Sponge mode has been fully engaged. We are leaving the yaoi zone and entering the forbidden bikini bottom.

Negative space (and blank panels!) is truly useful for comics, and I need to learn to use that more rather than filling every panel with details. You get pages done faster when you have less to draw, especially if you don't NEED to draw it, DOUBLE ESPECIALLY if it fits the mood. Such as waking up. You ain't seein' SHIT first thing in the morning.

The idea for this chapter came from a drawing I did where Ollie n' Basile had swapped outfits. So I needed a reason for them to swap outfits. Easy. Basile can't find his clothes after a regretful night of sex and steals Ollie's clothes. Thus Ollie is left with nothing (he only has one pair of clothes he wears for the entire week, much like a cartoon character) and manages to dig out Basile's oversized shirt.

The clothing swap is a good opportunity to emphasize their different body types and fashion sense. Short lil' Ollie likes oversized clothes - but even some of that is too small for Basile's big boobies. Yet Ollie has much wider hips and ass than Basile's completely flat booty. I don't think Ollie has worn a suit jacket or button up intentionally before... maybe to church when he was a kid and his mom dressed him.

Also, I feel the need to emphasize that Basile's hair is naturally quite curly, and what you see in his standard suit-n-tie outfit is the result of sticky icky gel. Cartoon characters don't just wake up in their outerwear! Unless you're Bret Michaels and you wear your bandanna to bed while you're in a car crash coma.

And here we see Basile squeezing into one of Ollie's 3XL hoodies. Clothing sizes are messed up. Just 2 inches difference makes it too tight to breathe?!

Rice cooker, weenies, bok choy, and eggs should be a staple of any college kid's diet. Don't matter if you're Asian or not.

Something I like to play with in the fake gay relationships I write, is mixing some of the traditionally "gender role" expectations. Post-coitus, Basile must perform the walk of shame like any lowly sorority girl, clothing her naked body with last night's mistake. Ollie is also clingy over his new-found "girlfriend". The obsessive behavior is associated more with women, but finding feelings for your one-night stand seems to be associated more with men.

None of it matters of course, is the point! People are people, and it's just funny to see what others expect of you because of the junk they think you're packing.

Ollie busts in with his part of the clothing swap! Walking all the way from his dorm to school, with nothing but wet socks on?! Disgusting. No wonder he has no GF! Please note that this is not a class that Ollie is ever in. He usually gets to sleep in since he intentionally scheduled all his classes after noon.

Basile did not bring his jacket to Ollie's dorm. But trust me, Ollie found it. He remembers where Basile left it in the classroom last night.

It ain't a comic drawn by me unless I do the ol "grab-n-choke-the-chicken" pose. Ollie, and all other Stupid idiot man-child scouts, are made for physical slapstick. Squidward and Spongebob can do mutually assured destruction! Just remember to balance it a bit heavier on the side of Squidward abuse.

AUTHOR'S NOTE IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTES: Don't hurt anyone IRL! Not their necks and not their feelings! My comics are incredibly realisitic morality tales of course.

I have a lot of fun sloppily aping Jim Steranko and Jack Kirby's black and white inking. I like to fill space up, readability be damned! It's fun to just keep slapping your pen on the paper!

The college kids are indeed college kids. Basile is at that age where he can no longer envision age demographics. Are Minions appropriate for 4 yr olds or 24 yr olds? Who knows. Everyone under the age of 30 is a tiny baby man. Including the one 45 year old taking this college course.

And this is where I took a little break to figure out how this was gonna end. We got the sex scene out of the way, we got a lil' slapstick... but now what?! Ollie gonna blab and Basile gonna lose his job? This is something I spend a lot of time think emoji-ing about with the student/teacher dynamic. Most of the time, this ain't gonna end up good ya know? Can't keep the story and characters in this state of suspense for a long period of time, the conceit is inherently ephemeral!! It's all fake and gay, but I need to keep my own suspension of disbelief in check just a lil' in order to keep writing it. Six months later....

'Xit' door? I musta inked over something and not noticed.

Comics are not animation, but I cannot help but draw a couple of key-frames to denote character movement. I've always been a lot happier drawing poses than doing subtle ease-in-ease-out animation. This is why I draw comics instead of animating, even if drawing multiple figures in the same panel confuses some folks as to why there are ninja jutsu clones. Plus, I don't gotta find voice acting ;)

One of my solutions to that "suspension of disbelief" problem I mentioned at the end of Chapter 2, is to keep ramping up the stupid shit and try to just have fun! Who cares if the tonal shift is jarring! The characters used to be drawn as 10 heads tall yaoi figures, and now they're flying through the air in chibi form? Good. This isn't a realistic world, it's HEIGHTENED REALISM. Something like that. And heightened realism means Ollie surviving the ingestion of cleaning products. Thank you Shane for your janitorial knowledge, for helping me fill in the environment of these scenes.

How do we keep the setting consistent since I'm filling it in with mostly black? We keep the fumes going through these panels to connect them to the previous panels! They're in the same place that Ollie's been drankin' Fabuloso (the forbidden Jarrito).

Basile plays the part in my brain that's questioning "what's the POINT of this story". And Ollie plays the good cop that's like "LET'S JUST HAVE FUN DRAWING UWU". As always, my dankest yaoi is ADHD fucking depression up the butt. Yaoi is just a great way to practice self-therapy.

This is me thinking out loud about how the OTHER student/teacher AU with the blackmail wouldn't work out longterm. Can Ollie make it werk?!!

Back in da dorm again, I cannae help but draw the obvious squid. And I have to prove that this story is connected to chapter 1 by re-drawing Ollie in that older style.

Ollie's outfit is awful chaos and 90% of it's formed from my own wardrobe. Especially the fannypack. Can't steal my money if you have to touch my ASS and be GAY by touching my ASS to get it. Wish I had those Minion shoes though.

Even for the time period of this comic in 2010-ish, Ollie's music taste is a little outdated... but I'm sure he'll influence Basile to love the CLASSICS of the Ying Yang Twins.

This restaurant is based on a real place in San Francisco, famous to tourists and children for their candied chicken. My memory has latched onto that place for a long time, because it relates to the Metalocalypse quote about "Chickens that tastes like candy". Now that's ADHD brain! I do not remember if it actually looks like that inside. I draw vibes-based backgrounds, not accurate ones!!!

The way different people interpret Ollie's actions and character is interesting! Some people think that he's intentionally torturing Basile, and manipulating him to get what he wants. Like free car rides. Very evil Ollie. Some people think Ollie's too stupid to do anything and doesn't get anything he wants intentionally other than by pure chance. Whaddya think?

"Cockalorem" was a word that I asked Shane to find for this dialogue. "Bonobo-dicked" came from me becoming obsessed with apes after the Ancestors video game came out. Those bonobos do be kinda crazy, but their idea of solving conflict through penis fencing is pretty sound.

I think Ollie's genuine in that he's okay with just being friends. It's just too bad the whole "had sex with my professor" thing sours the relationship with Basile a LOT. People gonna talk, weird tension. Wish you coulda started over, huh?

Who's the sir and who's the wife? I think they're both each other's wives!

Something that I very vaguely touch upon with my depictions of Basile is some form of addiction and dependency. Whether it's literal substance dependency, like lil nudges at Basile being dependent on alcohol (harder drugs too in other stories!) for small respites of numbness, or emotional dependency. That's one reason he lets Ollie hang around, no matter how much distaste he has. Dude has no friends now! Stoic men turn into mush when you hit them in their fee fees.

Hey, dig that splatter texture though! I wasn't getting the texture I wanted with IRL ink spatter and toothbrush, because of the small 5.5x8.5 size of the pages. Digital is fine too.

Basile's like a wine mom who can't hold her alcohol... drinking away her lonely nights watching soap operas over boxed red wine. I've said that so many times! I always repeat myself! But yeah, Ollie's having some second thoughts about his choice in attraction... I mean, Ollie may be a real stinky catch but Basile is not emotionally well LOL. No one is a great guy, y'know? Ya get to know someone for REAL and you get to figure out if you LIKE-LIKE them.

I like to mirror pages from the beginning of the book :3c Something that caught my imagination when I was reading the Tiger chapter of Watchmen as a kid. More scraggly backgrounds drawn from memory and VIBES... more reason to warp that perspective! Nothing is real!!!

Door design from memory. Basile's room is based on Lana's empty ass depressing square living box in the "High on The Beach" video. Barely any furniture to speak of. Shit on the floor. Mattress on the floor. This was not meant to be a permanent living situation. But he's stuck here.

The end of the book is a GREAT time to figure out how to use negative, undetailed space better as abstract shapes! Dig that empty white hole that's Basile's head, y'know? And all those angular fabric folds that have no basis in reality? Yowza! This is why you can't just wait until you're Ready to draw a comic. It'll be inconsistent cuz you'll be learning while drawing. Cool!

Now that fortune cookie is the MONEY SHOT of this whole comic. So succulent! So round! Encased in an air bubble, never to be touched....

Shane asked me what my favorite panel from this comic is, and I'll say the fortune cookie and the ~chu~ kiss. I'm fond of noses smushing into each other during yaoi kisses. The untold perils of having vastly different nose shapes. Those curls on Basile's head look pretty swell and cinnamon-roll-like too! His gel is loosening up, he's becoming a natural woman. It's symbolic or somethin', ya know?

Don't worry Basile, I can't read Chinese above a pre-school level either. That's why I didn't write the fortune. Basile and YOU, the reader, will have to tell me what sorta good luck he got!

Dirty ass house pieced from memory! Sidewalk cracks and weeds growing through the streets. No one takes care of this place!

Hopefully Ollie's phone helps the viewer place the date in their head. Unless they're too young to have ever seen Facebook's old layout. This is an account Basile had to make for work, that he never logs into. Shoot your shot into those unread DMs, Ollie!

THA! END! Zigzagoons ate my flesh! Actually walking the distance from the restaurant to Basile's home may have taken an hour.. now how's Ollie gonna get back across the Oakland bridge?! He can walk too right? Maybe sleep on Basile's doorstep? In any case, this concludes this particular timeline for Ollie. I don't really do sequels? All that I wanted to say is right here. They'll have more adventures in other settings :D

Looking over these is always a mix of cringe and warmth. I can do better! I can draw better! I can think better! But damn that do kinda look good though? Good job me. Having finally made n' printed this comic in 2022 cemented that these characters are MINE!!! There's just something different about having an open and closed story about 'em, compared to the vague concept of having OCs floating around in tumblr tags not doing anything in particular. I have boomer brain, I love having physical media to remind me what's real. I hope you enjoyed this comic and my old man rambles!