YMMV / The Guide to a Healthy Relationship

• Awesome Art: Oh, yes. Even the pages that show gruesome hallucinations or awful situations are beautifully lit, full of gorgeous details, and there's all those landscapes, skies at different times of the day, pleats in clothing, light reflections... and none of that beauty is drawn digitally.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: A comic about a drunk idiot who makes nonstop poor decisions and lacks self-awareness and about a severely mentally ill person who's constantly abused and kicked around can be a bit hard on the stomach.
• Complete Monster: Daniel. The most obvious is how he treats his romantic partner — his gaslighting, psychological terror and emotional abuse of Julian are obvious, physical abuse as of now confirmed, too. Julian is terrified of, completely obedient to and entirely dependent on him, and Daniel obviously enjoys the power he has over them. But in subtler ways, his manipulations reach his circle of friends as well. And then there's cheating on Julian with Apollo which was not subtle at all and arguably coercion, because he was sober and pushy while Apollo was drunk beyond the ability to consent.
• Heartwarming Moments: Julian taking Apollo to the bus station since Apollo can't see all that much once the sun is up. Despite all Julian has to deal with, including Apollo himself who's a really strenuous friend at times, Julian still takes care of him. And since Apollo is in the process of sobering up, he opens up to Julian about his own pretty devastating emotional state — something he hadn't done in the comic proper once so far.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • How easily Daniel manipulates Julian and everyone else in their social circle, to the point that nobody seems to be really aware of how terribly he treats his partner.
  • Julian's hallucinations. Case in point: the cover of chapter 3.
• Realism-Induced Horror: There's nothing special about Daniel. He's a normal guy with a normal job, no particular skill set aside from being charismatic, and the methods he uses to mistreat Julian are very much par for the course for a gaslighter and Domestic Abuser. And it's terrifying.
• Squick:
  • Julian's Body Horror hallucinations, including trying to cut itching bugs out of their skin or bleeding out from every pore, might count as Nausea Fuel.
  • There's a scene early on where Apollo wakes up naked in a bathtub full of beer bottles and then rummages through a pile of drunk, sleeping, partly naked people of a frat party to get his clothes back. One of the guys present fell asleep with his vomit drying on him. Amusingly / confusingly, this viscerally unpleasant but rather mundane scene seemed to gross out more readers than the cruel psychological terror that the comic deals with later on.
  • The state of Apollo's apartment. Something in a corner looks suspiciously like a dead rat or mouse. Not to mention the "roach collection".
  • Julian having to clean a public bathroom that looks like someone threw their shit all over the walls.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Can happen, since there are very dark themes at play and there's not much of a silver lining in sight. The only unambiguously sympathetic character is Julian, and there seems to be no end to their suffering.
• The Woobie:
  • Julian — has asthma, is mentally ill, haunted by paranoia, anhedonia, ghastly hallucinations, has a trauma from their stay in a psychiatric hospital where they've been mistreated, is constantly bullied for their looks and "weird" behavior, and let's not even get started with their shitpile of a boyfriend.
  • To a lesser degree, Apollo qualifies as well, since beneath his brainless drinking and idiotic attitude, he's actually miserable about having been disowned by his parents, landed far away from home in a dead-end job and an alcohol-induced downwards spiral that he doesn't have the strength to pull himself out of. Though his self-centered and inconsiderate behavior puts him in the realm of Jerkass Woobie.