BCB — Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Bad grades? Better prepare her to be a stay at home mom edition.

Website: bittersweetcandybowl.com/
Booru: bittersweetcandybowl.com/candybooru/
Previous thread:

These parental issues are the kind of lore that we should have been given 15 years ago. I honestly don't care about it now.

You know it probably would've been important to see that our MAIN CHARACTER had this kind of dynamic at home the entire time, you know, it seems like a large personality trait that his Mom is putting him to unmeetable standards

...Oh well, we needed sixteen fucking years of watching Paulo do inane teenager bullshit

I think that anon last thread was right, this has to be Taeshi copying Flakops' homework. I thought they were onto something back then, but this page seals it for me.

Maybe she'd make better grades if she could focus on her exams instead of taking care of Chris.

Mike's mom knows what it's like to be a career woman, is best friends with a stay at home mom, and only wants what's best for her daughter now that she's realized the truth.

It's understandable now why she seems to always be playfully hostile at Mike, she's being measured with him as the bar and being used as the extra child, she's probably too young to have actual resentment towards him but she might be getting to it. It also explains why Mike wants to give her plenty space, avoids ribbing back and didn't just invade her own table, he feels he's taken enough from her
I swear Taeshi if you make Mike's family life miserable and just want to see him go through with it while giving Lucy a family of ass kissers and justify her shit mood at them, well, I wouldn't be surprised actually

What is this all leading to

Is Mike finally gonna solve that sudoku puzzle

Rachel fan art.

DO NOT REDEEM NIGHTMARE RACHEL
SAAR

Oh. Oh no.

wow I was mostly kidding about the incest stuff, well here we go

This isn't incest. This is Mike's mom praising him for not seeking out help and bottling up his feelings while he's obviously depressed.

At first I thought Mike was a favorite child, but Ellen might just be putting heavier responsibility on Haley for her lower grades.

He's a "good kid" in the sense he does what he's told, keeps to himself and is easy to deal with. He's a "kid I don't have to waste time on". If you have ever been one you know how fucked it gets once you can't be that pleasant anymore

Mike is gay, gay isn't perfect, so Mike's in the closet because of his BPD mom. This whole chapter has been him yearning to impress James again and Sandy hasn't come up once.

At first, I was afraid that this was going to lead to Mike getting in over his head because he doesn't really know how to handle Chris. And things going so bad that he'd feel like he'd have no choice but to grovel at Lucy's feet for her help since she's always been good with Chris.

Luckily, there is only 1 page left, and I doubt the next chapter will be all about that. At least, I hope not.

If you have ever been one you know how fucked it gets once you can't be that pleasant anymore

I guess we're still on track for Mike's suicide arc.

He'll finally start slipping up by being inattentive in class or failing some tests. Maybe get into another confrontation with his friends but get caught this time. And rather than seeing these as warning signs, his family will slowly turn on him for not being perfect anymore.

Anon I understand that you were attempting to draw fur on the top of her head, but it actually just makes it look like she's balding, Homer Simpson style.

Glad I wasn't the only one to come to that conclusion

One more page in this chapter! How will this tense family situation get resolved? Will we just move on to Lucy being sad for no reason instead?

Or sixteen fucking years of mundane teenager shit that leads to nothing.

It's kind of criminal how little she has developed any family dynamics outside of Abbey until pretty recently.

Taeshi keeps making Lucy being an insane BPD bitch less and less plausible by giving her an idyllic home life where she is worshipped and babied.

Mike's sudden family developments is just too little too late. I know it's Taeshi doing olympic level gymnastics trying to win him over to her audience but this shit is just so lame.
It's nothing all that interesting. Why not make Mike's dad have an affair or some crippling gambling addiction (kek, too close to home for Suitcase?) that he finds out about.

Rather then "Your dad is an ass, your younger sister is irresponsible but since I can shove responsibilities on you Mike, yer the best!"
It is the absolute bare minimum of characterization.

Taeshi wouldn't dare replicate Lucy's ketchup arc with Mike.

We'll get a tepid depression arc that just ends with him getting asspats from Lucy after screaming like a toddler for a few pages about how shit his life is.. ala EF.. but times 11.

While Im glad this chapter is Lucy free, its still an overall pretty underwhelming and boring chapter. The most interesting thing is hints at Mike's parents having martial problems.

Otherwise it's a nothingburger.

Mike's sudden family developments is just too little too late. I know it's Taeshi doing olympic level gymnastics trying to win him over to her audience but this shit is just so lame.

It seems to be working

Is the booru down?

Yes. Technical difficulties upstream. Service has been flakey. Will fix when I can but there's northing I can do for now.

You know it probably would've been important to see that our MAIN CHARACTER had this kind of dynamic at home the entire time, you know, it seems like a large personality trait that his Mom is putting him to unmeetable standards

We all know Taeshi didn't think of this until a month ago at most.

Should I lose scalp fur in the future?

In general when you're drawing in a relatively simple style, I think you should keep "fur lines" almost entirely to the outline of the character and only in particularly fuzzy spots. You could hypothetically get away with a hair tuft on her forehead but you'd need a better grasp of how exactly that tuft would be shaped than you appear to possess. The lines you have there don't really imply any particular 3D form, just the idea of fur.

For her braindead paypiggies perhaps.

Got it. Yeah I should clarify that I'm not any kind of professional or art student, just doing this for fun. But yeah, I'll try improving them.

He's billed as the main character, him getting overthrown by Paulo for the past 16 years of the story is the point and the problem

Maybe at one point he was.
Yeah.

Mike needs to hurry up and make Haley his by breeding her

It was lame Taeshi just couldn't let Lucy's mom have the win there, because she honestly had a good point. Why wouldn't the child that tried to kill themselves need to be monitored more.

Adult Lucy in a golden bikini.

Too late, I've already edited the mother in a lewd situation with Mike

based

That family has a serious incest problem

Hold on, if Ellen has Mike. Then does that mean that their father has...

My god...

Holy mommy!

Sorry to the anon who wanted office Daisy but it's on the booru now

Taeshi has given us incest but the wrong type

She really can't do anything right, can she?

Gotta keep the bloodline pure.

Lol imminent divorce

What the fuck??? What happened, the last time (though to be fair I haven't been in this general for like two years), I read this shitty comic Mike parents were in an okay relationship. I guess them realizing that their son is a literal pushover faggot drove them to this.

this looks official jesus

call me retarded but you could have said this was official and I would have believed you. impressive.

Lani forcing her students to do the challenge anyway

This chapter started off so well and got so boring so fast

Taeshi cant stop shitting on mike so now she's made his parents relationship suck out of nowhere.

Literally there was no lead up to this. It's just to make Mike miserable and get closer to a breaking point.

We never actually knew anything about his parents relationship besides that the went out on a date once, did we?