Week 54! (Patreon)

So the last two in this series of "relevant" Randomly-Generated Characters are going to be the only two teachers that have thus far appeared in Furthia High. In stark contrast to the Old Canon of Furthia High, where all six of Kale's teachers were introduced (albeit very briefly usually) and established, the New Canon had very little actual classroom attendance shown, with most settings being between classes, at special functions like dances, and outside the school altogether, only really dealing with a classroom for Arc 11.

Now, the reasons for this if I can remember right are two-fold, probably. One, the vast chunk of the Old Canon dealt with Kale's first day of school, and thus attending and setting up a bunch of his classes and such. I wanted to do something different with the New Canon in a lot of ways, and I suppose one of them was to focus less on Kale's classes and more on Kale's social life and overarching story, and thus classes themselves weren't as much a focus. The other reason is... well, classrooms are kind of a big bitch to draw. You have all those desks that need to be aligned correctly and with the correct perspective, and all those desks need to be filled with students unless you really get creative with camera angles. It's a gigantic timesink that doesn't really fit well with a webcomic unless you are lightning fast, which I have absolutely never been. That's probably the bigger reason for abandoning actual classes as much, in the interest of cutting time as much as possible.

BUT ANYWAY, onto Mr. Lewis, our first introduced teacher, who is a chipmunk. Now, unlike the teachers in the Old Canon, who were mostly either stereotypes or something unique, both Mr. Lewis and next week's focus are based loosely on some of my actual high school teachers (or at least my vague memories of them at the time, which are even vaguer now a decade later).

Mr. Lewis is a teacher in the social studies department and is somewhat a combination of two of the teachers I had in that field. One was my Psychology teacher, who gave tough material and had strict requirements for studying and grades, but presented it in such a way that it was interesting and fun (and made me interested enough to pursue a degree in Psychology). The other taught a couple of different classes, civics and history and stuff (I read and loved Voltaire's Candide in it, I remember) and was far more laid-back, relatable, down-to-earth, and easy-going, kinda letting you do what you want if you did the work and socializing with you and stuff. These two were probably my favorite high school teachers, so out of a combination of the two came Mr. Lewis, who is simultaneously over-indulgent and stringent on the difficulty and length of his assignments, but also trying to be upbeat, relatable, and friendly to his students.

Now the most interesting thing about Mr. Lewis is probably his name, which comes from ANOTHER teacher I had... who was... a really bad teacher. He taught Algebra, and he would spend a lot of classes either giving assignments at the beginning and then reading the newspaper for the rest of it, basically letting us all do whatever the hell we wanted, or he would... well, get angry. I remember distinctly one of my friends getting screamed at, like literally screamed at and his desk grabbed, because he wouldn't shut up once. It was pretty scary. Pretty sure he was fired at some point while I was still there. I really dunno why I picked that name for the chipmunk. Cause it was simple? I dunno, the fictional one would never do that cause, like, seriously. S'fucked up.