BCB — Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Probably James lovebombed him before quickly dropping him to obsess over a shiny new boy, possibly Mike.

I hate this oblivious anime-ass dialogue.
Whatever, it's like Taeshi took personal offense to everyone saying James was the better option for Mike and is course correcting by turning him into another anti-Mike beatstick, or planned that from the start just for more emotional torture porn. Fuck you I'm just gonna ship MikeXFelix now.

Given what happened with David, that's a pretty likely pattern. I'm sure it will do wonders for Mike's mental health to find out he was just the latest in a line of boy crazes.

Hmmm, I think a no-bullshit-allowed person would make Mike good, someone that tells him to cut the self flagelation and is very VERY clear about what is expected of him and his relationship. Someone that won't have him walking on eggshells or have mood swings after every breath, he really could use someone that won't shower him in praise but will listen to him and be honest and have no hidden motives or traumas. Mike needs certainty more than anything else I would say, would be a huge upgrade from BPD cat, Phone cat, Speed lust cat and BPD cat but orange

What about Sue

What about her?

His real initial purpose was to be Paulo's casual gay interest, a literal "boy-next-door", who would have forced him to challenge his hyper-masculinity and need to seem like a macho all the time and maybe even… I don't know, grows as a character!
You may argue, but I refuse to think otherwise because it's immensely easier for me to live believing that at least for a moment there were hope.

What about her?

It has been established that Sue is firmly in Lucy's corner. All of this coulda have been done by just having him sit at Abbey's table.

someone that tells him to cut the self flagelation and is very VERY clear about what is expected of him and his relationship. Someone that won't have him walking on eggshells or have mood swings after every breath, he really could use someone that won't shower him in praise but will listen to him and be honest and have no hidden motives or traumas.

Anon, what you describe is pretty much just a good/great friend.

That was definitely his original purpose, but then taeshi got a terrible idea as usual

It's like we don't even NEED Mike anymore wtih you on the team!

holy fuck how is this dialogue real? The memes are real. You guys were right. This really is just gonna be David mogging on Mike and Mike losing another thing in his life because fuck it, Taeshi fiat. Am I the only one noticing how out of character this is for James?He was supposed to be the #1 Mike glazer after Daisy got over him I guess and now he's throwing him under the bus like nothing. This will all culminate in Mike crying at Lucy how he's worthless without her. This comic is the gift that keeps on giving.

Anon, what you describe is pretty much just a good/great friend

Yeah, he could use one of those

If it makes you feel better you could say he's only getting with Daisy because she's James with tits

I checked the BCB discord and they're talking about how James did nothing wrong because he can't read Mike's mind, and this is just a normal friendly joke to make

Things are looking pretty grim for Mike.

Yeah I remember back in high school my friends made jokes about how worthless I was and how they didn't need me on any of the teams I would be a part of. Good times. inb4 James is just being passive-aggressive over being rejected and he slowly but surely becomes a male Lucy.
Also you're on the same team ya retards!

taking whatever the cult says seriously

They called Lucy kissing Mike rape and Daisy smooching him manipulation, any character could appear, shot him in the head and they would find a way to make it Mike's fault

James is just being passive-aggressive over being rejected and he slowly but surely becomes a male Lucy

Nuh, he seems to be written extremely obvious, which is strange since he was hyper-aware about Mike's relationship with Sandy this one time. He gets compared to Daisy a lot, but I think there's some David in him too.

Amaya is a shinning light in a sea of darkness. Hopefully she'll continue to stay far away from the silliness and drama that is the main cast.

Or that she'll find happiness with a character I can self insert as. That would be nice too.

James is just shallow and slutty

I don't know anon, I wouldn't find it weird for the dude that just went and kissed a guy in a relationship hoping to steal him not to also do stupid jokes, he's kind of an airhead. Pray he doesn't become a meme character too

Taeshi is a female and doesn't understand how males talk to each other, what else is new?

James got rewritten as a shallow flighty obsessive lovebomber type when he jumped tracks from Mike to David. This present nonsense is just an extension of that premise.

I think there's some David in him too

There will be soon

Edit out the highlights from Mike's eyes

To be fair in 2008 joking about rape suicide and being racist between friends was all perfectly normal ribbing
I can see why zoomers would think James dropped Mike like a bag of rocks but I'll reserve my judgments for now until James flat out says "I don't want to be friends anymore, Mike." But I doubt he'd be petty enough or have such a sudden shift in development to say it.

He still felt some reflexive hope upon seeing James. That should be dead and buried now.

Yeah, pattern recognition is hard for us boomers.

The problem is it doesn't have the tone of ribbing at all. Ribbing would be directed at Mike himself and teasing or mocking him about how bad he sucks. James seems to barely be aware Mike can hear him, he's just glazing David. It doesn't even sound like a joke.

This isn't ribbing, if it was ribbing James would be looking at Mike with a snarky expression or something, this is Taeshi writing him as oblivious to an unbelievable degree due to Davidlust.

I suppose this is supposed to fit with how James completely ignored Paulo, which was portrayed as incidental carelessness rather than a callous choice. Once again Mike fell for a mentally defective cat.

Alright, see it this way, that kind of joke you make to your friend group and people you know dish the same kind of shit, saying it to the new guy is still a cunt move even if you yell "it was just a prank bro" after

Once again Mike fell for a mentally defective cat.

Yeah nah, Mike just seems to attract people with mental issues at this point.

Incalculably based James moment

Maybe there's just a lot of lead in Roseville's water supply.

If I were Mike I would've responded "Psh, says the noob who recruited me. Why are you even a track member if you get raped in racing games AND real races? Lick my balls faggot."

Too long, you get interrupted and laughed at after the first sentence. Keep it sharp and simple.

That sounds like something Paulo would say back in the day. But now he recognizes the word faggot is homophobic and would never dare say it. Not without breaking down five seconds later, crying in apology.

Oh who am I kidding, Paulo would cry no matter what.

I'm sure you would have, tough guy.

You know, despite everything, I think there was something approximating "cute" in Mucy way back when. The idea of being with a girl whom you've known for a while has the same interests and hobbies with you, engages in friendly banter and mildly harsh words that you both know you can take, and is quite competitive with you but to a healthy degree where it never feels outright antagonistic. I would be Ryan Goslinging if I didn't know any better. It makes me want to check out romantic stories with genuinely good tsundere relationships, if such a thing even exists.

Mucy could have ended up cute if Lucy had actually improved as a person and proved herself to Mike, who likewise learned how to stand up for himself.

It also wasn't all that cool to be a gay guy back then. It would have also been social suicide for James if it got out that he pushed Mike off the track team because he didn't want to be a freak with James.

I think what made me start to feel frustrated about this comic was how Lucy kissed Mike after confrontation yet she didn't act any nicer to him and if anything in the chapters following they'd act in a more vitriolic manner. Little did I know it would just get worse.

Summer Camp Island lookin' crybaby bitch.

The only way Mucy could have been good is if that BCI where they get together after confrontation was canon

Man I wish that wasn't locked behind a paywall. This sounds quite literally what 12 year old-me was asking for way back when.

Which one is that?

Come to think of it, when was the last time the comic called shitting on Mike an unambiguously bad thing? I'm surprised that James' personal retardation isn't getting treated as funny or even a forgivable excuse.

he doesn't own a copy of The Library

I'd post one for you but my computer's at the shop right now

Ironically enough James tells Mike to stop beating himself up over being a bad person then ends up calling him worthless 6 chapters later

someone better hurry before Nutcase finds out

If you want to make a point, then you should post a real page. That's the bare minimum.

Anon Babble thread this week?

It's Another Kiss. Am I going to be banned for posting it?

So this is James, now? A tard that shits on mike "Obliviously" while glazing David? Is she doing this because people had high hopes he'd actually be a good friend to him?

Taeshi decided to play the physical abuse aspect more seriously and then later on, once Lucy tried to kill herself, it left a giant elephant in the room that can't be addressed like it should because in universe mike would never be able to come back from it socially. On top of that Lucy never really improved. She just found a Mike replacement in Augustus

I know what the BCI is called. It's locked behind a paywall though.

Am I going to be banned for posting it?

Only if Nutcase is lurking here I suppose (he might be given that he has no job).
Yeah that sounds about right. It's the perfect storm, a combination of multiple factors including BPD, the comic being a form of therapy, Taeshi's only frames of reference for narrative storytelling being old anime she watched as a kid, and just plain poor writing.

I think we're gonna need one to blow off some steam.

Error: This image cannot be uploaded because it is the subject of a copyright infringement claim. Please refrain from posting it.

Alas, anon, it's not your day today.

damn wtf I knew Taeshi was homophobic but these stereotypes are getting out of hand
Well fuck time to Heinz myself

Catbox that shit and Suitcase can eat my ass.

Anything to save anon from getting impregnated py Paulo and then dissapearing for 9 months.

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Based

It could have been so simple. But, then the comic couldn't be used as a cashcow and milked until it was raw and bleeding.

pic

Lucy seemed pretty damn reluctant to mention her ketchup kersplat outside of guilt tripping fuel.

holy mother of based thank you now I can read the first 14 chapters and then this and pretend like I read the whole thing, and ignore the absolute shit storm that would come afterwards.
So, she's completely in-character.

Is it bad that it isn't surprising that James went from someone put in to basically tell the audience, "Mike isn't a bad guy! See!" only to basically abandon that not long after and now James is just one of the usuals that put him down.

She tries to make him oblivious to it but it doesn't work because James was the whole reason Mike ended up on the team. So now feeling like he's easily replacable by David is just going to make him feel even worse.

Can she just not resist shitting on Mike for too long?

This could actually work. While the others would feel awkward about her making jokes about it, for her, it can be a way to cope with it and not let it grip her for the rest of her life.

So, she's completely in-character

In-character would be her putting on airs and pretending to be a mature enlightened adult who wistfully looks back upon the mistakes her her youth (see her conversation with Sue). She'd drop that if Abbey seriously pissed her the fuck off, of course, and out would come the guilt mallet.

Is it bad that it isn't surprising

No, what that means is that you are blessed with basic pattern recognition. Mike is never, ever lifted up unless Taeshi plans to drop him from a greater height for a harder fall.

She's obviously been building a Mike depression arc. With any luck it might become a Mike suicide arc

basic pattern recognition

Bro is psychoanalyzing a kid's comic

Impressionable children should not be allowed to read this slop

Can she just not resist shitting on Mike for too long?

We both know the answer to that question anon. If she stopped shitting on Mike, the comic would end.

I wonder if Mike will not be allowed to be happy until he is broken and reshaped into a "worthy" partner for Lucy. And I fear what monstrosity such a character must be in Taeshi's eyes.

James rape?

"I'd rather fuck Felix than you anyway"

implying james isnt the one doing the rape

PleasehaveMikeandFelixhangouttogetherPleasehaveMikeandFelixhangouttogether

Submissive, docile, hollowly nodding along with whatever bipolar delusion comes out of her mouth, denying their own self-agency and opinions in favor of hers, catering to her mercurial whims like a slave, staying when she says stay, leaving when she says go, acting as a yes-men and cheerleader, displaying proper amounts of abject self-loathing and deference for ever dreaming of being attracted to or desiring someone who isn't her.

But at the same time, they must be assertive, dominant, masculine, unwilling to put up with her bullshit, selfish, taking what they want from her when they want it, creating a rigid structure she must adhere by way of emotional or physical threats.

So in a way, Mike needs to be no less bi-polar than Lucy but also on a schedule that complements her own mood swings.

Yup, like last thread discussing mike really is just talking about a battered house wife. In this context, she wants lucy to have a: manly assertive submissive house(wife)bitch alphamale.

I just want friends who don’t want to fuck me!

no I don’t care that the rest of the track team are my friends I’m SAD that the twink moved on!

Pick a lane Mike.

FELIX TOPPING MIKE

I'll draw them banging for the Anon Babble thread later.

Said friend just talked shit and not in a friendlly way. If he was just glazing david I'd be fine but he is being a cunt.

Precisely. The 'ideal' Lucy boyfriend looks like early Mike and early Paulo sharing a body and having their personalities mashed together in a way that doesn't cancel out or subdue personality traits that would oppose each other.

Mike met him thinking the wooing was James' default personality. Give the guy a break.

more fag content

excellent
also is there anywhere I can read the fan comic of them

Yes but neiter forms of either character exist atm cause:

Made one pissed off for months in universe cause friend group is a shit but made him whine about it and forced him to stick with sandy because...

Castrated the other into a Male Lucy.

Chapter prediction:

Mike visibly crushed James pays more attention to David

tries to slink off at the end of practice without anyone noticing

Felix notices

"Hey Mike, wait up."

"Huh?"

"Let's go hang out somewhere together, you and me."

"Ahaha, it's okay Felix, I'll be fine, really."

Then you won't mind if we're fine together. Come on."

grabs him by the hand to the outdoor bleachers or somewhere isolated

Felix gives the details on how James burned him in the past

"If you need a friend, let me know, alright? As (Captain?) of the club I can't stand by and watch one of our members be unhappy."

"Thanks, Felix. I will."

"Good."

end chapter with the beginning of another false romance as they hold their hands in a handshake

I imagine this team wouldn't be all that good with all the pull James seems to have with who gets in, and what grounds he recruits them on.

I could see Felix assuring Mike that they won't go any further than friends, not because it might not happen but for the team's sake, and that he'll put James on a leash to keep him from sucking David's dick on training time

I predict that Mike will have to give up his ass to Alejandro to save Lucy from being raped and we'll be treated to three whole pages of Mike making agonized facial expressions and crying while being sodomized. But this will have bought enough time for the cavalry (Augustus and others) to burst in and save the day for Lucy, but not Mike who will forever live with the scars of that day. Lucy forgives Mike for cheating on her, and they live happily ever after.

I really, really do not trust her to pull something like that off well. Not at all.
Him not wanting James to fuck him doesn't mean he'd be fine with being shit talked by him.

he'll put James on a leash to keep him from sucking David's dick on training time

Do u mean like he us doing in the comic right now or actually on his knees?

My prediction

Felix: Mike you shouldn’t feel bad because James is a slut-

James: HEY DAVID YOU WON THE RACE BACK IN DATE NIGHT WHICH WAS LIKE A FUCKING MONTH AGO BUT TAESHI FORGOT UNTIL NOW SO I GUESS YOU WON A DATE WITH ME, WANT TO GO SEE THE LAST SHOWING OF THAT FUCKING MOVE

David: Le meme dog line!

Then Mike goes home and sulks

Paulo is now a soggy bitch

Augustus got his balls removed

I half wonder if Taeshi's long game involves domesticating the other boys in Lucy's life to make room for a replacement asshole, i.e. jaded Mike.

Lucy forgives Mike for cheating on her but shoves him aside because he's used goods

Fixed that for you

the most likely outcome

Yes

Still better than Mike "learning" what it's like to be "immediately" abandoned by the light of his life after turning down a relationship. You know, as if he needs help empathizing with Lucy these days.

Flawless punchline delivery.
I really hope so, and that the friendship actually sticks this time.

But it wasn't an immediate thing with Lucy. He found someone else (didn't lucely reject Mike before that?) & she gradually got worse overtime. The James thing does not work as a parallel cause while Mikw rejected James he still wished to be friends with him.however James is strictly being a bad friend for no reason. He has no real prior negative interactions with Mike vs Lucy & mike.

Mike will never be allowed friendship and kindness again until he makes a sufficiently submissive and self-debasing sacrifice, like spreading his cheeks for Alejandro's girth.

And then we can have a full chapter of Paulo and Daisy spying on their date only to find nothing to do about it and instead show for 20 or so pages how little chemistry they have, but ends on Paulo giving Daisy his popcorn so it's akchually very romantic

Hence the quotation marks around "immediately." The scenario only works if Mike receives more blame than is strictly justified, exaggerating his "wrongdoing" against Lucy. It of course ignores that
A) Mike didn't turn right around and date Sandy--in fact, he asked whether or not Lucy was okay with it first
B) He still paid Lucy a ton of attention--so much so that Mike suffered for it
C) You're right, Mike only pulled away because Lucy refused to clean up her act

But Taeshi is anything if unbiased. And guilt-ridden Mike really quibble with another reason to pile on the self-loathing?

when your schoolmates treat you so badly that the local alleyway rapist is a viable alternative for male companionship

Nah my prediction for chapter after this

Paulo finds out and screams at Mike for letting David steal James

Insists that they’re going to tag along to the fucking movie

Afterwards

David: of course me and James aren’t dating! I’m in love with Paulo and Taeshi won’t change that status quo because she thinks Paulo having a big brown Tomoyo is funny!

James: If you want to date me Mike then just bee urself, stick up for yourself and say what you want!

Mike: but I have a girlfriend

And it’ll be a big waste of a chapter, a repeat of the Good Enough-Date Night arc where Mike is now playing Daisy’s role of being sad and wistfully jealous because that’s the only way Taeshi writes relationships.

Paulo already knows that David is James' new thing. He was there when it happened.

Anyway, I think whatever comes next will be far dumber and more out there than such an obvious retread. Like Eternal Flame level bold new frontiers in retardation.

Unironically seems to be Lucy's mentality, at least on a subconscious level. She already pals around with the local almost-rapist.

Paulo and David used to constantly sexually harass her, so it's to be expected.

Fuck when you factor in Taeshi's backstory it makes sense why she'd believe Paulo's early antics were normal behavior that could be tolerated while Mike had to be the punching bag.

SHE is the local almost rapist

I got to read the first 14 chapters and then these. Not to sound like a fag but that healed me. I feel like I'm in the past again but in a good way. I'm getting those warm, fuzzy feelings that I hadn't gotten in a while. Even the cringe is excusable because they're literal 14 year olds. The only thing that would make it better is if I had access to the original doodle style of these comics. That would be the deluxe DX director's cut collector's definitive edition of the comic.

YES

Everybody plays the fool sometimes. David will get his turn, too.

James yandere Twink bf?

You can download the original volumes 1-3 from the website, bottom of the Archive page.

Yes but he only wants to top

Anon Babble thread is up!

It's amazing how much the comic improves when Lucy wakes the fuck up.

It's amazing how much the comic improves when everyone isn't acting like a fucking retard and there's no awful teen telenovela Ken Penders melodrama.

Mike loses the big race by slipping on a banana peel landing face first in manure breaking his legs

then a football hits him in the crotch

Mike looks into the stands and sees Haley cutting him out of their family photos while Chris cries and his Dad yells out that he's disowned

Then a doctor comes in and tells Mike he has feline AIDS from kissing Sandy one time

As Mike weeps toward the heavens for mercy David does fortnite dances over his broken body

Taeshi comment: Mike looked so pathetic crying lmao but for real guys the Mike hate is too much !

Felix being the new fag for Mike would be an interesting twist
As in obviously it goes nowhere since it's BCB but still

Mike gets stabbed in an alleyway and begins bleeding to near death

Veronica: lmao Mike you're such a loser

You need to link better anon

That's the thing that bugged me the most since the track team showed up. her fans hating mike so much made her feel uncomfortable,

But she spent, like, half a decade having him be a sperg over everything and this was before EF happened that made it worse. The track team were a lame bandage and even she cant keep that up.

What does she want from the fandom with this character?

Honestly she probably doesn't even know. Consider how much of herself she's inserted into Lucy and how much of her husband is inserted into Mike. You think she knows how she feels about her husband?

Also don't feel bugged about what the fans think. People who unironically like this comic in 2025 are dumb. I love the comic but only because the older chapters give me nostalgia for a time long past and because it's fun and amusing to learn about its irl lore, discussing (shitting on) it with others, and reading its more recent chapters with my brain turned off. People who are genuinely thrilled by the story as it currently is cannot be trusted with proper critical thinking, that's the kindest way I can put it.

You guys remember how Mike, age 14 and drunk, literally beat up a group of adults almost single-handedly to near death (according to Daisy anyway) and the point where they ran away? What happened to this giga-Chad? No one ever mentions it. I get he's based on a really hateable person but at some point you gotta separate fiction from reality, Taeshi. If not for more recent developments I'd say he's due way more respect than he's given by the characters and by his own creator.

Mike only fought Alejandro and he lost twice, getting saved by Lucy, idk what you read

I liked the time he broke the laws of physics to save Lucy. Probably the peak of their relationship even though it was on the downswing by that point. Makes you wonder what would've happened if Lucy quit her bullshit right after and told him how much she cared.

They woulda fucked and then the story would change to seeing if Mike can manage a bpd ridden white cat without smacking her like a step dad.

To be fair, at the time Taeshi seemed to actually focus on why BPD (or whatever she thought Lucy had) was actually a bad thing and why her fursona needed to do better. If Taeshi hadn't suffered that mental breakdown, maybe Lucy wouldn't have ended up such a hellspawn.

Taeshi was originally going to end BCB on Mike being depressed after Lucy's an hero attempt. If only

Oh yeah I wonder if it actually would have been better if that was the outcome. It would've been more satisfying sure but I don't know if this would mean that the story itself would actually be better.

I think it woulda been a better story. If a story ends a but early and leaves you wanting more, rhen it's better then one where the cast gradually downgrades as people alongside everything else. The Simpson and its like coulda ended over a decade ago and nothing too major would be list for example.

I would unironically love if the comic ended this way

Actually, the plan to end it at or shortly before Junior year prom was the original plan. Taeshi toyed with the idea of ending BCB early thanks to her depression but ultimately we know what her choice was.