Ships Ahoy, Season Four

Ships Ahoy, Season Four
Published	February 22, 2021 (2021-02-22)
Page count	14
Major characters	Paulo, David, Lucy, Madison, Rachel, Katie
Minor characters	Teddy, Daisy’s mom, Justin, Molly, James, Abbey, Stacy, Matt, Jessica, Sandy, Augustus, Jordan
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Read in the BCI Members’ Library

Ships Ahoy, Season Four is a Bittersweet Club International-exclusive anthology of fourteen one-page vignettes, each built around a different pairing from the cast. They contradict one another by design: some are couples the comic actually has, some are couples it never will, and some are jokes about the idea of the pairing itself.

Pairings

Daisy’s mom’s cure for an awful day.

1. Daisy’s parents: Teddy trudges home after an awful day, and Daisy’s mom greets him with a hug.
2. David and Katie: Katie has a bad hair day, and David steps in to help.
3. Justin and Molly: Molly turns up with a whole box of Justin’s favorite cookies, which immediately makes him suspicious.
4. Paulo and James: James pays his coworker a compliment mid-shift.
5. Abbey and Stacy: Abbey and Stacy are happily clearing a dungeon quest together when Katie wanders over to ask what they are doing.
6. Matt and David: David laughs off Paulo’s suspicion that he and Rachel were dating, and Matt responds with a compliment.
7. Madison and Lucy: Madison follows Lucy and confronts her about Jessica.
8. Jessica and Rachel: Rachel recounts her dating history to Jessica.
9. Paulo and Sandy: Sandy has just won something, and Paulo has a modeling tip or two to offer.
10. David and Rachel: David tries a pickup line on Rachel, dog to dog.
11. Paulo and Emma: Paulo trips as they pass, and Emma worries that she bumped into him again.
12. Augustus and Jordan: Jordan practices basketball while Augustus watches, then Augustus tutors him over his schoolbooks.
13. Paulo and Madison: Madison berates Paulo as immature and disgusting.
14. Lucy x OC: Lucy sits alone at a table with a hot drink.

Trivia & observations

• The Ships Ahoy strips were drawn for Weekly Roundup, the Bittersweet Candy Bowl newsletter, and first went out to subscribers between 2018 and 2021. They were later collected into seasons and remastered for the Bittersweet Club International Members’ Library.
• The strips are captioned Ships Ahoy! #40 through #53, and Ships Ahoy, Season Five picks the count up at #54.
• In Field Day, Katie asks David for his beauty secrets, and he answers “Ovaries”. In this vignette, David styles Katie’s hair himself.
• In Popularity Contest, Stacy’s attempt to hide her gaming hobby from Katie leads to a guild fight. The vignette likewise has Stacy panic when Katie approaches her and Abbey during a game.
• Matt’s “Mr. Tall, Dark, & Handsome” echoes Daisy’s description of him in Take Heart.
• The Jessica and Rachel vignette presents the longtime best friends as a romantic pairing. In the main comic, Jessica dates Madison, while Rachel is her longtime best friend and comforts her when she is distressed.

Related chapters

• PDA: The vignette revisits this chapter’s confrontation: Madison challenges Lucy over Jessica, but Lucy hears her and answers back. In the main comic, Lucy does not hear Madison because Madison is speaking toward her deaf ear.
• Track Meet: The Paulo and James vignette shows them in matching Burger-Tron uniforms about fifteen months before the main comic identifies James as Paulo’s coworker there. Track Meet also marks James’s first named, speaking role in the main comic.
• Boy Toy: Emma’s worried “again” recalls this chapter’s cinema scene, where she and Paulo collide and he follows the mishap with a flirtatious line. The vignette has Emma once more worry that she knocked him down.