Lani Amalu

From Candypedia
Lani Amalu
GenderFemale
Age22
Birthday1986
SpeciesCat
OccupationRoseville High School CPII English teacher
DebutEnter High School, page 5
September 10, 2006 (2006-09-10)

Lani Amalu is an English teacher at Roseville High School, known to her students as Miss Amalu and to Paulo simply as Teach. She was twenty years old when Lucy and Paulo’s freshman class filed into her room, and she is the grown-up the gang actually likes seeing at the blackboard. She is also the one who has to stand before drawn curtains and tell them Lucy has left the school.

Personality

Miss Amalu is the sort of teacher students brag about having. She treats the first day of a school year like a reunion, hands out fist bumps to the class clown, and cheers her freshmen into next year’s course whether they scraped in or sailed in. She is barely older than her seniors and cheerfully aware of it, and she will make a joke at her own expense before anybody else gets the chance. None of that stops her from being able to quiet a room, though. She just does it with a raised eyebrow rather than a raised voice.

Miss Amalu greets a returning student with the enthusiasm of an old friend.

Lani starts joking about her age almost as soon as she arrives. Her debut in Enter High School takes a single panel, in which she stands before the freshman CP English class and announces that she is their “spunky, surprisingly young, and unusually lenient” English teacher, and Paulo is moved to tears on the spot.[1] The next chapter has her beaming “I’m only twenty!” at the room while Lucy hurls Paulo into the wall behind her.[2] She means the warm part, too. She sends her freshmen off for the summer promising they’ll be even better next year,[3] welcomes her sophomores back like old friends,[4] and the list of homeroom rules on her wall includes “Ms. Amalu is awesome” as rule number five.[5]

Her familiar stance carries a deliberate echo in Eternal Flame.

Jokes are how she runs a classroom, discipline included. When she catches Paulo bellowing at Abbey in Take Heart, she doesn’t shout back; a stern-but-amused word about civil language is enough to send him slinking to his seat.[6] The same instinct occasionally misfires. In Rain Check she greets a late and apologetic Daisy with a melodramatic sigh about being undervalued, then has to clarify that she was kidding when Daisy takes it to heart.[7]

She can play it straight when it matters, and the class knows the difference. In Breaking Up the curtains are drawn and her eyes are closed before she says a word about Lucy, and nobody mistakes the mood.[8] Veronica later drew her leaning on a student’s desk in the very same stance in Eternal Flame, in the background of a remorseful Mike, and confirmed that the echo was deliberate.[9][10]

Appearance

Call Waiting finds Ms. Amalu perfectly at home in her familiar classroom attire.

Lani is a cat whose short, curly bob sometimes gives way to a bun.[4][11] She dresses like a young teacher who hasn’t quite left college behind. A ruffled lilac blouse worn off the shoulder, paired with a purple skirt or skinny pants, turns up in chapter after chapter.[4][12][13] Veronica has admitted that the outfits she gives teachers tend to become their default, which is why Lani’s wardrobe stays put.[14] She also wears a pendant around her neck, a design Veronica describes as something she doodled up and stuck on.[14] Her signature stance is a hand planted on her hip, whether she is introducing herself, sending students to their seats or delivering bad news.[1][6][8]

Significant events

Lani turns up on the gang’s very first day of high school in Enter High School, as a cutaway gag introducing herself to a delighted Paulo and an indifferent Lucy.[1] She stays a background presence for the rest of freshman year, chirping her age while Paulo gets pitched across the room in A Difficult Choice[2] and handing out the results in Moving On that tell Lucy she has scraped into CP English II.[3] Veronica’s commentary drops a hint that some English teachers teach more than one year.[3]

Miss Amalu delivers the news nobody in class is ready to hear in Breaking Up.

By sophomore year she has the gang together in homeroom. She welcomes the class back in A Distance Apart, to Mike’s open disbelief that someone so young could be on staff.[4] Pillow Talk finally puts her name on a poster in her homeroom, and also shows her running Environmental Club in Paulo’s memory of Jasmine’s overloaded schedule.[5][15] In Call Waiting her lesson is derailed when David texts Mike an obscene picture, and she ends the chapter holding the buzzing phone.[13][16] In Breaking Up she stuns the class with the news that Lucy has left the school.[17][18] By Take Heart she is back on form, presiding happily over the friendship-rose delivery and chasing Paulo back to his seat.[19][6]

Her later appearances are quieter. On Lucy’s birthday in Unwanted Gift she exchanges warm smiles with Lucy in class.[11] In Eternal Flame she smiles from the front of the room while Mike stews over what he said to Lucy.[9] After Christmas, Rain Check has her leading a discussion of the Christmas-break reading and fumbling a joke on a late Daisy.[7]

Major relationships

Paulo

Even Paulo’s romantic emergencies have to give way to class.

Paulo has been Miss Amalu’s biggest fan since the day she announced how lenient she planned to be, and she returns the affection without indulging the crush. He wept with joy at her introduction in Enter High School,[1] and by the first day of sophomore year in A Distance Apart the two of them have a routine. He yells “Hey, Teach!!”, she winks and meets his fist bump with “What’s up, big guy?”, and Mike can only gape.[4] Later that year, freshly humiliated by Jessica and Rachel, Paulo watches her whistle past in that blouse and starts musing about older women, until David shouts him down.[12] Oliver’s commentary confirms that the taste for older women sticks around, even if, for now, that is as far as it goes.[12]

Miss Amalu puts Paulo in his place without dropping the banter. In Take Heart she catches him screaming at Abbey about making out and materialises behind him, hands on hips, to ban making out in class and pack everyone off to their seats. Her sly follow-up, an invitation for the class to “remain practitioners of civil language”, is aimed squarely at his swearing, and he slinks away ashamed while Daisy and Abbey giggle about it.[6] The noncanonical BCI strips play the same tune. In Ships Ahoy, Season Two he shows off a vocabulary word and asks whether she’ll go out with him now. She tells him “Not a chance”.[20] In Candied Bacon she confiscates his heirloom sword over a wail of protest, on the grounds that weapons aren’t allowed on school grounds.[21][22]

Lucy

Lucy is less demonstrative than Paulo. She sits through the famous introduction with her eyes shut,[1] but soon calls her English class “really fun”.[23] At the end of the year in Moving On, it is Lani who hands over the paper showing she has made CP English II, “Just barely..”, along with a bright promise that next year will be even better.[3] When Mike asks who on earth this teacher is in A Distance Apart, Lucy’s entire review is that she taught English last year and is twenty, and that no, it probably shouldn’t be possible.[4]

A few months later Lani becomes the person who has to explain Lucy’s absence, without knowing much about it herself. In Breaking Up she stands before drawn curtains, rests a hand on her desk with Lucy’s seat sitting empty, closes her eyes, and asks everybody to sit down because she has an announcement.[8] Then she says it plainly: “Lucy will no longer be attending this school.”[17] Mike wonders what happened without taking in the rest of her announcement.[18] Veronica later confirmed that Lani was never told Lucy was in the hospital, only that she was transferring, and that this was all she passed on to the class.[24] The noncanonical BCI story Grave Concern revisits the classroom announcement with Lucy’s death in place of a transfer, and that version stays inside its own what-if.[25]

When Lucy comes back, Lani is quietly on her side. On her birthday in Unwanted Gift, right after she tells Mike the two of them aren’t friends, the bell rings and Lucy gives her teacher a shy smile. Lani answers with a reassuring one of her own while Mike lays his head on his desk.[11]

Minor relationships

Mike

Mike never had her as a freshman, so she hits him fresh on the first day of sophomore year in A Distance Apart. He wants to know who that is, then whether “She’s a teacher?!” is even possible, and it takes Lucy to fill him in.[4] The phone incident is even less dignified. In Call Waiting David texts him an obscene picture mid-lesson, and Mike wails loud enough to make her jump. After class, Paulo sends another from David’s phone, and Mike discovers his is missing. The last panel belongs to Lani, holding the buzzing phone and blushing heavily.[13][16] In Eternal Flame she is a calm figure at the front of the room while he wrestles with his guilt over Lucy.[9]

Daisy

Daisy takes Miss Amalu’s joke rather more seriously than intended.

Daisy takes one of Miss Amalu’s jokes far more seriously than intended. In Rain Check, Daisy bursts in late and apologising and Lani, hand on hip, waves it off. She then clutches her chest and sighs, “I know I’m undervalued by my students,” and Daisy stares back so guilt-ridden that Lani starts sweating and has to spell out that it was a joke before moving on to the Christmas reading.[7]

Quotes

Hi, I’m your spunky, surprisingly young, and unusually lenient English teacher! Lani Amalu, introducing herself to the freshmen in Enter High School

I’m only twenty! Lani Amalu, as Paulo hits the wall behind her in A Difficult Choice

What’s up, big guy? Lani Amalu, fist-bumping Paulo on the first day back in A Distance Apart

Lucy will no longer be attending this school. Lani Amalu, to a silent classroom in Breaking Up

And as we do so, let us naturally remain practitioners of civil language~ Lani Amalu, putting Paulo’s mouth on notice in Take Heart

I know I’m undervalued by my students. Lani Amalu, joking at a very guilty Daisy in Rain Check

Trivia

  • Veronica based her on her own junior-year English teacher, who was “really young, really bubbly, really pretty” and once nominated her for Student of the Month.[1]
  • The students call her Miss Amalu or Teach; “Lani” appears in author commentary and BCI captions such as the Ships Ahoy strips.[7][4][16][20]
  • Her surname appears in the art on the Rules of Homeroom poster in Pillow Talk, which happens to be BCB’s first fully digital page.[5]
  • Veronica rewrote the dialogue on the last page of Call Waiting so the photo on Mike’s phone couldn’t be read as David’s own, since that would have Lani looking at something illegal.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Chapter 21: Enter High School, page 5
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 22: A Difficult Choice, page 2
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Chapter 40: Moving On, page 3
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Chapter 50: A Distance Apart, page 6
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 4
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Chapter 81: Take Heart, page 27
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 122: Rain Check, page 2
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 4
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapter 110: Eternal Flame, page 8
  10. ↑ “Ask response on Lani’s repeated pose”. 2021-05-24.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Chapter 107: Unwanted Gift, page 6
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 54: Back and Forth, page 18
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Chapter 62: Call Waiting, page 6
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 “Ask response on Lani’s pendant and teacher outfits”. 2014-08-11.
  15. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 16
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Chapter 62: Call Waiting, page 7
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 5
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 6
  19. ↑ Chapter 81: Take Heart, page 22
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Ships Ahoy, Season Two, page 2 🔒 (members only)
  21. ↑ Candied Bacon, page 7 🔒 (members only)
  22. ↑ Candied Bacon, page 8 🔒 (members only)
  23. ↑ Chapter 22: A Difficult Choice, page 1
  24. ↑ “Ask response on what Lani knew about Lucy’s departure”. 2018-01-05.
  25. ↑ Grave Concern, page 2 🔒 (members only)
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