Sometimes I think about the views and discussions on Lucy being physically aggressive via Mike being physically aggressive, and just find it really interesting.
Something that came to mind which I think about sometimes is the way both of them get physical when lashing out, and how that might be a factor in the way they’re perceived.
We know both these kids took martial arts classes. Lucy’s behaviors usually (not always, but usually) defaults to punches and kicks, basic stuff most people can do and probably the first things you’ll be taught in any self defense class. Knowing Lucy’s insecurities and history, it’s easy to see how her punching someone is her responding to uncomfortable situations impulsively by trying to defend herself. A punch when someone’s doing something you don’t like can easily scream “stop it and get away from me.” It’s not good behavior by any means, as we’ve long since established, but still.
Mike on the other hand responds in, honestly, what seem to be really inefficient ways when he gets physical. Grabbing Paulo’s head and smashing his face into a table, or grabbing Augustus by the face and throwing/slamming him to the ground, possibly head-first depending on that impact? Those seem like a lot more effort to pull off, especially on people who are taller than Mike, vs just punching them. Which we know Mike knows how to do perfectly well. So when Mike does this stuff, it’s in ways that feel like they take more deliberate effort to do, and read more as “I am angry and want to hurt you” than it does as defense.
… but anyway that’s my two cents on really specific observations I make in regards to the drama cats, thank you for your time.
Since David has vanished off the face of the earth during the Great Cat Confrontation of 2025, I want to make it clear
As the comic relief character, David 1000% has the ability to dissipate at will when the plot gets serious, much like a vampire turning into mist to escape to their coffin when cornered.
Hot damn rereading Burnt Bridges after the current pages is eye-opening.
Augustus was, like… actually really good to Mike in that chapter. He was legitimately as supportive and understanding as I could expect someone to reasonably be considering who he was talking to in that moment. Sure, Auggie’s pissed, but he even fucking asks Mike if he’s okay and has a tiny tidbit of banter with him in the end.
Literally the last time these two spoke, Mike was remorseful about what he did, cried about how he couldn’t apologize to Lucy or comfort her or do anything for her, said he’d leave her alone from now on, and asked Augustus to take care of her.
So then when Mike shows up on the track field and seems to be a problem for Lucy, Augustus asks Mike to give Lucy space. He’s asking Mike for what should on paper be a minor inconvenience. And. Not only can Mike not do that, it’s because he’s trying to cling to someone else to fill the Lucy or otherwise “romantic stand-in” role.
In hindsight, while I still wouldn’t call Augustus justified for going about things this way, damn it’s no wonder he’s so extra about it.
Well I sure have a lot of thoughts on recent pages, let’s see if I can summarize.
1. I think this scenario pretty much confirms that Mike doesn’t have any understanding of what a healthy platonic relationship looks like. Every important and impactful connection he’s had - Lucy, Sandy, Daisy, Paulo, James - has had some sort of romantic hangup involved. Every other friendship seems to just be casual or a side effect of being in the same social circle. Let’s be honest, I don’t think you can really say Mike and David are friends with each other, they just share mutual connections. It makes me think that, to Mike, platonic friendship is just… some minor detail that isn’t important.
2. Very well could be thinking too hard about this but I legitimately think Mike has not even LOOKED in Lucy’s direction so far in this entire scene. Going back to every panel where we can see his gaze or at least his general facing, he seems to be focused on either Augustus or James only, even when Lucy first makes her entrance. Really continues the trend of Lucy being an afterthought when someone else is in the picture.
3. Lmao Mike you have an amazing ability to stand your ground when doing so is more problematic, and then absolutely choosing the worst way to defend yourself when you have so many reasonable responses available to you.
4. Augustus has chosen a terrible route to go about this, but alas, we all know it’s kind of the only way this can happen. If approached in any reasonable way, Mike will always pick the path of least resistance and continue to dodge the issue.
5…
Hey Mike, I’m not saying violence is the answer, it is definitely not the answer. But if this is the route you’re going, that’d better be a punch you’re about to throw so that you can at least say you’ve done worse to Auggie than to Paulo
Honestly living for how divided the sides are on this conflict.
Like, on the one hand, Mike does legitimately have every right to be here. It’s a public area, he can be here if he wants to.
On the other hand…
Let’s be honest, this isn’t just “Mike and Lucy had a messy argument” that led to this, shit got plenty worse than that and at this point Mike is really the one who has done some serious targeted damage, like… multiple times. I honestly think Augustus approaching Mike to just point blank say “Hey, Lucy isn’t doing great, can you give her space during the lunch break” and just putting that request on the table would have been much more reasonable had he been willing to take no for an answer if Mike chose to stand his ground from the start. But we obviously know better than that (and we know Mike could beat Auggie in a fight if it came down to that lmao)
People have asked why Augustus and Lucy don’t just sit somewhere else, and that’s hard to say since we don’t know the layout of the school and what their options actually are. But also I’m fully willing to bet suggesting a different spot to Lucy would turn into her interpreting it as more coddling and being resistant or outright escalating the situation into an argument. So, between that or just asking Mike “hey can you not” when Mike seemingly has other options probably sounds like the better option to Augustus.
But, like… Hey, Mike? I agree you have every right to be out here, and Lucy probably doesn’t even know about Augustus doing this, but, uhh… why is this where you choose to stand your ground???
Bro is out here third-wheeling with James and David while also only semi-paying attention to them (and I say them but let’s be honest Mike is just out here for James) because he’s busy grey-rocking the girl who cheated on him. All the while, Mike has been actively invited to join the rest of the track team to hang out, with Felix even pointing out that James can be a problem. Not to mention there’s Abbey, or meanwhile Paulo or Daisy could maybe use someone to hang out with since they still seem to consider you a really good friend Mike and are trying to keep their relationship on the down low here at school. And all of them are probably actually eating their lunch, Mike! You’re an athlete, go eat! Listening to Augustus might actually be way healthier for you even if it’s kind of a dick move from him!
Anyway, TLDR yeah Augustus can’t control what Mike does and is probably trying to take things into his own hands when he shouldn’t be, but hey Mike is this really the hill you want to die on???
Mainly that I think it’s really interesting how Mike has already categorized Paulo and Daisy as having moved on and therefore leaving him behind. I could be forgetting some details so correct me if I’m wrong here but…
The last time we saw Mike and Daisy have a one-on one interaction was their… enlightening conversation in Double Down, during which Mike outright explained how he didn’t want to ruin things with Daisy after their experimental make out session, and Daisy affirmed that they were cool, and they just overall seemed to be on really good and level terms compared to how they’ve interacted in the past (ie, Daisy fawning all over Mike).
Since then, they’ve barely been in the same scenes together, with one of those few exceptions being Date Night - where Mike changed the subject when Paulo noticed something was off with Daisy, I might add. I’m not slamming Mike for this, I honestly think he was trying to put Paulo at ease, but it feels worth noting.
Immediately following this was New Year’s Resolution, which ended off with a very vulnerable and open conversation between Mike and Paulo about how Mike didn’t want people to leave him just because he couldn’t share their feelings romantically. It was a legitimately very sweet and important interaction between the two of them and seemed like a major deal in Paulo and Mike’s friendship.
The next time we see Paulo and Daisy is only a couple chapters later in Rain Check when they actually get together, and we next see them and Mike interact in Third Wheel when they’re trying to keep things discreet at school… and then immediately in the following chapters we’re seeing Mike feeling like he’s being left behind, topped off by him being confronted by Augustus, and David and James wanting to run outside.
“It’s so easy to forget me! They just… Once I’m no longer…”
But like… Paulo and Daisy haven’t had TIME to forget about you, Mike! We haven’t seen Mike interact with Paulo or Daisy in any negative manner that would imply they’re neglecting him in favor of each other. James definitely seems to shower his current fixation with attention and had his “We don’t even NEED Mike” comment but it seems pretty clear from an audience perspective that’s a James issue and not a Mike issue. But there’s still the rest of the track team (Felix in particular seems pretty supportive), and it feels to me like Paulo and Daisy literally haven’t had a chance to do anything to make Mike feel forgotten, he has just prescribed that to be the case based on them getting together.
I don’t want this to sound like I’m being harsh on Mike by any means, I’m really just making an observation here, but it’s deeply interesting to me how Mike seems to assume that someone having anything else going on in their life means they don’t care about him. ESPECIALLY if it’s romantic. Basically all this boils down to, in my opinion, is the feeling that Mike has had such a clusterfuck of a social circle growing up that he legitimately doesn’t know how to separate friendship from romance, and doesn’t know how to tell when someone is ignoring you vs. when they still care but just have other shit going on in their life.
Also I just realized - I was under the impression the whole track team was practicing outside during lunch breaks, but it seems like it’s just Mike, James, and David. They’re the only ones we see in Seeing Stars, James and David are the ones who Mike specifically mentioned while talking with Augustus, and the rest of the track team are just chilling in the cafeteria. Not sure if that’s relevant at all, but it just occurred to me as I was writing this.
Legit I honestly have been so enthralled by seeing the descent in how Sandy's dialogue has gone from "Uhh honey I don't think you meant for that to sound selfish but..." to "GUUURRRL WHAT YOU DOIN" throughout this whole conversation lmao
Hmm, I find Sandy's response in this page to be... interesting. And I'm about to go into a whole tangent over-analyzing tiny things.
Mike picks up the phone and we immediately find out that Sandy has been terrified Mike "did something bad." And I... find it odd that Sandy immediately jumped to that possibility? I'm not gonna fault her for being worried about Mike's well-being by any means, don't get me wrong. It more just strikes me as noteworthy that this seems to have been the first thought that popped into her head.
She very well may have thought of other things, then that possibility came up and stuck out as the worst possible one. Or she could have gone to such an extreme first because it's so unusual for Mike to not answer his phone the moment she tries to contact him, which is its own bag of issues.
But at the same time, it just stands out to me that her response was to make that assumption when there wasn't really any other indication of it. Disclaimer, of course, that you can never know what's really going on in somebody's head. However, in the case of Sandy and Mike's argument, I don't think Mike said anything that would have given most people that impression specifically. And I don't think Sandy, at least at this point, has been paying anywhere near enough attention to him to have gotten the vibe that he'd do something like that outside of this situation. Girl, you just confessed to cheating emotionally (and maybe physically???) on him and you're surprised that he isn't answering his phone to talk to you?
And then she follows up with "Don't scare me like that." I'm not trying to villainize the distressed 17-year old for not using better phrasing, I genuinely don't think she meant any harm with that. But it's not lost on me that it comes off as a little bit manipulative in this context, especially combined with her and Mike's relationship as a whole. When she's been ghosting Mike, admits to cheating or practically cheating on him depending on how you read the situation, and then responds to his outburst with "You scared me, don't do that again!" it isn't really the prettiest combination. It just comes across as her sounding like she's the victim here.
But the point of my whole tangent here isn't to claim Sandy's a terrible person (at least not for this page alone, the whole Mr. McHairdresser situation is a whole other matter), it's more just to point out the train of logic that seems to have happened here and wonder the why's behind it. Why is it that this is where Sandy's mind went in particular? Why did she use the phrasing that she did? Really this isn't a Sandy callout post so much as a "what makes Sandy tick" post because this page brought up a lot of questions about that for me. It really boils down to the fact that we don't know a whole lot about Sandy for certain aside from glimpses of details, and we don't know what's going on in her head or her life that taught her to use the words and phrasing and behaviors that she uses, and that's nothing new. But I just wanted to make my own comment on that fact.
In all seriousness though, Daisy potentially has a point. Not that getting a hobby is an instant fix-all for his relationship problems and the absolute decimation between him and Lucy, but like... Has Mike touched that game console of his aside from with Paulo? Just saying, it's hard to get a read on what he's doing in his life outside of schoolwork and his chats with Sandy these days.
romaincrisis
dededos
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