This is Not Good for her mental health. Maybe there's someone she trusts that she can talk with about this.

People Lucy Trusts

Her Mother

If I'm reading the tea leaves here correctly, it looks like when Lucy was in private school and staying at her aunt's house, she briefly mentioned boy trouble to her mother in a phone call or something, and Carol got involved to a degree that was deeply unnecessary and/or unfortunately necessary.

Or something. I'm extrapolating here.

But it looks like whatever Carol did severely damaged Lucy's trust in her. So her mom's out.

Augustus

No good, she's run out of patience for his well-meaning coddling and won't let on that anything's wrong. If she tells him about her anxieties then a) he'll start coddling her even harder and b) he might feel he has to stop hanging out with Jessica's crew to take care of her. Which would ruin her plan to convince him she's fine so he'll hang out with his new friends.

She can't let Augustus father her, she's trying to mother him!

Paulo

Fine, this one was a stretch before he went all "I know about what Mike did to you and I remained friends with him anyway" and/or "I will totally abandon one of my oldest friends if you invoke something rash I said in a fight like a month ago."

Mike

God

Dammit

chapter 1 - loneliness and isolation. all of the mains are introduced to us as loners. kris is introduced as a shut down kid who doesn't talk much and clings to their mother (with the implication of having severe mental health issues including unaddressed trauma). susie is introduced as the violent mean kid who doesn't care about anything or anyone and no one likes, so everyone avoids her. ralsei is quite literally introduced as "the lonely prince", and is the only one living in the castle town dark world when you meet him. lancer only really knows his father and his father's servants. he ralsei, and susie are all sheltered kids who don't know what it's like to have people who truly care about them. you find jevil locked in a cell that needs a key broken into three pieces to open, hidden deep in the castle dungeons where no one goes. card kingdom is designed to be mostly black with white details, or forests where no one really lives (there are enemies, but i believe all of them are servants for the king).

chapter 2 - fantasy and escapism. there are quite literally video games within a video game. queen's main goal is to create an ideal world, and susie, noelle, and berdly all have their own versions of an ideal world that become front and centre as you and kris spend time with them. unknowingly, they're all willing to potentially destroy multiple worlds to see their ideal world, and none of them see any issue with it. spamton's whole thing is that he's a puppet with no real freedom, which circles around to kris. they and ralsei are the only ones who don't view this world as an escape and can see some of the horrors that come with this world's existance. susie convinces noelle and berdly that their experiences in the dark world were nothing more than a dream. if you take the weird route, noelle spends a lot of time back in the light world convincing herself that everything that happened was a nightmare, but she can't quite make herself believe that.

chapter 3 - nostalgia and dysfunctional family. the entire chapter is a game show. tenna makes multiple references to families sitting around the tv, spending quality time together while watching a show. he grieves what he used to have in the dreemurr household before the family fell apart and he was unplugged, and he gets mad at kris specifically because their family fell apart and they don't watch tv anymore. both the rounds in tenna's gameshow and the sword route are heavily inspired by the original legend of zelda game and other classic rpgs, playing into a specific kind of nostalgia that some players might have for a past that felt simpler. once again, kris kinda sees something a little different, as the sword route seems to play more into their fears and trauma. it creates this contrast where tenna is angry about what he lost and wishes for a better time, where the same thoughts scare kris because of what they've experienced and what went on behind the scenes that tenna never knew about.

chapter 4 - writing your own story. this chapter is literally called "prophecy" in the chapter select menu, and focuses on the prophecy that ralsei gave a sparknotes version of back in chapter 1. ralsei is beholden to this prophecy. he believes in it without a doubt, and the idea of kris or susie knowing their endings terrifies him. in contrast, susie is very much someone who creates her own path. she goes against convention and expectation at every turn. she's a healer and magic user, while also being the tank with the highest hp, strongest weapons, and damage output. she's described in the prophecy itself as having hope crossed on her heart, and gerson tells her that she has the ability to rewrite the story if she wants to. susie doesn't believe in endings the same way ralsei does. there are implications that the weird route is supposed to happen in some capacity, with respect to noelle getting stronger and having a major role in the prophecy, reflected by us forcing the thornring onto her ("noelle will get stronger").

is there a post here

Veronica: I don’t think Jordan wants a major in anything! He just wants to play basketball! ;__;

I'm gonna want to grab Ralsei by the scarf and demand to know "WHAT KINDS OF DARKNESSES?!? Gerson appeared in the Knight's fountains twice, THIS IS A CLUE!" But Kris isn't going to let me do that, precisely because it's a clue. And then I'm gonna want to grab Susie by the jacket collar...

Oh my god, is this Susie about to... lock in? We're finally going to treat the end of the world with the urgency it demands?

It is! We're done faffing about with dating minigames and keeping secrets! We've got an evil Roaring Knight creating fountains and kidnapping cops, and we're finally gonna rally the troops! Tell the mayor, tell the military, tell the world! We gotta pull out all the stops!

I hate it so much.

Because on the one hand: this is a good take. Sue, Daisy, and Paulo cowering while Lucy got assaulted in Confrontation, when they were thirteen and being more-or-less mugged, was a massive failure on their parts. Of course Lucy would hold resentments over that, and of course they all mostly forgot about it: nothing bad happened to them. And of course she'd feel strongly about Mike standing up for her. We're probably overdue for something big coming of it.

But on the other hand: