I think the light just dawned on Danny (panel 4) that Amber has something a lot more important going on than a secret. She isn’t playing a game like you are Danny boy.
Orrrrr MAYBE he just had empathy for what she went through, and loving her, he felt a sympathetic love that overwhelmed him until he felt forced to express comfort and acceptance toward her, for both their sakes.
But y’know, your emotional immaturity angle works as well, I guess he might NOT have been pressuring her initially out of concern for her well-being.
I can see why egalitarianists would prefer the butt, because it’s not restricted to one sex – a guy’s butt can be just as hot as a girl’s. Boobs, while quantitatively better, I would argue, are only better on a woman.
Amber can remember things Amazi-Girl did. The inability to remember that actions of other alters is diagnostic for DID (multiple personality disorder).
I don’t know how it develops. I especially don’t know how it develops in the Dumbiverse. But Amber does not have it at this point.
I always felt like Amber is trying so hard to make AG a real personality to try and replace Amber because she has such low self esteem. Like she hopes that if she pretends hard enough, Amber will disappear and be replaced by AG who she thinks is super-awesome.
To me it comes across that she is still trying to dis-associate the things she does and feels as Amber from the things she does and feels as Amazi-Girl, and sometimes failing to do so. Not an expert, but I have the impression that in DID it doesn’t take effort to keep alters separate.
Ambers effort to create the Amazi-Girl identity do seem psychologically dangerous. But so far I think they are [still] conscious, which I don’t think the creation, maintenance, and adoption of alters in DID are.
DID is generally associated with severe childhood trauma and/or longterm abuse, which definitely fits Amber’s backstory. But the lack of memory between alters is not universal. Some of my alters, yeah, I completely check out of life while they’re out, but for others… It’s more like I’m watching myself do things but can’t affect what’s being said or done. Some of my alters will talk at me when I’m in control, telling me their opinions on the situation at hand when they differ from my own. Some of my alters never take control of the body; they exist purely to keep order within the collective.
At the moment, I’d say Amber’s personality is fractured but not completely shattered. The part are still connected. She is on a very precarious ledge, though…
That part’s not 100% required. That usually comes up when things are not integrated and she’s actively pushing for her alters to be less and less integrated, sooooo…. yeah. What Viktoria and St. Clair said about the ship sailing and her being dissociated to all hell.
Last I heard, no one has ever managed to prove whether multiple personality disorder even actually exists, so understanding anything about it is really problematic. Literally everything people are posting about it, so knowledgeably here, lacks scientific consensus. Not to criticize, it is kind of shocking to find that out, with it being so widely accepted as a thing particularly in the U.S. But there is a large chance it’s simply a figment of our cultural imagination.
It being a figment of our consensual reality doesn’t make it less real. Gay, straight, bi, male, female, boss, worker, parent, child, army, navy, air force: these are all inventions of our society, doesn’t stop us treating them as though they were god-given categories.
Personality disorders are difficult to “prove” with certainty, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for DID, so saying there is a “large chance” it is imagined is really a stretch. Particularly when people are talking about their personal experiences with it.
Yup, you got me, I just make it all up for the sweet social benefits. Being ace and trans too. Just, so many social benefits. I mean, sure there are some small things I could have had if I had just been a neurotypical straight cis man, but nah, inventing a complicated life-long struggle with painful internal realities is just the hip, cool, thing the kids today are into.
/sarcasm
But to be serious, I’m mostly just speaking from my own experiences and the experiences of other DID people I have known and the thing is that I’m somewhat used to having to do that. Asexual, trans, DID, romantic orientations, and so on. For a good chunk of my life, the information for all of these just wasn’t great or downright harmful and wrong and it took community communicating with each other, building a foundation of knowledge because there just wasn’t the interest or the ability to do so in higher academia. Some of it is closer to the beginning of that process (I’ve got several of the earlier scientific articles critically examining asexuality from various disciplines), some of it is considerably further on and has largely succeeded in removing very toxic misinformation clinically and socially (trans issues).
My reality is what it is and it’s been that way for a long time and I’ve spent time trying to pretend away one reality or another only to have it bite me in the ass later. And my internal life has been defined for a long time by not only the others, but DID as well. Things have happened and internal realities have been such that it would be rather unlikely to be something other than DID and similar methods that have helped others have helped me.
As a scientist, I cannot really ignore the reality and evidence of my own life experiences and the stated life experiences of those I know, especially when I know that academia tends to be slow to build genuine scholarship on marginalized communities.
Ahahahaha if you really think it’s so widely! accepted!!! then I…
Well. I can tell you’re a singlet.
Just look at these comments. You already have people joking about how Amber and/or Amazi-Girl are going to end up going on a killing spree because they’re SOOoooOOoOO CRAZY GUYS AMIRITE?! And while it’s true Amazi-Girl does have issues with being too violent, that’s a common narrative for anyone who doesn’t fit the norm of a culture (espespecially in regards to mental health, think of how often shootings are blamed on people perceived to be mentally unhealthy), and these assumptions are kind of a sign that the thing were talking about? It’s not accepted. It’s not accepted at all.
Plus there’s loads of different opinions between psychologists on how to treat multiplicity, with many outright denying it exists? I mentioned I was in a system to one psychologist (with the request that we not try to “fix” it since it wasn’t causing me any problems) and they were chill about it. But when I had to switch therapists, I was FUCKING TERRIFIED and had the worst panic attack beforehand, just because I know how unpredictable professionals are about dealing with this stuff. Would they mock me for being delusional? Would they try to make me bring back the long-dead “original” person, despite the fact that would definitely make my mental health worse…? In the end, we didn’t even talk about it, but the fear was there and very real, just as bad if not more so than my day-to-day fears of homophobia and transphobia.
It’s “accepted” in the US inasmuch as it’s a fun narrative for the general public to write about cRAzY PEoPle, but it’s nowhere near accepted for real. Not even close. And in the scientific community, the name was literally changed from multiple personality disorder to dissociative identity disorder as way to blame it all on people dissociating. The old name at least gave it some credibility by acknowledging there were other people. The new one makes it sound like it’s just one person dissociating, which… confuses me because dissociating feels nothing like switching lol. But clearly the scientists who have never lived like this know best. Clear…ly. 😐
And anyway, we can’t even prove ONE person exists in a brain, much less more than one. All you can really do is take people’s word for it when they say that, yes, they’re a separate person and, no, they’re not delusional. And there’s definitely not an abundance of Americans claiming to be in multiple systems/have DID. As Cerberus said, there are no social benefits and hell of a lot of drawbacks, which means the majority of systems aren’t just saying this for the hell of it. So scientific evidence or not, it’s probably a real thing. (Even the healthy multiplicity crowd doesn’t treat it as flippantly as to assume everyone will be okay and there’s no stigma lmao I’ve seen post after post of people terrified to come out about this.)
Staying out of the DID debate, but I’d like to point out one comic related thing: Amazi-Girl doesn’t have issues with being too violent, Amber does.
Amber loses control. Amazi-Girl doesn’t. That’s a lot of the point of Amazi-Girl. She’s channeling Amber’s rage, but doing so constructively.
The way Amber seems to put it, Amazi-Girl is how she deals with her aggression, and she thinks that if she didn’t use that as an outlet, she would take it out on the people around her.
I had a friend who has definite multiple personalities in his head. He’s entirely capable of remembering what’s going on with them, though, and they talk to each other in his head.
I’m not gonna say anything for Willis’ comic per se, but… psychologically that can’t happen, really. Dissociative Identity Disorder isn’t really a psychosis or something that you develop. It’s a result of trauma experienced when you’re very young, before you properly develop a personality. You create things in your mind to protect yourself from damage.
I’m not a psychologist, but my psych teacher at least always said that it really can’t happen to anyone over the age of like five-ish. Our personalities are too set and they can’t fracture like that.
There are a lot of opinions and not much consensus about DID. There are still psychologists who maintain that it is iatrogenic, i.e. induced by inappropriate therapy.
DID is pretty poorly understood overall and there’s a lot of debate back and forth between doctors on almost literally everything to do with it and it definitely doesn’t help that there’s not really much interest in studying DID individuals who are high-functioning in society or fully integrated, especially in long-term longitudinal studies.
In my experiences speaking with people who have DID, some develop in young ages, some develop older, some from specific traumas and some almost seemingly by random luck of the brain chemistry draw. It’s also totally possible to have hidden alters or alters who are literally stuck in time.
Most of the “scary” symptoms of DID arise do to old treatment methods and people’s negative ideas of how to handle their alters, often treating alters stuck in time or who carry negative emotions very poorly, thinking if they can separate the alter enough then they can be free of the trauma or the abuse or the negative emotions themselves. This often causes the alter that feels it is being pushed out to react in angry, sometimes violent ways and to do things like the full control and the loss of memory between the alters.
And it’s super fun to figure out how to handle when you’re a little kid scared to death that revealing what’s going on will lead to scary doctors who’ll lock you up forever because you’re clearly a monster person like in the movies.
Huh. I never thought about that…but yeah, once I integrated it was like there was no literature about me. Sometimes I look back and wonder if it really happened or not. (My DID was pretty definitely from extreme childhood stressors combined with total lack of support [could write a novel, won’t], and all that stuff about parenting the inner child actually seemed to help–after I pared away the really touchy-feely parts, which made my alter roll her eyes and say GOLLLLL.)
Yeah, ditto. With me, I have no idea what triggered my first major split even if I can pinpoint the how and the why of the second and third schisms. And it’s somewhat annoying to nowadays have spent almost as much of my life fully integrated and more or less “stable” as I have being in bad places with it and not really see myself reflected in any resource on the subject.
My youngest alter probably marks my first split, but I don’t know what the exact trigger was. There’s a lot she won’t tell me about what she remembers from my childhood that I have forgotten/compartmentalized into her, and I know she holds more than just the triggering incident. Part of the abuse cycle I was raised in though was this all-consuming rule of Be Normal In Public; smile and hug the abusers when people are watching, respond in the socially correct way regardless of what you’re feeling, etc. So all of my alters have this ingrained refusal to allow our existence to be visible. We haven’t integrated, but we’ve gotten really, really good at acting like each other so the overall public personality is consistent. I can black out in the middle of a conversation, then come back and continue it with five or twenty minutes missing, and nobody seems to notice the difference. I haven’t managed to find any good information on things that that. It’s frustrating.
but, yeah, danny is getting a taste of what he’s really getting into. maybe therapy wouldn’t be such a bad idea? this girl is seriously rockin’ the cray-cray!
I dunno. I think the way she’s talking is kind of like she’s playing D&D or some role playing game. *I* may not want to hollow out a giant’s body so that it can be taken back to the giant village and ransacked, but my Gnome Barbarian sure as hell does! (Shout out to Tom Fowler)
I have made that face. It’s the face I made when I heard about a suicide attempt. That person was my ex-girlfriend, good friend, and kind of a hero figure to me. That’s the face you make when you realize that someone who has saved your life might need saving sometimes too.
I’m with this one. Hurt and fear and “you are precious to me” and “please” and “why” and “oh god” and just… inability to despair because anything happening to this person would be….
The scary thing is when someone says something that causes that face and notices, and then laughs, even if it’s bitter, says “it’s not that bad” and proceeds to say something even more horrifying and they just can’t fathom the degree….
“But I failed, like I fail at everything, which is why I was trying, and that’s why it’s FUNNY”. Took me YEARS to get why that comment made other people cry.
“The person I love was in serious danger, way more danger than I’d realized, and is still in danger!”
Leading to, “I love you, all of you, please don’t die.”
Up til now, Danny thought that Amazi-Girl was a rad game that Amber played. Now he gets that the split is not a game, and that it meant that Amber smashed into a car and was bleeding from her head and still couldn’t stop putting herself in serious physical danger. (And she’d do it again, too.) Deep realization of danger to his loved one.
Not saying he isn’t supposed to be a nice guy, and it seems to me pretty realistic for a kid in his situation to be this way, but it probably takes a lot to get him to absorb such mature thoughts. Hopefully you guys are right about him obtaining that level of insight.
The funny thing is that Cybersix is a case where the art in the cartoon version is actually a bit better than the original comic book. I’ve seen some panels from the comics and Lucas looks like some kind of ape man in them. On the other hand they really could have moved even further away from the original design for Hashimoto and his little sister than they did.
I don’t know, do Triple Changers count for that? Because if so, I might be able to point a person in the direction of some Springer or Blitzwing fic. (And yes, due to Rule 34, I am certain SpringerxBlitzwing is also probably a thing. I have not looked specifically BECAUSE of Rule 34.)
But you generally don’t see the variation used in Cybersix, where Cybersix is female, while her secret identity is as male appearing Adrian Seidelman. He teaches at the school where Cybersix’s eventual love interest, Lucas Amato, also teaches. Adrian and Lucas become friends, and it’s not hard, when wearing shipper glasses, to see some of Cybersix’s interest in Lucas peaking out in Adrian’s behaviour. Then there’s one of Adrian’s students, Lori Anderson, who develops a crush on him, and gets jealous of Cybersix when she becomes convince Cybersix is interested in Adrian.
Are you implying one must have sexual desires to respect the beauty of the booty? You speak heresy against the ass. It is the way. It is the apha and the omega. It’s what attaches our legs to our torsos!
Absolutely not, Yotomoe! May I offer two examples —
a classical Greek statue known as Aphrodite Kallipygos;
and Ms. Vikky Dougan, a 1950s actress probably best remember for wearing a gown that, as the song goes, “revealed an entirely new cleavage”.
I am implying that, because I am asexual, and I also do not see the point of worshiping the ass. I am more of the overarm persuasion. Those things are comfortable to lean against.
I get that you’re just making a hyperbolic joke and that’s fine, not trying to be the moral police here, but jokes like that can come off as invalidating.
I guess it’s like, when there’s a joke where an ostensibly straight woman meets another awesome lady, and then says that she’d “go gay” for her.
It’s just a joke based on the attractiveness of the subject, but it’s nevertheless dismissive of the gay identity.
You can choose to see it as dismissive, if you want to. In the same way I can choose to find it dismissive when in almost every alien movie the aliens call humans a “pink ape” or some equivalent even though a huge part of the earth’s population is brown. I don’t like being offended so I just take everything with a grain of salt. I don’t have any beef with people who don’t like butts, but I’m not going to tiptoe around my jokes to please everything. Political correctness(or in the case that this word is still banned, the desire to speak in a way that offends no one ever at any time) is kind of the Murderer of Comedy.
I mean, that’s totally okay. We should be able to joke about what we want, but at the same time I also think we should expect that people can say “hey that’s not ok” as well. You don’t need to take it as gospel, but like, it’s good to keep perspective.
I mean if I called you patriarchal cis hetero scum I think you’d be well within your right to beat me in the head with a golf club, but there’s nothing wrong with having the dialogue.
yeah, I’m not saying I necessarily expect him to remember that bisexual is a word, or not to say ‘I think I’m attracted to men’ (although he has been clear consistently that he likes women, so hopefully whatever happens he’ll tell Amber that before she gets too freaked out), it’s more that as commenters we know what bisexuality is, that evidence points to that being what Danny is, and that in any case, he isn’t gay (and is very unlikely to use that phrasing by accident).
(put his foot in his mouth, yes, but probably not by using, let alone believing in that wording)
Well if we want to get bogged down in mathematical semantics (and why not?), a monogamous straight person discovering they’re actually a monogamous bisexual person would find themselves not having sex with the exact same amount of people as prior to their personal revelation. That being said, there might be ATTRACTION to additional persons (not necessarily twice as many since something something gender not actually binary something), but being monogamous, the end result is them still only diddling one person at a time.
If she thought he were gay, she might be distraught, considering how she felt when Ethan came out to her.
Fortunately that’s not an issue. Unless he seriously Dans up his delivery, things should go fine; as much smut as she reads, she’s bound to be aware that bisexuality exists… I’m still unsure how some characters were so oblivious.
The same way that heterosexual polyamory can often strain a relationship.
We already know that Amber has a hard time with self esteem and how she reacted when Ethan was able and willing to go through the motions with Joyce, a near complete stranger, but not Amber, his childhood bosom buddy.
Now imagine how, even if as a initial knee-jerk reaction, the way she’d respond to Danny saying “I think I like guys[too]”.
Yes and no. Yes, it’s a callback to how she and Ethan broke up and she might take it hard or wrong, even though there’s no real reason to if it’s explained with the right language.
But it’s hardly the same situation as polyamory. It’s like telling the hot brunette you’re dating that, yeah, brunettes are awesome, but gingers can also turn you on. Does your brunette have competition out there? Yes…. but she did anyway, unless she was the only brunette in the world. Hardly any more reason to worry about needing to share him than there was before.
Yes that potentially would be especially since she asked when they first met to avoid that except it won’t cause Danny is bi not gay and Amber will most likely look past it especially since Danny has shown he has no issue being intimate with her unlike Ethan before he came out
Well, as others said, he’s bi, not gay, and it wasn’t Ethan’s being gay that hurt her, per se. It was Ethan not wanting a physical, sexual relationship with her, right? Danny evidently wants that. Amber and Ethan never had sex; Amber and Danny have been getting it on for a while.
When Amber offered Danny sex with “mask or no mask” the choice was fraught with a potency that Danny was not aware of. In choosing what seemed to him to be a bit of playful kink he unwittingly added pressure to Amber’s tendency to compartmentalise her admirable and desirable traits into Amazi-Girl and to disesteem Amber. That seems like a disintegrative pressure to me. I think that Amber learning that Amber is loveable is probably a very encouraging development.
For Amazi-Girl to get all the affirmation would, I think, have applied continued pressure for Amber’s dis-integration.
IIRC, he didn’t choose “mask”. He hesitated and she kept it on. When it did come off – precisely because he was looking for Amber, he lets her put it back on – “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
Danny’s not putting pressure on her. If anything he’s been trying to push for more Amber – as he’s doing here by kissing her as Amber. They’re not dating, remember?
The story is a little more nuanced than that. Remember that Danny insists on talking to Amber after they make love, and she answers as Amber. Whether or not they had sex with her in costume, he insisted that Amber realize that she was with him, not just Amazi-Girl.
(OT.: I’m hearing Joe Cocker sing “You can leave your mask on” here…)
Yesterday Amber was all “sure, no big deal, I can tell you if you make it worth my while with sexy fantasies that involve cucumbers.” Today she’s not so beyond it all. I don’t think she has talked to anyone about it before this, the closest was the hug from Dina.
Yeah, and I think she’s mid-processing exactly what went down. I mean, it’s scary when an alter kind of runs off on their own (with your body) like that. And it may have cost her her life. After all, she was on route to a truck’s grill if her worst enemy hadn’t been there and it’s largely because Amazi-girl refuses to quit.
It ended well. Becky was saved, everyone lived, and Amber/Amazi-girl got to be real damn heroes, but that the Amazi-girl alter was willing to take that big of risk and accept that big of a physical punishment to “not fail” seems to be somewhat new information for her and I don’t think she’s fully sure how to handle that.
Amber has defined Amazi-Girl by absolutes. Never. Can’t.
What happens when “the irresistible force” meets, not the immovable object, but a reality which doesn’t allow for such things?
Look at it like this: A hetro can feel attraction to someone else but make the choice to be faithful to the person with whom they are in a relationship because their bond is deeper than a burst of attraction. The same is true of gays and bis; gender and alignment have nothing to do with it.
That’s a good way to put it. Danny separate “this person is attractive” with “I must marry this person and have millions of adorable babies”. He can’t bring himself to just acknowledge that he can actually be attracted to more than one person.
I mean, I knew the girl needed help, but this? This is BAD. Disassociating like that; that kind of desperate need to fulfill a perceived role imposed on her by others? That’s …. granted, I’m not a professional and I don’t know too many people who do that, but every last one of the ones I DO know was/is suicidal and that was the LEAST of their mental health issues. Danny’s not equipped to handle this. NO ONE is equipped to deal with that without training. Maybe even with. And she’s eighteen and she’s been dealing with this for how long? The need to be the protector probably started with her mom -distracting her dad, if not taking punches so her mom wouldn’t have to, plus the shit from the robbery -and she already had some sort of anxiety issues before that -add in her parents’ divorce and the abuse there, the shit she’s been taking from Ethan’s parents since he came out -and there seems to be a part of her that agrees with his mom -that it’s because she wasn’t good enough, and…. Willis, why do you torture your characters so much?
It doesn’t mean that she’s unloveable, but she’s in a bad way and she’s currently making very easy mistakes to make when you’re young and trying to self-handle this scary DID thing happening inside of you. I made them when I was a kid and to be fair eventually I did get things sorted out and know live the sort of life where even close romantic partners forget that’s a thing going on with me. But the intervening years to get there weren’t fun. Amber is… not going in good places and she might lose a few important things before she can get on the road towards better places.
It’s not that I think she’s unloveable -honestly, I feel she needs as much love and support as she can get -just… she doesn’t think about herself, once people are on her “protect” list, and… I guess I see her throwing everything into making her people okay -and constantly expanding the list of folks it’s her “job” to protect and not having enough time or energy or focus left over for her, and that’s … really bad. I’m also worried about Danny falling into the trap of “something is wrong, and this amazing, wonderful girl doesn’t see herself the way I do and I must help her! All the helpfulness!” and devote himself entirely to… fixing?… her and accidentally making things worse. She needs love and friendship and support, but she’s trying to be stable for everyone around her and that’s…. even if she WERE stable and had a decent support network, that’s hard, and she’s not and she doesn’t, and I’m worried about both of them.
Danny certainly seemed to come into this, with the deal for secrets and all, with the intention of fixing Amber or helping her to fix herself. But I don’t think that the kiss is in any way insincere or instrumentative; Danny doesn’t have it in him to kiss Amber for any reason other than that he loves her. And I really think that it will be good for Amber to be loved. (Whereas I think that it was bad for Amber for Amazi-Girl to be loved, especially to the exclusion of love for her.)
Holy shitkickers Batman, this is bad. I – and I think Danny was in the same boat – realized Amber compartmentalized things and she and Amazi-girl were clearly separated in her mind, but this? This is almost a full-on split. This is she did this, I did that, even though they’re the same person. It’s kind of frightening to see/hear her talk like that. Amber is messed the fuck up and needs serious therapy.
I’d argue it is a full-on-split. It’s the surprise she shows towards Amazi-girl’s actions and motivations. I mean, the third person was a really big giveaway that things were DIDy, but when alters straight up surprise the other alters? Yeah…
Same as Emma here, and the first one. “I am TALKING here, and it’s not about you, and your kissing is not going to make everything magically better so for fuck’s sake LISTEN and don’t fucking interrupt I NEARLY DIED WHAT ABOUT IT SOUNDS SEXY”
I’d guess Amber accepts that things like these, things Amazi-girl does, are indeed sexy, which is part of her issues…
Fair enough. Being cut off when I hadn’t finished saying pisses me off to, and when when someone cuts off my answer to a question that they asked does really so.
I didn’t see it as “sexy”. He’s not kissing her because her story is turning him on, but because he’s realizing how much danger she was in (and also more of how screwed up she is) and because he loves her and wants to affirm that. Much like hugging someone in a similar situation, but more so.
Exactly. My first thought was “sympathy via heavy physical contact”. She’ll understand since she taught it to Dina. Danny sees someone he cares about in pain and struggling, and he wants to help her feel better.
+1 Danny
This whole comments section has a widespread, chronic case of Butts Disease. It’s usually contained, but there’s still the odd flare-up every so often.
Yes, Danny, she is that sick. Yes, she needs someone to love her and convince her that she isn’t worthless. Yes, she needs to be convinced that she is Amazi-Girl and that she is the source of that heroine’s strength and good acts.
I just hope that she is able to accept it when he tries to tell her this.
Dude, thank you so much. There’ve been so many comments along the lines of “welp, she’s super crazy, so throw her out with the trash” that are really awkward to read past when you have the exact same illness as the character they are talking about, that it’s awesome to see someone be like. “Yup, she’s crazy and that means she’s going to need love and support and to not believe she’s absolutely worthless.”
As someone who knows precisely that feeling: Yes. She totally needs love and support. Everyone does. Everyone is very much worthy of it, even if their mental illness makes it hard to deal with. *Offers you internet blanket*
Absolutely. This would be the worst time for them to end. Right now Amber needs to be surrounded by people who love and support her, and nobody does that better than Danny.
And yeah it’s gonna be difficult and sometimes Amber’s going to lash out but dammit it fucking happens. She’s not a bad person because she had a truckload of bullshit dumped onto her and she isn’t perfectly dealing with it.
So yeah, DID Amber. Probably. At least 85% confirmed.
And that Panel 2 and 3. That resonates a lot. Cause that’s a thing that comes up again and again even if you’re integrated, the surprise. The way an alter can just reveal stuff to you about their motivations or their actions themselves, just letting that sit there like, okay, that’s a piece of the puzzle just slapped right there on the table.
And the fear when one alter takes over a body to go “on mission”, to meet their own needs at the risk of everyone else. Having to adjust to that and having to see the bad side of the alter you are used to considering the “good” one.
Amber is on the cusp of a very important moment of potential for integration, in getting her alters talking and on the same page. She’s seeing some of the cost of Amazi-girl’s win at all costs, never give up attitude and is letting Amber have some moments of joy.
She’s seeing the scope of what she has to deal with and that’s really the first step.
I don’t have DID personally, but from what I’ve heard in DID community, lots of combinations are possible, and voluntary switching is not all that rare.
Y’know, it would be nice if you people made up your fucking minds, because this is not hypothetical, there is a REAL PERSON out here wondering if she needs to see her psychiatrist or just has a very good imagination, and it would be LOVELY if all you armchair psychiatrists out there realized that every once in awhile as you’re pulling diagnoses out of your asses.
All mental illnesses exist on a spectrum, it makes them difficult to diagnose, especially when the person isn’t real and just acts the way the writer wants them to.
I wouldn’t diagnose her with DID (but then again I haven’t had full training) but she’s certainly unstable and in need of help.
My psychiatrist says what matters most is whether an illness is negatively impacting one’s life or not, ditto with its side effects. So, the question on whether or not to rush to a psychiatrist is whether or not this is negatively affecting your ability to live the life you want to live. If it is, then yeah, professional care may be a priority, if not, well, whatever. DID is one for me that goes unmedicated for me personally because things have been stable and integrated for a long time and a long time before I was finally able to access mental health care for the first time. Would it have been useful when I was younger? Maybe, maybe not, hard to say as I’m not a psychiatrist.
I think if the diagnosis matters to you personally one way or another, and is causing concern, it can be worth bringing up to your psychologist and/or psychiatrist (especially if they are individuals you trust), but it’s not like DID is a terminal illness that will secretly kill you if you don’t rush to the doctor.
I also think, either way, you are an awesome person and a diagnosis one way or another does not affect your value to yourself, others, and the world.
@Anna We are absolutely pulling diagnoses out of our butts, the vast majority of us have zero training, and none of us have met Amber or you! Please don’t look to strangers on the internet to diagnose you either way — you’re not a comic character so this is gonna be too complex and particular to your situation. You’ll want somebody who is actually qualified, such as a mental health diagnostician.
I’m still hoping that Amber will totally wrong-foot Danny by agreeing with him that Ethan is cute and attractive and actually offer to stand aside if he would be happier with Ethan. That’s when he blows her mind by saying that he actually likes her more. It isn’t something that I can see Amber being able to believe unless she was told so.
He just kissed her, which according to some people, makes him bi, so a threesome is more than likely, just not likely on this comic, maybe on slipshine later
…why though? Liliet points out Ethan is gay and then you start talking like being bi is a question because he kissed Amber. Your comment makes no sense.
Danny kissed Amber, and he is blatantly bi (which still doesn’t mean he’s up for a threesome by definition btw), but people were proposing a threesome with Ethan, who definitely isn’t attracted to women, and I was addressing that
With Amber’s self esteem issues, Danny saying he’s into anyone else is just to be expected, in her mind. She needs to be loved for herself, entire package deal, including the emotional baggage and the alter – identity.
Yup. It’s a very significant moment for that reason. I don’t think Danny understood until now that Amber was serious about her and Amazi-Girl being two different people. When he asked for “mask” rather than “no mask” that made increments to Amber’s and Amazi-Girl’s self esteem and esteem for one another. It was a moment burdened with a significance that Danny did not intend. This moment is equally significant on both axes: Danny is making the statement he intends about his love and Amazi-Girl: that he loves Amber.
I think that it was dangerous for Amber to believe that Amazi-Girl embodied all her good characteristics including the ones that Danny loved. For her to understand that he loves her and that she is loveable is much more promising.
The thing is that Amber is constantly using Amazi-Girl as an excuse to not face the consequences for her wants and desires. First, Amazi-Girl is the receptacle for all her negative emotions and rage. Then she is her good half and her nobility.
Amber wants and needs “Amber O’Malley” to be a shallow mask with no real depth or meaning; it’s the only way she can think of to confront her self-esteem issues and her mixed feelings for her father (for every child loves their parents and doesn’t want to defy them, no matter how unworthy they are of that love). She can only be the person she wants to be when being someone else altogether.
What Danny is going to have to do, is persuade Amber that she can be the hero of her story. Just because Blaine says she can’t is meaningless; she has to stop believing his evil lies.
If by “needs” you mean “insistently demands” I’ll agree. But if you mean “will die or suffer great harm without” I disagree. I think it’s actually very bad for Amber to get what she wants in this regard. It would be much better for her for “Amber O’Malley” to be a strong woman who survived sustained abuse while retaining the compassion and degree of agency to support Ethan through his coming-out in circumstances that a weak person could not have stood, and who actually possesses all the strength, skill, dedication, and bravery that she attributes to Amazi-Girl, and who actually possesses and deserves Danny’s love.
Doesn’t mean she can just magicallly up and undo all the damage her abusive upbringing did, and just smash Amber and Amazi-girl together until they are one person just from someone telling her it’d be a good thing.
I’m just saying about the word “needs”. It is not a more intense synonym for “wants”. Amber does not need her “Amber O’Malley” to become a shallow mask with no real depth or meaning. Preventing that from happening might be very difficult, and beyond Danny’s ability; that’s a different issue. Amber intensely craves the abnegation of “Amber O’Malley”, but she does not need it. In fact, that would probably be bad for her.
There are different sorts of “need”. For example, when I suddenly need to go to the bathroom in the middle of an important meeting, I don’t actually _need_ it, it’s like the exact opposite of what I actually long-term need. But I still use the word ‘need’ for it, because that’s also a meaning it has
On one hand, I understand that Danny is making a statement here, patching a large gap in his understanding of what was going on with Amber and making the first step in helping her get better.
On another, “shut her up with a kiss” is such a trope that I can’t help but cringe even when it’s… technically… justified… and a good thing… *eyetwitch*
Yeah. My interpretation was that she trailed off and then he kissed her, but looking at it again i see that the punctuation is two dashes, not an ellipsis.
She was still talking when he took her head. Even if it was an ellipsis, it’d still be him interrupting her.
Much worse in this form, of course ._.
The important question is how relatively important it is to Amber to finish her recount once started / have Danny listen attentively to the entirety of it, vs getting positive affirmation from him. It’s quite possible she’s not going to even feel dissatisfied, much less object out loud (not her style at all).
Yeah, surprise kiss is an effective dramatic tool, and like, as far examples go I can think of worse than “guy gets emotional and kisses his girlfriend”, but, eh, I still hate the trope.
Just because there are worse things doesn’t mean this one isn’t bad, that’s a fallacy
this trope sucks, and this particular example isn’t the clear cut case of “girl is saying something guy doesn’t like, guy kisses her, girl stops saying something guy doesn’t like” as Danny’s intention is not to shut her up (I FUCKING HOPE SO), it’s just an unintended consequence
but there’s a parallel here, and it feels unpleasant
Like, I absolutely hate the surprise kiss, because it objectifies the recipient even in the best of circumstances, and while I could probably write a lengthy essay on why Danny is kissing her here, that doesn’t change, that it’s still an ugly trope that needs to die, but can’t because it’s also an efficient dramatic tool.
For what it’s worth, he’s not kissing her to shut up her or anything like that. I think he’s doing it because he’s trying to affirm to her how much he loves and wants to help her, and he’s realizing how bad things are that he’s never seen before, but it’s just still a shit trope and I totally support you in wanting it to die.
Yea, he’s not kissing her to shut her up, but he still interrupts her talking >_<
and yea I know you were agreeing i just sometimes like to talk about stuff without debating it XD
surprise kiss is a big rape culture trope, as long as it's romanticised the way it is people will keep seeing 'blurred lines' in consent where there are none. you either have it or don't, and the point of the surprise kiss trope is that you don't and that's what makes it ~romantic~ and just no.
I really wonder what Amber's reaction is going to be
there's a long list of potentials there
Yeah, even if I can recognize its validity in fiction, that it kind of has to exist to keep story pace going because otherwise you’d kill the pacing of a storyline, it’s still annoying to see regardless. I guess it’s like, when you see an abusive parent or loved one in fiction, but then we learn that the abuse was all in the victim’s head and there were actually super serious important reasons for it and then everything’s all smiles, and then I just kind of feel like barfing.
Oh my god yuck. Yea, exactly that bro strider was officially confirmed for abusive asshole so suck it apologists
and nope it doesn’t have to exist ever, there are always multiple ways to manage pacing, if the writer has written themselves into a corner where they can’t see another way out of it than to do the surprise kiss, then they are a shitty writer FIGHT ME
There is a difference, but a lot of people seem to miss that. I’ve read both Moon Knight Essential Volumes. He kept three civilian identities (his original mercinary identity, a rich playboy, and a cabbie) in addition to the costumed one, and early on it was clear he did all this to fight crime. He knew who he was and was using the other identities as cover to get information. Sort of how Bruce Wayne used the Matches Malone to go undercover. I think it was only when writers changed did it become a split personality thing, but it seems to me it was due to a miss understanding of what was going on. But now mental problems are considered a primary part of the character so we are stuck with it. I trust we can avoid that with Amber/Amazing Girl though.
She’s been for a while. I did a reread not too long ago (after Amber having DID was suggested in the comments, so Amber/Amazigirl dynamics were something I was taking note of), and she shifted completely to Amazigirl after seeing Sal and flashing back. When she climbs into Ethan’s room to warn him about Sal’s presence on campus she refers to Amber in the third person, and despite being out of costume except for maybe the mask (which I’m not sure if she had on at the start) and dropping the ‘Amazigirl voice’ partway through at Ethan’s request, she’s tagged exclusively as Amazigirl throughout.
Aww. Sometimes you know someone who is like Amber & you just want to hug them, cause they’re trying so damn hard & it’s never good enough. Jedi hugs to all people who are like Amber!
So… We’re getting close to the point in the story where Sal shows up. That’s not gonna be pretty – it’s also gonna be interesting to see how she presents that part of the story.
Well, she’s not a system, if that’s what you were implying. (I’m not entirely sure?) It’s more like Amazi-Girl is this ideal she has, and she tries to live up to it. But the reason she doesn’t view herself as Amazi-Girl is because she believes that “she” is separate from her actions, which is a philosophical question. Are you separate from your actions? Are “you” defined by how people perceive you, or are you separate? Is how you perceive yourself more important than how others perceive you?
Your joke pretty loudly comes off as “why are these two people of different genders kissing”, regardless of what you meant to say. This idea that bi people are fucking up if they aren’t in a visibly same-sex relationship is a constant white noise for us.
You know if you deliberately throw yourself in front of moving trains you’re not a victim, you’re a volunteer. I never even dreamed someone could be insulted by this and even looking at it now I still think you have to try really hard to find an insult in it.
I don’t even want to explain it to you. Be insulted, you totally deserve it.
Danny isn’t heterosexual, your post is incredibly close to the same brand of “straight relationship” bullshit I’ve heard time and time again, there is a long standing prejudice against bisexual men and women for “hiding” in opposite sex relationships.
This isn’t a fucking huge leap I’m making here. I know that’s not what you meant, but that doesn’t change what you said.
I remember when people started coming up with this “straight passing privilege” BS and my immediate reaction was, “Okay, but do single gay people get straight passing privilege?”
God I know, it’s the fucking dumbest thing, and it’s an infestation of a viewpoint where all bisexuals are just trendy half queers instead of our own, legitimate orientation.
Your selective Outrage might sound more *sincere* if you hadnt already said far worse and uglier things about this tender moment of Het-love.
These are your exact words about this page, and how you feel about it .I’ve conveniently assembled them in conversation form: “because it’s also an efficient dramatic tool.”
I have no idea what you’re getting at, so I’m assuming you meant the part where I expressed how much I hate the surprise kiss trope.
Like, I recognize that this is a genuinely heartfelt attempt at expressing love from Danny, no shit, but that doesn’t mean sticking your tongue down someone’s throat without their consent is okay. Is this a particularly bad example of the surprise kiss? Not really. The pacing would die if Danny didn’t do something sufficiently dramatic and romantic, and Amber’s already done the same thing herself, but it’s still an inherently flawed writing tool that is, regrettably, also an efficient dramatic tool, so it’s not going to go away despite it being genuinely super fucking creepy in a real world context.
A: This is So romantic. Go Danny!
@Spencer: “it’s still annoying to see regardless”
A: What are you saying “Het is ew?” That is so biphobic. Talk about erasure
AltSpencer: “You said “het is ew”.
@Spencer: “I just kind of feel like barfing.”
A: No one wants to hear that. You should keep that phobia to yourself
AltSpencer: “This idea that bi people are fucking up if they aren’t in a visibly same-sex relationship is a constant white noise for us.”
@Spencer: “I absolutely hate the surprise kiss”
A: With any luck , you’ll never get one.
@Spencer: I guess it’s good that Danny isn’t heterosexual, then.
A: /facepalm . Thats isnt nicer, either
AltSpencer: “This isn’t a fucking huge leap I’m making here. I know that’s not what you meant, but that doesn’t change what you said.”
@Spencer: “I guess it’s like, when you see an abusive parent”
A: Its a beautiful moment and you are taking a dump all over it. “Abusive parent”. I cant even.
AltSpencer: “there is a long standing prejudice against bisexual men and women for “hiding” in opposite sex relationships.”
@Spencer: “it objectifies the recipient even in the best of circumstances”
Well I’m not going to try to kiss you , so you can take that attitude elsewhere. No promises. if Altspencer doenst find you find too not-hot.
@Spencer: “it’s still an ugly trope that needs to die”
AltSpencer: “Your joke pretty loudly comes off as “why are these two people of different genders kissing”, regardless of what you meant to say”
@Spencer: “it’s just still a shit trope and I totally support you in wanting it to die”
AltSpencer: “Your post is incredibly close to the same brand of “straight relationship” bullshit I’ve heard time and time again”
A: TotesExactly, Alt-Spencer!
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“ohhh DannyWAITAMINUTE if this is your ‘secret’ I’m gonna pound you so hard”
…
“IN MULTIPLE WAYS”
(awww, Danny’s reverse-Dannying it up… Nadding it up?)
Kiss the girl
Shalalalalalah!
My oh my, look like the boy too shy
Ain’t gonna kiss the girl
Sha la la la la la
Ain’t that sad? Ain’t it a shame?
Too bad, he gonna miss the girl
Aaaaand now that’s in my head, thanks. x_x
Why is there an annoying seagull squawking now?
I think the light just dawned on Danny (panel 4) that Amber has something a lot more important going on than a secret. She isn’t playing a game like you are Danny boy.
His isn’t a game, either. His orientation is very important, both for his own sake and in regards to their relationship.
Orrrrr MAYBE he just had empathy for what she went through, and loving her, he felt a sympathetic love that overwhelmed him until he felt forced to express comfort and acceptance toward her, for both their sakes.
But y’know, your emotional immaturity angle works as well, I guess he might NOT have been pressuring her initially out of concern for her well-being.
I mean, that’s silly.
Just wait…
WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET, THOUGH
Forget it, let them enjoy their time.
They won’t, Amber refuse to go out with him directly, after all.
Or Danny uses boy chemistry to change her mind long enough that she’s able to feel good enough to realize she needs to be with Danny as Amber.
[The Monarch]You know what that “secret” is? Your ex-boyfriend is a loser.[/The Monarch]
Once again the butt proves itself to be the greatest part of the body.
They combine both form and function in the best of ways.
Woah woah woah. Are you forgetting BOOBS? They’re the breast!
See this guy? He says what I’m thinking. He is brave.
I fully support this comment.
The IRS fully endorses all boob comments on this site
OTP INTENIFIES
Is your OTP boobs + butt? Can we ship those two things together?
IC wut U did there.
I can see why egalitarianists would prefer the butt, because it’s not restricted to one sex – a guy’s butt can be just as hot as a girl’s. Boobs, while quantitatively better, I would argue, are only better on a woman.
The butt is love; the butt is life.
links to “the booty is you” (song) only I don’t know how to do those so you are gonna have to look it up on youtube
Yeah, I don’t know why people pick on it so much, and always make it the butt of their jokes.
Now now, there’s no need for crASS jokes.
You two are cracking me up by being so cheeky.
UUUUUUHHHHHHHH
Yes Danny good you have done the right thing here.
Second right thing is recommending a therapist before full MPD sets in.
I can’t wait for her to develop a third personality. Wonder who it will be.
A mild-mannered reporter, I reckon.
She’ll have a third personality growing within her if they’re not careful.
That’s called a baby.
Yes, it is.
“Amazi-girl is always prepared for ANYTHING”
Amber may (or may not) be another matter.
Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that…
Dammit, I meant to do this link.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/broad/
The ship may have already sailed on that one.
Amber can remember things Amazi-Girl did. The inability to remember that actions of other alters is diagnostic for DID (multiple personality disorder).
I don’t know how it develops. I especially don’t know how it develops in the Dumbiverse. But Amber does not have it at this point.
That said, what she’s saying is disassociative as hell, IMO.
I always felt like Amber is trying so hard to make AG a real personality to try and replace Amber because she has such low self esteem. Like she hopes that if she pretends hard enough, Amber will disappear and be replaced by AG who she thinks is super-awesome.
To me it comes across that she is still trying to dis-associate the things she does and feels as Amber from the things she does and feels as Amazi-Girl, and sometimes failing to do so. Not an expert, but I have the impression that in DID it doesn’t take effort to keep alters separate.
Ambers effort to create the Amazi-Girl identity do seem psychologically dangerous. But so far I think they are [still] conscious, which I don’t think the creation, maintenance, and adoption of alters in DID are.
for what it’s worth, I agree.
Yeah I’m not saying she has DID now, but she desperately needs to talk to a professional therapist.
DID is generally associated with severe childhood trauma and/or longterm abuse, which definitely fits Amber’s backstory. But the lack of memory between alters is not universal. Some of my alters, yeah, I completely check out of life while they’re out, but for others… It’s more like I’m watching myself do things but can’t affect what’s being said or done. Some of my alters will talk at me when I’m in control, telling me their opinions on the situation at hand when they differ from my own. Some of my alters never take control of the body; they exist purely to keep order within the collective.
At the moment, I’d say Amber’s personality is fractured but not completely shattered. The part are still connected. She is on a very precarious ledge, though…
*DID Commiseration hug
*accepts and returns commiseration hug*
What is it with superheroes finding precarious ledges to perch on?
they’re comfortable
That part’s not 100% required. That usually comes up when things are not integrated and she’s actively pushing for her alters to be less and less integrated, sooooo…. yeah. What Viktoria and St. Clair said about the ship sailing and her being dissociated to all hell.
Last I heard, no one has ever managed to prove whether multiple personality disorder even actually exists, so understanding anything about it is really problematic. Literally everything people are posting about it, so knowledgeably here, lacks scientific consensus. Not to criticize, it is kind of shocking to find that out, with it being so widely accepted as a thing particularly in the U.S. But there is a large chance it’s simply a figment of our cultural imagination.
It being a figment of our consensual reality doesn’t make it less real. Gay, straight, bi, male, female, boss, worker, parent, child, army, navy, air force: these are all inventions of our society, doesn’t stop us treating them as though they were god-given categories.
Personality disorders are difficult to “prove” with certainty, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for DID, so saying there is a “large chance” it is imagined is really a stretch. Particularly when people are talking about their personal experiences with it.
Yup, you got me, I just make it all up for the sweet social benefits. Being ace and trans too. Just, so many social benefits. I mean, sure there are some small things I could have had if I had just been a neurotypical straight cis man, but nah, inventing a complicated life-long struggle with painful internal realities is just the hip, cool, thing the kids today are into.
/sarcasm
But to be serious, I’m mostly just speaking from my own experiences and the experiences of other DID people I have known and the thing is that I’m somewhat used to having to do that. Asexual, trans, DID, romantic orientations, and so on. For a good chunk of my life, the information for all of these just wasn’t great or downright harmful and wrong and it took community communicating with each other, building a foundation of knowledge because there just wasn’t the interest or the ability to do so in higher academia. Some of it is closer to the beginning of that process (I’ve got several of the earlier scientific articles critically examining asexuality from various disciplines), some of it is considerably further on and has largely succeeded in removing very toxic misinformation clinically and socially (trans issues).
My reality is what it is and it’s been that way for a long time and I’ve spent time trying to pretend away one reality or another only to have it bite me in the ass later. And my internal life has been defined for a long time by not only the others, but DID as well. Things have happened and internal realities have been such that it would be rather unlikely to be something other than DID and similar methods that have helped others have helped me.
As a scientist, I cannot really ignore the reality and evidence of my own life experiences and the stated life experiences of those I know, especially when I know that academia tends to be slow to build genuine scholarship on marginalized communities.
Ahahahaha if you really think it’s so widely! accepted!!! then I…
Well. I can tell you’re a singlet.
Just look at these comments. You already have people joking about how Amber and/or Amazi-Girl are going to end up going on a killing spree because they’re SOOoooOOoOO CRAZY GUYS AMIRITE?! And while it’s true Amazi-Girl does have issues with being too violent, that’s a common narrative for anyone who doesn’t fit the norm of a culture (espespecially in regards to mental health, think of how often shootings are blamed on people perceived to be mentally unhealthy), and these assumptions are kind of a sign that the thing were talking about? It’s not accepted. It’s not accepted at all.
Plus there’s loads of different opinions between psychologists on how to treat multiplicity, with many outright denying it exists? I mentioned I was in a system to one psychologist (with the request that we not try to “fix” it since it wasn’t causing me any problems) and they were chill about it. But when I had to switch therapists, I was FUCKING TERRIFIED and had the worst panic attack beforehand, just because I know how unpredictable professionals are about dealing with this stuff. Would they mock me for being delusional? Would they try to make me bring back the long-dead “original” person, despite the fact that would definitely make my mental health worse…? In the end, we didn’t even talk about it, but the fear was there and very real, just as bad if not more so than my day-to-day fears of homophobia and transphobia.
It’s “accepted” in the US inasmuch as it’s a fun narrative for the general public to write about cRAzY PEoPle, but it’s nowhere near accepted for real. Not even close. And in the scientific community, the name was literally changed from multiple personality disorder to dissociative identity disorder as way to blame it all on people dissociating. The old name at least gave it some credibility by acknowledging there were other people. The new one makes it sound like it’s just one person dissociating, which… confuses me because dissociating feels nothing like switching lol. But clearly the scientists who have never lived like this know best. Clear…ly. 😐
And anyway, we can’t even prove ONE person exists in a brain, much less more than one. All you can really do is take people’s word for it when they say that, yes, they’re a separate person and, no, they’re not delusional. And there’s definitely not an abundance of Americans claiming to be in multiple systems/have DID. As Cerberus said, there are no social benefits and hell of a lot of drawbacks, which means the majority of systems aren’t just saying this for the hell of it. So scientific evidence or not, it’s probably a real thing. (Even the healthy multiplicity crowd doesn’t treat it as flippantly as to assume everyone will be okay and there’s no stigma lmao I’ve seen post after post of people terrified to come out about this.)
Staying out of the DID debate, but I’d like to point out one comic related thing: Amazi-Girl doesn’t have issues with being too violent, Amber does.
Amber loses control. Amazi-Girl doesn’t. That’s a lot of the point of Amazi-Girl. She’s channeling Amber’s rage, but doing so constructively.
Right. Amazi-Girl is all the controlled and pro-social use of violence. It was Amber who lost her temper and beat piss and pickhandles out of Blaine.
The way Amber seems to put it, Amazi-Girl is how she deals with her aggression, and she thinks that if she didn’t use that as an outlet, she would take it out on the people around her.
I had a friend who has definite multiple personalities in his head. He’s entirely capable of remembering what’s going on with them, though, and they talk to each other in his head.
At the end of the strip Amber and Amazi-girl split completely, causing Amazi-Girl to go into full knight templer mode and try to kill Sal.
Danny is forced to kill her, doing the whole “cradling your kill” thing.
Everyone cries.
Or someone could just knock her out, but thats not nearly so fun.
Maybe it’ll work like with Fred Flintstone and every time she hits her head she gets a new persona.
Or like on Happy Days, and each time she getas hit on the head, she’ll start playing music.
Another knockout blow while Amber has not yet had time to recover from the last would not be a good thing at all. A woman needs her brain.
I’m not gonna say anything for Willis’ comic per se, but… psychologically that can’t happen, really. Dissociative Identity Disorder isn’t really a psychosis or something that you develop. It’s a result of trauma experienced when you’re very young, before you properly develop a personality. You create things in your mind to protect yourself from damage.
I’m not a psychologist, but my psych teacher at least always said that it really can’t happen to anyone over the age of like five-ish. Our personalities are too set and they can’t fracture like that.
Doesn’t mean she can’t try really hard to develop it.
There are a lot of opinions and not much consensus about DID. There are still psychologists who maintain that it is iatrogenic, i.e. induced by inappropriate therapy.
I really doubt Willis is trying to portray true DID. Amber is just in deep, deep denial.
Don’t go in there! Crocodiles!
I dunno, there’s some definite bits that resonate, so intention or not, the DID parallel can be drawn.
DID is pretty poorly understood overall and there’s a lot of debate back and forth between doctors on almost literally everything to do with it and it definitely doesn’t help that there’s not really much interest in studying DID individuals who are high-functioning in society or fully integrated, especially in long-term longitudinal studies.
In my experiences speaking with people who have DID, some develop in young ages, some develop older, some from specific traumas and some almost seemingly by random luck of the brain chemistry draw. It’s also totally possible to have hidden alters or alters who are literally stuck in time.
Most of the “scary” symptoms of DID arise do to old treatment methods and people’s negative ideas of how to handle their alters, often treating alters stuck in time or who carry negative emotions very poorly, thinking if they can separate the alter enough then they can be free of the trauma or the abuse or the negative emotions themselves. This often causes the alter that feels it is being pushed out to react in angry, sometimes violent ways and to do things like the full control and the loss of memory between the alters.
And it’s super fun to figure out how to handle when you’re a little kid scared to death that revealing what’s going on will lead to scary doctors who’ll lock you up forever because you’re clearly a monster person like in the movies.
Huh. I never thought about that…but yeah, once I integrated it was like there was no literature about me. Sometimes I look back and wonder if it really happened or not. (My DID was pretty definitely from extreme childhood stressors combined with total lack of support [could write a novel, won’t], and all that stuff about parenting the inner child actually seemed to help–after I pared away the really touchy-feely parts, which made my alter roll her eyes and say GOLLLLL.)
*Appropriate gesture of support
Yeah, ditto. With me, I have no idea what triggered my first major split even if I can pinpoint the how and the why of the second and third schisms. And it’s somewhat annoying to nowadays have spent almost as much of my life fully integrated and more or less “stable” as I have being in bad places with it and not really see myself reflected in any resource on the subject.
My youngest alter probably marks my first split, but I don’t know what the exact trigger was. There’s a lot she won’t tell me about what she remembers from my childhood that I have forgotten/compartmentalized into her, and I know she holds more than just the triggering incident. Part of the abuse cycle I was raised in though was this all-consuming rule of Be Normal In Public; smile and hug the abusers when people are watching, respond in the socially correct way regardless of what you’re feeling, etc. So all of my alters have this ingrained refusal to allow our existence to be visible. We haven’t integrated, but we’ve gotten really, really good at acting like each other so the overall public personality is consistent. I can black out in the middle of a conversation, then come back and continue it with five or twenty minutes missing, and nobody seems to notice the difference. I haven’t managed to find any good information on things that that. It’s frustrating.
Ugh, blackouts. I miss that awesome, tough little kid, but I do not miss the blackouts.
Oh yeah? So why did I hear my personality fracture when I was 8?
sympathy through light intimate contact?
but, yeah, danny is getting a taste of what he’s really getting into. maybe therapy wouldn’t be such a bad idea? this girl is seriously rockin’ the cray-cray!
I dunno. I think the way she’s talking is kind of like she’s playing D&D or some role playing game. *I* may not want to hollow out a giant’s body so that it can be taken back to the giant village and ransacked, but my Gnome Barbarian sure as hell does! (Shout out to Tom Fowler)
I think that logic ends when you actually physically do the things that the Gnome Barbarian / Superhero / whatever wants to do.
And, no, LARPing doesn’t count. You don’t use real swords, or real skateboards tied to real cars going at a real speed of 50 miles an hour, for that.
Whenever I hear that phrase, my mind instantly goes to “crayfish” and I spend half a minute in arthropod-haze.
yaaay i’m useful
A fitting choice of gravatar.
Thank You, butt, I am indebted to you.
That’s butts, not your butt, but everyone’s butt, he has dealt with the brunt of mankind for all of human existence.
hmmmmm i see fear in that face. a fear of losing her I think.
I see how you can see that, but my take on it is awe. Anyone else get something else from it?
I have made that face. It’s the face I made when I heard about a suicide attempt. That person was my ex-girlfriend, good friend, and kind of a hero figure to me. That’s the face you make when you realize that someone who has saved your life might need saving sometimes too.
I’m with this one. Hurt and fear and “you are precious to me” and “please” and “why” and “oh god” and just… inability to despair because anything happening to this person would be….
The scary thing is when someone says something that causes that face and notices, and then laughs, even if it’s bitter, says “it’s not that bad” and proceeds to say something even more horrifying and they just can’t fathom the degree….
This.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t thought about trying again since… wow, is it the 10th already?”
“But I failed, like I fail at everything, which is why I was trying, and that’s why it’s FUNNY”. Took me YEARS to get why that comment made other people cry.
this is what i wanted to say but well…… guess i didn’t realize it until i read it.
I see Danny finally starting to realize that Amber has psychological issues.
“The person I love was in serious danger, way more danger than I’d realized, and is still in danger!”
Leading to, “I love you, all of you, please don’t die.”
Up til now, Danny thought that Amazi-Girl was a rad game that Amber played. Now he gets that the split is not a game, and that it meant that Amber smashed into a car and was bleeding from her head and still couldn’t stop putting herself in serious physical danger. (And she’d do it again, too.) Deep realization of danger to his loved one.
(And agreed, upthread, that I normally see this face when somebody talks about self-harm or suicide.)
Not saying he isn’t supposed to be a nice guy, and it seems to me pretty realistic for a kid in his situation to be this way, but it probably takes a lot to get him to absorb such mature thoughts. Hopefully you guys are right about him obtaining that level of insight.
A fear that what you admired in someone comes from a really ugly place and that thing you admired is going to hurt her for real someday.
the butt always takes the brunt of it
that’s what she said.
that’s what he said
fixed that for you
That works too XD
Careful Danny, someone might snapchat you two 🙂
Ah, the “you’ve gone completely ’round the twist but I refuse to abandon you” kiss. I know it well…
No. Not that twist.
Butts Disease saves the day!
Only Danny could have a threesome in which only two people are present.
idk there’s Cybersix and Lucas
I am so, so happy that someone else knows that show.
It had like the best intro ever. It’s a crime that there is no extended version of that theme song anywhere.
I have a cosplay of Adrian! …as soon as the wig behaves and I can find more comically round spectacles
The funny thing is that Cybersix is a case where the art in the cartoon version is actually a bit better than the original comic book. I’ve seen some panels from the comics and Lucas looks like some kind of ape man in them. On the other hand they really could have moved even further away from the original design for Hashimoto and his little sister than they did.
I….only know the OAVs.
yeah well how about Lori =p
I don’t know, do Triple Changers count for that? Because if so, I might be able to point a person in the direction of some Springer or Blitzwing fic. (And yes, due to Rule 34, I am certain SpringerxBlitzwing is also probably a thing. I have not looked specifically BECAUSE of Rule 34.)
It’s not an uncommon superhero trope, really. Superman/Lois Lane/Clark Kent is probably the best known example.
But you generally don’t see the variation used in Cybersix, where Cybersix is female, while her secret identity is as male appearing Adrian Seidelman. He teaches at the school where Cybersix’s eventual love interest, Lucas Amato, also teaches. Adrian and Lucas become friends, and it’s not hard, when wearing shipper glasses, to see some of Cybersix’s interest in Lucas peaking out in Adrian’s behaviour. Then there’s one of Adrian’s students, Lori Anderson, who develops a crush on him, and gets jealous of Cybersix when she becomes convince Cybersix is interested in Adrian.
Also, when was Lois and Clark ever a thing
oh wait XD
Is Danny an “ass man”? If so, butts can be very useful.
All real men are ass men.
All real women are ass women.
Basically if you don’t like ass you’re not an adult person.
Look, it’s okay to be Scottish and dislike Haggis and you’re just going to have to deal with that!
No true scotsman dislikes Haggis!
*cough*asexualsareathingandalsodefinitelyadultpersons*cough*
Are you implying one must have sexual desires to respect the beauty of the booty? You speak heresy against the ass. It is the way. It is the apha and the omega. It’s what attaches our legs to our torsos!
I dunno, I know a guy who actually believes the human body is a conga line of terrible design. He’d probably disagree with you on that point.
Absolutely not, Yotomoe! May I offer two examples —
a classical Greek statue known as Aphrodite Kallipygos;
and Ms. Vikky Dougan, a 1950s actress probably best remember for wearing a gown that, as the song goes, “revealed an entirely new cleavage”.
I am implying that, because I am asexual, and I also do not see the point of worshiping the ass. I am more of the overarm persuasion. Those things are comfortable to lean against.
I get that you’re just making a hyperbolic joke and that’s fine, not trying to be the moral police here, but jokes like that can come off as invalidating.
I guess it’s like, when there’s a joke where an ostensibly straight woman meets another awesome lady, and then says that she’d “go gay” for her.
It’s just a joke based on the attractiveness of the subject, but it’s nevertheless dismissive of the gay identity.
You can choose to see it as dismissive, if you want to. In the same way I can choose to find it dismissive when in almost every alien movie the aliens call humans a “pink ape” or some equivalent even though a huge part of the earth’s population is brown. I don’t like being offended so I just take everything with a grain of salt. I don’t have any beef with people who don’t like butts, but I’m not going to tiptoe around my jokes to please everything. Political correctness(or in the case that this word is still banned, the desire to speak in a way that offends no one ever at any time) is kind of the Murderer of Comedy.
I mean, that’s totally okay. We should be able to joke about what we want, but at the same time I also think we should expect that people can say “hey that’s not ok” as well. You don’t need to take it as gospel, but like, it’s good to keep perspective.
I mean if I called you patriarchal cis hetero scum I think you’d be well within your right to beat me in the head with a golf club, but there’s nothing wrong with having the dialogue.
I also need to find new ways to begin paragraphs besides “well”, “I mean” and “like”.
It feels like I’m having my posts proofread by a valley girl.
Being an adult isn’t exactly fun. You gotta find a job, pay taxes and bear witness to your body growing older and breaking down… >.>
Why must you describe my life at the moment?
#NotAllHumans.
These two are going to make me cry.
Gonna, since… I’m not already, swear.
I’ve just got something in my eye. Yeah, that’s all it is. Shut up!
It’s too late for me. The tears started at panel 4. Save yourselves.
Now tell your you want to bang her ex!
“Oh shit. Sorry Amber. My lip seems to have grafted into you. We will have to live our lives like this now. Eating will be difficult.”
That was very random. I approve it.
It’s not random, silly.
Sounds like a less scary version of The Human Centipede. The feeding part….ah shit why did I bring that up?
This is going to retroactively be so sad when he tells her he’s gay, and she feels hurt and betrayed.
Bisexuality. I swear, do I need to get a megaphone or what?
There was even a comic (well, several, but one relating to Danny) about bi erasure.
Yeah, Danny should be fine so long as he remembers to say bi rather than gay. In short, so long as he keeps his foot out of his mouth.
…. we can trust Danny to do that, right?
yeah, I’m not saying I necessarily expect him to remember that bisexual is a word, or not to say ‘I think I’m attracted to men’ (although he has been clear consistently that he likes women, so hopefully whatever happens he’ll tell Amber that before she gets too freaked out), it’s more that as commenters we know what bisexuality is, that evidence points to that being what Danny is, and that in any case, he isn’t gay (and is very unlikely to use that phrasing by accident).
(put his foot in his mouth, yes, but probably not by using, let alone believing in that wording)
evidence points to that being what Danny is (bi).
In this case the “evidence” is word-of-god!
Wouldn’t being monogamous and bi just mean there were twice as many people one was not having sex with?
There’s ALREADY twice as many people one isn’t having sex with. The question is whether you find those people attractive.
… also, not necessarily 50/50.
Well if we want to get bogged down in mathematical semantics (and why not?), a monogamous straight person discovering they’re actually a monogamous bisexual person would find themselves not having sex with the exact same amount of people as prior to their personal revelation. That being said, there might be ATTRACTION to additional persons (not necessarily twice as many since something something gender not actually binary something), but being monogamous, the end result is them still only diddling one person at a time.
Thank you for explaining it better than I did.
It’s genuinely frustrating that this is even a thing that needs to be explained. Thanks for that.
Seriously. There were multiple pages dedicated to Dan learning the term. Do people have short memories, or have we been baited?
It won’t hurt. But I do have to warn you that it never seems to help either.
It might make me feel better…
Megaphone. Hm hm baby. Sounds like fun. We should all get one. Together now…
……………He’s not gay, he’s … bi. Why would that hurt or betray anyone????????
If she thought he were gay, she might be distraught, considering how she felt when Ethan came out to her.
Fortunately that’s not an issue. Unless he seriously Dans up his delivery, things should go fine; as much smut as she reads, she’s bound to be aware that bisexuality exists… I’m still unsure how some characters were so oblivious.
The same way that heterosexual polyamory can often strain a relationship.
We already know that Amber has a hard time with self esteem and how she reacted when Ethan was able and willing to go through the motions with Joyce, a near complete stranger, but not Amber, his childhood bosom buddy.
Now imagine how, even if as a initial knee-jerk reaction, the way she’d respond to Danny saying “I think I like guys[too]”.
Yes and no. Yes, it’s a callback to how she and Ethan broke up and she might take it hard or wrong, even though there’s no real reason to if it’s explained with the right language.
But it’s hardly the same situation as polyamory. It’s like telling the hot brunette you’re dating that, yeah, brunettes are awesome, but gingers can also turn you on. Does your brunette have competition out there? Yes…. but she did anyway, unless she was the only brunette in the world. Hardly any more reason to worry about needing to share him than there was before.
He’s not gay, and he’s not going to say he is either.
“Why did you hide this from me! I could’ve written SO MANY SLASHFICS YOU DICK”
“…. I can set you up with Ethan and give you permission on two conditions. One, I get to watch. Two, costumes.”
“He would be wearing a Batman costume, I’m guessing?”
“You’ve MET Ethan, right?”
“… so I’D be wearing the Batman costume.”
“Would me wearing a Catgirl costume make that somehow queer?”
Well, he’s not gay. He’s bi. I mean, he’s still into her. He’s just also into dudes sometimes.
I guess it’s a good thing he’s not telling her he’s gay!
He’s bisexual or at least bicurious, she’ll most likely be shocked or upset if/when he tells her that he is attracted to Ethan.
Danny does know what bisexuality is at this point. Though I’ll wonder if they’ll even remember to discuss his secret at this point too.
What they ought to do at this point is get a room, no mask.
Yes that potentially would be especially since she asked when they first met to avoid that except it won’t cause Danny is bi not gay and Amber will most likely look past it especially since Danny has shown he has no issue being intimate with her unlike Ethan before he came out
You’re fired.
Well, as others said, he’s bi, not gay, and it wasn’t Ethan’s being gay that hurt her, per se. It was Ethan not wanting a physical, sexual relationship with her, right? Danny evidently wants that. Amber and Ethan never had sex; Amber and Danny have been getting it on for a while.
Of course butts are useful. You need them to poop from.
But you can get Butts Disease by having one.
“Please kiss me instead of saying very worrisome things”
He just wants to hear her closer. Speak her problems directly into his mouth.
It is the price I’m willing to pay.
“But it wasn’t really my head, it was Amazi-Girl’s”.
I think that for Danny to kiss Amber is exactly the right thing right now.
Not only did Danny just kiss Amber, Amber welcomed the kiss.
Just so. They have to work on the understanding that Amazi-Girl is a game that Amber plays.
And I mean that in both senses.
…oooh.
Mm. It can go one of two ways:
A) As part of her trend with the letting Amber twirl and be happy, she relaxes her dissociation and begins the tough, hard road of integration.
B) Complete annihilation.
When Amber offered Danny sex with “mask or no mask” the choice was fraught with a potency that Danny was not aware of. In choosing what seemed to him to be a bit of playful kink he unwittingly added pressure to Amber’s tendency to compartmentalise her admirable and desirable traits into Amazi-Girl and to disesteem Amber. That seems like a disintegrative pressure to me. I think that Amber learning that Amber is loveable is probably a very encouraging development.
For Amazi-Girl to get all the affirmation would, I think, have applied continued pressure for Amber’s dis-integration.
IIRC, he didn’t choose “mask”. He hesitated and she kept it on. When it did come off – precisely because he was looking for Amber, he lets her put it back on – “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
Danny’s not putting pressure on her. If anything he’s been trying to push for more Amber – as he’s doing here by kissing her as Amber. They’re not dating, remember?
The story is a little more nuanced than that. Remember that Danny insists on talking to Amber after they make love, and she answers as Amber. Whether or not they had sex with her in costume, he insisted that Amber realize that she was with him, not just Amazi-Girl.
(OT.: I’m hearing Joe Cocker sing “You can leave your mask on” here…)
Those puppy-Dan eyes.
That’ll do Dan… That’ll do.
This is equal parts adorable and heartbreaking. So basically like every other strip of this here webcomic lol.
….. Amber definitely has issues.
Amber has more issues than a comic book.
ALt-text from 2013-12-16, “Amber’s issues have issues”.
She doesn’t have individual issues, she has subscriptions.
She’s was beyond subscriptions… She has a pull list.
“She is” not “She’s was”…
I really should grammar check before posting. I’ve been spoiled by edit functions on other commenting systems.
Aw Amber 🙁
But Danny. hahahahaha-you didn’t really think it was going to be THAT easy, did you? I mean you’re being very sweet and considerate, but
Sweet and considerate butts are useful?
Always, forever, and yesterday.
Maybe he thinks if he kisses her just as she is flipping back and forth between Amber and Amazi-girl, she’ll merge into one (mostly) sane person.
Oh, man, magic integration kiss, that’d be awesome. Completely impossible, but totally awesome.
lightningkisses can do anything!In EGS there’s magic nose beepage. Been trying it at home to see if it works in this universe.
dannys sad face needs to be an icon
Here you go: DoA 2015-12-10-brunt Danny sad face
You’ll get my bill.
Good work, Danny.
Who is this person, and what did he do with Danny?
Danny does the wrong thing at the wrong time….this was the best thing to do at the perfect time!!
Is it the Anti-Danny?
It was so wrong that it circled all the way around to being right.
What… No one’s said “looks like it’ll be taking some more *brunt* now, eh” yet? Well, I don’t want to be that guy…
Oh, crap, it’s too late, now, isn’t it…
Now THAT…is how a man tells his woman,
” ‘Amber’ may give up on a lot of things, but don’t let Amber give up on this…on us.”
Everyone else seems to think this is the right thing for Danny to do right now.
I’m… less than sure.
It might cue an Amber freakout and some serious boundary-issues. Healthy or unhealthy, she HAS compartmentalized her sex drive into Amazi-Girl.
She offered “no mask”.
Yesterday Amber was all “sure, no big deal, I can tell you if you make it worth my while with sexy fantasies that involve cucumbers.” Today she’s not so beyond it all. I don’t think she has talked to anyone about it before this, the closest was the hug from Dina.
Way to go Danny!
Yeah, and I think she’s mid-processing exactly what went down. I mean, it’s scary when an alter kind of runs off on their own (with your body) like that. And it may have cost her her life. After all, she was on route to a truck’s grill if her worst enemy hadn’t been there and it’s largely because Amazi-girl refuses to quit.
It ended well. Becky was saved, everyone lived, and Amber/Amazi-girl got to be real damn heroes, but that the Amazi-girl alter was willing to take that big of risk and accept that big of a physical punishment to “not fail” seems to be somewhat new information for her and I don’t think she’s fully sure how to handle that.
Very true. Everyone has limits… except for Amazigirl. How far is Amazigirl willing to go, Amber might have wondered. Now she knows.
To literally killing her if it means not failing.
Amber has defined Amazi-Girl by absolutes. Never. Can’t.
What happens when “the irresistible force” meets, not the immovable object, but a reality which doesn’t allow for such things?
I’m glad Sal made sure we didn’t have to find out.
This time.
“I’ll make the pain go away”.
But … But … I thought Danny had the hots for Ethan … well, kinda, sorta hots … oh, hell, spill the wine, kiss that girl … don’t worry about tomorrow.
I mean he’s been into Amber and her alter ego basically since they first met.
He’s attracted to Ethan too, that isn’t rare, but I have no idea how anybody could not understand that Danny also loves Amber.
Look at it like this: A hetro can feel attraction to someone else but make the choice to be faithful to the person with whom they are in a relationship because their bond is deeper than a burst of attraction. The same is true of gays and bis; gender and alignment have nothing to do with it.
That’s a good way to put it. Danny separate “this person is attractive” with “I must marry this person and have millions of adorable babies”. He can’t bring himself to just acknowledge that he can actually be attracted to more than one person.
Holy shit, Amber!
I mean, I knew the girl needed help, but this? This is BAD. Disassociating like that; that kind of desperate need to fulfill a perceived role imposed on her by others? That’s …. granted, I’m not a professional and I don’t know too many people who do that, but every last one of the ones I DO know was/is suicidal and that was the LEAST of their mental health issues. Danny’s not equipped to handle this. NO ONE is equipped to deal with that without training. Maybe even with. And she’s eighteen and she’s been dealing with this for how long? The need to be the protector probably started with her mom -distracting her dad, if not taking punches so her mom wouldn’t have to, plus the shit from the robbery -and she already had some sort of anxiety issues before that -add in her parents’ divorce and the abuse there, the shit she’s been taking from Ethan’s parents since he came out -and there seems to be a part of her that agrees with his mom -that it’s because she wasn’t good enough, and…. Willis, why do you torture your characters so much?
It is. Really bad.
It doesn’t mean that she’s unloveable, but she’s in a bad way and she’s currently making very easy mistakes to make when you’re young and trying to self-handle this scary DID thing happening inside of you. I made them when I was a kid and to be fair eventually I did get things sorted out and know live the sort of life where even close romantic partners forget that’s a thing going on with me. But the intervening years to get there weren’t fun. Amber is… not going in good places and she might lose a few important things before she can get on the road towards better places.
It’s not that I think she’s unloveable -honestly, I feel she needs as much love and support as she can get -just… she doesn’t think about herself, once people are on her “protect” list, and… I guess I see her throwing everything into making her people okay -and constantly expanding the list of folks it’s her “job” to protect and not having enough time or energy or focus left over for her, and that’s … really bad. I’m also worried about Danny falling into the trap of “something is wrong, and this amazing, wonderful girl doesn’t see herself the way I do and I must help her! All the helpfulness!” and devote himself entirely to… fixing?… her and accidentally making things worse. She needs love and friendship and support, but she’s trying to be stable for everyone around her and that’s…. even if she WERE stable and had a decent support network, that’s hard, and she’s not and she doesn’t, and I’m worried about both of them.
Danny certainly seemed to come into this, with the deal for secrets and all, with the intention of fixing Amber or helping her to fix herself. But I don’t think that the kiss is in any way insincere or instrumentative; Danny doesn’t have it in him to kiss Amber for any reason other than that he loves her. And I really think that it will be good for Amber to be loved. (Whereas I think that it was bad for Amber for Amazi-Girl to be loved, especially to the exclusion of love for her.)
“Imposed on her by others”?
Imposed on her by herself!
“I have to abide by my rules. I have self-imposed guidelines which are the reason i exist.“
Holy shitkickers Batman, this is bad. I – and I think Danny was in the same boat – realized Amber compartmentalized things and she and Amazi-girl were clearly separated in her mind, but this? This is almost a full-on split. This is she did this, I did that, even though they’re the same person. It’s kind of frightening to see/hear her talk like that. Amber is messed the fuck up and needs serious therapy.
I’d argue it is a full-on-split. It’s the surprise she shows towards Amazi-girl’s actions and motivations. I mean, the third person was a really big giveaway that things were DIDy, but when alters straight up surprise the other alters? Yeah…
Everyone’s like ‘aww this is so perfect’ but tbh this would REALLY PISS ME OFF if someone did this to me in real life.
Which aspect would so annoy? Interrupting your account with a kiss? Professing love for the whole you and not just one alter ego?
Same as Emma here, and the first one. “I am TALKING here, and it’s not about you, and your kissing is not going to make everything magically better so for fuck’s sake LISTEN and don’t fucking interrupt I NEARLY DIED WHAT ABOUT IT SOUNDS SEXY”
I’d guess Amber accepts that things like these, things Amazi-girl does, are indeed sexy, which is part of her issues…
Fair enough. Being cut off when I hadn’t finished saying pisses me off to, and when when someone cuts off my answer to a question that they asked does really so.
I didn’t see it as “sexy”. He’s not kissing her because her story is turning him on, but because he’s realizing how much danger she was in (and also more of how screwed up she is) and because he loves her and wants to affirm that. Much like hugging someone in a similar situation, but more so.
yes but he still interrupted her
which hugging does not do, so there’s a slight but crucial difference there
Partly depends on the follow up – Does he encourage her to go back to the story or does he keep her from finishing?
Exactly. My first thought was “sympathy via heavy physical contact”. She’ll understand since she taught it to Dina. Danny sees someone he cares about in pain and struggling, and he wants to help her feel better.
+1 Danny
(For clarification, my “exactly” etc. was directed at thejeff’s comment.)
Shouldn’t the title be “Bruntt”?
Just a thought. 🙂
So who is she when she’s not Amber or amazigirl?
The last thing she needs is another one.
She’s having more and more trouble keeping her compartments separated and knowing which one did what or which one she is at the moment.
This could be a good thing or a very, very bad thing!
Than she is Rose, obviously!
…*sniff*
Why is everyone so obsessed with butts?!
*re-reads the strip*
Oh, pffff
This whole comments section has a widespread, chronic case of Butts Disease. It’s usually contained, but there’s still the odd flare-up every so often.
Well dang, now I need a hug.
Oh ye gods, that look on Danny’s face…
Danny finally realizes he loves Amber, and will probably come to hate Amazi-Girl once he sees how corrosive she is to her.
Danny really wanted to kiss her butt better.
Yes, Danny, she is that sick. Yes, she needs someone to love her and convince her that she isn’t worthless. Yes, she needs to be convinced that she is Amazi-Girl and that she is the source of that heroine’s strength and good acts.
I just hope that she is able to accept it when he tries to tell her this.
Dude, thank you so much. There’ve been so many comments along the lines of “welp, she’s super crazy, so throw her out with the trash” that are really awkward to read past when you have the exact same illness as the character they are talking about, that it’s awesome to see someone be like. “Yup, she’s crazy and that means she’s going to need love and support and to not believe she’s absolutely worthless.”
So, thank you.
As someone who knows precisely that feeling: Yes. She totally needs love and support. Everyone does. Everyone is very much worthy of it, even if their mental illness makes it hard to deal with. *Offers you internet blanket*
Absolutely. This would be the worst time for them to end. Right now Amber needs to be surrounded by people who love and support her, and nobody does that better than Danny.
And yeah it’s gonna be difficult and sometimes Amber’s going to lash out but dammit it fucking happens. She’s not a bad person because she had a truckload of bullshit dumped onto her and she isn’t perfectly dealing with it.
Amber needs some psychiatric help badly. The amount of self-loathing she’s displaying here is no where near healthy.
I approve this Danny.
So yeah, DID Amber. Probably. At least 85% confirmed.
And that Panel 2 and 3. That resonates a lot. Cause that’s a thing that comes up again and again even if you’re integrated, the surprise. The way an alter can just reveal stuff to you about their motivations or their actions themselves, just letting that sit there like, okay, that’s a piece of the puzzle just slapped right there on the table.
And the fear when one alter takes over a body to go “on mission”, to meet their own needs at the risk of everyone else. Having to adjust to that and having to see the bad side of the alter you are used to considering the “good” one.
Amber is on the cusp of a very important moment of potential for integration, in getting her alters talking and on the same page. She’s seeing some of the cost of Amazi-girl’s win at all costs, never give up attitude and is letting Amber have some moments of joy.
She’s seeing the scope of what she has to deal with and that’s really the first step.
I’m no expert, but afaik if you have DID you’re not aware of what the other personalities are doing.
Speaking as someone with DID, I’m going to go with “no, that’s not necessarily the case”.
Ditto
What about voluntarily switching personalities, is that a thing?
I don’t have DID personally, but from what I’ve heard in DID community, lots of combinations are possible, and voluntary switching is not all that rare.
Y’know, it would be nice if you people made up your fucking minds, because this is not hypothetical, there is a REAL PERSON out here wondering if she needs to see her psychiatrist or just has a very good imagination, and it would be LOVELY if all you armchair psychiatrists out there realized that every once in awhile as you’re pulling diagnoses out of your asses.
All mental illnesses exist on a spectrum, it makes them difficult to diagnose, especially when the person isn’t real and just acts the way the writer wants them to.
I wouldn’t diagnose her with DID (but then again I haven’t had full training) but she’s certainly unstable and in need of help.
Sorry.
My psychiatrist says what matters most is whether an illness is negatively impacting one’s life or not, ditto with its side effects. So, the question on whether or not to rush to a psychiatrist is whether or not this is negatively affecting your ability to live the life you want to live. If it is, then yeah, professional care may be a priority, if not, well, whatever. DID is one for me that goes unmedicated for me personally because things have been stable and integrated for a long time and a long time before I was finally able to access mental health care for the first time. Would it have been useful when I was younger? Maybe, maybe not, hard to say as I’m not a psychiatrist.
I think if the diagnosis matters to you personally one way or another, and is causing concern, it can be worth bringing up to your psychologist and/or psychiatrist (especially if they are individuals you trust), but it’s not like DID is a terminal illness that will secretly kill you if you don’t rush to the doctor.
I also think, either way, you are an awesome person and a diagnosis one way or another does not affect your value to yourself, others, and the world.
*Supportive hug
@Anna We are absolutely pulling diagnoses out of our butts, the vast majority of us have zero training, and none of us have met Amber or you! Please don’t look to strangers on the internet to diagnose you either way — you’re not a comic character so this is gonna be too complex and particular to your situation. You’ll want somebody who is actually qualified, such as a mental health diagnostician.
Oh, you mentioned you already have a shrink. Ask your shrink. Good luck!
Is that a thing? I want that thing done to me.
Amazi-Girl promptly dumps Danny for cheating on her with Amber.
I don’t think that kiss is going to last. >_>
*passionate kiss ends*
[Amber]: So…what was your sexual secret?
[Danny]: … I- uh…I think I might be gay for Ethan.
[Amber]: … I going to beat you up now.
[Danny]: I completely understa-*boot to the face*
I’m still hoping that Amber will totally wrong-foot Danny by agreeing with him that Ethan is cute and attractive and actually offer to stand aside if he would be happier with Ethan. That’s when he blows her mind by saying that he actually likes her more. It isn’t something that I can see Amber being able to believe unless she was told so.
Or.
OR.
Threesome.
Ethan is gay tho.
He just kissed her, which according to some people, makes him bi, so a threesome is more than likely, just not likely on this comic, maybe on slipshine later
What “makes him bi” is that he has a valid attraction to men and women.
He doesn’t need to prove that to anybody.
They’re talking about Ethan, Spencer.
I was talking about danny.
…why though? Liliet points out Ethan is gay and then you start talking like being bi is a question because he kissed Amber. Your comment makes no sense.
Because TheNinthShader wants to be the X+1th commenter to point out a Ethan/Danny/Amber-threesome is possible and would be amazi-some!
Danny kissed Amber, and he is blatantly bi (which still doesn’t mean he’s up for a threesome by definition btw), but people were proposing a threesome with Ethan, who definitely isn’t attracted to women, and I was addressing that
With Amber’s self esteem issues, Danny saying he’s into anyone else is just to be expected, in her mind. She needs to be loved for herself, entire package deal, including the emotional baggage and the alter – identity.
Holy Crap I just realized that Danny and Amber technically weren’t an item up to this point.
Yup. It’s a very significant moment for that reason. I don’t think Danny understood until now that Amber was serious about her and Amazi-Girl being two different people. When he asked for “mask” rather than “no mask” that made increments to Amber’s and Amazi-Girl’s self esteem and esteem for one another. It was a moment burdened with a significance that Danny did not intend. This moment is equally significant on both axes: Danny is making the statement he intends about his love and Amazi-Girl: that he loves Amber.
I think that it was dangerous for Amber to believe that Amazi-Girl embodied all her good characteristics including the ones that Danny loved. For her to understand that he loves her and that she is loveable is much more promising.
The thing is that Amber is constantly using Amazi-Girl as an excuse to not face the consequences for her wants and desires. First, Amazi-Girl is the receptacle for all her negative emotions and rage. Then she is her good half and her nobility.
Amber wants and needs “Amber O’Malley” to be a shallow mask with no real depth or meaning; it’s the only way she can think of to confront her self-esteem issues and her mixed feelings for her father (for every child loves their parents and doesn’t want to defy them, no matter how unworthy they are of that love). She can only be the person she wants to be when being someone else altogether.
What Danny is going to have to do, is persuade Amber that she can be the hero of her story. Just because Blaine says she can’t is meaningless; she has to stop believing his evil lies.
If by “needs” you mean “insistently demands” I’ll agree. But if you mean “will die or suffer great harm without” I disagree. I think it’s actually very bad for Amber to get what she wants in this regard. It would be much better for her for “Amber O’Malley” to be a strong woman who survived sustained abuse while retaining the compassion and degree of agency to support Ethan through his coming-out in circumstances that a weak person could not have stood, and who actually possesses all the strength, skill, dedication, and bravery that she attributes to Amazi-Girl, and who actually possesses and deserves Danny’s love.
Doesn’t mean she can just magicallly up and undo all the damage her abusive upbringing did, and just smash Amber and Amazi-girl together until they are one person just from someone telling her it’d be a good thing.
Not how it works )=
But it is possible to take the first step in reconciling the two.
It’d be nice if that’s we started to see. I’m already tired of Amazi-Girl.
I’m just saying about the word “needs”. It is not a more intense synonym for “wants”. Amber does not need her “Amber O’Malley” to become a shallow mask with no real depth or meaning. Preventing that from happening might be very difficult, and beyond Danny’s ability; that’s a different issue. Amber intensely craves the abnegation of “Amber O’Malley”, but she does not need it. In fact, that would probably be bad for her.
There are different sorts of “need”. For example, when I suddenly need to go to the bathroom in the middle of an important meeting, I don’t actually _need_ it, it’s like the exact opposite of what I actually long-term need. But I still use the word ‘need’ for it, because that’s also a meaning it has
I’m almost certain that if my butt took the brunt of that fall, I would not be sitting on a concrete wall like that for at least a week…
Amber’s butt is Amazipadded.
On one hand, I understand that Danny is making a statement here, patching a large gap in his understanding of what was going on with Amber and making the first step in helping her get better.
On another, “shut her up with a kiss” is such a trope that I can’t help but cringe even when it’s… technically… justified… and a good thing… *eyetwitch*
Yeah. My interpretation was that she trailed off and then he kissed her, but looking at it again i see that the punctuation is two dashes, not an ellipsis.
She was still talking when he took her head. Even if it was an ellipsis, it’d still be him interrupting her.
Much worse in this form, of course ._.
The important question is how relatively important it is to Amber to finish her recount once started / have Danny listen attentively to the entirety of it, vs getting positive affirmation from him. It’s quite possible she’s not going to even feel dissatisfied, much less object out loud (not her style at all).
Doesn’t mean Danny isn’t a dumbbutt ._.
In the strip two days ago she was not willing to talk about the incident at all. Dodged it two times.
Only when Danny offered sexy secrets she was willing to talk about it.
So while in general the interruption would be rude, i think it is not in these circumstances.
Yeah, surprise kiss is an effective dramatic tool, and like, as far examples go I can think of worse than “guy gets emotional and kisses his girlfriend”, but, eh, I still hate the trope.
At least it’s not the Billie/Ruth one?
Just because there are worse things doesn’t mean this one isn’t bad, that’s a fallacy
this trope sucks, and this particular example isn’t the clear cut case of “girl is saying something guy doesn’t like, guy kisses her, girl stops saying something guy doesn’t like” as Danny’s intention is not to shut her up (I FUCKING HOPE SO), it’s just an unintended consequence
but there’s a parallel here, and it feels unpleasant
I know. I was agreeing with you.
Like, I absolutely hate the surprise kiss, because it objectifies the recipient even in the best of circumstances, and while I could probably write a lengthy essay on why Danny is kissing her here, that doesn’t change, that it’s still an ugly trope that needs to die, but can’t because it’s also an efficient dramatic tool.
For what it’s worth, he’s not kissing her to shut up her or anything like that. I think he’s doing it because he’s trying to affirm to her how much he loves and wants to help her, and he’s realizing how bad things are that he’s never seen before, but it’s just still a shit trope and I totally support you in wanting it to die.
Yea, he’s not kissing her to shut her up, but he still interrupts her talking >_<
and yea I know you were agreeing i just sometimes like to talk about stuff without debating it XD
surprise kiss is a big rape culture trope, as long as it's romanticised the way it is people will keep seeing 'blurred lines' in consent where there are none. you either have it or don't, and the point of the surprise kiss trope is that you don't and that's what makes it ~romantic~ and just no.
I really wonder what Amber's reaction is going to be
there's a long list of potentials there
Yeah, even if I can recognize its validity in fiction, that it kind of has to exist to keep story pace going because otherwise you’d kill the pacing of a storyline, it’s still annoying to see regardless. I guess it’s like, when you see an abusive parent or loved one in fiction, but then we learn that the abuse was all in the victim’s head and there were actually super serious important reasons for it and then everything’s all smiles, and then I just kind of feel like barfing.
Oh my god yuck. Yea, exactly that
bro strider was officially confirmed for abusive asshole so suck it apologistsand nope it doesn’t have to exist ever, there are always multiple ways to manage pacing, if the writer has written themselves into a corner where they can’t see another way out of it than to do the surprise kiss, then they are a shitty writer FIGHT ME
I starting to think she’s developing split personality syndrome.
well she’s cognizant that she’s her, but it’s the whole compartmentalisation thing, which is different.
There is a difference, but a lot of people seem to miss that. I’ve read both Moon Knight Essential Volumes. He kept three civilian identities (his original mercinary identity, a rich playboy, and a cabbie) in addition to the costumed one, and early on it was clear he did all this to fight crime. He knew who he was and was using the other identities as cover to get information. Sort of how Bruce Wayne used the Matches Malone to go undercover. I think it was only when writers changed did it become a split personality thing, but it seems to me it was due to a miss understanding of what was going on. But now mental problems are considered a primary part of the character so we are stuck with it. I trust we can avoid that with Amber/Amazing Girl though.
She’s been for a while. I did a reread not too long ago (after Amber having DID was suggested in the comments, so Amber/Amazigirl dynamics were something I was taking note of), and she shifted completely to Amazigirl after seeing Sal and flashing back. When she climbs into Ethan’s room to warn him about Sal’s presence on campus she refers to Amber in the third person, and despite being out of costume except for maybe the mask (which I’m not sure if she had on at the start) and dropping the ‘Amazigirl voice’ partway through at Ethan’s request, she’s tagged exclusively as Amazigirl throughout.
The Christian-Bale-voice was an addon, originally she spoke normal.
She later changed her voice to confuse Danny (and other observers) about her civilian identity.
Aww. Sometimes you know someone who is like Amber & you just want to hug them, cause they’re trying so damn hard & it’s never good enough. Jedi hugs to all people who are like Amber!
“My sexual secret is that I want to put my mouth on you.”
squee
such precious cinnamon rolls
Too good for this world, too pure
So… We’re getting close to the point in the story where Sal shows up. That’s not gonna be pretty – it’s also gonna be interesting to see how she presents that part of the story.
She flys off the roof with her motorcycle, flips off the patriarchy, then proceeds to somehow turn those two kissing into a threesome.
Those two kissing is already a threesome.
Tomorrow’s comic:
Amber is blissfully kissing Danny. Suddenly she pushes him away, her eyes wide with shock.
Danny: “What?”
Amber: “You taste like Ethan.”
…Fuck. I laughed.
d(^u^)
‘You can always say it was Amazi-girl, but in the end, it was you who did it. Don’t say that the mask gave you strength. You’re strong on your own.’
Amber has so much trauma that she split herself. Very sad. I’d like to see her be able to integrate these halves to be a stronger whole.
Well, she’s not a system, if that’s what you were implying. (I’m not entirely sure?) It’s more like Amazi-Girl is this ideal she has, and she tries to live up to it. But the reason she doesn’t view herself as Amazi-Girl is because she believes that “she” is separate from her actions, which is a philosophical question. Are you separate from your actions? Are “you” defined by how people perceive you, or are you separate? Is how you perceive yourself more important than how others perceive you?
I’m pretty sure this explanation here is meant to imply that she is, indeed, a system, and not in a good way
Danny has just realized he’s in love with his best friend. Question is, what will he tell his girlfriend?
“She really was just a friend, at first. But lately, my feeling for her have grown more… complex. She’s really an ama-”
“DON’T say it!”
Danny’s face in Panel 4. Love those big eyes. How can anyone resist that face?
Het is ewww
I guess it’s good that Danny isn’t heterosexual, then.
Cunningly interwoven into the subtext of my joke
Your joke pretty loudly comes off as “why are these two people of different genders kissing”, regardless of what you meant to say. This idea that bi people are fucking up if they aren’t in a visibly same-sex relationship is a constant white noise for us.
You know if you deliberately throw yourself in front of moving trains you’re not a victim, you’re a volunteer. I never even dreamed someone could be insulted by this and even looking at it now I still think you have to try really hard to find an insult in it.
I don’t even want to explain it to you. Be insulted, you totally deserve it.
You said “het is ew”.
Danny isn’t heterosexual, your post is incredibly close to the same brand of “straight relationship” bullshit I’ve heard time and time again, there is a long standing prejudice against bisexual men and women for “hiding” in opposite sex relationships.
This isn’t a fucking huge leap I’m making here. I know that’s not what you meant, but that doesn’t change what you said.
I remember when people started coming up with this “straight passing privilege” BS and my immediate reaction was, “Okay, but do single gay people get straight passing privilege?”
God I know, it’s the fucking dumbest thing, and it’s an infestation of a viewpoint where all bisexuals are just trendy half queers instead of our own, legitimate orientation.
Your selective Outrage might sound more *sincere* if you hadnt already said far worse and uglier things about this tender moment of Het-love.
These are your exact words about this page, and how you feel about it .I’ve conveniently assembled them in conversation form: “because it’s also an efficient dramatic tool.”
I have no idea what you’re getting at, so I’m assuming you meant the part where I expressed how much I hate the surprise kiss trope.
Like, I recognize that this is a genuinely heartfelt attempt at expressing love from Danny, no shit, but that doesn’t mean sticking your tongue down someone’s throat without their consent is okay. Is this a particularly bad example of the surprise kiss? Not really. The pacing would die if Danny didn’t do something sufficiently dramatic and romantic, and Amber’s already done the same thing herself, but it’s still an inherently flawed writing tool that is, regrettably, also an efficient dramatic tool, so it’s not going to go away despite it being genuinely super fucking creepy in a real world context.
****A @Spencer vs Adam vs AltSpenecer 3 way***
A: This is So romantic. Go Danny!
@Spencer: “it’s still annoying to see regardless”
A: What are you saying “Het is ew?” That is so biphobic. Talk about erasure
AltSpencer: “You said “het is ew”.
@Spencer: “I just kind of feel like barfing.”
A: No one wants to hear that. You should keep that phobia to yourself
AltSpencer: “This idea that bi people are fucking up if they aren’t in a visibly same-sex relationship is a constant white noise for us.”
@Spencer: “I absolutely hate the surprise kiss”
A: With any luck , you’ll never get one.
@Spencer: I guess it’s good that Danny isn’t heterosexual, then.
A: /facepalm . Thats isnt nicer, either
AltSpencer: “This isn’t a fucking huge leap I’m making here. I know that’s not what you meant, but that doesn’t change what you said.”
@Spencer: “I guess it’s like, when you see an abusive parent”
A: Its a beautiful moment and you are taking a dump all over it. “Abusive parent”. I cant even.
AltSpencer: “there is a long standing prejudice against bisexual men and women for “hiding” in opposite sex relationships.”
@Spencer: “it objectifies the recipient even in the best of circumstances”
Well I’m not going to try to kiss you , so you can take that attitude elsewhere. No promises. if Altspencer doenst find you find too not-hot.
@Spencer: “it’s still an ugly trope that needs to die”
AltSpencer: “Your joke pretty loudly comes off as “why are these two people of different genders kissing”, regardless of what you meant to say”
@Spencer: “it’s just still a shit trope and I totally support you in wanting it to die”
AltSpencer: “Your post is incredibly close to the same brand of “straight relationship” bullshit I’ve heard time and time again”
A: TotesExactly, Alt-Spencer!
What the hell, why would you even say that?
Because so many people react to any sort of gay affection with EWWW NOT IN PUBLIC THINK OF THE KIDS
this? this is a joke