Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Well, Augustus is not aware of Mike’s mental state, he just sees Mike as “not giving shit” so he tries really hard to send across the msg here. And It works. You should have said “no” when you had the more proper opportunity to do so, Mike.

I think it’s the one where the guy decided that it’s ok to mentally torture his closest childhood friend ( who was not perfect but was there for him a lot) because his gf said something about that friend, and in the end backstabbing that friend, and without care say the worst shit to her, which drove her to a suicide attempt. Oh, and later on, after that friend did some mental healing, he approached her out of selfish need to have someone to hold him when that same gf broke up with him. Ruining that friend’s mental healing , only to end up back paddling and return to the gf. In the process fucking up his childhood friend’s mental state again. And with all that never manage to properly acknowledge what they did to the friend and properly apologise. Yes, I think it’s this movie.

If by his childhood friend was not perfect, you mean physically and mentally abusive to him for years until he snapped, then sure

And mike needs to watch movies about not mentally destroying close friends and use them selfishly when needed for self comfort, only to end up flipping and destroy their mental state again. At least Augustus is trying to atone for his past action.

Yeah, I guess Mike need that wake up call. Though I advice Lucy to keep staying away from him. :)

For you maybe. Personally I’m fine with this. I don’t wish Mike any harm though. Augustus is not who he use to be and he’s being protective of his best friend who helps him to get better life.

This isn’t being protective. This is him *becoming* the bully. What he’s currently doing does nothing to help Lucy.

The hell are you talking about? This IS being protective as it can be. Admittedly over protective. Are you forgeting these are freaking teens? They rarely do things in a more mature way. You never heard of friends trying to protect their close friends by doing something stupid?

Being protective is trying to solve the situation causing the problem. This doesn’t solve anything, but it lets Augustus vent his own frustrations. Yeah, they’re teens, Mike is an asshole, but so is Augustus lol. Mike being awful doesn’t give Augustus the right to be equally awful without being called out.

I’m just saying he’s being a hypocrite, and this does nothing to solve the situation. In fact, he’s clearly acting smug in the process while probably making it worse lol

Not to mention he isn’t much of a saint either before he changed too.

And Mike comes from a higher up middle class family that lives in the suburbs, was a good boy and now doing messed up shit. Your point? Our origins define us? People can’t change from good to bad and bad to good? No one learns? Have we learned nothing from Paulo and Abby?

yeah, I see the other side, we really need to protect the sanctity of the fucking brick wall instead of going literally anywhere else

ultimately, when you’re functional, protecting your mental health is your own responsibility. if Augustus is convinced that Lucy’s been lying about everything being okay, which, yeah, she is, that’s his problem to hash out with her, not start problems everywhere else acting like he knows how to actually fix things. especially when he’s been asked to do specific things if he thinks Lucy’s in trouble (namely, get her mother involved) that he’s completely ignoring

so many people just flagrantly disregarding character development that took a long, long time to achieve. Augustus now understands how wrong he was for doing it, he apologized for it, he’s kept away from Daisy, and he pointed out the importance of consent back to Lucy when she kissed him in Burnt Bridges. What more do they want from this teenager? And even if you don’t feel he’s evolved past who he was in the early part of the story, how does that invalidate anything he’s doing here anyway? This isn’t about Augustus, it’s about Mike’s hypocrisy in how he’s been behaving since Burnt Bridges. He’s the one who told Augustus he regretted not having any way to comfort her after Eternal Flame and for Augustus to look out for her.

Put simply, in an aita story, this moment would be labeled “ESH”. (Everyone sucks here) Mike’s not really in the clear at all for his decision to ignore the request to give Lucy space, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Augustus is magically in the right with his approach here either. He’s not reinforcing boundaries, he’s harassing Mike to make Mike feel worse about himself. The ends do not justify the means, regardless of whether or not Augustus knows about Mike’s mental state.

Did I say that Augustus is 100% right for doing this? No, I didn’t. But it’s ok to miss the whole point of what I’m trying to say. People can act moraly superior while life is more complicated than a simple view of black and white. Acting like that makes their insights quite shallow. 😮‍💨

I’m not, I keep saying that he’s not doing this in a great/smart way and that it will probably end up with Lucy scolding him or having a fight with him. And yeah, I will be all over the comments because you guys keep shitting on him without the same understanding you had towards Mike and Paulo. You may not agree with me but you’re not saying I’m wrong either. I use to comment maybe once every two pages when the whole thing with Augy and Mike started, but since it’s started to be a shit fest in the last 3 pages, I started to defend my boi more activity.

any time someone brings up Augustus’ RECENT past (it’s less than two years ago, and considering the severity, it’d be normal to be anxious about it. I’m not, particularly, but this’ll loop back into something later), you deflect to Mike’s behaviour within roughly the same timeline, including one bizarre post where you started bringing up Mike’s middle-class upbringing, nobody was talking about their origins. even when someone just said Aug’s acting cold, which he is, objectively, you were there to make sure we knew Mike deserved it. how do you think this reads? you started complaining that everyone’s minimising abuse, it feels like you’re minimising everything else

we know Mike fucked up! I have an understanding of where Aug is coming from and believe where he’s coming from is stupid and will continue to mock him for it, just like I will mock Mike for his constant inability to do anything that will help him. and there is in fact reason to believe this is bad. Aug’s character development had also led to him dropping some of his more objectionable traits. the smarmy jackass who is just emotionally manipulating people for his own ends, damn what everyone else wants or needs, that’s who he was until Love My Way, and that’s who he’s looking to be right now. I have serious concern he is regressing

I stand by my comment about the origins. That person made it sound like a person with a bad past can’t change, and so I gave Mike as an example for coming from a good and financially stable family and he ends up doing shit as well. You finally express that you can understand where Augy is coming from (with the balance of his wrongs) as well, and with that I’m satisfied. Now if only it was the same with the other hostile readers. I usually stay quite and rarely comment but the comments wouldn’t stop and it started to irritate me, so I went hard on this page. I’m glad I did. From the amount of likes I got on some of my comments show that more silent readers agree with me on this and I gave them a small voice. I got what I wanted here so I’m finishing this. 🫡

the financial stability comment was nonsense because the things people were talking about had nothing to do with it. maybe if they were talking about Augustus being a petty thief, but the first comment in that chain was clearly making it about what he did to Daisy, unless you know about any other incidents where he was grooming somebody. you also didn’t get me to express anything I had not already expressed, I have been saying that Augustus’ actions are not helping anybody since May, and that requires knowing what he’s trying to do and why

but hey if that all means you’re going to stop trying to lecture people about things you’ve misinterpreted in what they say, more power to you

😆