>>114439016Like most characters in BCB, Mike is a composite of character traits that clash with Taeshi's emotional interpretation of those traits, shown through how she chooses to write the comic and how she further chooses to interpret past actions through current emotional interpretations.
Mike is still most certainly a pastiche of Taeshi's feelings for Carry-on Cuck. Its just that, keeping in mind the author's freely admitted diagnosis and clear history of emotional dysregulation, this brings in the concept of "splitting" or how BPD people interpet others.
All the "good" and "bad" emotions surrounding a concept are split and to be as clear on this metaphor, basically stored apart from one another.
We're viewing her exploring her own emotions on Carry-on Cuck and her percieved cuckery she had at his hands. Previously it was basically all her self-loathing channeled into grandiose bullshit, culminating in her self-insert Lucy face-planting into a bottle of Heinz. The subtext isn't to be ignored here.
But now we have this current slew of events where Mike is basically doing nothing out of the ordinary and still comports himself as he always did, except now Lucy is back and gets to replicate Mike's whole gloom and doom "everyone in our friendgroup only likes me you dumb bitch, they're all going to leave you eventually" spiel, except in a tedious twist of fate and shitty writing Lucy is now the epicenter of their social group because Taeshi doesn't know how to write interpersonal dynamics deeper than your average anime harem trope.
I got off on a tangent
Anyhow, YES this is still Taeshi's half-assed petty shitflinging at Luggage Lad, except she can barely bring herself to do anything to make it seem like he's in the wrong other than retcon him snapping at Lucy as some abstract form of sociopathic abuse and that they were "codependent" in their doings instead of what has been shown conclusively, is that no Lucy is just a gigantic cunt and Mike is der wunderkind.
