“Two weird slackers adrift in Middle America alternately hurling abuse & pop-culture references at each other” is the ur-narrative for 99% of Gen-X media
Master Billy Quizboy (hydrocephalic boy genius) and the ever-popular Pete White (albino fuck-up) have a significant gap in their backstory:
Met sometime before the fall of the Berlin Wall (~1989?)
Had some laughs
Lost an eye/hand
Gained a memory wipe/an Airstream trailer
Then suddenly, we’re at a yard sale in 2004.
→ jump to all Master Billy Quizboy & Pete White posts
↓... but wait, there's more ↓
↓... but wait, there's even more ↓
Storylines for a 1990s-set Billy & White Flashback Spin-Off
(written while suffering from quarantine isolation madness 2020, redrawn in 2022)
The first year of their partnership, Conjectural Technologies is already in dire financial straights.
Billy is surly teenager with a year-long gap in his memory and a malfunctioning robot hand he doesn't remember getting. Pete tells him he has PTSD from the dog attack and being lost in the desert. They have pointless day jobs to pay the bills (Billy at the public library, White at a call center) and no standing in Super Science.
→ jump to all Master Billy Quizboy & Pete White posts
1990
To fund their newly-formed science company, White adopts the role record producer/ponzi scammer (but not “predator”) using Billy as his anchor. (They fail at the beginning of the decade, rewarm it and try it again ~8 years later)
1992
Billy's first time voting in a presidential election. They pitch themselves hot-shot political consultants with super-science-backed election strategies to every candidate and get hired by a lunatic Texas millionaire running as third party before they eventually run away to join Deee-Lite on the MTV Rock the Vote tour
1994
Billy has a crush on the snarky riot grrrl clerk in the video store who is mean to him. Pete White abuses an untested antidepressant, suffers serotonin psychosis while broadcasting on his 100 watt pirate radio station and inadvertently becomes the new voice of conservative talk radio. Or something… we’ll figure it out.
1996
The one where they… argue about bands?
There isn’t a story for this, I just wanted to draw these outfits.
1998
They start a dot-com that actually doesn’t do anything, become the toast of Manhattan's Silicon Alley, get a million dollars in venture capital and drive it into the ground in the span of three months.
19̶9̶9̶ →Y2K
Billy enrolls in high school as an ordinary sophomore, but handles bullying poorly. Really poorly. Like, blowing-up-the-school rampage poorly. Meanwhile, White is drafted for a government mission to stamp out the Y2K bug in the nation's infrastructure. [→ more 1999]
By the eve of the Millennium they’d be so fed up they’d be like, “We failed at everything. Wanna spend the next 10-to-22 years wearing the same clothes every day and not doing anything in particular?”
And bingo-bango!— reset to proper canon.
This is the "short version" of the spin-off pitch.
→ See the LONG VERSION on AO3
→ jump to all Master Billy Quizboy & Pete White posts
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I've mentioned before how big eyes are common to 'cute' characters but actually not crucial, because the more important ingredient to kid/baby cuteness is chubby cheeks/short proportions. On the flip side, large/exaggerated eyes don't necessarily register as infantile/childish, and especially can work on characters who the maturity/world-weariness is part of their allure.
(maybe because in all of these, their eyes are either 1/2 or 3/4 closed + the shape? It makes them look like they're always scrutinizing something closely. They don't have that confused/wide-eyed stare that's common in kids, including teenagers who still look childish).
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Me, myself, & I
It's me, the chic and gorgeous artist herself! I signed it this time with my real name, Azelia, along with my artist nickname. I just adore the classic western cartoon styles - like these ones: Max Fleischer, Disney, and Tim Burton (because I'm gothic) And thus, I've transformed into a cartoon character in three famous styles. 🌸 I'm an original.
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'Hypocrite' is Fievel's favorite vocab word, which he uses often to describe his Aunt Mabel
He's too young to understand that she's just doing all she can to keep him safe and not grow up to be surly like her
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