donde esta lucy

Oh hey, remember "Design Corner"? Let's take a walk through Tess's everyday design, from her earliest chronological appearance to her last.

We get one glimpse of Tess in what's implied to be her freshman year.

Tess's hair was long wavy brown. She has the center part and prominent front locks of hair we'll see throughout her design, along with crimped whiskers, but she has no visible accessories at this point.

In her sophomore year, Tess falls in with Roger and totally revamps her look.

She starts dying the front locks of her hair pink and seems to straighten the back of her hair. She accessorizes with a collar and a changing assortment of bracelets, as well as a tank-top and skirt combo that shows off a little of her midriff.

She gets four ear piercings and has three tail...piercings? clips? Two look like studs and one looks like a ring. The ring is normally (but not always) the furthest from the base of her tail. She also gets an eyebrow piercing on her left eyebrow, just like Augustus.

But by junior year, she's broken up with Roger and is trying to reinvent herself. Enter High School and enter, Tess! This is her introduction in the comic.

She's ditched the earrings, eyebrow piercing, tank top, collar, and skirt and cut her hair short, but she's kept the tail piercings and the pink dye in the front of her hair. She's also opted for two thick black bracelets as a standard part of her look and debuts her locked-heart necklace.

The very bottom of the back of her hair is also dyed now. In its original design, her hair was a little longer, sticking up at the top and longer all-around in the back.

The front locks of her hair were originally drawn way longer very shortly after her introduction, but in revision they're kept around chin-length.

By December of that year, the front of her hair does grow a bit, going past her chin and forming little fluffy puffs at the bottom.

Tess's look doesn't shift further until the Silvershore Isles arc ushers in a new art style:

The fluff at the bottom of her dyed hair was drawn with some extra texture in this style, but that got removed in revision.

More notably, while the prominent flyaway bits of hair on top of her head were edited out of Volume 1, they survived the Volume 2 edits. They'll also return later in a flashback where the original scene has since been revised to remove them:

At any rate, when senior year comes around Tess comes back to school with a new haircut:

She's cut her pink hair the shortest we've seen it, getting rid of the little tufts at the end. The back of her hair also is cut shorter, eliminating the dyed back. The two strands of hair that were sticking up on top have been shorn for good this time.

Tess retires the locked heart and debuts her star necklace in "Feline Filibuster"

The watercolor era brings a few changes to how Tess is stylized.

Tess's pink hair meets in a center part and forms a prominent "V" shape in her forehead where the locks grow. In previous styles, her hairline would often be level across her forehead, with more pink hair in the shadow of the prominent locks lifting up in the front. That doesn't happen anymore in the watercolor era, simplifying the design to the "V" shape. The effect gives Tess a dramatic widow's peak-esque look. The ends of her pink hair also don't taper off in a point anymore, but instead are fluffy.

The way the star necklace is shaded also changes, giving it a much greater appearance of three dimensionality. It also shifts a bit between being pointy and rounded.

As time progresses, the front of her hair grows back out to almost chin-length.

And so, that completes the evolution of Tess's design! Farewell, Tess! It was fun watching your design change as you reinvented yourself and grew as a character.

In her dreams, she runs through brick alleyways, trying to evade her pursuer. But Lucy is trying to hide her nightmares from the people in her life:

This setup makes the artistry of the moment when Augustus asks her about her nightmares really clever:

since sue finally doesn't have to wear crutches anymore as of the new chapter, i got curious and went to see how much time has passed irl since she broke her leg

The color is all pink like this might be a romantic moment. Let's call this scene what it is: it's Lucy assaulting Augustus. She does not telegraph her intention to kiss him, giving him an opportunity to turn her down. She just goes straight for the kiss.

Augustus has to physically push her off and tell her "No".

Even then, once he's pushed her away, expressly told her "No", and is clearly upset, she tries to go for another kiss anyways.

We also should acknowledge that is happening his bedroom, which is the first place he's had to himself that felt safe. If we consider the layout of the room, Lucy is physically between him and the door. It's a windowless basement room with no other exits. To leave, he has to go around/through her. He can't easily just walk away.

It's only after he threatens to make a scene that her family will hear and invokes Lucy's rhetoric about consent that she actually stops.

While clearly upset in the moment, overall Augustus doesn't seem to be very affected by the assault. He comforts Lucy through a self-loathing spiral, accepts her apology, and affirms his platonic love for her. There is no indication that he feels less comfortable around her going forward; if anything, her breakdown drives him to be more protective of her.

And I genuinely think what we got in canon was just about the best possible way for this to play out, because the alternatives are so much worse.

In canon, Augustus's sense of safety wasn't damaged, but given the situation, it very well could have been. Lucy came into the one place he should have unequivocally felt safe and assaulted him. At this point in the story, he hadn't really started making friends with Jordan and the seniors; she is his only friend. He's living under her roof and doesn't have anywhere else to turn. He would have no one to even talk to about this, even without the stigma surrounding it and the worry if anyone would believe him or take him seriously.

And if Augustus was really uncomfortable with Lucy, it would have really messed up Lucy too. In canon, she immediately spirals into self-loathing for what she did and Augustus helps comfort her through it.

A version of events where Augustus removed himself from the room because he was uncomfortable and would have reaffirmed Lucy's perception of herself as "a bad person" and left this self-loathing spiral completely unchecked. In the aftermath, she wouldn't be able to turn to Augustus for social support anymore.

It's also worth acknowledging how Lucy is putting him in an incredibly bad position in relation to his housing. The only rule we actually see Lucy's parents establish was him not having a romantic relationship with Lucy:

If he were to reciprocate, he would be risking his housing, and being kicked out of her home would land him in a worse scenario than he was in before he left. At best Toby and Alejandro are angry about his lack of loyalty and at worst Alejandro has been told about his relationship with Melanie and is homicidally enraged. Augustus has been afraid of Alejandro's wrath to the point that he gets held back a year trying to appease Toby. His options would be to go home expecting to be severely beaten or to immediately become homeless.

It's also worth noting that Lucy has positioned herself as having control over Augustus's housing as well. She's the one who persuades her parents to take him in. She also lays down conditions for him staying there:

How would Lucy's parents know if Augustus was skipping class or pursuing Daisy? If Lucy told them. She never threatens to have him kicked out or tries to leverage his housing against him, but him remaining in Lucy's home is implicitly contingent on him having Lucy's support. She has a lot of power in their relationship, and just because she doesn't wield it against him doesn't mean Augustus isn't aware of it.

Augustus has a lot to lose if his relationship with Lucy sours. There is a parallel between Melanie and Lucy in that they're at the time of their advances, they're the only real friend Augustus has. We saw Augustus passively acquiesce to sexual advances he wasn't really ready for with Melanie.

Fortunately, when Lucy makes advances, Augustus is older, more willing to assert himself, and knows more about consent from his conversations with Lucy. Honestly, Augustus shows a lot of trust in "Burnt Bridges". He trusts that Lucy doesn't want to hurt him or take advantage of him and he trusts that if he had to make a commotion and involve her family that it wouldn't backfire on him.

Augustus is really at his best in this scene; he clearly deeply cares about Lucy and it reflects well on him. I'm glad that he was resilient enough not to be really aversely affected, but I think it would be completely understandable if he was.