Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Trauma bond

For real!! I’m a filthy Mucy truther but I do often wonder what it is Mike has compared to the others! Especially people like Paulo and Sue who have actively helped Lucy out in the past

I think it’s mixture of everything they been through together.

And I think she’s not being entirely honest with herself that she’s over or doesn’t want to do anything with him anymore as she claims.

Especially if her running back to him in the previous chapter is to go off on anything.

Mike was the first person to accept her for who she was iirc

She didn’t have any friends untill he came along

In Unrequited, at the end when Lucy is shattered, Sue offered to buy her a slushie [and guessing wanted to hear her out] and told her “Mike isn’t your only friend in the world, you know.” That sentence was pretty loaded, feels resentful

Vero has talked in the past about how Sue identifies herself as more mature than she is.. she might have been holding onto this for a long time, knowing it was unfair but unable to let go of it (and who can blame her given how Lucy has acted!)

The only people who know figured it out with deductive reasoning [Daisy and Paulo]

Yep, even before he was drunk he decided to do the liquer chocolate thing to get drunk, while they were lost in a bad part of town. Then he broke their radio and talked back to them first (tho tbf by that point the mugging was already near guaranteed)

You really going to blame a child getting tricked into consuming alcohol?

It was Alejandro that made him drunk remember

I don’t blame him for getting tricked. I’m just saying all he had to do was wait for Sue to come back from making the call to her mother. He didn’t have to do anything else.

Iirc he got drunk trying to win extra money that could be helpful in getting them back home, he did make himself a liability unknowingly, but the liquid courage also helped him rectify the same issue, he would have been further out of commission had he not been inebriated

You remember correctly, but he made that decision after Sue got permission from the bar worker to make the call to her Mom. So all he had to do was wait for Sue to come back, because there was no money needed for her Mom to come get them.

I feel like August isolating Mike solved NOTHING. All he did was made their situation even worst and shouldn’t have gotten involved.

Sure but the characters don’t only do things in order to solve problems. Sometimes the story involves characters doing bad things, and stuff getting worse before it gets better. It would be a boring comic if every character only ever did the right thing at every turn…

I know and I understand it, but I never felt so PO at August and David with all my life for the stunt they pulled.

Deeply agree, I also think that it’s extremely unfair and unreasonable to only blame Mike for what happened and remove any agency Lucy had in those moments

I think with how this all boiled up, I think Sue is just fed up and done with Lucy and how she’s been treating her.

And likely is just sick of the drama that they are still hanging on to with this at this point, senseless back and forth with no ending in sight.

That I do agree with in full. This emotional game does need to end so some form of mental bagging could be let go or at least looked closer at too learn from it.

Only problem is other factors are preventing it from happening or even pushing them further down the trauma hole.

Mike still hanging on to his toxic girlfriend

August confrontation with lack of context making the situation worse.

No one bothering to check on Mike or notice his growing lack of absense.

Lucy unresolved trauma and even these dreams that she barely told anyone about.

August playing devils advocate with the phone that has Alejandro still on it, and for all we know, could likely trying to find or track him as we speaks

And most of all, LACK OF COMMUNICATION FROM ANY SIDE.

Oh yes of course but I’m specifically talking between Sue and lucy. You’re not wrong, but I was just speaking about them in general

Same too. I mean some things she said she not wrong on, but I do believe it’s unfair she’s dumping all the blame on Mike when there were outside factors too.

I think Sue is just done with all this BS with Lucy and is likely just going in swinging blindly. She’s likely in a blind rage without realizing it until she say somethings that truly crossing the line.

I do as well but we also see WAY more than these characters do. From the perspective of Sue…Mike did ruin Lucy’s life. She hasn’t see all the conversations or heard the background we have as readers. She doesnt know everything that went down and only knows Lucy’s side of it really and how he was the reason she attempted suicide.

From her perspective, she saw Mike being very cold and cruel for months before December, slowly eroding Lucy’s mental health, and now she knows December happened and is why Lucy did what she did and left. So from her PoV, Lucy was OK until Mike started ignoring her, then told her she was an unlovable parasite and that none of her friends were her friends. She doesn’t have the same level of information that we the readers do

I have compassion in my heart

Enough to know that it is wrong to guild trip someone who stood up against someone that repeately caused physical harm to him who then attempted despite being granted several olive branches.

I’m not saying Lucy deserved it, I’m saying that blaming Mike is wrong

Saying it’s Mike fault Lucy went to the hospital makes about as much sense as saying it’s Abbey fault his father is in prison

It takes away all blame and fault of why they turned against those who hurt them in the first place

Lucy literally did apologize and show remorse and try to make amends with Mike more than once, once most significantly the night he grabbed her, promised her that she had no real friends and everyone hated her and that she was a parasite. It is fine to believe it’s unfair to be blaming Mike for Lucy’s hospitalization. The reason you’re being asked to have compassion is because you said ‘Lucy is Mike’s Alejandro.’ You compared a young teen girl who lashed out at a fellow teen one too many times to an adult man who sexually assaulted her and saying that her actions are equivalent to that. Please consider the implications of how you’re weighing severity and responsibility.

She did not apologise in December

What she did was try to force the friendship back between them and act like nothing was wrong, she has once acknowledged what she did was wrong in eternal flame and she has once apologised recently. All after the damage was already done

I have never said their actions are equivalent. Those are words you put in my mouth

What i said was that simular how Alejandro is the centerpiece of Lucy’s trauma and issues. Lucy is the centerpiece of Mike’s trauma and issues

People have already wonderfully explained trauma isn’t a competition (i believe it might have actually been you yourself) so while nobody is going to argue that Alejandro is objectivily a worse person that doesn’t invalidate the pain Lucy put Mike through and it definitivily doesn’t make it Mike’s fault for standing up for himself

Maybe instead if assuming people are heartless, maybe double check if you aren’t misunderstanding them.

Cause now you are saying someone needs more compassion when the point they are making that victims of abuse shouldn’t be held accountible that the abuser might hurt themself when they stand up for themself

Which i hope you realise makes zero sense whatsoever

You did compare the two, the implications were there. I stand by what I said that it’s inappropriate and lacks compassion to do so. You can disagree if you like, but I’m clearly not alone in thinking so.

Implications you assumed

There was a time when everybody thought the sun revolved around the earth

Not being alone in thinking something does not make you right

I stand by what i said, just like how Alejandro has ruined Lucy’s life Lucy is ruining Mike’s life. Actively doing so recently even

But the phrase “a teen that lashed out at another one too many times” show me that you are just gravely undercutting what Lucy did

Mike repeatetly came home with bloody noses and bruised chins, then was gaslighted and guildtripped into believing that standing up for himself caused someone to almost die to then have his friends manipulated to not check up on him to the point he is now activily starving himself

Is that what you call “lashed out one too many times?”

Atleast i can say my compassion doesn’t have double standarts