Bittersweet Candy Bowl Discord server

From Candypedia
A custom emote from the BCB Discord server.

The Bittersweet Candy Bowl Discord server is the official community chat server for Bittersweet Candy Bowl. It opened in June 2017 as “a fun, safe place to chat about the comic with fellow BCB readers” with its own vanity invite at bcb.cat/discord.[1] The Extras page, last updated in August 2024, promotes it as a place to join “hundreds of readers”.[2]

History

The comic already had a chat room long before Discord came along. Readers had been gathering in the #bcb IRC channel on irc.rizon.net since around 2011, and it stayed the place to be for years. The Discord server was announced in a newspost on June 26, 2017, with the authors admitting they were “still building” it, though it already looked like it was “taking off”.[1]

The new server didn’t replace IRC overnight, and the two ran side by side for a good three years. That said, the site began pointing readers toward Discord pretty quickly. By December 2017, the home page’s “Chat with us” blurb had been rewritten to send readers to Discord rather than IRC.[3] By May 2019, the Extras page gave Discord a whole enthusiastic paragraph while the IRC entry had shrunk to a single polite sentence.[4] IRC finally came off the Extras page in the site’s September 5, 2020 update.[5][6] The channel’s own history is covered over on Bittersweetcandybowl.com.

Features and community activity

One of the server’s custom character emoji.

Fittingly for a comic set at Roseville High, the server’s channels are named after parts of a school, with the likes of #homeroom, #cafeteria and #orientation on the list. The authors added a #seniors-lounge channel in January 2022.[7]

In 2018, members could pick “Team __” roles for the characters they supported, and patrons who linked their Patreon accounts got gold names.[8] Patrons also have a room of their own in #gifted-and-talented, the “secret Discord room” the Patreon offers have advertised since 2019.[9] The details of that live over on Bittersweet Candy Bowl on Patreon. In October 2020, the authors announced fresh custom character emoji for the server.[10]

The server has hosted community events as well. An art contest ran in early 2018,[8] and a flower-themed fashion contest followed that summer, with the voting held over on Candybooru.[11]

The authors and the server

Both of the authors have followed discussions on the server. Veronica was active for a period but eventually left, and in 2026 she explained why on Tumblr: “I left because I’m a people-pleaser who is very easy to influence. ... So I pretty much need to shield myself from big spaces to avoid vast amounts of contradictory feedback.”[12] That said, she isn’t entirely out of the loop. In the same post, she wrote that Oliver “will often read discussions to me from the discord, so that way I’m not COMPLETELY blind.”[12]

Trivia

  • The site’s own pitch for the server gets a dig in at Mike. Per the Extras page, it’s a place to “discuss all sorts of good things, like how Mike deserved better”.[2]
  • When the 2020 emoji refresh was announced, the authors had a consolation for nostalgic fans: “if you like the old emoji they’re still on candybooru!”[10]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “BCB newspost: “A new chat, our last con of the year, and.. blood””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2017-06-26. Archived from the original on 2017-07-17.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “Extras”. bittersweetcandybowl.com.
  3. ↑ “Archived BCB home page”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-08.
  4. ↑ “Extras”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-02.
  5. ↑ “Extras”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2020-08-04.
  6. ↑ “Extras”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2020-09-27.
  7. ↑ “BCB newspost: “Reread BCB’s remastered chapters — they’re finally all online!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2022-01-31.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 “BCB newspost: “Sakura-Con, Ships Ahoy, San Japan and… sssDiscord””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2018-03-19. Archived from the original on 2018-05-11.
  9. ↑ “BCB newspost: “”Merry Christmas, Roseville!” and a Very Special Greeting Card Offer””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2019-11-18. Archived from the original on 2019-12-15.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr. 2020-10-29.
  11. ↑ “BCB newspost: “Molly writes a BCI comic...””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2018-06-25.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Veronica (2026-03-16). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
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