Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Nah, I was there. I was the murder weapon.

no no, hes got a point

I don’t think you can rely on any of these people for the whole story.

Kinda, definitely not the whole truth

Mike was never that needy of Lucy, not untill after she started weaponising her suicide attempt to guildtrip him

Just one example early on Mike was trying to catch a bus to find Sandy, Lucy saw him and followed him even after he explicitly told her to leave him alone

Calling Mike the needy one is delusional at best and manipulative at worst

Hard to say. Paulo is use to what and how David says things.

How is it accurate? Since when has Mike shown that he doesn’t care about Paulo and Daisy?

I don’t think it’saccurate at all, it is accurate to what Lucy believes of Mike but not what actually happened.

Mike was never needy for Lucy. He approached her when she couldn’t make any friends and felt responsible for her. He barrely tolerated her untill her behaviour turned in abuse. There are times where he literally tells her to not follow him and she does anyway. How is he the needy one?

Mike leading Lucy on is a story fabricated unconciously by Lucy so she could have someone to blame other then herself for how low she had gotten and Mike has been too guildtripped and gaslighted to deny it anymore

I think a large part of the issue between Lucy and Mike is that while he did put up with a lot of abuse from Lucy, he never felt like it was bad enough that he needed to cut her off. I believe it’s because he also enjoyed how obsessed Lucy was with him, and he could use Lucy as reassurance that he’s a good person for being nice to her.

Then, when Sandy pointed out that Lucy was being abusive to him, he didn’t say anything until finally blowing up and laying it all out in the worst possible way. I imagine he was conflicted internally, but a simple conversation where he told Lucy how she was hurting him would have made a big difference to how things turned out.

Also true; it’s exactly what Daisy said in the library a few chapters ago: Mike needs to learn to stand up for himself BEFORE it gets so bad that he explodes; he has a very hard time standing up to people he cares about because he’s afraid it’ll be too much and they’ll abandon him.

Maybe tied into how his mom treats him? She constantly praises him for being ‘perfect’ and ‘never difficult’, so maybe he’s learned to never speak up for himself for fear of being an ‘inconvenience’?

If victims of abuse could cut their abuser of so easily there would be a whole lot less abuse happening.

Whenever Lucy’s abuse came up before Sandy noticed it the common response was “That’s just how Lucy is”

How do you expect someone to suddenly stand up for themself if everyone arounds you thinks it’s fine and you’ve known nothing else

Also Mike having a calm convertation wouldn’t have changed a thing. Lucy was told why Mike hated her and all she did with that information was sulk about it or try to force their friendship anyway. She has not once apologised for it

Oh, absolutely! All of the outside contributing factors are the reasons why Mike was never sure of himself enough to speak up!

At first he was just saying “that’s who she is” as a way of apologizing for her to other people, when he really should have been calling her out. He’s just constantly “too nice” as a reaction to a lot of influences, and thinks that setting boundaries and correcting someone’s bad behavior will make them leave you (mostly because I don’t think he has any close examples of another way to be…)

There was no other way this could have gone, but I think if someone like Sue (or even Jess) had been the one to point out how abusive Lucy was being, it would have gone much better. Sue would have emphasized Lucy’s good qualities while still laying out that her treatment of Mike is unacceptable, and he would have been in a better headspace to confront Lucy in December.

I’m sure Vero and Oliver have the story already laid out, but that’s just my two cents!

Be wild if that were the case. David and Paulo are like two peas in a pod, so their friendship ending would require some sort of nuclear level event for that to be possible. We will just have to see how things play out though.

Also I am absolutely in love with the new colors/style hoo boy I’d frame that it’s so pretty

You mean where Augustus pushed and pushed untill Mike snapped.

That’s called reactive abuse.

Where the abuser keeps pushing the victim to try to get an outburst so they can dehumanise them and point out to the world how bad the victim is and how right the abuser is.

Augustus is a master at thid. He did the same thing to Abbey too when he brought up his father

Mike was the victim in that scenario

Mm…fair point. This is the last resort in a sense.