Mother's Day Week Day 4: Taaffe
Yet another pink mom! Taaffe is Beck's mother. She had a slight redesign on her horns since I last showed her. This is a quick sketch of her in her youth. Her theme is sugar candy and she is berry flavored (hence the pink). Compared to the other Sugars she has a modern human city look to her. Very much not a morning person.
In terms of motherhood.... Beck doesn't consider her a very good mom. While he doesn't see her as a big sister, she definitely feels more like one in the manner she treats him. Whatever that means. The other adults definitely judge her. She's not a "bad" mother in the abusive sense more so the... janky sense. Like making bad lunches or forgetting to pack them sense. Or being bad at homework. And getting into Looney Tunes style fights/arguments with Beck whenever he's being a brat. Never anything truly serious but not a good look. While it's partially because she's young it's also just not in her person to be overly serious and "motherly". A very laid back and nonjudgemental mother paired with a very moody and judgmental son she's always trying to reign in. A son who always calls her a hag even though she was a teen when she had him. Beck definitely has a superiority complex concerning the intelligence difference between them. I think with most other normal kids she would be a decent mother. She even acted as a minor mother figure to Bobbert and they hold her in high regard. (Then again Bobbert has pretty low standards).
An imperfect soul with a good heart, she has the same crystallization disorder all the other members of her family have. Hers is mild and while it does get worse in adulthood, it won't being a major issue in the long run like Star's or even Beck's. Hers seems to mostly affect her skin (surface) and makes her sprout a pair of horns.
One day, when Beck was ten or so, he reported her to the Sugar equivalent to CPS and now Beck lives with his cousin and her grandparents (Star). While Taaffe initially was allowed to visit Beck, constant friction between her and Beck and a certain visit from someone made her stop visiting. She would send letters and call him on holidays but otherwise gave up all custody to Star's family. Beck seems to find Star's family more peaceful (i.e. they learned to just leave him alone) but nonetheless seems to resent on some level Taaffe just leaving him.
I'm making her sound really bad here but she really isn't. Beck's less than stellar personality just does not mesh well with hers. He cannot help but want to screw her over for "being lesser" than him (like he does with everyone else) and for his own "benefit". While all potential attempts by anyone to reign him in would have irritated him, he knew her particularly childish ways of interacting with him could be weaponized very easily in a world that overly pampers yet protects children with an iron fist. But he doesn't actually hate her (in the general sense) which is why he's stung when she decides to give up her rehabilitation program for parenting and just let the other Nabat's raise him. She is still his mom and she gave up on him. He makes himself feel better by reminding himself she was lesser than him and thus did not deserve to raise him anyway. She's just a dumb bimbo who always irritated him, he does not need her. He was the one who set up her up so isn't it exactly what he wanted? He does get over it but it's just another case of him causing his own misery.
He's sort of like Genk, where Genk just naturally had problems regulating emotions and his actions but his mother made it worse because she was abusive. With Beck even if he ended up with a mother like Fragaria's, he would have still hated her. Taaffe being like an older sister rather than a mother made her easier to hate and bully but it was not why he acted like he did (generally speaking). Both would need serious intervention to get better. Which Genk does get but Beck doesn't. Instead, he ends up with people who can work around him and thus not end up being harassed by him but who still fail to see his true issues and thus get him the help he needs. While some like Bobbert, Star, and Taaffe could see this deeper problem, they couldn't get him the help he needs. Taaffe because she severely underestimated the help he needed and by the time she realised the true depth of his issues, she had already been deemed a failure of a mother and thus knew none of her concerns would be taken seriously. Because any issues must solely be her fault and not some innate issue with Beck as well. While not the best mom, she was a good person and is much better than any of the mother mom's we're about to see in the coming days for Mother's Week.