

this is Funny. they are listening to their friends saying I HATE YOU!!! I FUCKING HATE YOU!!! and they're like sooo you're telling me there's a chance... SCORE...

this bit leads into something about this chapter that kinda befuddles me. we'll get to that.

in terms of changes to the art, it's fun picking out really minor things that got changed, like this panel where the curve of daisy's left ear was adjusted. i never would've thought about her ears having a specific curve unless i'd noticed this change!

[tensecondstomidnight]

im glad the booru exists because this blog is mainly here for long ass posts where i get way too nerdy and specific about facial expressions and i assume 90% of people dont wanna see that and would rather i just post art

[tensecondstomidnight]

there's an interesting juxtaposition with these panels that are stacked atop each other here. in the top panel, lucy's allowed to keep her overly-simplistic expression, and in the bottom one, the orbital eyebrow cannon was fired at her.

now, it's kind of a nitpick to even point this out. the eyebrow cannon in these 4-pagers really isn't a huge deal, since basically all the art is being totally redrawn. i'm only really bugged about the cannon being fired when it's a later page (like in the next chapter, hahahaha) in those, the art is clearly perfectly fine already and the cannon is just being fired for no reason (in my opinion!)

in this case, it was just something i noticed and wanted to point out like "lol, isn't that interesting i wonder why"

anyway stop thinking about all of that, we've got an appearance from bald sue and AMAYA ON-SCREEN

she's so unbelievably cute here. what the hell. that's amaya. she's so sad. like to spare her.

when paulo helpfully calls out that mike isn't into girls, a gaggle of male nobodies accosts him. in the redraws, the author drew some random male inserts. in the original, however, i guess she just didn't feel like drawing dudes. based alert?

also lol @ that girl. i'm glad that one got kept. if she was a TRUE fan she'd just start shipping him with his guy friends.

okay, wait, i have another redraw nitpick, please don't unfollow. take a look at this panel, yes lucy is cute but look at the text bubbles.

the way you're supposed to read this is top-left, bottom-left, top-right. BUT. this doesn't follow text bubble law! text bubbles, like any other narrative text, are read left-to-right first, and then you go a layer down. so in this, the second and third bubbles should be switched. funny thing is, the original got this right! sometimes, in second-guessing yourself, you create a problem that wasn't previously present. now if you'll excuse me, i'm getting a call from the get-a-life foundation.

anyways, speaking of old internet humor, pretty much all of the mid-2000s gags built around the internet's fascination with AAVE are intact here. paulo and david are eager to discuss pimps and hoes (that far-right guy even calls mike a "hustla" in the redraw) and i'm sure we all recall yashy's attitude towards her own discrimination earlier.

but as interesting as all that is, i want to pay special mind to the middle panel in this row, where david asks mike for the "blue-eyed one."

in the redraw, he says this instead:

and like... maybe i'm crazy, and it's certainly up for interpretation, but this almost reads like... david x amaya crumbs? i know that ship has a few die-hard fans out there, and i've never seen ANYONE ship david and stacy, so...? eat up, i guess? didn't see that one coming! fun!

also, look, more stacys. i'm posting the redraw here because originally that stacy and sue on the left were just a couple of blank inserts. more stacy is always the right call, so i'm fully in support of this change.

funny that mike doesn't take the opportunity to mention sandy here.

the next chapter is a BIG DAMN DEAL. it's CONFRONTATION, a chapter that has lasting implications on the comic for... well, the next 19 and a half years, i guess! see you then!

[tensecondstomidnight]

another lazy future comic

[tensecondstomidnight]

on to Puppy Love!

something notable about the old chapters is that they're always posing characters in ways they just simply wouldn't nowadays.

and the resulting redraw panels look really odd as a result. just look at modern lucy going for the same thing here.

something about that pose on that model just doesn't feel right... but being faithful has its costs, and its better than the alternative.

looks like mike's got some secret admirers leaving him love notes! this chapter is a good example of a redrawn chapter that received a lot of tiiiiny little touch-ups, but no major edits from what i can tell. which is good, because as far as early 4-pagers go, this is one i like.

like to spare her ignore to kill her

i think it's funny that the author felt the need to touch up stacy's poetry in the redraws. it's IMPORTANT that she's WELL-SPOKEN, darnit! i feel like it was sort of an old internet hallmark to have characters say "gawd" in place of "god," so i'm sad the redraws took that one away. i also like the way "SEXY" is capital and underlined in the original third panel here, demonstrating that lucy's putting great emphasis on the word. puts a clearer voice in my head than the new one. also, it's sad that she's not allowed to say "nyahahaha" anymore. they're cats... let them nyah...

in terms of design alterations, daisy is one of the most blatant. the head shape changes on characters like mike and lucy is easier to gloss over because they're just such simple designs (and lucy's cheek fluff hasn't grown in yet) but daisy's a lot easier to pick out 'cuz of the difference in her fluff and whiskers and stuff.

hard to complain, though, because daisy gets a lot of cute panels in the redraws! just look at her big ol' eyes here. some of these are just marked improvements, really.

after mike insists that he isn't interested in letting his gaggle of wannabe lovers jump his bones, things quickly devolve into paulo and david calling him gay. GAY PERSON HERE: THIS IS FUNNY. i'm always a little sad whenever a thing like this takes out an old gag, not because i think they should still be telling crude jokes, but because i think it's fun when you can look back through a 20-year-old comic and find things they wouldn't say anymore. any reader worth their salt can acknowledge that it currently is not 2006 and chuckle at the things people were freely saying back then. thankfully, bcb was always lighthearted enough with its cruelty that a lot of that stuff is intact, which is good, because it aids in paulo's struggle with his own sexuality later. it's good setup, unintentional or not!

also, this was the sequence that made me fall in love with david the first time i read the comic.

[tensecondstomidnight]

Wow

[tensecondstomidnight]

Visit Original Link

[tensecondstomidnight]

Wow

[tensecondstomidnight]

movie time... there's another interaction here that's easily labeled "the most basic mike and lucy interaction that you could write"

he's not even doing anything, girl. what are you pining about? WATCH THE MOVIE

david barks at paulo for trying to steal his popcorn (bad friend, you don't deserve a plush, etc.) and when the other unseen moviegoers throw their food at him for being a nuisance, he says this:

i have no idea what that means. why would the popcorn be bloody? in the redraws, this line is change to "fur-free!" which makes more sense, but like, wouldn't he just say something like "hey, free food!" was the popcorn not fur-free? was there a chance it wouldn't have been?

...or maybe "fur-free" is just him saying "for free" with food in his mouth...?

because a single SA2 reference is never enough. and this from people who only like the classic games! i guess sonic 3 isn't known for its memorable quotes...

for some reason, the campiest movie ever manages to affect paulo and lucy emotionally. (swirls wine in glass) ahhh, just like how early chapters like the vacation arc have an effect on me... truly life eez like ze bittairesweet candy bowl...

in the redraw, mike is less cruel when daisy stops hanging off him to go pester paulo about his emotions. look at him ignore lucy crying right next to him, hahahahaha. he probably thinks that's just a default state for her. oh she's crying again? ahh, she'll be done in a minute. she's probably thinking about that time her blocks got knocked over in first grade.

the rest of this chapter isn't too much to note. paulo explains his phobia of dogs barking (which is funny because its a noise half the population makes, more on that in a second) and mike and lucy have a goofy interaction where they ruminate on the really obvious connection between the movie and their lives and then lucy is like Nooo thats Stupid ha ha ha ha ha good Bye

but more importantly, there's a change in paulo's backstory where he originally specified that they weren't just any high school-age bullies, but DOG bullies.

now paulo has enough to have an internal struggle over later on, but man, it's REALLY funny that he stares david in the face and says YEAH SOOO I HAVE A DOG PHOBIA in the original chapter. don't worry david, you're one of the good ones. i'm just scared of other dogs.

imagine how RACHEL would feel!

anyway, i'm not gonna bother dedicating a post to Catty Remarks, because i simply don't have enough to say. it's two pages of cat puns, but more notably, it's the first "intermission" chapter, where they take a quick aside to do something else before getting back to important things like hitting each other and referencing sonic.

all i'm gonna note is this panel where it looks like yashy bursts out of lucy's chest like an alien:

and also the fact that, once again, mike and lucy are magnetically attracted to each other to the point where they can't exist in close proximity without one of them sighing and thinking "UUUUGH I WISH WE WERE MARRIED RIGHT NOWWW"

get a friggen' room! sheesh!

as a final note, based on the volume 1 chapter list, it looks like this intermission was originally placed before Off to the Movies, not after it. regardless, we shall follow the website order, for now... next up, Puppy Love!

[tensecondstomidnight]

thank god almost all the sonic references are intact still, otherwise i WOULD riot.

happy new year, and welcome to Off to the Movies! the description on the redrawn chapter states that the author wrote this comic with the intention of drawing yashy quoting Unknown from M.E. and then from there she had to actually write something happening. see, that's the thing, kids these days would just draw a reaction shot and call it a day. there's no SOUL in webcomicing anymore, i tell you what.

mike and lucy go to the movies! lucy insists that yashy can't be brought along because she's an easily-influenced child. in the original comic, they flash back to a slapstick-y bit where yashy references star wars a lot. in the redraw, this is changed to what is objectively a funnier scene, but one that i take umbrage with.

see, since the redraws basically only touch the dialogue when absolutely necessary, the characters mostly retain their "simple" childlike attitudes in the early chapters. they are believably young and stupid. not really so much clever as they are goofy. to me, this bit veers too close to being... i dunno, too modern? too much like an interaction that only could've happened within the last 7-10 years of bcb? maybe i'm CRAZY i dunno

aaaanyway, mike and lucy run into paulo, daisy, and david at the movies. see, i always feel like david is getting the short end of the stick nowadays, 'cuz he was totally the "fifth main character" until unruly bastards like augustus started muscling their way in and screwing everything up. poor fella. but who cares about them anyways- AMAYA ON-SCREEN

good to see you, girl! and she's working her job! look! uniform! ah, great character.

in the redrawn pages, they do the thing where you invent a really generic sounding movie title, but it kinda works because lucy's solution to what to watch is a movie that is overtly just both of the previous movies combined. lol. in the original, though...

it might look lazy, but i have vague recollections of this being The Style At The Time. it's just kind of the same joke but older, if that makes sense. i think. it's late for me at the moment.

joke holds up. ha ha ha ha owned. fuck you orange cat ha ha ha ha

[tensecondstomidnight]

it's four in the AM on december 31st at the time of writing. the guilt of not updating my reread in over a year has finally gotten to me.

if i had to hazard a guess why it took me 386 days to read Chirpy's Introduction, it's probably because i'm not the die-hard pet fanatic i claim to be. don't get me wrong, the pets (especially yashy) are an invaluable asset to early BCB. they create conflict, make for good gags, and generally ruffle everyone's feathers in a way that i find entertaining (again, mostly yashy...) but they don't really work as well on their own. it's like reading a comic about toddlers. (no offense intended to Bleating Hearts, which is, to my understanding, a comic about toddlers)

back when i talked about Flying Lessons, i somehow wasn't aware of how many deleted chapters are still available on the site, so i assumed this was defunct deviantart HASHTAG LOST MEDIA. let's see what we were missing out on!

see in this case, the gag is that the pets are the only characters in the entire world that are dumber than the protagonists.

i don't know if i've pointed it out before, but i like that the capital "i"s here are written so hastily that they look like uppercase "z"s. the first time i saw someone do that was ask stoned trixie. RIP to ghost, as always.

i took note last time they did the cat thing, so look, they did the cat thing.

like in Flying Lessons, chirpy's backstory begins with mike and lucy doing what they usually do: being competitive with an added layer of unnecessary violence. yashy watches lucy run off with mike, and then gets scared, because she doesn't have object permanence i guess...?

as lampshaded in Flying Lessons' page descriptions, yashy was very blatantly a baby yoshi in these original pages.

actually unreadable. how am i supposed to enjoy this if she doesn't scream DANGER!!!! like a wet floor sign anymore? RUINED

this goes as far as her literally doing the yoshi tongue thing to save the day, which is obviously not present in the redraw.

when the egg is hatching later, she reverts to yoshi language again, but it's always an easy fix when she does that since she's considerate enough to offer subtitles.

notable differences from the final pages here: in Flying Lessons, mike's line here is "I'm calling child services." in the original... he's got blur's egg! what the hell?

poor yashy. being a kindergarten mom must be rough.

i don't remember exactly how mike comes into possession of blur (FAKE FAN) but evidently mike didn't hatch him, at least not anymore

mike is also violently punished for this little crack. one more instance of lucy being needlessly cruel that's been scrubbed from the omnibus chapters. mike, the poor sap, he was set up! he has really good reasons to hate her, trust me, there's just... no evidence, anymore...

see, okay, the chapter is directly contradicting itself. mike found blur looking like a drowned rat. the egg is now some confusing third party that either did or didn't hatch.

maybe it was a bad egg.

maybe it's error.

Flying Lessons really tones down how mean yashy was to blur in this chapter. she's calling him a big fat stupid idiot even while talking about what was presumably a near-death experience of his. she still says Die, Idiot though.

can yashy's egg's hatch? the world may never know.

ANYWAY, WE'RE DONE HERE. we're FINALLY headed back to the main chapters, if you can believe it! see you in Off to the Movies!

[tensecondstomidnight]

I'M ALWAYS RIGHT

[tensecondstomidnight]

I'M ALWAYS WRONG

my big big big desire for the next chunk of bcb was for a pauloxdaisy and mikexsandy double date where paulo and daisy would finally be faced with the reality of mike and sandys dynamic and this would be the road to paulo finally having an honest conversation with mike about his relationship and the way it affects him. NOW: THIS COULD STILL HAPPEN. but i feel like we aren't getting two double dates in a row. unless we do, which would be fine.

what i'm hoping for now is that this scenario will eerily mirror what i would've wanted and paulo will say a lot of things to jordan that he would've said to mike about sandy. maybe, maybe, this will be the practice round for the sandy conversation. maybe he will even realize because of today just how much mike resembles jordan and be filled with a healthy dose of plot-pushing righteous fury. WE CAN ONLY HOPE.

[tensecondstomidnight]

december girlies