Bittersweet Candy Bowl

100% this! Auggy is an amazing friend and means well but he might have overstepped her boundaries a little bit on this one.

Might also have to do with the stress of his friends constantly checking in on his relationship to make sure he’s okay, which means he’s constantly lying to them to make it seem like things are working out when they really aren’t. Genuinely SO much of Mike’s stress seems to stem from his insistence on making things work with Sandy when they just… aren’t going to. It’s pushed him to isolate further and further as he recognizes that his friends really don’t approve of what the relationship is doing to him emotionally. He’s built up Sandy as his one and only for so long it’s borderline foundational to him at this point. He just can’t let himself be wrong, so better to avoid situations that make him think that he might be.

Lucy isn’t a saint either. She pushed her friends away and treated people that were trying to stay friendly like crap. She also treated Mike like crap and pushed her feelings onto him. Mike is also dealing with a toxic girlfriend who has been straight up abusive and manipulative. Mike also has been trying his hardest to keep distance. What is being asked of him now isn’t reasonable and I also think that Lucy wouldn’t approve of it either.

oooohhh yeah that’s a pretty interesting parallel!!

Thank you for pointing this out. I feel like people are really jumping down Augustus’ throat on this one without really listening to what he’s saying. He’s not saying Mike can’t hang out with his friends or he can’t ‘be outside’ but there’s a specific spot Lucy eats lunch that she moved to so as not to disturb Mike and to remove herself from his friend group because she realized that wasn’t good for either of them. And now there he always is. I’m not sure if it’s the right call for him to ask this on her behalf or that it’s worth the risk to both Lucy and Mike’s mental state to get involved like this sure. But I see where he’s coming from!

Lucy hasn’t done anything here, though. No offense, but you just seem to have a very strong bias against Augustys and Lucy. Sure, they’ve messed up, but they’re just teens/kids. Kids mess up. Even here, Augustus is not malicious; he is just misguided and worried about his closest friend. And to compare them to Alejandro is pretty wild ^^”

Lucy hasen’t done anything wrong here and is going to flip when she finds out what happened. That’s true

Doesn’t change what she did in the past though.

And different opinions ofcourse but for me there is a limit on how much you can excuse things for being kids. And physical abuse to the point where the victim regulary goes home with bloody noses and bruised shins is quite beyond that limit for me. Doesn’t help that Lucy seems to have little to no regret for the things she did. My stance on her would be very different if she had given Mike a single sincere apology.

But yes, I’m not going to deny i do have a bias against Lucy, but as someone who has seen abuse in his life i don’t think it’s an entirely unreasonable bias

To be clear i do think Lucy is a fantastic character in the story, but to me she’s very much the antagonist at this point. Much more then Alejandro who has stayed a lot more in the background. That will probably change whenever he starts showing his face though

Lucy has shown regret for the way she behaves multiple times. (December, love again, unspoken rule, after you, eternal flame, and seeing stars)

Not really, she has showed regret about the consequences of her actions but rarely about how it hurt others and the times she did she almost instantly backpeddaled.

In eternal flame she merely acknowledged (not apologised, acknowledged which is a very important distinction) that what she did was wrong only once she heard Sandy might be out of the picture. The second she knew that she wasn’t she instantly went back to blaming Mike

Same with Paulo, apologised to him about playing with his feelings only to throw it back at him the moment he said he didn’t feel anything for her anymore.

I didn’t really notice these things on my first read through, but on my second and especially third i really picked up that Lucy has the tendancy to be very manipulative.

Then again maybe that’s just me, but i can’t help but have alarm bells at a lot of stuff Lucy and now recently augustus does

Lucy being the antagonist of the comic is honestly a wild take. Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely see that interpretation. But looking at the bigger picture? None of the main or supporting characters are in the clear if we’re talking about contributing to the suffering of other characters in this series. None of them. (well, maybe Amaya) This story isn’t about one singular character being the catalyst for everyone else’s misery. (that’s the role of BOTH Mike and Lucy /hj) It’s a story about drama, and how despite all of it, life goes on, and you can either wallow in that misery and self pity, or you can pick yourself up, recognize where you went wrong, and start making positive changes in your life to become a better, more secure person. Redemption, growth, and self improvement are key themes in this comic. At this point in the story, almost every character has gone through that, Lucy included. Sure, she hasn’t exactly apologized to Mike since she returned. But at the same time, she wasn’t exactly looking to mend fences with someone who was (and still kinda is) extremely volatile and unpredictable with his affection for her. Like, yes, she was physically abusive to Mike in the past, and that’s very much something to be critical of. But Mike was no saint in that relationship either, and by the end, they were both actively hurting each-other, though Mike did a lot more long lasting damage than Lucy ever came close to doing. Lucy has since grown past it, or at least tried to. At this point in the comic, Mike is the one in the main cast that has yet to really grow, to develop as a character and become a better version of himself. And unless something extremely unexpected happens, that will come in time.

Now, as it pertains to the current situation, yes, it is a very unreasonable ask from Augustus. It’s also entirely possible he’s misreading the cause of Lucy’s current emotional state. But given the events following Eternal Flame, I can’t really fault him for it. Mike proved in that chapter that, once again, his feelings for Lucy are volatile and caused her more emotional pain than he cares to admit to himself. Augustus is trying to find a diplomatic solution because he (rightly) thinks Mike can’t really be trusted to discuss this stuff directly with Lucy at this point. But as many others have pointed out in the comments here, well meaning as Augustus may be in this moment, he’s unintentionally piling onto the depressive spiral Mike is going into. It’s a nuanced, multi-faceted situation informed by poor decision making of highly emotional teenagers trying and failing to get a handle on the complexity of life.

And just to be clear, I love the entire main cast, flaws and all. 3/4 of them have become such better people at this point, and I desperately want Mike to join them by the end. Even extending to the supporting cast, the only characters I actively dislike are Toby and Alejandro, who are such unambiguously bad people at this point that it’s wild we’re even comparing them to any of the rest of the cast. Especially one that took the first opportunity he could to break all ties with them, become a better person for the person he saved and who, in turn, saved him, and is now finally able to start looking to his future with a borderline adoptive family that genuinely seems to care for and support him for the first time in his life.

I don’t think Augustus knows Mike left the lunch table, mostly because he kinda did so quietly and without fanfare after joining the track team. Nor do I think the rest of the lunch table really considered that Mike was replacing them with his “new friends,” and would be unwilling to have him back. But considering how bad Mike is with managing stuff like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees it as a binary choice, and thinks hanging with his old friends at the lunch table would be “cheating” on his new friends on the track team. That said, considering the new couple on the scene, I can also see Mike’s potential reasons for wanting to distance himself from the lunch table, given that it might bring up uncomfortable parallels in his own relationship.