Hal, it's about cats

Thoughts on Bittersweet Candy Bowl! I'm the crazy timeline guy.

[itsaboutcats]

So I may have gone into a wild frenzy and created a Bittersweet Candy Bowl timeline. It contains everything that's publicly available in BCB.

It's got tags to filter events by characters and character relationships, chapter descriptions, links to events, and notes on what I considered when placing each event. I'm sure I'm missing some tags here and there, but it's a fun way of looking at events in the comic and was a massive labor of love.

Guide to using the tags is under the cut!

Character tags: Major characters are tagged when they appear in a chapter, including if they are sending text messages but are not seen. If a major character is discussed but does not appear, they would not be tagged but their relationship tags with the characters discussed would be used.

Minor characters are tagged when they appear or are mentioned. Some of them may have a relationship tag or two with a major character.

Relationship tags:

Relationship tags track interactions between characters. All relationship tags sort the characters' names alphabetically, so Mike and Lucy is tagged "Lucy & Mike" and Paulo and Abbey is tagged "Abbey & Paulo".

Some tagged relationship tags reflect very minor interactions, like giving someone a side-eye but not saying anything. Note that there are some instances where the number of relationship tags applicable to a scene exceeded the limits of the software and the less relevant ones regrettably had to be cut.

Utility tags: A few utility tags appear at the top of the tags list.

Date range: This tags the date ranges of when the major characters are in school. It can be helpful to toggle on when looking at another tag, like a character tag, to help contextualize when events fall.

Exact date: There are some events in the comic that we know exactly when they occur. This tag reflects that. There are a lot of birthdays, but also some holidays and things that could be calculated out.

Rough estimate: The opposite of an exact date! These events were placed with very little date information to work with. They might be placed in the wrong month, or even the wrong year, and it's possible they are out of order in relation to other major events. This mostly applies to flashbacks or events we know happened but did not see.

[itsaboutcats]

I'm enjoying the reappearance of Daisy's nightgown from "Pillow Talk".

[eesbegovic]

Abbey's Disaster Dominoes

I'd argue that Abbey's abuse-is-abuse speech in Feline Filibuster played a major, and overlooked, role in setting Mike against Lucy.

Consider the timeline: Immediately before this, in Mischief Night and in Rehearsal, we see that things between Mike and Lucy had settled into a basically manageable place. They are, if nothing else, still talking.

And then Abbey says this:

Abuse is abuse. No matter a bully's excuses.. Violence should never be tolerated.

Abuse, huh? Sounds like something Mike's been hearing from his girlfriend for a year or so.

(In the first of these flashbacks Mike isn't wearing a scarf, which implies that Sandy started saying things like this in Mike's scarfless period between A Difficult Choice and Left Behind, early in their freshman year. I dunno if she'd said anything like this in the weeks immediately before Feline Filibuster.)

So Abbey gives his big speech, and the page ends on a panel focusing on Mike, who seems affected by it. And on the next page he's suddenly glaring at Lucy:

How interesting.

We don't see Mike again until the next chapter, Pillow Talk... when he decides to start giving Lucy the silent treatment, on her birthday, seemingly out of nowhere.

But it wasn't out of nowhere: Abbey's abuse-is-abuse speech accidentally prodded Mike into finally acting on that that "Lucy is abusing you" frame that Sandy, equally by accident, built for him.

And this, the silent treatment that began in Pillow Talk, is what first put the light out of Lucy's eyes and set her on a depressive spiral.

[itsaboutcats]

1st of all, yaaaaaaay at all your Sue posting Ok now to the question, what are your thoughts on Sue's and Lucy's friendship in particular? I think its incredibly onesided, it's been shown multiple times that Sue cares a lot about Lucy, she always goes out of her way to do things that she thinks will make her feel better, but I'd say that Lucy at this point in the story feels like she mostly tolerates her? Something that makes me feel that way was the way Lucy reacted to Sue's hug in "It's all in the mind" page 9 and the way she has been acting in the current chapter, what did you think of that? Thanks for all the Sue posts by the way

I'm glad you've enjoyed the Sue posting!

I agree that Sue's relationship with Lucy is pretty one-sided, but it feels one-sided in ways that are interesting because it reveals a lot about Lucy's blind-spots and priorities.

Sue has a lot of moments of care for Lucy. In sophomore year, Sue tries really hard to let her know she's there to support her.

But Lucy never turns to Sue for support, and can't understand why Sue would support her.

She winds up turning to Paulo and Augustus, a creepy near-stranger. While Augustus has appeal as an outsider who isn't part of her social circle, the same can't be said of Paulo. We have to address how Lucy's experiences growing up heavily shaped her sense of self worth and her security in relationships to examine why.

When Mike dropped her in third grade because he had a crush on Sandy, Lucy saw romance win out over platonic friendship. She also has primarily received "positive" attention because of her body, with Paulo, Daisy, and Mike all suggesting her looks are her only redeeming quality and there's no other reason to like her. As a result, in moments when she's desperately needed support, we've seen her try to use romance/her body to try to secure her relationships. Lucy struggles to feel secure in relationships that aren't also underpinned by people finding her attractive. Lucy also has big ol' hetero goggles that prevent her from considering that girls might like her too; she fails to clock that Jess likes her, even when Rachel is alluding to it.

The end result is Lucy doesn't value the friendships she has with girls as heavily as the friendships she has with guys in part because she doesn't understand why they'd care about her. Even though Sue is trying really hard to be a supportive friend, Lucy doesn't feel as secure in the relationship or understand why Sue's paying attention to her.

An interesting piece of evidence to this dynamic as a whole is in "December". Mike reveals he's only stayed at the table "because of Sue's stupid play", but when he reveals how he expects their friends will follow him, he doesn't mention Sue.

Sue's tried really hard to support Lucy this year, and while she's Mike's friend too, he doesn't really have a compelling argument that Sue will follow him over Lucy. So he just erases Sue from the conversation.

But Lucy doesn't grasp that Sue will be there and continue to show up for her. She's stuck on the notion that "Paulo won't leave" her, which Mike rebuts by citing his relationship with Jasmine.

So I agree that the relationship is lopsided, and that Sue is putting more work into it than Lucy is, but I do think Lucy genuinely cares about Sue as a friend.

They have moments when they just are in sync and seem to have fun together:

I also think this moment is really important:

We get to see Lucy reaching out to Sue with a sincere affirmation of her work. And it's also, unspoken, a goodbye to Sue. She knows she's moving and changing schools, disappearing without an explanation right after the play, so she's providing a positive note for her and Sue's relation to end on, a little notion that it's okay, the play is good, and it's not Sue's fault (even if Sue won't wind up feeling that way). She reaches out to Sue before her departure, not Daisy, David, Mike or Abbey, and I think it conveys genuine care on her part.

But the dynamic following Lucy's return was mentioned, so let's get to that.

Sue continues to be really considerate of Lucy, reaching out and always happy to see her, in addition to trying to prioritize her against Mike/Paulo

And Lucy rises to accept Sue's invitations when she reaches out. She doesn't have to; she has been describing the group as "ex friends". But if she didn't care, she could (and I'd argue would) blow Sue off. Instead, these two genuinely have fun together:

But as was mentioned, things aren't all rosy. We have to talk about that hug. I've seen someone (I forget who or I'd link it) make a comparison between Sue's response to Lucy's hug with Mike's response to Lucy after he falls off the archway.

Lucy and Mike are the injured parties, but they are to some extent expected to comfort and reassure someone else. Lucy in particular is drained before this hug happens; she's already made it clear she doesn't want to talk about what led to her absence. Sue kind of is pushing that boundary before this hug; she's not asking for information, but she is asking for Lucy's emotional engagement and reassurance on a topic Lucy's established she doesn't want to discuss:

Lucy doesn't want to linger on this topic, but Sue is messily prodding at it and asking Lucy for reassurance. That's why I think we get that look.

An alternate reading is that the panel of Lucy's reaction to the hug has a grey background to evoke Lucy's confrontation nightmares, although I don't favor this interpretation as they don't really come back until post-Eternal Flame and a grey-tone is used in other backgrounds in this chapter to convey being unamused. However, this is a good segue to "Tickets Please", as Lucy's "Confrontation" trauma is actively a wedge between her and Sue during the chapter. It's the reason why she's so surly at the beginning of lunch; see the stars in the 4th panel.

For a more comprehensive dive into this topic, I'm going to redirect you to eesbegovic's post, which delves into Lucy's nightmares, how Sue is portrayed in them vs how she actually acted, and how this trauma stands between Lucy and the table.

We can't blame Lucy for being really traumatized; it's really sad that Sue is in these dreams considering she didn't bad-mouth Lucy the way Paulo and Daisy did and has consistently and repeatedly demonstrated her care in acts out outreach and support. But it is what it is. Lucy is having traumatic dreams and related thoughts about Sue that make her less inclined to spend time with her and makes it more difficult for Lucy to trust in their relationship.

As for the rest of "Tickets Please"... Well, it reveals a pretty disappointing failure of Lucy's to empathize with Sue. I don't think she understands Sue and Paulo's dynamic and why Sue reacts to Paulo the way she does. Lucy is incredibly competitive and loves ruthlessly trying to prove herself; Sue does not. And of course, Lucy also proves incredibly thoughtless in her challenges, to a comedic degree.

And we can't ignore this, either:

I doubt this particular movie was to Lucy's taste, but for a lot of this chapter, I was holding on hope that she and Sue would see a different movie together to give us a positive note for her and Sue to end the chapter on. That's not going to happen now. Lucy ignored and brushed off Sue's attempt to reach out to her. She doesn't respond to Sue's invitation, creates a scenario that threatens Sue's access to the tickets, and starts to walk off when Sue does get the tickets. She doesn't want to see the movie with Sue.

Before, she was taking Sue up on spending one-on-one time together. So, what's changed? The nightmares and the table. Nothing else has changed in Lucy and Sue's relationship. Lucy's pushing herself a lot harder in the day to engage with her friends, at a point when she feels alienated from them, and it's taking a toll on her.

And like... This chapter obviously feels a lot worse for Lucy's relationship with Sue than Lucy's relationship with Paulo, even though they both feature in her nightmares and Paulo really earned his spot in them with things he actually said. And I don't really have a good explanation for why that is. Maybe Lucy's annoyed by Sue's assumptions about what she wants at the end of "Line in the Sand". Maybe she's experiencing some guilt about invoking Paulo's words against him and wants to be nicer to him. But those are guesses, and not ones I'm really confident in. We just have to wait and see how things play out.

This feels like a bleak chapter for Lucy and Sue's relationship, although we don't have a clear sense of how badly Sue was affected by Lucy's behavior or if Lucy was having an off day and will be more thoughtful from here. I do think they genuinely like each other, but a lot in their relationship right now depends on Lucy's ability to work through her trauma, and even then, there's still the issue where Lucy undervalues her friendships with girls. It makes for a sad state of affairs, and breaks my heart a little bit because I love these two an their friendship.

[itsaboutcats]

How the turns table...

[itsaboutcats]

I just don't get this. If Sue read some of the books, she has every reason to cite that in her bid to get the tickets, especially considering Paulo's claiming to be halfway through the first book. Even if she didn't like them, it's a good talking point to bolster the legitimacy of her claim to the tickets. She could say, "Yeah, I'm halfway through them! Diana's my favorite character!". Instead she hedges and deflects in a way that makes it seem like she hasn't read any of them, which weakens her position. I guess she's supposed to be so disbelieving that Paulo's read them that she focuses on that instead of presenting the legitimate good argument she has?

This just feels contrived; Sue doesn't initially cite knowledge of the source material because it would make her position seem more genuine and less petty, but is later revealed to know and mildly dislike the source material so we all can feel good about Paulo getting the tickets. After all, Sue probably wouldn't have enjoyed the movie she wanted to use as an excuse to spend time with Lucy anyways!

Bluh.

[itsaboutcats]

Devastated that despite bemoaning the positive growth of guys she knows, Lucy doesn't support women's wrongs. I guess a entertainment value of a petty contest was just too good...

[itsaboutcats]

There's something to be said about how Paulo assumes Abbey's making fun of him by asking if he read a book and Sue assumes Paulo's making fun of her through his claim that he's read a book, but Paulo is too busy being indignant to see why she thinks that. His anti-book stance was within the past month, by my estimate. He's opened up to reading, but his past attitude precedes him.

[itsaboutcats]

The end of "Critical Hit" always reminds me of the end of "On Our Own"

Lucy and Augustus both are in need of friendship and support, but Augustus won't let Lucy in so they remain estranged. Following Lucy's departure, Paulo and Sue both are struggling to find meaning in the artwork around them, but they can't find common ground. Everyone is on their own, failing to connect. It's really poignant.

[itsaboutcats]

Sue and her friends

I want to talk about Sue's dynamic with her friend group, starting by exploring her bid for student council secretary.

When Sue announced her campaign, the only other candidate on the ballot was "some stupid preppy" implied to be Katie. Abbey's candidacy is only established afterwards and is introduced as an oppositional desire to stop her from achieving her policy goals.

At least Abbey has an ideological reason to oppose Sue, but Daisy and Paulo both go above and beyond to ensure Sue doesn't win because they have a stronger personal allegiance to other candidates.

Sue tries to be positive about Daisy's win to be supportive to her friend:

But when Daisy reveals she doesn't even want the position and hands it off to Abbey, Sue is clearly upset.

Daisy and Sue have been friends since elementary school. They've weathered ordeals together. But Daisy will happily undermine and work against Sue not because she wants the position or for an ideological reason; it's just because it'd make her boyfriend of a few months happy at Sue's expense. They never talk about this! This is hurtful stuff coming from someone Sue genuinely considers a friend and was trying to be happy for.

It's never actually established whether or not Sue becomes aware of Paulo's campaigning or not; at the time of the results she isn't, but it was public knowledge throughout the school because Paulo pressured his peers into voting for Daisy. He even tried to get Amaya to vote against Sue. It's hard to imagine she wouldn't hear about it eventually.

This treatment just sits unresolved in the back of the narrative.

In making the play, Sue was putting herself out there, much like the student council bid. David is implied to have started bad-mouthing her play long ago, but it takes over a year for us to get this emotionally vulnerable beat about how hurtful the way her peers talked about it has been for her:

Sue bottles up how hurt she is about things for a long time, not bringing it up on her own until it reaches a breaking point. It's not hard to imagine she has similar feelings related to her campaign: Were her ideas really that bad? Why did three of her friends work against her?

This pattern can be extended to "Tickets Please" as well; Abbey, James, and David brainstormed the trivia questions, and the end result was a quiz that featured topics they knew Paulo had expertise in, making it appear kind of rigged. Vera's clarified this wasn't her intent, but considering how Sue's friends have treated her in the past, it really feels like she'd have reasons to suspect they colluded against her.

It's not hard to imagine Sue laying awake at night turning those trivia questions over in her head, wondering if once again her friends were acting against her, throwing Paulo tailored questions in another act of favoritism. She can't interrogate it without being perceived as a sore loser, so she just has to sit with the doubt. Just like the student council election, this will sit unresolved, another hurt between Sue and her friends.

And Sue does have other reasons to think her friends are favoring Paulo. After all, they are willing to call her out sometimes when she's being a jerk to Paulo but no one is willing to stand up for her or check in on her when he's clearly upsetting her, barring Amaya. They just ignore her being upset, carrying on conversations without acknowledging Paulo's insulted her:

There's a cumulative weight to all of this, especially because there are so few moments where the main cast actually exhibit care for Sue.

And Sue has cared a lot about them! She tries so hard to be a good friend to Lucy. She cared a lot about Mike even though the fallout of his relationship with Lucy seriously damaged their relationship. She never gets credit for it, but for a long time she tried to be a good friend to Paulo too and works to smooth over other people's interpersonal problems with him. She checks in on Abbey to make sure he's doing okay and lets him join her SwordVale guild despite the student council debacle and the fact that they don't agree about basically anything.

But the moments when these characters reach out and exhibit care for Sue feel really few and far between. Sue is almost always the instigator: Lucy will go trick-or-treating with Sue because she knocks on her door. Daisy will help Sue try out for cheerleading because she asked. Mike will apologize to Sue only after she checks up on him again.

I know Sue's a supporting character, but consider how often a character is concerned about Abbey's feelings versus how often they are concerned about Sue's feelings. I'd say maybe Sue needs to be more emotionally volatile for them to worry, but she's been pretty openly upset about how Paulo's treated her and it's never made a difference.

Increasingly, the moments of empathy and support we see directed at her aren't actually from the main cast; they wind up being from Amaya and the senior girls:

These are the people who we've actually seen noticing when Sue is hurt, empathizing with her, and trying to lift her up.

The senior girls aren't even really Sue's friends! They all go to Daisy's events together, but Sue didn't make the cut for Madison's birthday party the way Paulo and Daisy did. It's implied Sue wasn't specifically invited to Rachel's either. Yet it feels like they're treating her better than her actual friend group because we almost never see anyone in that friend group express care for Sue and her feelings.

Instead, we get "Tickets Please", where so far we've seen her friend group push her into a competition she doesn't want

create blatantly unfair challenges

and actively not empathize with her experiences

It's increasingly difficult to see these people as Sue's friends. It just feels like they don't care about her, and it's getting pretty bleak.

[that-otoishi-kin]

I've got no more awesome, factually correct opinions to give😔 but i have thiiis. Lucy Bittersweet Candy Bowl, they'll never make me hate you, Lucy Bittersweet Candy Bowl (yeah, that's her full, legal name. She's the entire Bittersweet Candy Bowl)

[itsaboutcats]

If I had a nickel every time Paulo scooped someone injured/ill out of the path of oncoming traffic and flipped off drivers, I'd only have two nickels, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[itsaboutcats]

Special shout-out to Sue for 0% buying into Abbey's "predatory Paulo" framing. She's seen and experienced plenty of Paulo's sexism herself, but she knows he treats the girls he likes well. While she doesn't like Paulo and is happy to complain about him in general, she still won't entertain animosity towards him when she finds it divorced from Paulo's actual behavior.

I love her serious challenging expression. She won't let Abbey off the hook for his benevolent sexism. He has to respect women's agency.

[itsaboutcats]

is sue your favorite character? or do you have another favorite (or none at all)?

Sue is the character I relate to the most. She reminds me a lot of myself in high school. I've found her character to be a really grounded exploration of the experiences of a teen girl. That's part of why I've found the some reactions of fans (and characters) to "Tickets Please" and her conflict with Paulo in general so disappointing; it doesn't feel like a lot of empathy has been extended to her and she's just held to a really different standard than male characters.

My favorite character is Augustus.

[itsaboutcats]

Ah yes, Abbaisy. Truly the hypocrite match made in heaven.

[itsaboutcats]

Okay, let's be honest. Watching a movie when you haven't read the book it's based on is normal. The point of an adaptation is to introduce a piece of media to a larger audience than it would otherwise have. Watching a movie when you have read the book it's based on is normal. Your enjoyment of the source material drives you to see it in another medium.

WATCHING A MOVIE WHEN YOU'RE HALFWAY THROUGH THE BOOK IS NOT NORMAL WHAT ARE YOU DOING

[eesbegovic]

Look at you fools, running around rigging and counter-rigging this puerile little contest. But what do you take me for, a minor side character in some webcomic? Do you seriously think I'd agree to your asinine plan if there remained the slightest chance of it affecting my decision? I made it thirty-five hours ago.

- Amaya, probably