#billyquizboy

as posted on April 21, 2021:

↑ original 2021 post's art— yuck

The best supporting characters from any show (with most tenuous reasons to exist in that show) have a 15-year gap in their backstory. Met sometime before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Had some laughs. Lost an eye/hand; gained a memory wipe/an Airstream trailer. Suddenly, we're at a yard sale in 2004.

↑ first anniversary update, still ugly

Which either means they did nothing for 15 years (possible, even likely) or following the spirit of "everything interesting happens off camera," I theorize they had tons of era-specific hustles hitting all the major topics in the zeitgeist (as you do), leading to implausible shaggy dog adventures*— fame, money, power gained and lost— always leaving them back where they started: stuck in a shitty trailer in the desert, arguing.

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-14 years wearing the same clothes every day and not doing anything in particular?" And bingo-bango!— reset to proper canon.

*(Because this is the INTERNET I want to emphasize that none of these "adventures" involve them FUCKING EACH OTHER. Jeez!) It's the perfect '90s premise. "Two weird slackers adrift in Middle America alternately hurling abuse and pop-culture references at each other" is the ur-narrative for 99% of Gen-X media There is my pitch for the spin-off/"expanded universe"/ novel series/Little Golden Book... A pitch I make to no one... house-bound in quarantine lockdown in total isolation... Am I even gonna deny sketching out year-by-year episode arc breakdowns (fully illustrated)?