Bittersweet Candy Bowl

I’m kinda worried whatever she say next, Lucy will lose it and hit her across the face

I hope Sue keeps cornering her. It’s long overdue for Lucy to get called out

To be honest she needs therapy. Both her and mike, i really feel that is going to be the only way they can move forward in a healthy way.

That’s IF August doesn’t keep butting in. His instigation likely set that back for Mike, and Lucy, by a MILE

Sue is the one who called Lucy self-absorbed

If you look at the speech bubble from the last page where it says “You’re so self-absorbed,” its tail points toward the character on the right, not Sue. See how the next panel the speech tail is pointing at Sue? It’s shorter and going towards her face. The context also supports it. Sue is emotional, her speech bubbles aren’t round, but spiky to infer her emotional state. Just sayin‘

She definitely does need to be reminded that they were all kids in a really scary situation where some of them had ALREADY gotten hurt. That said, if I were any of her friends, it would absolutely haunt me if I saw that happening to her and felt I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

In her reluctant defence, it is important to note that Lucy didn’t just experience that night

She experienced versions of that night again and again in her nightmares

So this is the first time Lucy being unreasonable is pretty… well reasonable

It’s good Sue is reminding her exactly what happened, even if it’s hard to hear

Indeed, she has been reliving what happened to her again and again—she’s more or less told nobody about what’s happened or how profoundly it’s affected her, and she has stewed alone in it for so long. I understand why she feels the way she does, I wish the poor girl could get help.

Unfortunately, none of them knew how to deal with this.

It’s good it’s finally coming out because none of them ever really talked about what happened to them that day since it occurred.

Yeah, I think that’s she key difference in the trauma Lucy is dealing with, vs. her other friends (who were also, understandably, traumatized in their own way). Sadly I don’t know if either of them are capable of talking about the nuances of that right now…

For sure, but it at least puts it out there and gives them a chance to think about it later when things aren’t so heated. They also are STILL kids and being self-absorbed is pretty normal at their age.

Honestly I think she has no idea what she wants anymore

She keeps claiming and saying she doesn’t want to deal with Mike or even want him in her life.

Yet after that whole incident with August, she keeps coming back to him, and here she is saying Mike did something that they couldn’t.

She has everything she wants back, being at the table and others. Yet spites them and STILL goes outside where Mike is and cry and hugs for him.

Doesn’t excuse Lucy treating her friends like trash, the same friends who were happy to be with her again, and it doesn’t invalidate the traumatic experience each of her friends went through that day either.

Which Lucy is having a hard time understanding.

It doesn’t invalidate what they went through but it’s not equal.

My previous comment is mostly directed at the other commenters who are so anti-Lucy they’re dismissing how traumatic what Lucy went through outright

@Paprika “But sure Sue you had it bad…” See how easily you just dismissed Sue’s trauma, even though she was punched in the face by a grown man and almost had her nose broken?

No one dismissed how much trauma Lucy went through that night. Everyone’s only pointing out that Lucy dismisses everyone else’s feelings/trauma without a second thought. While expecting them to jump through the same hoops she didn’t leap through for them. Which is true; she didn’t stand up when Sue got punched, only when Mike was in danger.

This is not the trauma Olympics; these are children. And you did what you claim other commenters are doing: you dismissed one child’s trauma for another.

That’s like saying we should minimize Paulo’s trauma, resulting from his mother abandoning him and starting a new family. Because Abbey has trauma from his father actually murdering his mother.

Does that now mean that Abbey’s pain trumps Lucy’s? Because at least she still has both of her parents, right? That’s not how it works. People experience trauma every day, and that shouldn’t ever be minimized just because someone else might’ve had it worse.

@Elmanii wonderfully said

If every person could dismiss others trauma cause “they got it worse” then the logical conclusion to that is that only a single person’s trauma in the world would matter

Which wouldn’t be a world i want to live in

That’s why I try to correct it in my other comment.

And you say no one is dismissing her trauma but all I’ve been seeing is people putting Lucy down for not getting over what she went through and showing no sympathy to the messy way people handle that trauma.

Instead they cheer for Sue to put Lucy “in her place” and (like you) condemn her for not standing up to two adult men early enough, which considering what happens to her seemed like a bad idea.

The way Lucy is handling things isn’t perfect but the amount of hate in see in these comments are disgusting

There are gonna some people who are happy seeing Lucy being bashed, which I do not condone, and some who are not happy.

But I think for the most part the reason why people are cheering for Sue isn’t because they want “to put Lucy in her place”, it’s because however crude the conversation may be, (they’re children after all), it puts things into a clearer perspective for Lucy.

A perspective that originally has been warped and corrupted by her trauma, and nightmares.

Should we the reader expect Sue not to ask Lucy about why she’s insulting her, or Paulo, and Daisy, when Lucy keeps doing it on and on without end?

How long should they enable Lucy’s verbal abuse towards them, and put up with it? Until she finally manages her trauma in a more positive/mature way? And how long will that take? Weeks? Months? Years?

Till they’re no longer friends with Lucy?

It’s because we the readers are invested in these friendships why we cheer when characters are confronted with their flaws, (as long as it’s done as reasonably as possible, I still dislike what August did to Mike), because we want the characters we care about to develop to be better people.

You said it yourself, “The way Lucy is handling things isn’t perfect.” So we’re glad that Sue is not just calling out Lucy, but trying to understand why she’s acting the way she is, because it’s realistic and it’s an unresolved issue that needs to be addressed for the sake of Lucy’s development.

that that’s okay :-)