I would think Amber would have been more upset by Bowie’s death. She strikes me as a Labyrinth fan.
Now, Ethan would be bummed out by Prince. He adores Batman, so there’s no way he hasn’t seen the ’89 movie about a jillion times.
Of course, both of these examples worked better with OG Amber and Ethan, who were alive for at least some of the 1980s, and not these new models who probably don’t even remember the 90s and Christ I’m old.
What/Who the flip is “Daria”? No seriously, never saw it/her. Oh it was MTV cable “stuff”. Never cared for MTV, and didn’t have cable as a kid growing up in the 80s/90s, (but I still know Dexter and Rugrats). MTV always felt like a channel that had an overly high opinion of itself, like a pre-Web2.0 Reddit, for the 2000s kids. Really went down hill on anything that wasn’t actually music videos.
They probably remember the 90s in a way that you wouldn’t care for, like a memory of a parent turning on the radio and then hearing Spin Doctors on the “oldies” station.
Amongst all the royalties rip-offs, Spotify is by very far the worst. As a musician, I can only disapprove of its usage.
Oh and I just felt like mentioning that I listen to my radio every day, I still have a shelf of tapes and my mp3 player is almost 10 years old. And I’m a proud owner of a standard phone line with a physical answering machine, no smarthingies and such. I was born in 1988, when Kurt was still alive. I feel young.
Yeah, but clever teens have ways around that. I did… I had a cassette adapter for my cheap portable CD player so that I could listen to them in my Hunka crap.
I drive fleet vehicles for a large company. ALL our vehicles have radios, even the 2016s. The new Toyota Siennas display a picture of the artist if the station sends the data on the HD FM signal. Radio is not dead yet; however, the station I listen to is fighting for its life:http://www.kplu.org/save-kplu
It never occurred to me before this comic that Amazi-Girl was a self-destructive outlet for Amber – that she, on some level, WANTS to die, if in a way she can justify as being meaningful or constructive. That casts her hero antics in a whole new light.
My suspicion is that Amber isn’t mad that her life was saved, nor does she actually want to die. But if there is one thing that Amber absolutely DOES NOT WANT, it’s to owe a life debt to HER. And by saving her life Sal has inflicted that very thing on Amber.
Another option is that, by not being evil, Sal is undermining Amazi-girl’s entire foundation for existence. She believes Sal to be the Joe Chill to her Batman, and by not being evil Sal is forcing Amber to face the face that Sal is the Batman to her Joker.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking too… I feel like she’s losing her agressivity inhibitions towards him, and it really feels like it’s gonna go downhill fast from about right now.
ERK… As long as this doesn’t turn into “self fulfilling prophecy cliche”. You know, where Amber is threatened by Danny being too close to Sal… which drives him away from her, and he runs into the arms of… Sal. KABOOM. Suddenly, police sirens on campus, take 2.
If I was Danny I would likely respond with something like ” well I think saving your life is something I should be grateful to her for I don’t want to lose you”
In a rather angry tone but I think that is unlikely to come from danny
I think Dallas is a psychiatrist or something, right?
Anyway, to have your life saved as the second worst thing for anyone to ever do to you is… insane. Is she suicidal? I mean, the entire concept of “To the End of the Line” sort of also proved she was nuts, banging 30-something feet in the air, in a position that can likely get you killed if you fell from that height.
Yep, nothing like “I’d rather be a splatter on the front grill of a Peterbilt than accept help from someone who I hate” to set off alarms.
Been there myself. Still kind of there… but I’m not dressing up like a superhero and looking for criminals to slap around on a daily/nightly basis, so I’m likely a lot less unsafe than Amber/AmaziGirl is.
I hate to say this because she’s a completely empathetic character, and I like her and understand *why* she is the way that she is, but Amber is just a completely toxic partner. Especially to someone like Danny, who isn’t going to call her on her shit. She’s not asking him whether he knows because she expects him to know, she’s asking him because she’s angry and irritable and hasn’t completely learned how not to take it out on others. Which, I get it, most people learn that lesson in high school or early young adulthood. But Amber’s pent-up rage make her an especially egregious case. She’s aware of it too, at times, but still unable to redirect her feelings in the heat of the moment.
Actually I’m really glad that the strip is “going there.” It’s nice to see genuinely problematic and harmful relationship dynamics depicted, when the harmful traits are neither excusable on one hand nor straight-up abusive on the other. There’s this common narrative in society where people who have been abused wind up hurting or abusing others, and it’s something you have to be delicate about in fiction, because there’s… so many ways you can play that out where it either excuses their behavior, or it villainizes them outright, y’know? I’m really glad that the strip is being more and more straightforward, like explicitly making clear that Amber is in the wrong by a long-shot. But still allowing her to be a nuanced character who is genuinely trying. Just… not trying hard enough in the correct ways yet.
Anyway, she and Danny need to break up honestly. She needs a wake up call and he needs to not be at the brunt of her aggression anymore.
I bet at some point she’ll be giving him a verbal beating and he’ll yell something like “I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! Please don’t hit me!”, which will trigger a memory of an incident between her parents. Maybe that will hammer home how much she’s like her father, and that merely compartmentalizing those behaviors isn’t working. (Mike spelled it out, but was met with denial.)
If we’re going all real-worldy I could totally see her assault Danny, she’s a very violent person when you really think about it. All it would take is for her to become upset enough with him to momentarily forget that he’s not in her mental list of acceptable targets. However, I feel that might just be a shade too dark for the series, but who knows. Buuut, if it were to happen I bet we’d hear some occasional familiar-sounding phrases like how she “is not usually like that” and “has her reasons” from the comment section, and probably Danny himself.
Do remember that in the previous strip to that one, Amber admitted that she took advantage of Danny being sweet and kind of a pushover. Mike wasn’t saying she was doomed to be an abuser, he said (completely correctly, as it turns out) SHE was the one more likely to be an abuser if she’s actively looking for pushovers.
It’s not a matter of looking for pushovers, it’s that Amber is scared that she’s going to end up like her mother because that happens all the time to abused children. She “took advantage of Danny’s kindness” by running to him to escape from her dad and pressuring him into pretending to be “Amber’s” boyfriend, something that would be a lot more fucked if she, you know, wasn’t actually Danny’s girlfriend.
Seriously, this idea that Mike is just some purveyor of ultimate wisdom is fucking gross.
She IS incredibly toxic, and that’s what makes this relationship extra interesting (they have a nice dynamic outside of the roughness). It’s a matter of will Danny put up with her bullshit long enough for her to get over things.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. How can she expect him to know when she doesn’t tell him. I know she has a slew of problems she’s dealing with but she’s being unreasonable.
Danny has made some genuine mistakes in this strip, but honestly? Even if Amber HAD told him who Sal was, he hasn’t done anything wrong here. He was talking to an acquaintance of his in a public space.
Well, if she had told him about Sal, the situation would be entirely different and this scene wouldn’t be happening. Hanging out with your girlfriend’s mortal enemy is kind of a no-no, at least not without some serious negotiations.
Either Danny would have persuaded her that Sal has changed, so it would be ok, or he would have agreed to avoid her or she would have agreed that it was ok despite the enmity or they would have already fought & broken up over it or he would be sneaking around to hang out with her anyway. In none of those cases does it play out like this.
Seriously, how the fuck would he know about some random incident from way earlier in your life, Amber? Other than the incredibly unhealthy behavior it’s now manifesting as. But still, that doesn’t tell him anything about the incident itself.
Comes from the movie Fatal Attraction. Guy has a one-night affair with this one woman. She becomes obsessed with him. His wife comes home, he finds the family’s beloved pet bunny in a pot, blistered and dead from being boiled.
Well, at least for the character in fatal attraction and some people dabbling in british cuisine. I guess Amber could theoretically be in the latter group.
Turns out years ago Danny worked at a certain convenience store to earn money for his hardcore…uh,…shucks what would Danny be addicted to…
DATE SIMS! His hardcore Date Sim addiction!
Maybe it’s because you capitalized “cis,” but for the past several minutes I thought you were referring to the (Bachelor of) Computer Information Systems degree.
Let’s all legit remember that time she got her group of malcontent thugs to beat Amazi-girl up in a Walmart parking lot AFTER drinking while underage!!! That totally happened.
After a vigilante attacked them. And honestly, who hasn’t had a drink while underage and at college? If you haven’t than I am sorry, try it sometime. I became friends with an enemy after we watched Zombieland while drinking and hiding from RAs.
To be fair… let’s also remember the time she put a knife to some stranger’s throat while robbing a store to get attention.
Or the time she convinced a rape victim not to report the rapist to the police.
Joyce was sexually assaulted. Also she had valid reasons for not wanting to approach the police that were not considered by her other friends. Joyce’s parents would have pulled her from college and made her come home and can you honestly say that that would have been better?
To be fair… let’s ALSO remember that she was a child with severe issues due to poor parenting. And she was punished for it. And the rape thing? That’s a low blow. She didn’t convince Joyce of shit. Joyce was already reluctant (people have no idea how difficult it is to tell someone. the whole “you should do it and I’ll support you” is fucking useless bullshit) and nothing Sal said was unreasonable. All she said was that it probably wasn’t the best idea to go to the cops because they had no proof and instead were practically volunteering information on how they assaulted a guy (since they did hit him a few times). Sal said not to blindly trust authorities and that they probably weren’t going to do shit. And she’s not wrong. It’s well known that campus cops don’t do shit about this. Also, she was genuinely trying to help. She is not a terrible person, at all.
Campus cops do less than shit. I know 2 girls who were assaulted by the same guy on my campus. I know he assaulted at least 1 more. He had no repercussions even after they reported. They were just asking that a note be made on his record and that the school make sure they do not have the same dorm building. Nope. School did nothing
Yeah, pointing out that reporting sexual assault is a dicey game is far from a wrongdoing. I’ve been point for friends reporting before, basically serving as moral support and so I’ve seen just how abominably vile cops are to survivors (friend of mine was straight up told that reporting was a waste of police time and resources and tried to argue that having seen the guy on a bus once was proof that she totally consented and otherwise called her a slut in many creatively awful ways).
Sal’s advice was well-meaning and focused on this knowledge of how awful cops can be and was a necessary counterpoint to Sarah’s naive trust in the system. Especially since Joyce had a lot to lose in reporting it and very little to gain, sadly.
Also, yeah, she held up Ethan at knifepoint when she was a kid. And she paid the price for that, rather thoroughly, while the person who actually stabbed her got off scot free. And then she cleaned up her whole life and managed to accomplish the same amount her brother did despite spending a good portion of her childhood literally knitting her life back together.
Given that even Ethan has let that go entirely, I think Amber’s right to feel aggrieved about that has long since expired (though her traumas from it will obviously take longer to heal).
Kris-
That’s a grave misreading of the event. She got underaged drunk in a parking lot with friends. Which is… what college kids do. College kids drink underaged. Unless we’re arguing literally everyone at Joyce’s party deserves being harassed and stalked by a vigilante, I think this is some weak sauce and you know it.
And she was directly targeted and antagonized by Amazi-girl right off the bat, threatened with violence and Amazi-girl tried to goad her into a fight. So Sal got her friends to non-violently restrain her so she could talk face to face and then tried to de-escalate and end the conversation without violence (up until Malaya messed stuff up by putting a knee in). Even then she disentangled from the event without turning violent.
And that’s after Amazi-girl essentially repeated racist cop narrative at Sal, arguing that her existence warranted preferential misapplication of technicalities and drug law bullshit.
So, yeah, no, not at all a wrong-doing and in fact, Sal deserves a fucking medal for restraint, cause damn knows I don’t got it.
I was actually rather purposefully retelling the story with a strong biased towards Amazi-girl for comedic effect. Did it work?….no……anyway. I would hardly classify Sal’s group as thugs (though they might still be a little malcontent)…But none of that even matters cause Amazi-girl is clearly the ultimate authority on Sal’s character. Don’t let legitimate reasoning or things like actions and context sway your opinion! Sal=awful. At least until this one sided villification by a computer nerd with rage issues is over.
Oh, terribly sorry. My sarcasm-meter totally missed that one. My bad.
But yeah, totally, AG is infallible and therefore her worldview on Sal must be right. Grrr… underaged drinking…. grrr… saving “lives”. I just… how does one person become such an inhuman monster?
Personally, I wouldn’t hold Ethan’s forgiveness up too highly. This is, after all, the guy who finds a chicken sandwich more delicious than his self-esteem. The rest is sadly accurate, though.
And, honestly, I took that scene where he tells Amber to stop because Sal must have changed as less to do with his actual opinion on her, and more trying to deter Amber from chasing after her because his best friend crawled through a window and was speaking in third person.
I dunno, I can’t imagine he’ll get on with Sal much when the truth comes out.
Amazi-girl did LITERALLY ask for it. I’d be the last person to say Sal has no bad qualities, but this isn’t about her right now.
Besides, self-destructive behavior, inability to think outside her hero-fantasy, ENDANGERING THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is way worse than a bit of underage drinky-drinky.
Yes she is terrible.
Sal saved Ambers life.
And that’s the SECOND WORSE thing she did.
Can’t imagine how scarring her in a robbery could possible be the basis for this solid wall of hate all these years later. Would think that stabbing Sal in the hand for it, would sort of call it even?
But then again, it was a piece of her screwed up childhood, and convenient to hang a hook on Sal as being the whole cause of it.
Run Danny.
Amber needs Sal to be the devil for the same reason Joyce needs evolution to be a lie. Even in the face of all evidence, they need this to be true because this belief is what got them through in life.
Well, it’s certainly not a rational basis for the hate, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Sal was the trigger point for a traumatic experience on top of years of abuse, that’s she was never allowed therapy for and that Blaine likely kept digging at afterwards. We know he used that trauma to push her into martial arts instead of therapy.
So yeah, she’s built up Sal into a monster in her head and she’s going to have to deal with that. I’m still hoping this encounter leads to that starting. Which if she’d just tell Danny who Sal is to her, it might.
Yeah, she’s flirting quite hot and heavily with the notion of becoming an abusive partner and I think she needs to start calling a cab and getting her ass home, before that progresses any further than it already has.
Augh, I just can’t see Amber’s character arc going anywhere good for the next while. Best case she gets hella therapy, worst case she hits rock bottom and then what?
I think “no physical violence” is a bit low of a bar to be setting for an interaction with your SO to be going okay. This is still pretty damn appalling.
Well, worst case she hits Danny, puts on the costume, murders Sal and then goes on a killing spree across campus, eventually being shot down by the cops.
But we’re a long way from any of the worst cases.
It’s easy to look at this from our viewpoint, or even Danny’s, and see this as abusive, controlling, “I get to say who you can talk to” behavior.
But it isn’t really. It’s not about Danny, it’s about Sal. It’s “why are you hanging out with the person who did that to me?” Forgetting in the heat of the moment that he doesn’t know, which isn’t cool. And being completely wrong about what kind of person Sal is now, which is the real problem.
I really do kind of hope the bottom is pretty close for Amber now. Maybe over-influenced by what some people are saying here, but I don’t see how she gets much worse than she is now without not being able to come back as a sympathetic character. I don’t want her to become a villain.
As I’ve said, I don’t think we’re going there. For one thing I really doubt Willis is going down the mentally ill character descends into violence and abuse route – skirts the edge and overcomes it is a much more likely story. I hope this sequence is the catalyst for some kind of resolution with Sal. It’s certainly being set up for one.
I agree on the likelyhood of Amber going too far as being relatively unlikely. It’s a difficult and heavy and depressing thing, and while it happens all the time out here in meatspace it’s probably not for DoA. At the same time I would, however, find it very interesting to see how Willis would do that because we haven’t really seen a character go bad, have we? Characters tend to be revealed to have been non-obviously icky all along (like Joyce’s Mom) or just show up as pre-packaged unsympathetic awfulness (Blaine, Toedad, etc). Not saying that every story needs a Walter White or whatever, but a part of me kinda sorta want to see how that would play out.
I really can’t see that happening, since that seems like something that would make Amber completely unsympathetic. It doesn’t even have the extremely thin veneer of being played for kinda laughs like Ruth’s abuse of Billie early in the comic, where Billie would get thrown across the room and get up with no problem.
I’m pretty much with thejeff on this. I think this, or something very near, is going to be the absolute worst Amber is going to get, because if she keeps going further without any kind of positive moments, if she’s just repeatedly snapping at Danny and vilifying Sal, then it runs the risk of making her completely unsympathetic.
Danny was having a totally calm conversation with someone he’s been acquainted with in a public area. He has in now way “messed up” nor is he “an idiot” just because Amber is angry.
We (the mentally ill population) would prefer it if people would not use that word to describe people with mental illnesses. In some circles, it’s even considered slur on the level of n****r, f****t, or ret****d.
(I’m self censoring not because I think it’s wrong to write those words out, but in case Willis does.)
Being a white cis-straight male, I’m not allowed to use the first two; and Autism has me agreeing with you for the third. Though I do sometimes slip and use it, just feels like the most accurate word to use in that instance. (General insult, not derogatory meaning)
I grew up in a pretty polite, pre-internet and not natively englishspeaking environment, learning the last one mainly as a fancy verb for something being delayed or inhibited. It has occasionally gotten me some very confused looks over the years with people thinking I have harsh opinions about held-up trains and slow-growing potted plants, for example.
That I find funny. Just using the word out of the context / towards a different target than the word was originally meant to insult. I think I heard South Park did an episode similar to that. Words can change meaning?
I definitely respect your concern and see it as an act of good nature, but you do not represent all of us in any possible way, so please do not speak on behalf of all of us.
Crazy is an old and misused word that has strongly changed it’s meaning and I personally do not see the harm of using it in this context. ‘Retard’ on the other hand still a horrendous word, and comparing the two together is, in my personal opinion, ridiculous.
Danny: Yes Amber, of course I know that this is the person who traumatized you as a child because she is clearly the root of all evils committed in this world and I have every way of knowing things that you don’t tell me.
-Things any reasonable human would be justified to say sauteed with grade-A premium snark.
Yeah, that gets to the heart of the problem, dunnit?
I mean, not only does he have no fucking clue what she’s on about, because how could he when she has deliberately not told him anything about anything until it blows up in his face (he didn’t know that her dad was abusive until he straight up kidnapped him to get to her).
But there’s no way he would be able to agree with her over-dramatic meltdown of invented persecution, because it’s well… based in completely irrational myth-making. Sal is not the ur-criminal Amber insists on seeing her as, not some diabolical Joker figure that must be stopped before she Mark Hamils over everything. She’s a kid who made some youthful fuckups that hurt some people, but has tried to get her shit together and overall, has at least on that aspect.
But Amber is insistent that just because she has PTSD triggers about someone that makes them her eternal enemy and it well… doesn’t. It just makes them someone who triggers you and so should be avoided. But it doesn’t justify demanding no one else ever be so much as in the same general area as them or this accusatory bullshit she is investing herself in now.
And she needs to learn that so she doesn’t frickin’ hurt anyone or turn her well-respected superheroine alter into a dangerous threat to everyone on campus’s life.
It might go well. Though she’s certainly not heading in a well direction, but it might turn out that way.
It might get a bunch of things out in the open – at some point Sal has to find out that Amber/Amazi-girl is that kid from the convenience store. There’s a pretty good chance that’s now. I can’t help but think that’ll be a good thing.
Amber shouldn’t be holding on to Sal as the eternal enemy, but she’s not going to be able to get over it until she can actually confront Sal about it.
Neither of them are the villain here. Sal threatened to murder her best friend and Amber went out of control and stabbed her when she was already no longer a threat. They both did awful shit because of their respective histories and have suffered for it, and they were both children when it happened.
Mind, Amber now is wrong to continue pursuing it, and she’d be wrong even if she hadn’t stabbed her. She’s not even really entitled to confronting her, since Sal committed her crime and paid for it and Amber’s feelings don’t really apply to the judicial system.
She can hate Sal for the rest of her life if she wants, but that’s about as much as Amber is allowed.
Sure and if Sal just calls her out on it, things’ll blow up in a bad way. If Sal at least acknowledges some guilt and remorse, then there’s a chance of some kind of dialog that’ll help Amber. And possibly Sal as well. We haven’t really seen much if anything of Sal’s feelings over what she did or about what Amber did. Sal’s too cool to let any of that show.
For me it’s not really a question of “entitled” or “rights” or “allowed”. Just what might help any of these screwed up kids.
Technically, Danny, Billie thought Sal was Amazi-Girl. You just let Billie convince you she had figured something out correctly, which admittedly isn’t much better.
Speaking of which, does Billie still think Sal is Amazi-Girl? Is that still a thing?
Well, she surely doesn’t know who really is Amazi-Girl.
The last time we saw her talking about Amazi-Girl was (I’m pretty sure) before she started spiralling into depression. I’m sure she’s very doubtful of her old claims. Not necessarily because she’s been contemplating it any further, but probably because she does not trust her judgement in the slightest.
billie isn’t a journalist anymore? i know she and ruth have stopped “practicing journalism”, but have we seen anything to indicate she stopped writing stuff for the paper?
or did we ever see her do any actual-journalism journalism, come to think of it? i haven’t really been keeping track.
At least Ruth did it in the heat of the moment, out of feelings she’d felt for a while. Daisy just did it because she saw a chance to score a kiss and took it. Very objectifying.
Did Amber even tell him about the robbery? I can’t remember if something like that happened after he found out she’s Amazi-Girl, but I’m thinking “no.”
Yeah, Sal has been ruining the mythology of Amazi-girl by not being a villain and doing genuine actions to help her out even though Amazi-girl has twisted her own morality into knots to justify seeing her as an eternal threat that must be stopped at all costs.
And Amazi-girl will never forgive that, because she’s scared of actually putting the blame for her DID where it belongs (her dad’s consistent abuse and the random luck of the psychological hand she was dealt) and she’s even more scared of what nuance will do to the Amazi-girl alter (she literally believes that Amazi-girl must be consistent and unfailing and perfect, thus, Amazi-girl can’t be a triggered scared girl reacting like a flailing racist, so Sal must be evil to justify her bad actions towards her).
And if it’s gotten to the point where she’s a) so suicidally hateful of herself and her own life and b) so invested in viewing Sal as a villain no matter what that she’s willing to rewrite her own lived experiences to view saving her own life as a harm she has received…
Yeah, there’s reasons to be scared for every single person in comic right now.
Yep. Amazi-Girl is being Inspector Javert, you know, after he was saved by his escaped convict, and his black-and-white worldview is shattered, and all the stars are dark and cold.
That show ended so well for Javert.
I guess I have a hard time thinking of Javert as a true villain. More a completely inflexible good-guy who just happens to be chasing another good-guy. He was just a zealot for justice.
I count Javert as Lawful Neutral and an antagonist but not the show’s villain, myself. (That honor goes to Thenardier.) But since he does represent The System and the show is about Revolution, I could buy it too.
I think it is the Second Worst Thing because it shatters the psychological ground she stands on. If Sal’s not all bad and even worse than Blaine, than all the stories that keep Amber and Amazi-Girl together as more or less coherent personalities fall apart because life just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Amber isn’t tagged in this one. If this is amazi-girl nearly attacking Danny for not knowing what he cannot know, things are failing fast.
Cannot imagine what will follow.
(is it stupid to keep your fingers crossed for a fictional character?)
It is and I think you’re right. I’ve been noting that she’s making all the wrong decisions surrounding her alters and is getting dangerously close to them not even sharing memories anymore between them. I’m now starting to get worried that that would be the best case scenario for where she’s heading right now.
Amber doesn’t have DID. Willis may have intended her to but if so he didn’t do his research because her symptoms are not at all consistent with DID. Amber really WANTS to have DID because it’d be an easy way to escape from herself but the fact that she has full knowledge of everything she does as Amazi-Girl means she does not have DID.
There are people who do have MPD but still some of their personalities share memories. From what we can see, she acts totally consistent with this now, though I didn’t see it that way when she and amazi-girl where first introduced. Each time she switches to amazi-girl because of trauma response, both the victim persona (amber) and the rebel victim persona (amazi-girl) get stronger and more distinct and disconnected. If I was seeing this kind of behavior in a real-life person, I would start to think about the choice between confronting her (tricky, can trigger a crisis) and ignoring it (takes a lot of energy) and making plans how to avoid her (also takes energy).
No you’re right, she is definitely mad about being alive. She is 100% exhibiting suicidal thoughts in the last panel. I’ve had those too and I recognize them. Girl is MESSED. UP.
So she preferred to eat the dirt on the road rather than being saved by the one she still thinks is just a criminal. In past strips people said she needs therapy, but I am not sure if that’s going to help at all.
And it’s making Amazi-girl worse of a person, because to be both consistent and to justify trying to find any excuse to confront Sal, she’s having to care more and more about bullshit non-crimes no one cares about like underage drinking and thus is more and more likely to become a menace to the student body that is hated and reviled for being a rule-mongering killjoy like Mary.
It’s interesting. I usually identify with Amber’s DID moments, usually from the perspective of mistakes I’ve made in the past, but this run is one of those that I feel completely alienated from the character. She’s going off into the woods of anger and delusional and I feel it’s all going to end in fire and death.
I feel the same way. She’s a car crash that I’m choosing to look away from because there’s too much blood. She is guts and brain matter spattered on the road. I can’t anymore.
Do you realize Amber is already an emotionally abusive girlfriend, Clif? Maybe it doesn’t look bad to you, but this is textbook. Please stop brushing it off.
Even when they joined forces to rescue Becky and Sal SAVED HER LIFE Amber still wasn’t even willing to consider Sal might not be ~pure evil~. Like, what else can Sal possibly do at this point?
Nothing. It’s too important to Amazi-girl’s worldview that Sal be the eternal criminal. Sal could open a shelter for caring for injured kittens and Amazi-girl would still describe it the violent act of a diseased criminal.
Amazi-girl is starting to veer in very unhealthy abusive directions and is starting to echo the kind of paranoid justifications for hating someone that you see in professional harassment movements.
And that’s scary as fuck.
(also, this makes me wonder about a potential Batman story where Batman actually met the person who killed his parents and its some repentant slob who went to prison, cleaned up his shit, and is now living a normal life. Would Batman acknowledge people change, would he feel less ownership to his personal crusade, or would he double-down on viewing that as the symbol of all crime in order to justify the way he’s structured his whole life).
Anytime batman quits so does the Joker, literally the only reason joker does his shit is because batman will be there, but in most continuities if bats is killed or retires the joker tends to stop doing his terrible things, because he see’s no reason to play his game without the other player
Maybe in a Zack Snyder movie. But uh. Batman’s like one rule is “no murder” and virtually every episode of the animated series showed him genuinely supportive of getting the criminals and villains the help they need to recover.
Ok but even the guy who is responsible for his whole entire origin story? I’m not a super Batman expert (only seen him in movies and when he appeared in other characters’ comics I read), but that always to me seemed like the big one. The one guy he wouldn’t let go, who didn’t ‘deserve a second chance’.
Some versions of Batman have shown him to be very generous to charitable organizations, investing in the underprivileged, etc., which indicates he would probably view Joe Chill as symptomatic of a broken city, and thus not the person to focus his anger at.
But that’s a mature viewpoint, and Chill wouldn’t be out of prison for double murder until enough time had passed that Batman had overcome his more immature notions on criminals. So you’d have to do some kind of story where he keeps running into people who are all getting out of prison from his first years of crime fighting – and when they all resume their terrible acts, he does on believing anyone can change.
So when he, in a fit of rage, he goes to Chill’s home, possibly to kill him, he finds Chill is indeed reformed. Possibly some other hero could help talk Batman down on the need for forgiveness. Nightwing, perhaps.
He has met Chill a couple times, but never a reformed Chill. The canonical versions:
Pre-Crisis – Chill was killed by his own henchmen when they found out he was responsible for creating Batman.
Year Two – Batman considered killing Chill (who is still working as an assassin), but it’s not clear if he’d have gone through with it if the Reaper hadn’t beaten him.
Current continuity – Bruce considers killing Chill (who was just a common, pathetic mugger looking for money to buy booze), but decides against it, because it would defile his parents’ memory.
You know, for someone who claimed to be a fan of Gail Simone’s run of Bat-Girl, Amber didn’t seem to take to heart any of the storylines ending with Bat-Girl lending a hand of support and sympathy to the villains after understanding their tragic past. juuuuust sayin’.
to be fair, amber doesn’t know the tragic aspect of sal’s past, just the part where their paths overlapped. and it didn’t paint sal in an especially favorable light (not that amber came away from it looking especially stable either, but still.) all amber knows is “sal tried to rob a store” not “sal tried to rob a store because ________”
Though Ethan did try to get Amber to consider that Sal must have changed based on her (Sal’s) presence at IU, and Amber was having none of it. For one thing, Amber’s fragile psyche currently needs to be retroactively justified in stabbing Sal’s hand. That’s never gonna happen. Amber won’t get better until she undoes some pretty deeply-embedded unhealthy thoughts on strength, weakness, and her own and others’ right to forgiveness.
I think I remember a DCAU episode where Riddler was reformed, but Batman kept thinking it was a ploy to lower everyone’s’ guard. Got to the point where The Riddler just went ‘screw it’ and went all evil again.
AmaziGirl would probably think it was a front for training attack cats to carry knife-bombs, or something.
The bright side is Amber’s getting to the point where people are going to have to do something about this and she’ll have to achieve some form of stability in order to remain usable as a character.
Yeah, she’s veering dangerously close to posing a legitimate danger to other characters’ well-beings and that’s impressive to say so soon after she saved at least one other character’s life in the very recent past.
oh thank the heavenly father almighty you put a single asterisk in there so none of us get offended by the word we all know you still typed. I almost got the vapors but thankfully one single character was obscured and now I am saved.
We’re not telling you not to think she’s mentally ill we’re telling you not to use ablest language that stigmatizes people living with mental illness. You shit.
Well perhaps Danny will stop being chickenshit about ‘hey maybe dangerous vigilantism by someone I know has anger issues *might* have risky consequences and should be reconsidered…’ issue.
Amber could have killed herself and others on that highway. Considering the potential deaths of a multiple vehicle pileup at high speeds, potentially quite a few. And not only did her plan not really have much chance of working, it’s now also clear that it was at least fueled partly by some sort of death wish, or self-harming thoughts and behavior.
Sal and Joyce’s roomie are right. Amber is out of control and should be stopped for her good and everyone else’s.
The situation is hella dangerous and Danny might not realize it yet, but he’s actually in physical danger if he was to stand up strongly against the undue harassment of a random student who has been a regular presence and friend? to him.
Like, he’s also got no life experience truly standing up for himself and his own best interest thanks to his shitty parents, but if he was to practice it here, things could go very very badly for him and could leave him suffering physical abuse from an intimate partner…
Which yeah, saying that out loud gets at the heart of how abusive this dynamic has been getting over the last two days.
Maybe he’s only afraid of hurting her feelings because she’s never shown any sign of wanting to hurt him. But of course, unlike Ruth, she’s the abusive dangerous one. Because how dare she do something that isn’t normal.
If that was the lens through which Danny was viewing it-afraid of Amber hurting him if he brought up her vigilantism in a critical way-I wouldn’t say chickenshit at all.
But it’s not. I’m using that term because so far his response has been more or less ‘ la la la la not hearing this’ or ‘Amazigirl does good stuff!’ He’s seen her go livid with violent fury before, and the danger she’s posed to most others had nothing to do with her intending or even doing violence to them. Most of the people who could very possibly have died on that highway weren’t people Amber would have known or even ever seen before in her life.
I’m calling it right now that he’s about to raise his concerns with her. The only problem is that Amber’s brain is going to do instant backflips of denial and assume that Sal is clearly trying to turn Danny against her and poison their relationship in order to hurt her. Just more evidence that Sal is a villain and must be stopped.
Okay I’m seriously getting sick of Amber here. Like, the depths of my sympathy and understanding for her situation can only extend so far. Right now (and lately in general) she’s being so beyond unreasonable. Punishing Danny for something he knows absolutely nothing about, especially when he’s not even doing anything wrong, is not only pigheaded and baffling, but even borderline abusive.
At this point, my opinion is Dan needs to get out of this relationship. I always see people talking about ‘how bad that would be for Amber!’ but guys, seriously, staying in it like this is bad for Danny. And my patience with Amber is at its limit.
Danny is way too meek and spineless and eager to be with absolutely anyone under any circumstances if it means having a girlfriend for him to ever have a healthy equal dynamic with the thundering shithouse that is Amber’s current state. He needs to get out of there and work through his own stuff without having to drain all his energy trying to be an unpaid and wildly unqualified life coach.
If Amber is terrified of becoming her dad, she really needs to re-evaluate her actions.
One of the warning signs of emotional abuse is
– They correct or chastise you for your behavior.
Which Amber is doing by getting mad at Danny for associating with someone she doesn’t like.
She starts to edge onto other aspects, such as becoming emotionally distant from Danny by switching personas.
Danny is clueless and sweet. Yes, he is a big dumb-dumb sometimes about things right in front of his nose, but I give him slack for that. Freshmen are still kids, they are allowed to be oblivious. (Cynicism kicks in Sophomore year, Optimism Junior year, Apathy Senior year).
But there is another problem, Danny defines himself in relationships to other characters. He is Joe’s friend, Amazigirl’s boyfriend, etc. He will have trouble breaking away until he figure out how to be comfortable without those supports.
The last paragraph is really, really true. It’s a hard struggle, one that people may not even realize they are committing until it’s pointed out to them. I went through the same thing, up until freshman year I defined myself by my relationship to my parents and my sister, never thinking about who I am as myself.
I physically started shaking when my psychiatrist pointed that out to me because I realized instantly the truth of the statement. And it’s not an easy fix either, it took me the whole of my sophomore year to figure out who I am. That’s why, even when Danny is being oblivious boy-wonderbread, I still sympathize with him because I went through that struggle.
Though seriously, Amber needs to see a psychiatrist. Immediately.
Seriously, he’s terrified of being Danny, because he’s been told by everyone close to him minus maybe Dorothy and definitely Ethan that being Danny is the worst thing he could ever be.
And that’s something he’s going to need to fix to be a full partner to those he loves. And yeah, right there with you with my emotional abuse alarms going off. That getting mad for simply being near someone she’s decided is her enemy, that expectation of complete compliance with weird rules she never bothers to explain…
Hey, I actually was one of those people in the past saying that a breakup could be really bad for Amber as she is drifting in some bad directions…
And I think he needs to run.
Cause those bad directions are here and they’re starting to get really really scary and I’m worried that Danny will sustain physical as well as emotional violence the longer he stays. Amber is not in a good place right now. That can manifest in a lot of ways, but this is reminding me a lot of an ex of mine who was absolutely loving and caring… when she wasn’t hanging around her family, but when triggered by them would do all sorts of things that were on the border of emotionally abusive including gaslighting and creating situations where I had to continually apologize for the most random of made-up things.
I have very, very tentatively started to believe that Danny actually know exact what the stakes are, how large risk he is in and what his chances of success are.
And he is still staying.
I’m not sure that it is a wise decision, but it is at least an informed decision (and a very, very heroic one). I don’t think this outburst is a surprise to him – I think he has waited for it for some time.
Let’s hope you know what you are doing, little buddy.
I’m not sure “heroic” is the right word to describe somebody knowingly remaining with their abuser. I mean, I’m not saying that the idea of putting yourself at risk for somebody you care about isn’t a positive one, and if that is his goal then his intent is admirable, but his *actions* are maybe better described as brave, but recklessly self-endangering, in that case.
Yeah, I used to be big on the idea that Amber could get help with Danny, that she didn’t need to give him up to seek treatment and that he could be a pillar of support for her, and that she wasn’t so far gone that her problems made her inherently incapable of having a relationship. I mean, the first time she ever yelled at Danny she started crying and descended into blaming herself and calling herself worthless and stupid. That, to me, said that Amber wasn’t as bad as people kept saying she was. That she was just damaged, but she still very much could get better when she started making positive strides, and this sequence just really took me out of that idea, and now I’m thinking she really can’t be with Danny because she can’t control her rage even with him.
And, like, I should be able to understand Amber here. Her PTSD trigger is standing right there, but instead of giving Danny anything that could help explain her situation she’s just digging her heels deeper and deeper and acting like talking to Sal is this massive betrayal. And it is to her, for sure, but we’ve barely been given any context for it and we’ve seen Sal in so positive a light, that she is this genuinely good and well meaning person who fucked up when she was a kid and paid for it, that Amber just becomes really unlikable as she rages at her, and she really shouldn’t be in that position. Amber’s actions against Sal are wrong but we should at least be able to say “yeah I get why she hates Sal, because Sal did awful shit to her and just because Sal’s a good person doesn’t make it go away”, and that barely works even as an explanation anymore because she’s acting like a jackass over having her life saved.
I’m really hoping this proves to be the catalyst for Amber to start working on her issues, at least soon.
I hope that Danny will stand up and respond “that was years ago, and Sal is a decent person now, and she saved your life” and that to see Danny say that makes Amber start thinking maybe she’s being irrational and come to terms with things and move on.
But I too am a fool, and I think there’s still plenty of time that this will be getting worse before it ever gets better.
Unfortunately even if he knew the full context he probably wouldn’t be able to stand up like that. Danny comes off as someone who in the heat of the moment gets incredibly frightened and flustered and will shrivel up and admit wrongdoing no matter how irrational his guilt may be.
I think we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg of how Danny’s parents have treated him all his life. Expecting Danny to supposedly “Man Up” and tell Amber-AG off is totally unreasonable.
he’s already setting the tone by his lack of situational awareness and going “ruh roh, am i in trouble” instead of “hey listen, i clearly don’t know what’s going on, do you wanna talk it out maybe?”
It’s his parents default way of interacting with him and Joe’s not much better on that score.
When he’s convinced that stating his mind and his feelings and his experiences are just a drain on everyone close to him, he’s not going to feel very free to do so when he’s genuinely scared of “screwing it up”.
Yeah, it’s almost as if he’s been in a situation where he’s been verbally attacked by this individual for “not following her rules” before. Ugh. Patterns.
What I am wondering is if Amber will red out on Danny due to anger. I can see Sal stepping in there to protect Danny. Sal is a loner but she does acknowledge that Danny has generally been a good person to her.
If that happens I wonder how Amber/Amazigirl will react?
Can someone post the webcomic page of what Sal did to Amber that was her first worst thing she did to her? Im confused, I only remember Sal saving Ambers life. Thats the second worst thing right? Or is she just making the first up or being petty?
Sal robbed the convenience store Amber and Ethan were visitining. Ethan was held at knifepoint, Amber was criticised by her dad for not doing anything and she snapped and stabbed Sal.
Sal got shipped off, her already strained relationship with her family effectively ruined, and her body physically scarred. But AMBER is the one who REALLY suffered that day. Cause her dad yelled at her.
Amber is a fictional character who, aside from the dangerous vigilantism, has experienced a very plausible lifetime of abuse that many of the people who read this webcomic are able to directly relate to. By diminishing the fictional experiences and trauma of Amber, you’re thereby undermining the validity of the experiences of those actual, real human beings who have suffered abuse in their life.
I don’t think anyone said that it was worse for Amber than Sal, it was just that day in their combined history was Amber’s worst. Could also have been Sal’s. Different metrics, etc, etc.
Blaine was an emotionally, physically and generally abusive fuckwad, in both this continuity and shortpacked. (only in shortpacked we got to see his corpse so thats nice)
also you are apparantly incapable of reading into subtext since all you see is Blaine “yelling” at her in the flashback yet there was clearly far more going on
But yeah, gerb is also right. Amber got off scot free stabbing someone in police custody and only went off because her dad literally blamed her for the incident and just went to town on her when she was already in full panic mode and trauma state. And Sal got a whole mess of court-ordered stuff for it that she went through and then rebuilt her life afterwards.
But Amazi-girl insists on holding on to the mythology of the incident because she still has some nasty PTSD triggers about it.
She is not choosing to hold on to her anger because of her PTSD. She’s never been taught how to deal with her anger properly, And that among other things is why she has PTSD over this.
I also have mental health issues, including a mood disorder. On top of that, I am on the autistic spectrum. I had abusive parents and was victimized in every way. I have Chronic PTSD, which never completely goes away. After two weeks of college, I went into a really bad anxiety state and was in so much pain that I sought counseling. I know now that being away from home meant that I was free to feel the truth of what happened to me.
As I said yesterday, I made the decision at a very young age not to abuse others because I would never want to hurt anyone the way I was hurting. That is what I don’t get.
I empathize with Amber, but I cannot understand why the pain she obviously feels has not driven to counseling. It is easy to numb out over video games which is where she puts most of her time. However, her acting out is so irrational that she should be frightened. I don’t think Amber is psychotic, but she certainly is in denial.
I don’t see any justification for Amber’s behavior. I am hoping that she will have real life consequences, hit rock bottom, and finally realize that there is no way out unless she works at it.
As a freshman in college herself, she may be just now in a place where she has real options for counseling. Her Mom seems like a great person, but she may not have noticed, may have had too much of her own stuff to deal with, or something like that. So maybe, hopefully, she’ll take that path or something like it. It is definitely starting to get… Bad.
Do we even know how long ago Blaine got kicked out of the picture? Sometime between 13 & now, obviously. Back when Blaine first appeared she said she hadn’t seen him in years, but I think that’s all we know.
And we know the last summer she was too busy helping Ethan through his coming out trauma and all that entailed.
Her mom may be fine, but she’s likely got issues of her own to deal with from Blaine.
Blaine and Stacey divorced when Amber was 13, around the same time of the robbery.
IIRC Amber also mentioned that her mother worked a lot to provide for her and Amber was often left alone, and also she ditched her daughter for a day to get railed by Dr. Rosenthal. I’m guessing she drew a lot of emotional support from the Siegals before they turned on her and Ethan.
That early? I thought there was time enough after the robbery for him to push her into martial arts instead of therapy and generally screw her up even further.
She also said she hadn’t talked to him in 3 years, though there could have been some contact (and partial custody?) for awhile after the divorce.
As a bipolar person who suffers from psychotic tendencies, I can say from experience this is moving from “you need to apologize to Danny and go to therapy” to “you need to back the fuck away from Danny and take some damn antipsychotics” real quick. #protectboywonderbread
No. Because nothing psychotic is going on here. Amber seems perfectly well in touch with reality. Her problem are anger management issues and aggression.
Yes, these are the same problems abusive people have. But that doesn’t make them psychotic.
Now if Amber starts making up shit that never happened, or acting like Danny is someone else, or any of the other symptoms I’m sure you’re aware of, then maybe anti-psychotics would be the answer.
And, yes, she needs to get out of this situation. But the problem is that Danny doesn’t understand that, and Sal seems to be content just to stand there, rather than leave as Danny asked.
Indeed. There are a very many disorders in which one can experience psychotic episodes, it has even been documented in some people with severe depression. I think that due to the stigma a lot of folks think the colloquial and derogatory term “crazy” and the term psychotic (in the clinical sense) are the same (ex. Psychotic person = horrible person, which is just untrue). I think people are saying Amber is psychotic here because of her delusions and irrational levels of rage and anger, which we’ve seen before. It’s partly psychotic in nature because her reasoning, anger at Sal and Danny is nowhere near the actual reality, and she’s acting on it, making her a danger to herself and others.
“and Sal seems to be content just to stand there, rather than leave as Danny asked.” Are you actually trying to find a way to blame Sal for minding her own business in a public area??
She may not have a condition where anti-psychotics may help, but I don’t think I agree that she is being in touch with reality right now given that she’s convinced saving her life was an act of villainy. At the very least her and reality are having a loud argument and considering a trial separation.
Sal offered to leave. It was her idea. Danny certainly wouldn’t have asked it, especially immediately after she pointed out explicitly that she had every right to be there.
Maybe she is leaving. It’s only been a few seconds. Or maybe she saw enraged Amber and decided she needed to stay to keep an eye on things–I would’ve.
I’m pretty sure when Danny greeted her as “Amber” and she responded as “Wrong” that counts as disassociating. Also grounded in reality is not a word I’d use to describe Amber, ever. This isn’t me calling Amber a “psycho”. This is me being painfully aware of a dangerous mentality that is honestly kind of sickening to see because I’ve been Amber. Like I got way too upset last night when I posted that comment because it was too close to the worst version of myself.
Because nothing psychotic is going on here. Amber seems perfectly well in touch with reality.
Who is that Amber you are talking of?
Certainly not a person present in today’s strip (check the tags!)
And that really is the problem!
“Perfectly well in touch with reality?” I think not!
This better not be one of those cliches where the issue doesn’t resolve because a character doesn’t elaborate on something or ask an appropriate question.
I know we all always say this a lot that Amber needs to get help asap, but man, she’s actually getting really scary now. To the point where in real life, if you were her friend, you’d wonder if she was beyond help, if she had gone off a ledge.
The last panel is suicidal as hell (= ‘I wish she’d have let me die”) and she’s just generally full steaming ahead with her anger. Also, the line between Amber and AG has evaporated, there’s no line anymore. She’s really 100% terrifying and frustrating now and it’s actually hard to watch.
I do care about her and godDAMMIT she better get some help soon, but watching her just continuously spiral closer and closer to the abyss feels so oppresive to me and suffocating, like… I can’t help her and this girl is KILLING HERSELF.
Idk. It’s not fun for me to watch. Like, at all. Maybe I need to take a break from this comic for a while, because ‘The Relentless Downward Spiral of Amber O’Malley’ is not something I signed up for or can deal with right now.
Blahhhhhh. Long story short, this is just….. A LOT. Poor Amber. Somebody get her fucking help.
She has no respect for herself and clearly doesn’t value her own life and in fact sees saving it or respecting it as the acts of a villain…
But she also is really close to just deciding to go off on Sal out of the blue or hurt anyone who comes to her aid.
And yeah, it’s kinda terrifying to see and I spend most of my days teaching and aiding kids with severe mental conditions. And it’s kind of an interesting thing, because I usually identify a bit with Amber because of the DID stuff, but she’s going way off the grid here into lands I was way too scared of hurting other people to even glance at.
Amber is not just a poor kid doing literally everything wrong to treat her unfortunate mental conditions, she’s starting to be someone needing observation to keep her from hurting herself and others and if it continues to worsen, Danny may have to legitimately think about potentially having her hospitalized for her own protection and the protection of folks like Sal.
Absolutely. She’s a danger to herself and others. Plus, as others have pointed out, she is so Blaine-y here, her anger is reaching her father’s level of anger and that is so scary in an 18 y/o girl. I mean, in anyone really, but both genetics and upbringing have probaly done their part, along with brain chemistry, in fucking this girl up.
…I’m at the point where I believe Amber needs to withdraw from school from the semester and check into a hospital or facility. For not only her own safety and sanity, but those around her. She is on the verge of a psychotic break, and from my own experience, it will not be pretty, and there will be casualties, Please, someone, (Ethan, Mike, DANNY) call her mom.
She checks both boxes, unfortunately. I just hate to think of how it will tear her apart, and the people that love her, if it comes down to involuntary commitment. I spent a little time in the top floor myself, by my own choice, but seeing the kids my age kept there for their own good, against their will, was horrifying.
Ethan has told the story of the holdup to Danny.
Amber and Amazi-girl know it was Sal. Ethan has a twinge of recognition, Danny doesn’t know, and Sal doesn’t know it was Amber who stabbed her.
I think I agree with the ones here predicting this is going south.
Of course Danny has no clue, she hasn’t told him anything about it. But, he has been told by Walky a lot he didn’t want to hear.
Sal saved Ambers life.
And that’s the SECOND WORSE thing she did.
Can’t imagine how scaring Amber in a robbery could possible be the basis for this solid wall of hate all these years later. Would think that stabbing Sal in the hand for it, would sort of call it even?
But then again, it was a piece of her screwed up childhood, and convenient to hang a hook on Sal as being the whole cause of it.
Run Danny.
I dunno. PTSD considered, I still think Amber is really abusive towards Danny. Nobody deserves to be the yielding and apologetic punching bag for anger and frustration. I’ve been there.
He doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s hardly ever seen Amber this bad and he is freaking out a lot, but he brings up the one thing he know that could be a gamechanger.
Poor, poor, Amber. She can only be blamed for Ethan getting hurt in the most paranoid abusive fantasies of Blaine – but this is situation right here, right now is hurting Danny and threatens to hurt him a lot more.
And if that happens then Amber will have a new Worst Day to look back to, one where her own guilt is much more pronounced.
What’s scary is that she seems to have bought Blaine’s paranoid abusive fantasies hook, line, and sinker and seems very loathe to abandon them to reality or in service to protecting people other than her that Blaine has harmed (let us not forget that Danny was straight up kidnapped and threatened by Blaine simply for being close to her).
And that’s not good. Eventually she’ll have to make peace with the fact that her dad was not just a piece of shit, but that everything he said to her was bullshit and lies. Including the bits about her that she has assumed must be true because he abused her until she internalized it to her very core.
So much to comment on here, I’ll really try not to rehash anything I noted up above and just stick to that I haven’t already hit.
Panel 1: Sal pointedly ignoring the girl she has every reason to believe is a) the same person who has antagonized her at every turn and b) racist as fuck. I mean, think as someone who isn’t aware of Amber’s backstory and just put yourself in the perspective of Sal. Here’s some crazed honkey immediately going off on her “not-a-boyfriend” because he dared exist near her and she’s acting like she’s dangerous because she’s existing in front of a school building. Like, holy fuck, that’s the level of shit where if I was Sal I’d be very scared of being Zimmermaned.
Panel 2 and 4: Anger, escalating threats, barely contained rage pointed at a romantic partner… yeah, that’s hitting a lot of Emotional Abuse buttons right there and it’s a completely unreasonable expectation that she has to this and to Danny in general since yesterday in comic time.
But with Danny it’s all rage and expectation of complete capitulation… which… even if this isn’t abuse, it’s definitely not helpful to Danny’s issues and it might be time for him to jet simply to protect himself and his emotional well-being (even though we all know he never will, even if she turns to violence).
Panel 3: And that last point is emphasized by the fact that she does her scary reiteration thing right after he tries to distract the conversation and de-escalate a situation. Her insisting on escalating when her conversation party is not down for that… it’s not a good sign to say the least. Especially since unlike Joyce, she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on (it may have been traumatizing for her, but Ethan was right when he noted that everyone else has grown up and changed).
Panel 5: Danny’s internal monologue must be some combination of warning sound screaming and a gif image of eyes growing wide. That’s a lot of a lot of things to take in at that level of intensity and while many slag him for being a doormat, I’d say…
Panel 6: This panel where he stands his ground and even points out the reality of the situation, a reality his girlfriend really doesn’t want to hear in defense of the friend she is attacking and is treating like garbage is some worthwhile brave shit.
Like, Amber is terrifying right now and could easily turn violent against him and he’s willing to just counter her directly. That’s not easy when you’ve got a partner in that kind of headspace and have spent all your life having everything you think and feel dismissed by shitty parents and friends.
Panel 7: I know I touched on this before, but that anger and rejection in that pause. That refusal to accept the raw truth of the matter because it would interfere with her imaginary mythology of herself and her relationship with Sal. That conscious choice to choose a deepening of delusional thinking rather than to accept an inconvenient reality is very human, but very scary.
Amber there made probably the biggest choice of her life and it’s going to make recovery from this point very difficult because…
Panel 8: That treatment of saving her life not just as a wrong, but an outright villainy not only betrays her complete lack of respect for herself and her investment in this outlook on life, but a conscious choice to believe in fictional things to justify hating a person and seeing them as a source of personal villainy in her life.
Like, Amber here legitimately reminds me of Candace Owen and a number of individuals wrapped up in perpetuating harassment movements. People who need to view their targets as villainous and personally harming them because their view of themselves and their worlds need said people to be villains to justify their chosen actions.
And Amber there just chose to do exactly that. To choose to view Sal as villain to interpret even the saving of her life as somehow a wrong deserving of reprisal. To view it as something Sal needs to make up for and which is only a hint that Sal will somehow do greater harm to her in the future. To view Sal leaning against a wall literally doing nothing but staring at her phone and smoking a cigarette as a grave and immediate threat.
Amber at this moment has deliberately chosen to abandon reality even when pointed at directly in order to justify hating someone harmless, just trying to live her life in peace doing no current harm to her or anyone not named Malaya.
And that’s what makes this all so terrifying, because I’m not sure how you come back from conspiratorial thinking like this. From direct rejections of reality and self-sustaining justifications for continued harassment and hatred of people for now imagined slights (like at least the robbery was real and not a complete off-the-wall like this).
I’m not sure there is a back without doing some extensive apologies and acknowledging your role with some serious wrongdoing. And it makes Amber someone that both Sal and Danny would be well to get far far away from before she decides that Danny is also a villain who has “turned on her” and “wronged her” because she’s not agreeing enough with her spiriting away on a tangent line going infinitely far away from reality.
And when you combine that with DID, that’s a really good recipe for some really not good shit. Amber may straight up need hospitalization or at the very least some form of observation and is starting to move from “yeah, this character prolly needs therapy” to “no, seriously, she needs a therapist and if I was her teacher, I would be passing along my set of resources on how to find a therapist in her area while also talking to my supervisors about a potential 911 call and isolating her from the other students”.
People keep saying Amber has DID. She doesn’t. The DSM-5 says that two of the main criterion for DID diagnosis is that the patient have some sort of amnesia of the alter personality (the “dissociative” part of Dissociative Identity Disorder), and also that they be distressed by this condition. Amber is well aware of Amazi-Girl, created her as an outlet for escape, and its just super maladaptive coping. She seems to have PTSD, isn’t dealing with her shit well, and absolutely needs therapy, but she does NOT have Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Perhaps under an older version? I know my classification of Autism got bounced around a bit between the changes. Or perhaps it’s a “TV” version of a dual identity disorder, and ‘DID’ is being used as a simple shorthand? Or I could be completely wrong. Not like that hasn’t happened before.
Yea, what qualifies did get expounded upon from the last version- I believe the “must be distressed by” is new. TV DID really does it no justice, just like with TV schizophrenia.
I really think its more the TV-version thing. Or, people not wanting to think a character could be so messed up without some kind of classifiable mental illness as an excuse, maybe? She certainly has problems, I just wouldn’t say she’s DID.
Hi. I actually have DID and have had it for as much of my life as I can consciously remember. So I’m speaking from that, so please forgive me if it feels like I’m being brusque on this subject, but it’s somewhat annoying to be dictionary argumented about a condition I’ve spent my entire life living with and speaking with other DID individuals about.
And the DSM a) has had a long history of being slow to respond to the reality of conditions or ways of living (see the history of homosexualiy, transgender identities, or the fact that currently asexuality is considered a diagnosable condition rather than a sexual identity according to that manual) and b) reflects the psychologist community in really doing very little surrounding DID after it has been integrated or before it disassociates.
As such, it’s not the “TV” version or a shorthand that I’m referring to, but the actual condition. Cause I genuinely see a lot of my younger self in Amber, trying to juggle alters, trying to treat one as an emotional dumping ground, alter shifts in the middle of my routine, fights and arguments and protection rackets among the alters, and so on.
Amber is very consistent with a DID sufferer who is integrated but pushing on that point and doing behavior that is very likely to lead to amnesiac disassociation if she’s not careful.
I was only speaking in reference to Amber, not to you, Cerberus. Perhaps I didn’t convey that properly, or ended up mistyping. I know that I have problems typing in ‘NOT’ operators, which can thusly throw off meaning of some things completely. Sorry if I offended.
I’ve been much been banging on at this point for a while now. Amber WANTS to have DID because dissociating is a great way to escape from being Amber and she REALLY doesn’t like Amber. But she doesn’t. She puts on a mask and plays a role but she doesn’t actually stop being Amber and become Amazi-Girl she’s just Amber pretending to be Amazi-Girl.
I do not see where Amber has made a single threat, and I do not see how she has lost touch with reality. She is angry. She has said a lot of angry things, but she hasn’t even insulted Danny, let alone threatened him.
I’m not saying she’s treated him well, or that what she’s doing is right. And her anger is out of proportion. But it’s pretty much caused by her PTSD being triggered, and the fact that she “chose” fight instead of flight–to cover up her fear with anger.
And she knows who Danny is, and she knows what Sal did. Yes, she’s worried about Danny hanging out with her, but she kinda has reason to be–because Sal could do exactly what she did–tell Danny about what happened. About how dangerous it is for her to be Amazi-girl. And, as she is currently trying to do–she could try to get him to stop her. You know, break up with her if she doesn’t stop being Amazi-girl.
I did not read the comic in any way similar to how you read it. While I normally love your embellishments, these seem to make Amber out to be a whole lot worse than anything I saw.
To be honest, it feels a lot like when you talked about people making up stuff about Becky or Carla. Even down to the fact that I can identify really well with Amber.
Not the DID, (which I’m still not convinced she has–she doesn’t have the requisite memory issues.) Not being some sort of vigilante (unless you count defending people online). But having anger problems? Panic attacks? That’s all stuff I have. While I wouldn’t freak out about a person, no person is one of my triggers. I still could see myself in a situation where I get really angry because I’m covering up for fear.
A situation where, while I yell and posture, I specifically avoid threats or violence. Granted, now I’m more likely to withdraw, but that’s because I’ve gotten help. But not hospitalization–and I don’t see how Amber is at that point now, either.
So, yeah. Don’t get me wrong. I still love you, but I just cannot see where you are coming from here, or where others are jumping to Amber having crossed some line in this comic. Last comic, sure, since she had never been like this to Danny before. But this time? I don’t see it.
If anything, I see that second to last panel as hopeful. She had to pause. That Sal saved her put a chink in her thinking. I remember it happening to me while angry before, too. There’s a reason her anger is lessened in the final comic.
I am very sorry for that. I also have identified very strongly with Amber (PTSD, DID, anxiety attacks). And I don’t want to make others feel attacked for their shared identities as I really don’t like that when it happens to me.
I’ll try to be more measured in the future and I’m sorry for the harm I have caused here.
Also, everyone? Amnesia is not a requirement for being DID. It’s a requirement for having psychologists give a flying fuck about the fact you have DID, because that’s the sexy part of DID and makes for good research papers.
There’s some ambiguity about the final panel that I think I may be picking up on.
See, it isn’t saving AG’s life that is the second-worst thing that Sal has done. It’s expressly telling Danny about having saved her life that is the second-worst thing.
AG’s entire self-image is based on over-the-top self-confidence; on being the hero; the one who saves the day. Sal having gone to great effort to help her doesn’t make Sal look like a good person; it makes AG look like she’s too weak to have kept on top of things. By AG’s way of thinking, Sal should have just kept silent about it.
Sal telling Danny about having saved AG’s life results in AG . . . the phrase that comes to mind is “losing face”.
Yes, this is a fucked-up way of thinking. But it does seem like the sort of honor-culture mentality that AG might have.
Or maybe I’m just imagining what AG means. *shrug*
I kinda hope that Danny picks up on that last line (and doesn’t grasp the loss of face implication) and says something like “Wait — saving your life was a bad thing? Do . . . do you really want to die?” And maybe AG gets embarrassed and backs off.
I dunno. I think she legitimately has decided that saving her life was a bad thing. And I think it’s partially because Sal did it. After all, anything Sal does must be bad because foundational mythology. So since she saved her life, this is now a wrong. And anyone who thinks her life is worth saving can be considered an enemy.
Like, I hope you’re right, but I worry that this might be the descent into some truly scary paranoid demonization thought patterns.
Though that might be because I’m hyperaware of those of late thanks to all the Bathroom Mythologies being spun right now in the wake of HB2.
Based on one or two preview panels I’ve seen, I suspect that we’re going to see some super self-destructive behaviour on Amber’s part because, if Sal isn’t actually a monster, does that mean that Amazi-Girl isn’t necessarily a hero?
Nice to see someone else coming to that (alternative) conclusion! (Not being a native speaker of English myself, I wasn’t sure that I was getting all the possible nuances right.)
Plus: all the worse, since Danny kind-of has been AG’s #1 fan (with a crush, at that). So from Amber/AG’s perspective, Sal whispering those words in Danny’s ear specifically, is truly hitting her where it hurts.
Wanna clarify I understand Sal trigger’s Amber’s PTSD, just pointing out that Danny is missing the information to even make the connections, and even if he did, her emotional reaction here is out of normal ranges. He’s not doing anything wrong, her brain is attacking her.
yeah, i’ve liked their weird little mario kart playing, math tutoring friendship. Kinda hoping at some point Sal will step in to defend Danny here if Amber keeps escalating this.
Seriously their friendship is so much better for him than his relationship with Amber and I hope to god he doesn’t ditch it to try to preserve this flaming wreck of a relationship.
Especially since Sal has so few friends and a kid like Danny is a supportive person who (while clueless) would offer an alternative to her best friend.
Oh, the day is still young, Amazi-Girl? She might do something worse to you? What could that be? From your body language, I’m guessing ‘make you beat up your traitorous boyfriend for consorting with your nemesis’.
Please run, Danny. Just run. Hide behind the first non-Sal person you get to.
I’m pretty sure that she’ll just tell Danny that they’re over because, if he’s taking Sal’s side, that makes him one of Amazi-Girl’s Rogue’s Gallery too.
I actually think Amber is far far away from the point which people are trying to put her in. I think the final panel is a sign she’s NOT actually having a psychotic break from reality but accepts the fact Sal is not a monster. She accepts Sal did save her life and the Amazi-Girl portion of her personality is actively fighting the Amber portion. I believe she’s close to a breakthrough and casting aside the worst emotions of that moment.
How the hell would he know? Amber’s never told him herself, and she’s the only one who ties Sal with the convenience store incident. Ethan didn’t recognize her, and dismissed it as in the distant past when he was told. Sal didn’t recognize either of them individually. We haven’t seen conclusive proof that Sal even saw Amber that day because she was hiding.
I keep trying to decide if Amber is “moving against,” “moving toward,” or “moving away” according to Karen Horney’s personality theory and just… Can’t figure her out.
I’d just like to add (not sure if anyone already mentioned this) that this is a reprise of her original psychotic break (as was her beatdown of Blaine). When this happens you become dissociated from reality in such a violent way that you literally are inhabiting a world no one else is. As such what makes sense to you or what seems logical or rational is something that no one else can understand, nor can you understand them. Think about it—it’s as if suddenly no one can understand the language you’re speaking even though, to your mind, what you’re saying is perfectly intelligible. There’s no point getting mad at Amber for being unreasonable with Danny; she’s getting frustrated and angry with him because of a fundamental gap in communication (“How can he not know who she is when *I* know so well who she is?!”). It’s just not helpful applying commonly accepted paradigms of rationality to psychotic situations. And this is out of Danny’s or any non-professional hands to remedy.
What psychotic break? And what violence? I guess you can see her flashing back during her attack on Blaine as such a break–though I’ve seen that trope pretty often in fiction before without it meaning that.
But I don’t see one here. I see someone who is really angry, who got triggered, and is yelling a lot. She seems completely aware of everything going on around her. What she’s saying is mean, but it makes sense. And she calmed down a bit when Danny pointed out that she saved her.
And, despite other claims upthread, it makes perfect sense that she is afraid of Sal talking to Danny. Because of what Sal actually did already say.
I mean, your basic idea is right–Amber is not fully in control of what she’s saying, due to her mental illness. But I do not understand all these people claiming a psychotic break.
I was classifying the original convenience store incident as a psychotic break because it (and whatever followed) seems to have many of the symptoms of a classic psychotic episode, including a sudden violent and uncontrollable outburst, the delusion of Sal being the villain to Amazigirl’s superhero, persecution paranoia about her alter identity, etc. I was seeing that as the originating incident after which every future incident that threatens to become a red panel situation where she gets triggered and mixes up past and present could be a relapse. However I agree that there isn’t much point using psychoanalytic terms to diagnose a fictional character. My main point was that people should remember Amber tends to spill into a state where she can’t tell reality from fantasy at least consciously and there’s no point yelling at her across the fourth wall to be rational with Danny.
Oh hi Amber’s scary, abusive side that she probably learned/inherited from Blaine, it’s really unpleasant to see you. Still hoping Amber decides to get some real help about you. You’re gonna end up hurting and driving away everyone Amber cares about.
I’m kinda surprised it took me so long to realize that the reason she’s able to stand there talking right now is because she slipped into her other persona, and likewise, I’m dreading the inevitable realization that Amber’s now incapable of controlling herself in both of her personae with Danny.
It is really bad, probably even moreso than Amber going into panic attacks when she sees Sal, because Amazi-Girl would absolutely want to pick a fight with her because that’s what Amazi-Girl is made for. Amber is terrified of Sal, but Amazi-Girl sees her as a villain to defeat in combat.
And it is a really bad sign that her DID is getting worse, because she’s gotten more and more incapable of controlling which person she is at the moment. Earlier this chapter she had enough control to grab her mask and run away, but here she’s immediately switched.
Interesting that you’d interpet this as her having DID that’s getting worse, because I’m sort of reading the opposite here. If anything we’ve have been seeing the lines between “Amber” and “Amazi-girl” blurred to the point where we’re now seeing Amazi-Girl behaviour without the costume or voice. I’ve read Amazi-girl more as a pretty unstable volontary comparmentalization technique. Then again, I’m no psychologist, so what do I know.
Either way we’re in agreement on what the short-term fallout could be here.
Yes, this is what I was trying to say yesterday about the irony of Amber insisting that Danny be in a relationship ONLY with AG to prevent him from being treated …well…like this.
I think Amber is actually the more likely of the two to pick a fight with Sal, though. Something about when AG said that being up on the roof after seeing Sal in the hallway being “to prevent my other self from stabbing someone…well again.” Yes, AG will try to provoke a fight, but Amber will actually take the first swing. It’s started me wondering if Amber’s panic attacks are really just terror at seeing Sal or terror that she’s going to haul off on her again. Or a complicated and delicate blend of the two.
Forgot to close the tag — let’s try it again.
But Sal *DID* save Amazi-Girl — so does this mean that Sal is aware that Amber is Amazi-Girl’s ‘secret identity’?
Before? I don’t think so. It’s not like she’d been hanging out with Danny when Amber was around, and people who actually know Amber couldn’t figure it out just by looking at her. Remember, at least two people thought Sal could be Amazi-girl. The disguise is preternaturally good.
Now, though? If she can hear what she’s saying, which seems quite likely, then she very well should.
I don’t think Amber is actually suicidal in the final panel (probably). She doesn’t really object to Sal saving her life; she objects to [person she conceptualizes as ultimate evil] doing something 100% good. The worst thing Sal can do besides starting the whole “Amber can’t cope and so pretends to be a superhero who saves people” schtick is prove that she isn’t even an evil villain, leaving Amber with the reality that she is the only person left trying to eternally re-play that night at the convenience store after everyone else has moved on with their lives.
I do want to say what I was scrolling down to say. I thank you that, with a few minor exceptions, a couple I responded to, no one seems to be doing what was bothering me so much yesterday. I don’t know if you read what I said or not, but, either way, it’s appreciated.
Amber is not awful. She is not a bad person. She is a person with a mental disorder. One that we’ve been privy to for a long time. Please, if you can, try to have sympathy for her.
Don’t treat her like she actually is how she acts because of her mental illness.
And, with that, I’m out. I’m totally drained. Don’t even know if I’ll be able to scroll down tomorrow.
I agree. She’s not an awful person. She’s someone with a mental disorder (several mental disorders) and some nasty triggers from abusive parents and even at worst case, she’s someone who does her negative actions due to those aspects rather than being someone like Blaine who gets off on the power trip.
I’m really sorry that the comments have been draining. I’m also really sorry to have contributed to that drain. *Appropriate gesture of support* if you’re willing to accept.
You gotta admit, it’s hard not to be frustrated with her. And I think that’s what people are displaying here: frustration, not so much animosity towards her. That and concern.
You can be sympathetic and mad at someone at the same time though.
Same here. While Becky’s arc seems to have made a lot of people with similar experiences relate a lot to it the Danny/Amber dynamic hits super close to home for me. Where a lot of people probably just see a mentally tormented girl and her martyr-complex of a boyfriend I can’t help but see the seeds of what, for me, eventually turned into years of mental and physical abuse.
Though, to be fair, Amber seems to be more aware than my ex that her issiues are, well, _her_ issues and not just the world being cruel and wrong. That can count for a lot.
I can definitely see the seeds of mental and physical abuse here.
But they’re still seeds. Not even the early relationship warning signs that she is an abuser. Seeds that Amber could go in that direction without help or some other breakthrough.
I don’t think we’re anywhere near the “run away now!” situation some people are seeing it as.
….nnno, you’re right, but the problem is that abusive relationships often are the kind of thing you kind of slip in to, so any red flags are really imortant. When the crystal-clear situations start showing up you’re lucky if you can still get out without too much trouble and the situation might be entirely unsalvegable already.
I think that what I and others are reacting to is mainly red flags that shouldn’t be ignored, not dealbreakers in and of themselves.
Hey, there’s something that has been bugging me about Sal too.
How does someone go from feeling unwanted by their parents to robbing a convenience store at knifepoint?
Sal was neglected for years on end and lashed out to try and get her parents to finally pay attention to her. If you go back to the flashback, Sal just knocks over some stands and goes up to the desk demanding money, and it isn’t until the clerk says that she can’t actually threaten him that she goes and grabs Ethan.
Actually, I suspect there was a trigger to her starting to rob stores that goes beyond the parental neglect story. But we haven’t been made aware of it yet.
We also don’t know what happened to Marcie. I first though both things were connected but it seems the time-line doesn’t fit.
Honestly this is kinda disappointing, since just yesterday in-verse we had a big scene of Amber freaking out and beating herself up because she lashed out at Danny, something apparently so awful to her that she had to put it in her Red Panel collection, and now she’s just doing it again with no hint of self awareness. Like, I thought that was the point. That she knew that rage was there and she had to keep it buried, and that expressing anger was an unforgivable sin for her, and boom, here we go again. It’s starting to come off like Amber is very much in the “cycle of abuse” story, and I was hoping that would be avoided here for a more thorough explanation of Amber’s mental health instead of going into “yes this victim of constant abuse is definitely just like her abuser, and she should learn to stop being so shit.”
At the least, I do appreciate that Amber’s story is very much told with her in the driver’s seat. Often stories about mental health issues either wholly excuse them, or treat them as irredeemable shitstains from the word go, and I like that even when Amber acts terrible, and she needs to own up to it, there’s still context that shapes her character. I think we need to start seeing some change, though, because this story has been going on way too long with very minimal development.
While the story has been going on for a long time for the readers, in-universe it’s only been a little over a month. I think Willis can be excused for not resolving Amber’s myriad issues in that amount of time.
That first paragraph seems to directly conflict with the second one. Amber’s been aware that she’s stuck in that cycle of abuse since before the comic began — Amazi-Girl exists as a coping mechanism to shunt all that rage and violent urges onto — and it’d be weird if she could instantly control it the very first time after admitting to Danny that it was a problem.
Joyce started having her character and worldview challenged, and consequently changed, a long, LONG time ago. Amber only just took her first challenge to how she operates, in the aftermath of the car chase when Sal spoke to her before she left. (I guess trying to fight Sal might count, but did she learn anything from that?) The rest of her character development has been retroactive, her backstory revealed as time went on.
Amber punching Blaine in the face and Amazi-Girl beating the tar out of him afterwards might be the ultimate example of this. That storyline was the culmination of challenges (her shitty father’s abuse) that happened before the first comic strip, which does nothing to alter the person Amber’s been throughout the run of Dumbing of Age. In fact, that was when we readers began to really see what Amber’s character arc since the comic began would entail (the consequences of that abuse, beyond her shitty dad himself)…and she’s only just starting to face pushback from other characters over it.
I never really took the earlier stuff as indicative that Amber was in a cycle of abuse. I think she definitely picked up some stuff from Blaine, whenever she has a problem she tries to control it and barks and threatens to achieve that end, but there was still way more focus on Amber struggling against that rage and the inherent guilt she felt whenever she let it out, and I felt that, largely, the focus on why Amber needed to get better was because she was so wrapped in not becoming her dad that she created a whole new slew of problems she had to deal with, her DID, her self loathing, her disregard for her own safety. This is just page after page of Danny trying to reason with her while she’s being a prick to him. I guess this could end with, like, another bit of her realizing she’s acting out in other “safe” identity and freaking out again, but their last major interaction was exactly that so I doubt it. This is just really coming off like “Amber’s main problem is that she’s actually Blaine” and I was hoping that was something this series was going to avoid with her character.
She does get to the guilt eventually, sure…except where Sal is concerned, who she still wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of despite having already STABBED HER THROUGH THE HAND in the past.
Feeling bad about her impulsive actions also doesn’t automatically make her NOT in a cycle of abuse.
To be fair, Amber IS being mathematically accurate here, considering Sal has only ever done two things to her. By the same logic, attacking her with a knife was the second best thing she ever did to her.
I’m quite scared for Sal right now, I have no idea where this is going, and she really doesn’t deserve any of this. She might just become another person who experiences Amber’s version of “justice”, it’s really looking to be that way the longer this festers. And I stand by my sentiment from before that Danny should leave (and get counseling) and Amber should get some sort of help. Incidents like this left unchecked quickly become a pattern (it already is a pattern), and I really don’t think either of them benefit from this relationship.
Hospitalization is good for a lot of people. It really helped me when I was in college to walk into the health services when I was dealing with severe stress/anxiety. It’s the first ever time I started counseling.
It’s vaguely upsetting the way some people are claiming that she’s not being abusive here, and what about her tragic upbringing, that’s why she does it etc. , especially as someone who’s been on the receiving end of the hatred and bullshit for “sympathetic reasons” in childhood. I zoned out a little reading the first four panels.
I love the understandable blinding rage stopping Amber from telling Danny who she is. Usually when writers write these “someone doesn’t know something” scene there is a lot of time when people can explain things (usually in TV series but Batman Vs Superman did it too.) but here there isn’t any and the emotions are still strong.
You do have to wonder if, from the perspective of a certain part of Amber’s turbulent and disintegrating psyche, Sal did do her a disservice there. I wonder if dying at the moment of her greatest triumph – saving Becky – somehow appeals to Amber as a grand and positive end for her story? I suppose that would have prevented her from having to confront her continual mental collapse and somehow live with it.
Probably. A grand heroic exit is a lot cleaner and easier for someone suicidal than the thought of having to slog through one’s life and deal with one’s issues the long and arduous way.
That last panel. It speaks so much to Amber’s burgeoning cognitive dissonance surrounding her view of Sal. Amber’s so committed to having Sal act as her figurehead for the ills in the world, that Amber almost seems to be saying that Sal saved her life to fuck with head.
I mean, obviously Amber’s profound nihilism is poking through there too, but every one else has commented on that!
Amber knows that Danny can’t peer into her psychotic episodes and witness the flashbacks of her tormentor, right? As far as I’m aware Danny was never explicitly told about Sal and the convenience store robbery so how can he know anything about her? Not even Sal’s brother seems to know or care.
Holy crapballs, you are being way too toxic and horrible, and Danny is being way too accepting of your crappy behavior. You deserve to be taken out of the open world and put into an institution until you can learn to be safe for society.
I’m amazed at the amount of people that insist that Amber should be institutionalized/hospitalized. Like, yeah, she has issues, but the whole point of a story is seeing a person dealing with their issues.
Can you imagine the dangers she’d be put through if she were hospitalized and then, say, her father found out? Or was able to get to her?
I agree, institutionalization probably wouldn’t help Amber. She really just needs a therapist who can help her with her PTSD and how she copes with a lot of stuff.
Institutionalized? That maybe going a bit far at this point. She isn’t overtly suicidle just dangerously delusional while acting as Amazi-Girl. Well, given the car wreaks she caused in the last major outing, maybe that tips the scale there, if the police had caught her…. Before she chased a kidnapper and wreak some vehicles, an enforced hospital stay would have been too far, now she’s kinda put others lives in danger.
As to her father getting at her. Technically she is a legal adult, and if she was committed with the help of her mother, with EXPRESS instructions about her father (who would quickly be exposed as a root contributing factor), he actually should have a harder time getting at her. Currently he could stalk and accost her at any point outside the dorm. In a hospital or closed institution he’d be have to break and enter past security staff. And in doing so commit various substantive crimes in front of witnesses, that carry jail to prison terms. A restraining order would be the first thing I’d seek as her admitting counsel. Actually isn’t there already one against him?
School has barred Blaine from campus. I’m unclear as to whether there’s a Protective Order in place.
Though Blaine has no right to access information relating to Amber’s care, were she institutionalized, he could find out about it if he is carrying her on his health insurance. Since he’s been Ordered to pay support through higher education, I would be surprised if he hasn’t also been Ordered to pay for health insurance (and possibly other medical care). An EOB would let him know what was up pretty quickly (though he’s not entitled to those either, they might still be sent to his address).
Everybody here talking about Amber, the real issue here is that we are seeing Danny’s whites. Willis seems to be experimenting with full eyes for his dot-eyed characters
The dialogue in this strip has been pretty decent, but this is a good example of how it can get absurd (try getting two college students to read this aloud without sounding ridiculous). The storyline is struggling under the weight of so many backstories and subplots that are dramatic to the point of being ludicrous.
It’s disheartening to me to see how many comments insist that being mentally ill and being abusive are mutually exclusive. Amber is being abusive. She’s being dangerous. And she’s mentally ill. And she needs help. There’s nothing contradictory in those terms. As a person who’s dealt with mental illness and tried to cope in ways that very badly hurt people I care a lot about, it’s honestly kind of infantilizing to hear people act as though mental illness negates or excuses the impact that ones actions have on others. It’s true that the trope of mentally ill people being continually the most violent and fearsome members of society is stupid and needs to die. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people with mental illness who can do incredible damage to those around them, deliberately or not.
You know, I just realized that I do not object to shouting when angry as such – but it’s only ok to do this to people who will shout back and not be intimidated by it. Then you can both have a great row, throw everything (words, I mean) at each others heads and then start to look at things rationally when all those emotions are out of the way. I actually prefer that to people in a rage who do not realize or pretend not to realize that they are angry and just exude rage.
Danny is the kind of guy who is intimidated and thinks it is his fault even when you just have a different opinion but are not even really angry. With the kind of anger amazi-girl/amber exhude here – and in panel 4 it’s the worst – she isn’t shouting but this kind of bitten off words and the posture express total rage – is just the kind of stuff he has no protection against. It all feeds directly into his self-loathing. Still he tries to stand his ground.
That’s actually serious character development on his side.
Still cannot imagine how this will play out.
Sal will be cautiously watching because she doesn’t need rage spelled out to see it, but she is not intimidated by other people’s rages, only her own. So she would probably interfere if she thinks Danny is threatened and this would cause a mayor meltdown for amber/amazigirl.
Actually, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for both Danny and Amber. He should not have to take such shit. She needs to learn to deal with hers without involving the rest of the world and going where she needs to to stop her personas is like going voluntarily into your worst nightmare, but please, please please start!
I also think people are way way too sympathetic to Sal. As far as Amber knows, she was going to kill Ethan and anyone else she could lay her hands on. Why, exactly, is she supposed to believe it wasn’t a violent hate-filled robbery?
Eh, that’s really the wrong way to look at it. Between the two, Sal really is in the right, and Amber can’t keep treating her like her archnemesis.
Anyway, we’ve been shown Sal’s history and why she committed the robberies, how she was driven to do so because of years of neglect, before we finally got any idea that Amber had any history with her. We already know Sal suffered immensely over it, whereupon we’re introduced to a new conflict where Amber already hurt her back, we know why she did it, and the main victim of the crime, Ethan, has largely dealt with it and is more concerned for Amber than he is “some girl.”
Hating Sal is fine. Amber isn’t obligated to forgive her, any more than Sal is obligated to forgive Amber for stabbing her in the hand. They both did terrible shit and both have paid consequences for it. Amber, though, is the one pushing it further and acting terribly because of it, while Sal is just standing there doing nothing, and Amber’s been consistently shown as in the wrong in her actions basically since this story has started, and that’s been years of this one character being wrong all the time.
Not to mention this goes beyond Amber’s attitude towards Sal. She is getting angry at Danny for not knowing something that he couldn’t possibly hope to know, and that is seriously not okay.
How is AMBER supposed to know Sal reformed? Sal hasn’t exactly made any attempt to contact her or make restitution to her victims. Sal isn’t the “good guy” in this, she was horribly horribly the villain. It’s just she was a stupid kid and has moved on. Amber hasn’t. Amber can’t. It doesn’t change what she did was awful.
As an isolated incident, why would Sal have to make restitution? Sal held up a convenience store *without hurting anyone* and Amber *stabbed* her. And not even in self-defense–it was assault once Sal was restrained by the police. Sal threatened violence, but Amber was the one who made the situation violent. They were both bad guys in this situation. So why are you saying that Sal should’ve apologized, but aren’t holding Amber to the same standard?
By that definition, isn’t kidnapping not harming someone? Ethan was taken hostage at knife point and could have very well been killed. Threatened violence IS violence as many abuse victims can and will attest. As for Amber, I’m well aware she’s suffering severe severe issues. Ones which perhaps ruined her father as well as her.
I’m not saying that taking Ethan hostage couldn’t have hurt him (which in this case it did not, clearly not even mentally), but I’m emphasizing the lack of physical damage to emphasize the equality of Sal and Amber, that the latter is no better than the former in the convenience store situation.
And, actually, threatening and doing are two VERY different things. You can go ahead and say that isn’t the case with abuse victims, but that’s not who we’re talking about. We’re talking about violence in terms of physical stabbing. It is VERY different to be threatened and knifepoint and to actually be stabbed.
I wonder if Sal finally takes the gloves off to show… no scar. And the attacker was just someone that *looked* a lot like Sal. (as we’ve only seen Amber Flashbacks, she might be projecting Sal’s current image onto the few details she remembered in her adrenaline-haze from the time. Would make for an interesting twist.)
But Amber must have some major self-hatred to think that Sal saving her is the 2nd-worst thing she’s ever done to her. Even more than I thought…
I’ve a feeling I’m likely to catch flack for it, but I’d really love to see the arc come where she gets her confrontation with Sal out of the way so she can get the fuck over it.
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“Stupid still being alive so I can bang a dude from a bungee!”
This storyline is sort of hilariously congruous with that Slipshine, isn’t it.
You mean incongruous?
Nnnnope, I think it’s pretty congruous.
In this context, you use “Boing” instead of “Bang”.
Actually, Amber’s upset with Sal ‘cuz now she has to live in a world without Prince.
Imma gonna go with too soon on the Prince jokes.
Not according to Sinfest – he’s been doing Prince jokes all week…
I’d say those aren’t really jokes he’s doing. The first one in particular is definitely tribute.
sinfest lost me years ago
coincidentally, Prince is ALSO in uncontrolled airspace, depending on what you believe in
I would think Amber would have been more upset by Bowie’s death. She strikes me as a Labyrinth fan.
Now, Ethan would be bummed out by Prince. He adores Batman, so there’s no way he hasn’t seen the ’89 movie about a jillion times.
Of course, both of these examples worked better with OG Amber and Ethan, who were alive for at least some of the 1980s, and not these new models who probably don’t even remember the 90s and Christ I’m old.
http://www.mtv.com/news/2267756/teens-react-daria-90s-tv-shows/
=|
What/Who the flip is “Daria”? No seriously, never saw it/her. Oh it was MTV cable “stuff”. Never cared for MTV, and didn’t have cable as a kid growing up in the 80s/90s, (but I still know Dexter and Rugrats). MTV always felt like a channel that had an overly high opinion of itself, like a pre-Web2.0 Reddit, for the 2000s kids. Really went down hill on anything that wasn’t actually music videos.
You’re judging MTV against the hot mess it is today, not the ball of awesome it was in the 1990s.
that show was very 90s, animaniacs and batman the animated series would be a better show from that era to watch
They probably remember the 90s in a way that you wouldn’t care for, like a memory of a parent turning on the radio and then hearing Spin Doctors on the “oldies” station.
Radios are probably something else they remember from the 90s. Isn’t it all Spotifys and so forth now?
I had an answer for that question but my mind drifted to how long we’d have to wait before people feel old for remembering Spotify.
Amongst all the royalties rip-offs, Spotify is by very far the worst. As a musician, I can only disapprove of its usage.
Oh and I just felt like mentioning that I listen to my radio every day, I still have a shelf of tapes and my mp3 player is almost 10 years old. And I’m a proud owner of a standard phone line with a physical answering machine, no smarthingies and such. I was born in 1988, when Kurt was still alive. I feel young.
I can’t fuck with radio anymore but I still buy vinyl.
Nope. Radio is still way more more efficient and cheap if you’re doing something outdoors, my smarphone has one.
Most cars, especially the cheap used ones sixteen-year-olds get first, still have radios in them (if they still work that is).
Yeah, but clever teens have ways around that. I did… I had a cassette adapter for my cheap portable CD player so that I could listen to them in my Hunka crap.
I drive fleet vehicles for a large company. ALL our vehicles have radios, even the 2016s. The new Toyota Siennas display a picture of the artist if the station sends the data on the HD FM signal. Radio is not dead yet; however, the station I listen to is fighting for its life:http://www.kplu.org/save-kplu
with 13 really long life-spans under your belt? i’de say so yeah.
*gets popcorn*
Surprised you didn’t already have any going.
That last panel is unsettling.
Yep, another problem layered on top of her other problems.
It never occurred to me before this comic that Amazi-Girl was a self-destructive outlet for Amber – that she, on some level, WANTS to die, if in a way she can justify as being meaningful or constructive. That casts her hero antics in a whole new light.
Once you’ve seen it, it puts a really uncomfortable spin on every previous Amazi-Girl scene you ever liked, doesn’t it?
My suspicion is that Amber isn’t mad that her life was saved, nor does she actually want to die. But if there is one thing that Amber absolutely DOES NOT WANT, it’s to owe a life debt to HER. And by saving her life Sal has inflicted that very thing on Amber.
Another option is that, by not being evil, Sal is undermining Amazi-girl’s entire foundation for existence. She believes Sal to be the Joe Chill to her Batman, and by not being evil Sal is forcing Amber to face the face that Sal is the Batman to her Joker.
Yeah, there’s an entire thesis paper on all the last panel is saying. If I was Danny, I would be very very scared for my girlfriend right about now.
Honestly, from Amber’s body language and words, if I was Danny I would be scared /of/ my girlfriend right then, and that is not okay.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking too… I feel like she’s losing her agressivity inhibitions towards him, and it really feels like it’s gonna go downhill fast from about right now.
Yeah… I agree with both of that. Danny is in way more danger here than he may realize.
ERK… As long as this doesn’t turn into “self fulfilling prophecy cliche”. You know, where Amber is threatened by Danny being too close to Sal… which drives him away from her, and he runs into the arms of… Sal. KABOOM. Suddenly, police sirens on campus, take 2.
That’s just silly. She has to fight it out with Ethan first.
Unfortunately when it comes to abusive relationships, she learned from the best whether she realizes it or not…
If I was Danny I would likely respond with something like ” well I think saving your life is something I should be grateful to her for I don’t want to lose you”
In a rather angry tone but I think that is unlikely to come from danny
I think Dallas is a psychiatrist or something, right?
Anyway, to have your life saved as the second worst thing for anyone to ever do to you is… insane. Is she suicidal? I mean, the entire concept of “To the End of the Line” sort of also proved she was nuts, banging 30-something feet in the air, in a position that can likely get you killed if you fell from that height.
Well, I think that the worst part of saving her life was Sal being the one who did so
That or she wants to get killed for real
Yeah, Amazi-Girl is Javert that way.
Yep, nothing like “I’d rather be a splatter on the front grill of a Peterbilt than accept help from someone who I hate” to set off alarms.
Been there myself. Still kind of there… but I’m not dressing up like a superhero and looking for criminals to slap around on a daily/nightly basis, so I’m likely a lot less unsafe than Amber/AmaziGirl is.
And Blaine-mode is revving up into overdrive…
No, he doesn’t know, ’cause you never told him.
Exactly. Why _would_ he know? But Amber is already slipping into PTSD-induced rage mode, and isn’t even considering what she did and did not tell him.
She’s considering it! That’s why she asked. Angrily, but she did ask. So, uh, it’s only -50 instead of -100?
I mean, it’s still pretty shitty of her. -70
She’s going to tell him. Give her time.
I hate to say this because she’s a completely empathetic character, and I like her and understand *why* she is the way that she is, but Amber is just a completely toxic partner. Especially to someone like Danny, who isn’t going to call her on her shit. She’s not asking him whether he knows because she expects him to know, she’s asking him because she’s angry and irritable and hasn’t completely learned how not to take it out on others. Which, I get it, most people learn that lesson in high school or early young adulthood. But Amber’s pent-up rage make her an especially egregious case. She’s aware of it too, at times, but still unable to redirect her feelings in the heat of the moment.
Actually I’m really glad that the strip is “going there.” It’s nice to see genuinely problematic and harmful relationship dynamics depicted, when the harmful traits are neither excusable on one hand nor straight-up abusive on the other. There’s this common narrative in society where people who have been abused wind up hurting or abusing others, and it’s something you have to be delicate about in fiction, because there’s… so many ways you can play that out where it either excuses their behavior, or it villainizes them outright, y’know? I’m really glad that the strip is being more and more straightforward, like explicitly making clear that Amber is in the wrong by a long-shot. But still allowing her to be a nuanced character who is genuinely trying. Just… not trying hard enough in the correct ways yet.
Anyway, she and Danny need to break up honestly. She needs a wake up call and he needs to not be at the brunt of her aggression anymore.
I bet at some point she’ll be giving him a verbal beating and he’ll yell something like “I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! Please don’t hit me!”, which will trigger a memory of an incident between her parents. Maybe that will hammer home how much she’s like her father, and that merely compartmentalizing those behaviors isn’t working. (Mike spelled it out, but was met with denial.)
I dont think amber would go as far as physically assaulting danny, but the relationship the two of them have is not healthy for either of them
If we’re going all real-worldy I could totally see her assault Danny, she’s a very violent person when you really think about it. All it would take is for her to become upset enough with him to momentarily forget that he’s not in her mental list of acceptable targets. However, I feel that might just be a shade too dark for the series, but who knows. Buuut, if it were to happen I bet we’d hear some occasional familiar-sounding phrases like how she “is not usually like that” and “has her reasons” from the comment section, and probably Danny himself.
Mike did not spell it out. He told her that seeking partners that didn’t scare her meant she was definitely doomed to become an abuser.
Do remember that in the previous strip to that one, Amber admitted that she took advantage of Danny being sweet and kind of a pushover. Mike wasn’t saying she was doomed to be an abuser, he said (completely correctly, as it turns out) SHE was the one more likely to be an abuser if she’s actively looking for pushovers.
It’s not a matter of looking for pushovers, it’s that Amber is scared that she’s going to end up like her mother because that happens all the time to abused children. She “took advantage of Danny’s kindness” by running to him to escape from her dad and pressuring him into pretending to be “Amber’s” boyfriend, something that would be a lot more fucked if she, you know, wasn’t actually Danny’s girlfriend.
Seriously, this idea that Mike is just some purveyor of ultimate wisdom is fucking gross.
She IS incredibly toxic, and that’s what makes this relationship extra interesting (they have a nice dynamic outside of the roughness). It’s a matter of will Danny put up with her bullshit long enough for her to get over things.
Or it’s a matter of will Danny put up with her bullshit until she slips and physically hurts him instead of just emotionally.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. How can she expect him to know when she doesn’t tell him. I know she has a slew of problems she’s dealing with but she’s being unreasonable.
Danny has made some genuine mistakes in this strip, but honestly? Even if Amber HAD told him who Sal was, he hasn’t done anything wrong here. He was talking to an acquaintance of his in a public space.
What mistake did he make here?
I think when Kindra says, “this strip,” they mean, “over the course of the entire run of the comic,” not, “this specific strip we’re talking about.”
Ah okay that makes sense.
Yeah, that was what I meant. Danny’s done his fair share of foolish things (like everyone else in the comic), but here he’s blameless.
Well, if she had told him about Sal, the situation would be entirely different and this scene wouldn’t be happening. Hanging out with your girlfriend’s mortal enemy is kind of a no-no, at least not without some serious negotiations.
Either Danny would have persuaded her that Sal has changed, so it would be ok, or he would have agreed to avoid her or she would have agreed that it was ok despite the enmity or they would have already fought & broken up over it or he would be sneaking around to hang out with her anyway. In none of those cases does it play out like this.
Not sure what part of that is less likely – that Danny would try, or that it would be effective.
I’m suddenly struck with the mental image of Amber seeing Sal’s Tarantugun tattoo and realizing that Sal likes the same cartoon as her.
Although maybe that’s a little too “your mother’s name is Martha” for DoA.
Well, I was trying to be complete. If she’d told him about Sal, that’s one of the possible paths. None of which end here.
And I suspect he would try and might even have an effect. Danny isn’t assertive, but he is loyal – even to more casual friends.
Seriously, how the fuck would he know about some random incident from way earlier in your life, Amber? Other than the incredibly unhealthy behavior it’s now manifesting as. But still, that doesn’t tell him anything about the incident itself.
Ohhhhh, boy.
This is gonna go south REAL bad.
Oh good, Sal will be on her home turf then.
I’m actually kind of hoping Sal steps in on this soon. Amber needs to learn to forgive, even if she doesn’t forget.
I’m kind of hoping the two get a chance to talk before Sal steps in.
The south shall rise again.
On the plus side, I think it’ll make it far easier for Danny to do the right thing and end their relationship.
I’m calling it: Amber’s a bunny-boiler…
What is that? I’m afraid to go to Google.
a woman who acts vengefully after having been spurned by her lover.
At least that’s the definition google has.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bunny_boiler
Comes from the movie Fatal Attraction. Guy has a one-night affair with this one woman. She becomes obsessed with him. His wife comes home, he finds the family’s beloved pet bunny in a pot, blistered and dead from being boiled.
So that’s a literal thing then.
Well, at least for the character in fatal attraction and some people dabbling in british cuisine. I guess Amber could theoretically be in the latter group.
At least she’s not an overly attached girlfriend.
Thanks, I forgot about that movie….
WHY DID YOU REMIND ME!?
You’ll never escape! 😉
What does that have to do with anything? No one’s spurned her. This isn’t about that at all. This is about her image of Sal as her evil Nemesis.
From everything we know about Amber, she’s far more likely to react in a “Of course I’m not good enough for you” way. As is Danny, of course.
Chill, it’s not like Sal’s a Prime.
Well, yes, but…in this universe, you and Optimus are just toys and cartoons and some terrible movies. Sorry you had to find out like this.
She’s quite buxom, I bet there’s room for a Matrix in there.
We’ll know if “The Touch” plays when she touches her chest.
If she was a Prime, she’d have already died at least once by now.
To be fair. I don’t think there’s any way Danny COULD know who that is. Within this context, at least.
Turns out years ago Danny worked at a certain convenience store to earn money for his hardcore…uh,…shucks what would Danny be addicted to…
DATE SIMS! His hardcore Date Sim addiction!
Exactly. I mean she didn’t exactly share all with Danny. Reign it in Amber please.
“Oh, I do know who that is! It’s my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend’s sister!”
“…Danny you magnificent bastard, you’ve unmasked her TRUE IDENTITY! Great work! Now I can take her down!”
“Well, shit, maybe that was a bad idea.”
Poor Sal, not having a good day at all.
I like to think that what happens next is a series of threats to her well-being are narrowly avoided like she’s Mr. Magoo or the Road Runner.
Sal’s a terrible person.
It’s Dumbing of Age. They’re all terrible people and we get to watch (with popcorn).
You’re my peers and I love you all, but you’re terrible, you’re all terrible.
Thankyou, thankyouverramuch.
Alright!
How dare she save Amber’s life and care about her future! What a busybody.
First of all how dare you
The nerve of that piece of shit, standing over there minding her own business.
I know! Existing! Like a… like a… HUMAN! I can’t even.
This is weird. Someone’s saying it about a CIS, possibly STRAIGHT character for once.
Maybe it’s because you capitalized “cis,” but for the past several minutes I thought you were referring to the (Bachelor of) Computer Information Systems degree.
I thought they were talking about the post-USSR Commonwealth of Independent States
It’s a frightening new reality. If she was also white, I’d be really scared right now.
Wait, that’s allowed now? Never got the memo.
Let’s all legit remember that time she got her group of malcontent thugs to beat Amazi-girl up in a Walmart parking lot AFTER drinking while underage!!! That totally happened.
After a vigilante attacked them. And honestly, who hasn’t had a drink while underage and at college? If you haven’t than I am sorry, try it sometime. I became friends with an enemy after we watched Zombieland while drinking and hiding from RAs.
Ah, so that’s what Amber and Sal need to do.
To be fair… let’s also remember the time she put a knife to some stranger’s throat while robbing a store to get attention.
Or the time she convinced a rape victim not to report the rapist to the police.
Joyce wasn’t going to report it anyway, she was too afraid of her parents finding out and getting pulled out of school.
Joyce was sexually assaulted. Also she had valid reasons for not wanting to approach the police that were not considered by her other friends. Joyce’s parents would have pulled her from college and made her come home and can you honestly say that that would have been better?
How dare Sal have opinions? How dare she believe that the police will not at all times act in your best interest?
To be fair… let’s ALSO remember that she was a child with severe issues due to poor parenting. And she was punished for it. And the rape thing? That’s a low blow. She didn’t convince Joyce of shit. Joyce was already reluctant (people have no idea how difficult it is to tell someone. the whole “you should do it and I’ll support you” is fucking useless bullshit) and nothing Sal said was unreasonable. All she said was that it probably wasn’t the best idea to go to the cops because they had no proof and instead were practically volunteering information on how they assaulted a guy (since they did hit him a few times). Sal said not to blindly trust authorities and that they probably weren’t going to do shit. And she’s not wrong. It’s well known that campus cops don’t do shit about this. Also, she was genuinely trying to help. She is not a terrible person, at all.
Campus cops do less than shit. I know 2 girls who were assaulted by the same guy on my campus. I know he assaulted at least 1 more. He had no repercussions even after they reported. They were just asking that a note be made on his record and that the school make sure they do not have the same dorm building. Nope. School did nothing
sun tzu-
Yeah, pointing out that reporting sexual assault is a dicey game is far from a wrongdoing. I’ve been point for friends reporting before, basically serving as moral support and so I’ve seen just how abominably vile cops are to survivors (friend of mine was straight up told that reporting was a waste of police time and resources and tried to argue that having seen the guy on a bus once was proof that she totally consented and otherwise called her a slut in many creatively awful ways).
The reports and studies on it back this up pretty fiercely and it’s also reflected in a number of people’s experiences of negative treatment and just general awfulness when trying to report:
https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story
Sal’s advice was well-meaning and focused on this knowledge of how awful cops can be and was a necessary counterpoint to Sarah’s naive trust in the system. Especially since Joyce had a lot to lose in reporting it and very little to gain, sadly.
Also, yeah, she held up Ethan at knifepoint when she was a kid. And she paid the price for that, rather thoroughly, while the person who actually stabbed her got off scot free. And then she cleaned up her whole life and managed to accomplish the same amount her brother did despite spending a good portion of her childhood literally knitting her life back together.
Given that even Ethan has let that go entirely, I think Amber’s right to feel aggrieved about that has long since expired (though her traumas from it will obviously take longer to heal).
Kris-
That’s a grave misreading of the event. She got underaged drunk in a parking lot with friends. Which is… what college kids do. College kids drink underaged. Unless we’re arguing literally everyone at Joyce’s party deserves being harassed and stalked by a vigilante, I think this is some weak sauce and you know it.
And she was directly targeted and antagonized by Amazi-girl right off the bat, threatened with violence and Amazi-girl tried to goad her into a fight. So Sal got her friends to non-violently restrain her so she could talk face to face and then tried to de-escalate and end the conversation without violence (up until Malaya messed stuff up by putting a knee in). Even then she disentangled from the event without turning violent.
And that’s after Amazi-girl essentially repeated racist cop narrative at Sal, arguing that her existence warranted preferential misapplication of technicalities and drug law bullshit.
So, yeah, no, not at all a wrong-doing and in fact, Sal deserves a fucking medal for restraint, cause damn knows I don’t got it.
I was actually rather purposefully retelling the story with a strong biased towards Amazi-girl for comedic effect. Did it work?….no……anyway. I would hardly classify Sal’s group as thugs (though they might still be a little malcontent)…But none of that even matters cause Amazi-girl is clearly the ultimate authority on Sal’s character. Don’t let legitimate reasoning or things like actions and context sway your opinion! Sal=awful. At least until this one sided villification by a computer nerd with rage issues is over.
Oh, terribly sorry. My sarcasm-meter totally missed that one. My bad.
But yeah, totally, AG is infallible and therefore her worldview on Sal must be right. Grrr… underaged drinking…. grrr… saving “lives”. I just… how does one person become such an inhuman monster?
Personally, I wouldn’t hold Ethan’s forgiveness up too highly. This is, after all, the guy who finds a chicken sandwich more delicious than his self-esteem. The rest is sadly accurate, though.
And, honestly, I took that scene where he tells Amber to stop because Sal must have changed as less to do with his actual opinion on her, and more trying to deter Amber from chasing after her because his best friend crawled through a window and was speaking in third person.
I dunno, I can’t imagine he’ll get on with Sal much when the truth comes out.
As a bi person, chick-fil-a is pretty tasty though.
Amazi-girl did LITERALLY ask for it. I’d be the last person to say Sal has no bad qualities, but this isn’t about her right now.
Besides, self-destructive behavior, inability to think outside her hero-fantasy, ENDANGERING THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is way worse than a bit of underage drinky-drinky.
No. No that totally did not happen.
I legitimately forgot about that
God DoA is just this massive tragedy, isn’t it?
Yes she is terrible.
Sal saved Ambers life.
And that’s the SECOND WORSE thing she did.
Can’t imagine how scarring her in a robbery could possible be the basis for this solid wall of hate all these years later. Would think that stabbing Sal in the hand for it, would sort of call it even?
But then again, it was a piece of her screwed up childhood, and convenient to hang a hook on Sal as being the whole cause of it.
Run Danny.
Amber needs Sal to be the devil for the same reason Joyce needs evolution to be a lie. Even in the face of all evidence, they need this to be true because this belief is what got them through in life.
That is…an incredibly well put distillation of both Amber and Joyce’s issues with myopia. Well done.
Are we sure the worse thing wasn’t helping her with her laundry?
She doesn’t know about that yet. It may yet be.
Well, it’s certainly not a rational basis for the hate, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Sal was the trigger point for a traumatic experience on top of years of abuse, that’s she was never allowed therapy for and that Blaine likely kept digging at afterwards. We know he used that trauma to push her into martial arts instead of therapy.
So yeah, she’s built up Sal into a monster in her head and she’s going to have to deal with that. I’m still hoping this encounter leads to that starting. Which if she’d just tell Danny who Sal is to her, it might.
I bet that’s an emulated, pirate copy of Mario Kart she’s playing on her phone.
She really needs to get over these anger issues.
Yeah, she’s flirting quite hot and heavily with the notion of becoming an abusive partner and I think she needs to start calling a cab and getting her ass home, before that progresses any further than it already has.
Yeah I’m seeing that wanting to happen too
Okay, no violence, this is going okay so far.
Augh, I just can’t see Amber’s character arc going anywhere good for the next while. Best case she gets hella therapy, worst case she hits rock bottom and then what?
I think “no physical violence” is a bit low of a bar to be setting for an interaction with your SO to be going okay. This is still pretty damn appalling.
Oh and worst case she hits rock bottom and she hits Danny.
Well, worst case she hits Danny, puts on the costume, murders Sal and then goes on a killing spree across campus, eventually being shot down by the cops.
But we’re a long way from any of the worst cases.
It’s easy to look at this from our viewpoint, or even Danny’s, and see this as abusive, controlling, “I get to say who you can talk to” behavior.
But it isn’t really. It’s not about Danny, it’s about Sal. It’s “why are you hanging out with the person who did that to me?” Forgetting in the heat of the moment that he doesn’t know, which isn’t cool. And being completely wrong about what kind of person Sal is now, which is the real problem.
I really do kind of hope the bottom is pretty close for Amber now. Maybe over-influenced by what some people are saying here, but I don’t see how she gets much worse than she is now without not being able to come back as a sympathetic character. I don’t want her to become a villain.
As I’ve said, I don’t think we’re going there. For one thing I really doubt Willis is going down the mentally ill character descends into violence and abuse route – skirts the edge and overcomes it is a much more likely story. I hope this sequence is the catalyst for some kind of resolution with Sal. It’s certainly being set up for one.
I agree on the likelyhood of Amber going too far as being relatively unlikely. It’s a difficult and heavy and depressing thing, and while it happens all the time out here in meatspace it’s probably not for DoA. At the same time I would, however, find it very interesting to see how Willis would do that because we haven’t really seen a character go bad, have we? Characters tend to be revealed to have been non-obviously icky all along (like Joyce’s Mom) or just show up as pre-packaged unsympathetic awfulness (Blaine, Toedad, etc). Not saying that every story needs a Walter White or whatever, but a part of me kinda sorta want to see how that would play out.
I’m worried that what we’re getting set up for is she takes a swing at Danny and Sal stops her.
I really can’t see that happening, since that seems like something that would make Amber completely unsympathetic. It doesn’t even have the extremely thin veneer of being played for kinda laughs like Ruth’s abuse of Billie early in the comic, where Billie would get thrown across the room and get up with no problem.
I’m pretty much with thejeff on this. I think this, or something very near, is going to be the absolute worst Amber is going to get, because if she keeps going further without any kind of positive moments, if she’s just repeatedly snapping at Danny and vilifying Sal, then it runs the risk of making her completely unsympathetic.
Danny might be a bottom but I don’t think I’d call him a rock
Amber, don’t do this to whitebread D=
He messes up, he’s an idiot, but he shouldn’t get this from you
Wait, why’s Amazi-girl in the tags? Walky is nowhere to be seen
It took me a minute to figure out why this was funny.
I just sighed. I think that mistaken identity joke hit critical mass when filters needed to be applied to assorted Amazi- names.
And this isn’t even something he’s messed up. He has absolutely no way of knowing that Sal and Amber ever had anything to do with each other.
My God…
Amber is the fandom!
Really? Maybe she’s about to tell him.
Danny was having a totally calm conversation with someone he’s been acquainted with in a public area. He has in now way “messed up” nor is he “an idiot” just because Amber is angry.
Maybe that’s why she hasn’t told him either thing.
Yeah. Now if they were married then clearly everything would be his fault.
it’s “wonderbread”, not “whitebread”.
Just saying.
*leaves a pile of Madonna CDs next to the hacked Muzak*
You can choose which one gets played.
Tiptoes in and plays Me First and the Gimme Gimmes version of Crazy for You
Ohh! Ukeleles!
*Smashes the disc and plays Gorillaz*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_in_BNJlg
Whoa this brings back memories
I vote for that one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP06kxW_M3I
What a crazy lady.
We (the mentally ill population) would prefer it if people would not use that word to describe people with mental illnesses. In some circles, it’s even considered slur on the level of n****r, f****t, or ret****d.
(I’m self censoring not because I think it’s wrong to write those words out, but in case Willis does.)
Being a white cis-straight male, I’m not allowed to use the first two; and Autism has me agreeing with you for the third. Though I do sometimes slip and use it, just feels like the most accurate word to use in that instance. (General insult, not derogatory meaning)
I grew up in a pretty polite, pre-internet and not natively englishspeaking environment, learning the last one mainly as a fancy verb for something being delayed or inhibited. It has occasionally gotten me some very confused looks over the years with people thinking I have harsh opinions about held-up trains and slow-growing potted plants, for example.
That I find funny. Just using the word out of the context / towards a different target than the word was originally meant to insult. I think I heard South Park did an episode similar to that. Words can change meaning?
I definitely respect your concern and see it as an act of good nature, but you do not represent all of us in any possible way, so please do not speak on behalf of all of us.
Crazy is an old and misused word that has strongly changed it’s meaning and I personally do not see the harm of using it in this context. ‘Retard’ on the other hand still a horrendous word, and comparing the two together is, in my personal opinion, ridiculous.
Again, no offence intended!
Danny: Yes Amber, of course I know that this is the person who traumatized you as a child because she is clearly the root of all evils committed in this world and I have every way of knowing things that you don’t tell me.
-Things any reasonable human would be justified to say sauteed with grade-A premium snark.
I think only somebody who knows that could say it, which rather cuts down on the justification.
Sal: the Angra Maiyu.
Yeah, that gets to the heart of the problem, dunnit?
I mean, not only does he have no fucking clue what she’s on about, because how could he when she has deliberately not told him anything about anything until it blows up in his face (he didn’t know that her dad was abusive until he straight up kidnapped him to get to her).
But there’s no way he would be able to agree with her over-dramatic meltdown of invented persecution, because it’s well… based in completely irrational myth-making. Sal is not the ur-criminal Amber insists on seeing her as, not some diabolical Joker figure that must be stopped before she Mark Hamils over everything. She’s a kid who made some youthful fuckups that hurt some people, but has tried to get her shit together and overall, has at least on that aspect.
But Amber is insistent that just because she has PTSD triggers about someone that makes them her eternal enemy and it well… doesn’t. It just makes them someone who triggers you and so should be avoided. But it doesn’t justify demanding no one else ever be so much as in the same general area as them or this accusatory bullshit she is investing herself in now.
And she needs to learn that so she doesn’t frickin’ hurt anyone or turn her well-respected superheroine alter into a dangerous threat to everyone on campus’s life.
So far, she’s asked if he knows who she is. Doesn’t mean it will go well, but doesn’t mean it won’t.
With that tone? I’m not sure I have the optimism to genuinely believe it has any hope of going well.
It might go well. Though she’s certainly not heading in a well direction, but it might turn out that way.
It might get a bunch of things out in the open – at some point Sal has to find out that Amber/Amazi-girl is that kid from the convenience store. There’s a pretty good chance that’s now. I can’t help but think that’ll be a good thing.
Amber shouldn’t be holding on to Sal as the eternal enemy, but she’s not going to be able to get over it until she can actually confront Sal about it.
Well, if she does confront Sal about it, Sal would be completely right to call her out.
“YOU stabbed me, and somehow I’M the bad guy here?!”
Neither of them are the villain here. Sal threatened to murder her best friend and Amber went out of control and stabbed her when she was already no longer a threat. They both did awful shit because of their respective histories and have suffered for it, and they were both children when it happened.
Mind, Amber now is wrong to continue pursuing it, and she’d be wrong even if she hadn’t stabbed her. She’s not even really entitled to confronting her, since Sal committed her crime and paid for it and Amber’s feelings don’t really apply to the judicial system.
She can hate Sal for the rest of her life if she wants, but that’s about as much as Amber is allowed.
Sure and if Sal just calls her out on it, things’ll blow up in a bad way. If Sal at least acknowledges some guilt and remorse, then there’s a chance of some kind of dialog that’ll help Amber. And possibly Sal as well. We haven’t really seen much if anything of Sal’s feelings over what she did or about what Amber did. Sal’s too cool to let any of that show.
For me it’s not really a question of “entitled” or “rights” or “allowed”. Just what might help any of these screwed up kids.
Amber you are seriously getting closer to the “I WOULD LEGIT RATHER DIE THAN” slope.
her being upset about her saving her life tells me it aint a slope
she would rather be dead then have sal save her
Amber never actually told him, so it seems pent up and misdirected anger-
Oh wait. Is Amber. Gotcha.
Please use words, not violence. We need a story time, it’s not gonna be easy for Amber, but that’s what everyone needs right now.
Technically, Danny, Billie thought Sal was Amazi-Girl. You just let Billie convince you she had figured something out correctly, which admittedly isn’t much better.
Speaking of which, does Billie still think Sal is Amazi-Girl? Is that still a thing?
Well, she surely doesn’t know who really is Amazi-Girl.
The last time we saw her talking about Amazi-Girl was (I’m pretty sure) before she started spiralling into depression. I’m sure she’s very doubtful of her old claims. Not necessarily because she’s been contemplating it any further, but probably because she does not trust her judgement in the slightest.
At this point, AmaziGirl is the furthest thing from Billie’s mind. She’s not a journalist anymore and she is worried about Ruth.
billie isn’t a journalist anymore? i know she and ruth have stopped “practicing journalism”, but have we seen anything to indicate she stopped writing stuff for the paper?
or did we ever see her do any actual-journalism journalism, come to think of it? i haven’t really been keeping track.
She walked away from the newspaper office (presumably) permanently when she tried to show Daisy how her RA had propositioned her and then Daisy did the same boundary violation at a time when she was still seeing Ruth’s actions as that:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/blameless/
At least Ruth did it in the heat of the moment, out of feelings she’d felt for a while. Daisy just did it because she saw a chance to score a kiss and took it. Very objectifying.
“At least” she slammed Billie into a wall and kissed her?
Amber told Billie clear as day, but Billie was falling-down drunk at the time.
*Someone* certainly know how to hold a grudge, don’t they?
Of course he doesn’t, Amber.
Did Amber even tell him about the robbery? I can’t remember if something like that happened after he found out she’s Amazi-Girl, but I’m thinking “no.”
She did not, but Amber seems to operate under the assumption that everyone around her has psychic powers and just KNOWS why she does anything.
Quite a while ago (like, back in Book 3), Danny asked about her “origin story”. All she said was that there was a robbery.
Wait is she really outraged at being alive? Do I feel sorry for Danny? Maybe I should just eat my feelings.
No, she’s mad that the person she hates is the one who saved her life. I think.
Like Snape, only without the decades of abusing children in her care. Hopefully.
Yeah, Sal has been ruining the mythology of Amazi-girl by not being a villain and doing genuine actions to help her out even though Amazi-girl has twisted her own morality into knots to justify seeing her as an eternal threat that must be stopped at all costs.
And Amazi-girl will never forgive that, because she’s scared of actually putting the blame for her DID where it belongs (her dad’s consistent abuse and the random luck of the psychological hand she was dealt) and she’s even more scared of what nuance will do to the Amazi-girl alter (she literally believes that Amazi-girl must be consistent and unfailing and perfect, thus, Amazi-girl can’t be a triggered scared girl reacting like a flailing racist, so Sal must be evil to justify her bad actions towards her).
And if it’s gotten to the point where she’s a) so suicidally hateful of herself and her own life and b) so invested in viewing Sal as a villain no matter what that she’s willing to rewrite her own lived experiences to view saving her own life as a harm she has received…
Yeah, there’s reasons to be scared for every single person in comic right now.
Yes.
Yep. Amazi-Girl is being Inspector Javert, you know, after he was saved by his escaped convict, and his black-and-white worldview is shattered, and all the stars are dark and cold.
That show ended so well for Javert.
Great, now I have to listen to “Stars.” (best villain song tbh)
I guess I have a hard time thinking of Javert as a true villain. More a completely inflexible good-guy who just happens to be chasing another good-guy. He was just a zealot for justice.
And a heck of a singer. Amazing song.
Oh, wait… need to qualify that… heck of a singer unless you’re Russell Crowe.
My favorite is Phillip Quast from the Complete Symphonic Recording.
I count Javert as Lawful Neutral and an antagonist but not the show’s villain, myself. (That honor goes to Thenardier.) But since he does represent The System and the show is about Revolution, I could buy it too.
Not really. Willis is reported to have said no one dies.
There are worse things than death…
And they won’t happen for the same reason death won’t happen: the fallout would last effectively forever at the pace this comic moves.
Given that we’ve seen two separate dads be punched into the hospital, that’s not really filling me with as much comfort as I think you intended it to.
You’d be surprised what you can live through.
As if the only bad thing that can happen to a character is death.
I think it is the Second Worst Thing because it shatters the psychological ground she stands on. If Sal’s not all bad and even worse than Blaine, than all the stories that keep Amber and Amazi-Girl together as more or less coherent personalities fall apart because life just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Amber isn’t tagged in this one. If this is amazi-girl nearly attacking Danny for not knowing what he cannot know, things are failing fast.
Cannot imagine what will follow.
(is it stupid to keep your fingers crossed for a fictional character?)
It is and I think you’re right. I’ve been noting that she’s making all the wrong decisions surrounding her alters and is getting dangerously close to them not even sharing memories anymore between them. I’m now starting to get worried that that would be the best case scenario for where she’s heading right now.
Amber doesn’t have DID. Willis may have intended her to but if so he didn’t do his research because her symptoms are not at all consistent with DID. Amber really WANTS to have DID because it’d be an easy way to escape from herself but the fact that she has full knowledge of everything she does as Amazi-Girl means she does not have DID.
She may not have DID, but speaking as someone with DID, her symptoms are in fact consistent with someone who is semi-integrated.
There are people who do have MPD but still some of their personalities share memories. From what we can see, she acts totally consistent with this now, though I didn’t see it that way when she and amazi-girl where first introduced. Each time she switches to amazi-girl because of trauma response, both the victim persona (amber) and the rebel victim persona (amazi-girl) get stronger and more distinct and disconnected. If I was seeing this kind of behavior in a real-life person, I would start to think about the choice between confronting her (tricky, can trigger a crisis) and ignoring it (takes a lot of energy) and making plans how to avoid her (also takes energy).
No you’re right, she is definitely mad about being alive. She is 100% exhibiting suicidal thoughts in the last panel. I’ve had those too and I recognize them. Girl is MESSED. UP.
So she preferred to eat the dirt on the road rather than being saved by the one she still thinks is just a criminal. In past strips people said she needs therapy, but I am not sure if that’s going to help at all.
well technically sal is still a criminal, only now it’s crimes no one cares about like underage drinking
And it’s making Amazi-girl worse of a person, because to be both consistent and to justify trying to find any excuse to confront Sal, she’s having to care more and more about bullshit non-crimes no one cares about like underage drinking and thus is more and more likely to become a menace to the student body that is hated and reviled for being a rule-mongering killjoy like Mary.
Yes Amber he totally knows who this person is and her significance to you despite you having explained absolutely none of this to him.
That’s why she asked!
No Amber no T.T Don’t go that way 🙁
It’s interesting. I usually identify with Amber’s DID moments, usually from the perspective of mistakes I’ve made in the past, but this run is one of those that I feel completely alienated from the character. She’s going off into the woods of anger and delusional and I feel it’s all going to end in fire and death.
I feel the same way. She’s a car crash that I’m choosing to look away from because there’s too much blood. She is guts and brain matter spattered on the road. I can’t anymore.
She may be going that way, but she hasn’t gone that way yet.
Do you realize Amber is already an emotionally abusive girlfriend, Clif? Maybe it doesn’t look bad to you, but this is textbook. Please stop brushing it off.
oh, amber. somewhere, blaine is all “that’s my girl!”
Holy shit, the last thing we need right now is a recuperated Blaine leering behind a tree or something.
Or maybe that’s exactly what we need. Get Amazi-Girl and Sal to team up. Get to know each other on equal footing.
Even when they joined forces to rescue Becky and Sal SAVED HER LIFE Amber still wasn’t even willing to consider Sal might not be ~pure evil~. Like, what else can Sal possibly do at this point?
Nothing. It’s too important to Amazi-girl’s worldview that Sal be the eternal criminal. Sal could open a shelter for caring for injured kittens and Amazi-girl would still describe it the violent act of a diseased criminal.
Amazi-girl is starting to veer in very unhealthy abusive directions and is starting to echo the kind of paranoid justifications for hating someone that you see in professional harassment movements.
And that’s scary as fuck.
(also, this makes me wonder about a potential Batman story where Batman actually met the person who killed his parents and its some repentant slob who went to prison, cleaned up his shit, and is now living a normal life. Would Batman acknowledge people change, would he feel less ownership to his personal crusade, or would he double-down on viewing that as the symbol of all crime in order to justify the way he’s structured his whole life).
I guess when the Joker turns his life around, we’ll find out.
Didn’t that happen recently? I think they either just rebooted from it, or are about to, but I think that happened.
Anytime batman quits so does the Joker, literally the only reason joker does his shit is because batman will be there, but in most continuities if bats is killed or retires the joker tends to stop doing his terrible things, because he see’s no reason to play his game without the other player
I feel like Batman would straight-up murder that dude, no matter how repenetant he is. Isn’t Batman’s entire raison d’etre basically vengeance?
Maybe in a Zack Snyder movie. But uh. Batman’s like one rule is “no murder” and virtually every episode of the animated series showed him genuinely supportive of getting the criminals and villains the help they need to recover.
Ok but even the guy who is responsible for his whole entire origin story? I’m not a super Batman expert (only seen him in movies and when he appeared in other characters’ comics I read), but that always to me seemed like the big one. The one guy he wouldn’t let go, who didn’t ‘deserve a second chance’.
Except for in the new 52, the DCAU, Batman: Full Circle, and The Dark Knight Returns, where he specifically confronts and forgives his parents killer.
I don’t think Batman is selfish enough to let the Joker live over and over again, but the one guy who happened to kill his parents, he has to die.
Batman: Robin, enough you can’t let your emotions get the best of you
Robin: Stuff you advice Batman! You and your stone cold heart, you don’t know how I feel how could you!
Batman: “Batman Glare”
Robin: Batman, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry.
For context, Robin is fighting Tony Zucco (the guy who killed his parents)
Some versions of Batman have shown him to be very generous to charitable organizations, investing in the underprivileged, etc., which indicates he would probably view Joe Chill as symptomatic of a broken city, and thus not the person to focus his anger at.
But that’s a mature viewpoint, and Chill wouldn’t be out of prison for double murder until enough time had passed that Batman had overcome his more immature notions on criminals. So you’d have to do some kind of story where he keeps running into people who are all getting out of prison from his first years of crime fighting – and when they all resume their terrible acts, he does on believing anyone can change.
So when he, in a fit of rage, he goes to Chill’s home, possibly to kill him, he finds Chill is indeed reformed. Possibly some other hero could help talk Batman down on the need for forgiveness. Nightwing, perhaps.
It’s probably been done though.
He has met Chill a couple times, but never a reformed Chill. The canonical versions:
Pre-Crisis – Chill was killed by his own henchmen when they found out he was responsible for creating Batman.
Year Two – Batman considered killing Chill (who is still working as an assassin), but it’s not clear if he’d have gone through with it if the Reaper hadn’t beaten him.
Current continuity – Bruce considers killing Chill (who was just a common, pathetic mugger looking for money to buy booze), but decides against it, because it would defile his parents’ memory.
You know, for someone who claimed to be a fan of Gail Simone’s run of Bat-Girl, Amber didn’t seem to take to heart any of the storylines ending with Bat-Girl lending a hand of support and sympathy to the villains after understanding their tragic past. juuuuust sayin’.
to be fair, amber doesn’t know the tragic aspect of sal’s past, just the part where their paths overlapped. and it didn’t paint sal in an especially favorable light (not that amber came away from it looking especially stable either, but still.) all amber knows is “sal tried to rob a store” not “sal tried to rob a store because ________”
Though Ethan did try to get Amber to consider that Sal must have changed based on her (Sal’s) presence at IU, and Amber was having none of it. For one thing, Amber’s fragile psyche currently needs to be retroactively justified in stabbing Sal’s hand. That’s never gonna happen. Amber won’t get better until she undoes some pretty deeply-embedded unhealthy thoughts on strength, weakness, and her own and others’ right to forgiveness.
I think I remember a DCAU episode where Riddler was reformed, but Batman kept thinking it was a ploy to lower everyone’s’ guard. Got to the point where The Riddler just went ‘screw it’ and went all evil again.
AmaziGirl would probably think it was a front for training attack cats to carry knife-bombs, or something.
OUCH!!!!! That is so true that it’s absolutely horrible.
The bright side is Amber’s getting to the point where people are going to have to do something about this and she’ll have to achieve some form of stability in order to remain usable as a character.
Yeah, she’s veering dangerously close to posing a legitimate danger to other characters’ well-beings and that’s impressive to say so soon after she saved at least one other character’s life in the very recent past.
Why yes. She’s spoken angrily to her boyfriend. By all means lock her away.
Man you feel like a big enabler or something.
Irrational anger, okay. Few people are immune to that. Openly expressing a death wish is something else again.
She’s losing the ability to cope with her pain, and I don’t think Danny will be able to provide that by himself.
Jesus Danny is 18 in his first month of high school, he does not need this bullshit just get this boy away from this psycho, honestly.
“high school” I mean college!! guh I’m the April Fool. :S
“Jesus _____ is 18 in their first month of college, they do not need this bullshit just get this kid away from this _____, honestly.”
Too many characters fit this right now.
Please do not refer to the mentally ill as a “psycho,” for the same reason you would not refer to Becky as a “d*ke” or Ethan as a “f*g”.
(Again, self-censoring in case it offends Willis or others. I personally am fine with the use/mention distinction.)
oh thank the heavenly father almighty you put a single asterisk in there so none of us get offended by the word we all know you still typed. I almost got the vapors but thankfully one single character was obscured and now I am saved.
Amber’s nucking futs.
We’re not telling you not to think she’s mentally ill we’re telling you not to use ablest language that stigmatizes people living with mental illness. You shit.
She really needs psychiatric help.
To be fair, I’m probably not the first person to say that.
How dare she not be the mustache twirling villain I’ve internalized her as! She didn’t even meet me half way and grow a mustache!!!!
Tomorrow: Amber makes Walky grow a mustache
WILL HER VILLAINY NEVER CEASE!!!!
Well she is smoking. That’s like littering level evil!
No he doesn’t know because you never told him! Danny doesn’t deserve this.
He’s not psychic?
So this is how the world ends. In flames of anger.
“Actually, no, I don’t know because you haven’t told me and I’m not psychic.”
You’re not psychic either? What’s this comment section coming to?
The dogs?
Probably the Slipshine
Well perhaps Danny will stop being chickenshit about ‘hey maybe dangerous vigilantism by someone I know has anger issues *might* have risky consequences and should be reconsidered…’ issue.
Amber could have killed herself and others on that highway. Considering the potential deaths of a multiple vehicle pileup at high speeds, potentially quite a few. And not only did her plan not really have much chance of working, it’s now also clear that it was at least fueled partly by some sort of death wish, or self-harming thoughts and behavior.
Sal and Joyce’s roomie are right. Amber is out of control and should be stopped for her good and everyone else’s.
I’m sort of amused by people hating on Danny for beimg “chickenshit” for not standing up to “dangerous vigilantism”.
You can’t have it both ways. Either Danny’s a wimp or the situation is dangerous.
The situation is hella dangerous and Danny might not realize it yet, but he’s actually in physical danger if he was to stand up strongly against the undue harassment of a random student who has been a regular presence and friend? to him.
Like, he’s also got no life experience truly standing up for himself and his own best interest thanks to his shitty parents, but if he was to practice it here, things could go very very badly for him and could leave him suffering physical abuse from an intimate partner…
Which yeah, saying that out loud gets at the heart of how abusive this dynamic has been getting over the last two days.
Actually you can. He’s not afraid of Amber hurting him, he’s afraid of hurting Amber’s feelings.
He’s too dan Danny to realize that she might actually be dangerous.
Maybe he’s only afraid of hurting her feelings because she’s never shown any sign of wanting to hurt him. But of course, unlike Ruth, she’s the abusive dangerous one. Because how dare she do something that isn’t normal.
If that was the lens through which Danny was viewing it-afraid of Amber hurting him if he brought up her vigilantism in a critical way-I wouldn’t say chickenshit at all.
But it’s not. I’m using that term because so far his response has been more or less ‘ la la la la not hearing this’ or ‘Amazigirl does good stuff!’ He’s seen her go livid with violent fury before, and the danger she’s posed to most others had nothing to do with her intending or even doing violence to them. Most of the people who could very possibly have died on that highway weren’t people Amber would have known or even ever seen before in her life.
I’m calling it right now that he’s about to raise his concerns with her. The only problem is that Amber’s brain is going to do instant backflips of denial and assume that Sal is clearly trying to turn Danny against her and poison their relationship in order to hurt her. Just more evidence that Sal is a villain and must be stopped.
Okay I’m seriously getting sick of Amber here. Like, the depths of my sympathy and understanding for her situation can only extend so far. Right now (and lately in general) she’s being so beyond unreasonable. Punishing Danny for something he knows absolutely nothing about, especially when he’s not even doing anything wrong, is not only pigheaded and baffling, but even borderline abusive.
At this point, my opinion is Dan needs to get out of this relationship. I always see people talking about ‘how bad that would be for Amber!’ but guys, seriously, staying in it like this is bad for Danny. And my patience with Amber is at its limit.
Danny is way too meek and spineless and eager to be with absolutely anyone under any circumstances if it means having a girlfriend for him to ever have a healthy equal dynamic with the thundering shithouse that is Amber’s current state. He needs to get out of there and work through his own stuff without having to drain all his energy trying to be an unpaid and wildly unqualified life coach.
If Amber is terrified of becoming her dad, she really needs to re-evaluate her actions.
One of the warning signs of emotional abuse is
– They correct or chastise you for your behavior.
Which Amber is doing by getting mad at Danny for associating with someone she doesn’t like.
She starts to edge onto other aspects, such as becoming emotionally distant from Danny by switching personas.
Danny is clueless and sweet. Yes, he is a big dumb-dumb sometimes about things right in front of his nose, but I give him slack for that. Freshmen are still kids, they are allowed to be oblivious. (Cynicism kicks in Sophomore year, Optimism Junior year, Apathy Senior year).
But there is another problem, Danny defines himself in relationships to other characters. He is Joe’s friend, Amazigirl’s boyfriend, etc. He will have trouble breaking away until he figure out how to be comfortable without those supports.
The last paragraph is really, really true. It’s a hard struggle, one that people may not even realize they are committing until it’s pointed out to them. I went through the same thing, up until freshman year I defined myself by my relationship to my parents and my sister, never thinking about who I am as myself.
I physically started shaking when my psychiatrist pointed that out to me because I realized instantly the truth of the statement. And it’s not an easy fix either, it took me the whole of my sophomore year to figure out who I am. That’s why, even when Danny is being oblivious boy-wonderbread, I still sympathize with him because I went through that struggle.
Though seriously, Amber needs to see a psychiatrist. Immediately.
Seriously, he’s terrified of being Danny, because he’s been told by everyone close to him minus maybe Dorothy and definitely Ethan that being Danny is the worst thing he could ever be.
And that’s something he’s going to need to fix to be a full partner to those he loves. And yeah, right there with you with my emotional abuse alarms going off. That getting mad for simply being near someone she’s decided is her enemy, that expectation of complete compliance with weird rules she never bothers to explain…
It’s all adding up in bad bad ways.
You know, I must have missed the part where either Amber or Amazigirl told him that being Danny is the worst thing he will ever be.
What does that have to do anything? There is much much more to being emotionally abusive. And Amber IS performing some of the classic warning signs.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/amber-2/
Sadly that Rubicon has been crossed. She apologized for it, but this is definitely alter #2 pushing a boat across that particular body of water.
I think it was the comment section for the last 15+ years that said it.
Hey, I actually was one of those people in the past saying that a breakup could be really bad for Amber as she is drifting in some bad directions…
And I think he needs to run.
Cause those bad directions are here and they’re starting to get really really scary and I’m worried that Danny will sustain physical as well as emotional violence the longer he stays. Amber is not in a good place right now. That can manifest in a lot of ways, but this is reminding me a lot of an ex of mine who was absolutely loving and caring… when she wasn’t hanging around her family, but when triggered by them would do all sorts of things that were on the border of emotionally abusive including gaslighting and creating situations where I had to continually apologize for the most random of made-up things.
I have very, very tentatively started to believe that Danny actually know exact what the stakes are, how large risk he is in and what his chances of success are.
And he is still staying.
I’m not sure that it is a wise decision, but it is at least an informed decision (and a very, very heroic one). I don’t think this outburst is a surprise to him – I think he has waited for it for some time.
Let’s hope you know what you are doing, little buddy.
I’m not sure “heroic” is the right word to describe somebody knowingly remaining with their abuser. I mean, I’m not saying that the idea of putting yourself at risk for somebody you care about isn’t a positive one, and if that is his goal then his intent is admirable, but his *actions* are maybe better described as brave, but recklessly self-endangering, in that case.
Yeah, I used to be big on the idea that Amber could get help with Danny, that she didn’t need to give him up to seek treatment and that he could be a pillar of support for her, and that she wasn’t so far gone that her problems made her inherently incapable of having a relationship. I mean, the first time she ever yelled at Danny she started crying and descended into blaming herself and calling herself worthless and stupid. That, to me, said that Amber wasn’t as bad as people kept saying she was. That she was just damaged, but she still very much could get better when she started making positive strides, and this sequence just really took me out of that idea, and now I’m thinking she really can’t be with Danny because she can’t control her rage even with him.
And, like, I should be able to understand Amber here. Her PTSD trigger is standing right there, but instead of giving Danny anything that could help explain her situation she’s just digging her heels deeper and deeper and acting like talking to Sal is this massive betrayal. And it is to her, for sure, but we’ve barely been given any context for it and we’ve seen Sal in so positive a light, that she is this genuinely good and well meaning person who fucked up when she was a kid and paid for it, that Amber just becomes really unlikable as she rages at her, and she really shouldn’t be in that position. Amber’s actions against Sal are wrong but we should at least be able to say “yeah I get why she hates Sal, because Sal did awful shit to her and just because Sal’s a good person doesn’t make it go away”, and that barely works even as an explanation anymore because she’s acting like a jackass over having her life saved.
I’m really hoping this proves to be the catalyst for Amber to start working on her issues, at least soon.
I still hope for the day Amazi-girl realizes her villain is not actually a villain, so Amber can live her goddamned life.
I am a fool to hope for this, but at least I’m a beautiful fool.
I hope that Danny will stand up and respond “that was years ago, and Sal is a decent person now, and she saved your life” and that to see Danny say that makes Amber start thinking maybe she’s being irrational and come to terms with things and move on.
But I too am a fool, and I think there’s still plenty of time that this will be getting worse before it ever gets better.
Unfortunately even if he knew the full context he probably wouldn’t be able to stand up like that. Danny comes off as someone who in the heat of the moment gets incredibly frightened and flustered and will shrivel up and admit wrongdoing no matter how irrational his guilt may be.
I think we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg of how Danny’s parents have treated him all his life. Expecting Danny to supposedly “Man Up” and tell Amber-AG off is totally unreasonable.
Second to last panel Amber like http://i.imgur.com/MIJLHrJ.png
Amber/AG getting irrationally pissed when her supposedly rock solid worldview is compromised? No surprises there.
Danny’s reaction to this is going to set the tone of the conversation, if it stays a conversation at all.
Also? If Sal gets the impression violence might erupt I’m not sure she would just stand there idly.
he’s already setting the tone by his lack of situational awareness and going “ruh roh, am i in trouble” instead of “hey listen, i clearly don’t know what’s going on, do you wanna talk it out maybe?”
It’s almost as if he’s suffered a lifetime of emotional abuse that’s conditioned him to assume he’s screwed up and needs to apologise.
Yup.
It’s his parents default way of interacting with him and Joe’s not much better on that score.
When he’s convinced that stating his mind and his feelings and his experiences are just a drain on everyone close to him, he’s not going to feel very free to do so when he’s genuinely scared of “screwing it up”.
Yeah, it’s almost as if he’s been in a situation where he’s been verbally attacked by this individual for “not following her rules” before. Ugh. Patterns.
What I am wondering is if Amber will red out on Danny due to anger. I can see Sal stepping in there to protect Danny. Sal is a loner but she does acknowledge that Danny has generally been a good person to her.
If that happens I wonder how Amber/Amazigirl will react?
Violence?
Run away in the face of this “betrayal”?
Who knows.
Can someone post the webcomic page of what Sal did to Amber that was her first worst thing she did to her? Im confused, I only remember Sal saving Ambers life. Thats the second worst thing right? Or is she just making the first up or being petty?
Sal robbed the convenience store Amber and Ethan were visitining. Ethan was held at knifepoint, Amber was criticised by her dad for not doing anything and she snapped and stabbed Sal.
Sal got shipped off, her already strained relationship with her family effectively ruined, and her body physically scarred. But AMBER is the one who REALLY suffered that day. Cause her dad yelled at her.
he’s done a bit more than yell at her…
Yes. Good. Downplay Amber’s years of mental abuse and the trauma of being in an actual robbery while her only friend was held at knife point.
That’s the right thing to do.
Amber isn’t real so who cares
You do. You’re commenting about her.
Amber is a fictional character who, aside from the dangerous vigilantism, has experienced a very plausible lifetime of abuse that many of the people who read this webcomic are able to directly relate to. By diminishing the fictional experiences and trauma of Amber, you’re thereby undermining the validity of the experiences of those actual, real human beings who have suffered abuse in their life.
That is why you should care.
I don’t think anyone said that it was worse for Amber than Sal, it was just that day in their combined history was Amber’s worst. Could also have been Sal’s. Different metrics, etc, etc.
You serious? “Her dad yelled at her”
Blaine was an emotionally, physically and generally abusive fuckwad, in both this continuity and shortpacked. (only in shortpacked we got to see his corpse so thats nice)
also you are apparantly incapable of reading into subtext since all you see is Blaine “yelling” at her in the flashback yet there was clearly far more going on
All of that happened before and after that day, and is in no way an isolated incident, least of all one Sal can be blamed for.
So, basically, Amber is projecting her anger towards her father on to Sal. The First-Worst Thing was not actually anything Sal did.
Right.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hostage/
This.
But yeah, gerb is also right. Amber got off scot free stabbing someone in police custody and only went off because her dad literally blamed her for the incident and just went to town on her when she was already in full panic mode and trauma state. And Sal got a whole mess of court-ordered stuff for it that she went through and then rebuilt her life afterwards.
But Amazi-girl insists on holding on to the mythology of the incident because she still has some nasty PTSD triggers about it.
She is not choosing to hold on to her anger because of her PTSD. She’s never been taught how to deal with her anger properly, And that among other things is why she has PTSD over this.
I also have mental health issues, including a mood disorder. On top of that, I am on the autistic spectrum. I had abusive parents and was victimized in every way. I have Chronic PTSD, which never completely goes away. After two weeks of college, I went into a really bad anxiety state and was in so much pain that I sought counseling. I know now that being away from home meant that I was free to feel the truth of what happened to me.
As I said yesterday, I made the decision at a very young age not to abuse others because I would never want to hurt anyone the way I was hurting. That is what I don’t get.
I empathize with Amber, but I cannot understand why the pain she obviously feels has not driven to counseling. It is easy to numb out over video games which is where she puts most of her time. However, her acting out is so irrational that she should be frightened. I don’t think Amber is psychotic, but she certainly is in denial.
I don’t see any justification for Amber’s behavior. I am hoping that she will have real life consequences, hit rock bottom, and finally realize that there is no way out unless she works at it.
As a freshman in college herself, she may be just now in a place where she has real options for counseling. Her Mom seems like a great person, but she may not have noticed, may have had too much of her own stuff to deal with, or something like that. So maybe, hopefully, she’ll take that path or something like it. It is definitely starting to get… Bad.
Do we even know how long ago Blaine got kicked out of the picture? Sometime between 13 & now, obviously. Back when Blaine first appeared she said she hadn’t seen him in years, but I think that’s all we know.
And we know the last summer she was too busy helping Ethan through his coming out trauma and all that entailed.
Her mom may be fine, but she’s likely got issues of her own to deal with from Blaine.
Blaine and Stacey divorced when Amber was 13, around the same time of the robbery.
IIRC Amber also mentioned that her mother worked a lot to provide for her and Amber was often left alone, and also she ditched her daughter for a day to get railed by Dr. Rosenthal. I’m guessing she drew a lot of emotional support from the Siegals before they turned on her and Ethan.
That early? I thought there was time enough after the robbery for him to push her into martial arts instead of therapy and generally screw her up even further.
She also said she hadn’t talked to him in 3 years, though there could have been some contact (and partial custody?) for awhile after the divorce.
A good point. It’s definitely a mess of a self-reinforcing spiral.
I feel so bad for Danny.
Like, I feel bad for Amber and a lot of other characters in this comic as well, but right now my heart is breaking for Danny.
Yep, Amber’s getting Blainier by the panel.
You are so right and that is a really scary thing to be right about wow.
For once, Danny didn’t Dan.
Seems to be happening more often. It’s like he’s growing has a person/character. Well, we still have Mary as a hate-sink.
“The first worst thing is making me stab her in the hand, by the way.”
Amazigirl may be immune to all criticism, but she still totally sucks at rational thought.
TBF, the first worst thing could be, like, taking her best friend hostage in a robbery.
As a bipolar person who suffers from psychotic tendencies, I can say from experience this is moving from “you need to apologize to Danny and go to therapy” to “you need to back the fuck away from Danny and take some damn antipsychotics” real quick. #protectboywonderbread
I agree. She really scares me here. Like, legit terrifies me.
Ditto.
No. Because nothing psychotic is going on here. Amber seems perfectly well in touch with reality. Her problem are anger management issues and aggression.
Yes, these are the same problems abusive people have. But that doesn’t make them psychotic.
Now if Amber starts making up shit that never happened, or acting like Danny is someone else, or any of the other symptoms I’m sure you’re aware of, then maybe anti-psychotics would be the answer.
And, yes, she needs to get out of this situation. But the problem is that Danny doesn’t understand that, and Sal seems to be content just to stand there, rather than leave as Danny asked.
You know, antipsychotics are used in the treatment of a wide range range of diagnoses, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, etc.
Indeed. There are a very many disorders in which one can experience psychotic episodes, it has even been documented in some people with severe depression. I think that due to the stigma a lot of folks think the colloquial and derogatory term “crazy” and the term psychotic (in the clinical sense) are the same (ex. Psychotic person = horrible person, which is just untrue). I think people are saying Amber is psychotic here because of her delusions and irrational levels of rage and anger, which we’ve seen before. It’s partly psychotic in nature because her reasoning, anger at Sal and Danny is nowhere near the actual reality, and she’s acting on it, making her a danger to herself and others.
“and Sal seems to be content just to stand there, rather than leave as Danny asked.” Are you actually trying to find a way to blame Sal for minding her own business in a public area??
She may not have a condition where anti-psychotics may help, but I don’t think I agree that she is being in touch with reality right now given that she’s convinced saving her life was an act of villainy. At the very least her and reality are having a loud argument and considering a trial separation.
Sal offered to leave. It was her idea. Danny certainly wouldn’t have asked it, especially immediately after she pointed out explicitly that she had every right to be there.
Maybe she is leaving. It’s only been a few seconds. Or maybe she saw enraged Amber and decided she needed to stay to keep an eye on things–I would’ve.
I’m pretty sure when Danny greeted her as “Amber” and she responded as “Wrong” that counts as disassociating. Also grounded in reality is not a word I’d use to describe Amber, ever. This isn’t me calling Amber a “psycho”. This is me being painfully aware of a dangerous mentality that is honestly kind of sickening to see because I’ve been Amber. Like I got way too upset last night when I posted that comment because it was too close to the worst version of myself.
Because nothing psychotic is going on here. Amber seems perfectly well in touch with reality.
Who is that Amber you are talking of?
Certainly not a person present in today’s strip (check the tags!)
And that really is the problem!
“Perfectly well in touch with reality?” I think not!
This better not be one of those cliches where the issue doesn’t resolve because a character doesn’t elaborate on something or ask an appropriate question.
I wish Joyce would pop out and say “Story Time”.
I’d prepare for disappointment if I were you; pretty much Amber’s entire character arc has been paved on poor communication.
In my experience existence seems to be paved on poor communication, with varying degrees of such.
So true. The older I get, the more apparent this becomes.
I know we all always say this a lot that Amber needs to get help asap, but man, she’s actually getting really scary now. To the point where in real life, if you were her friend, you’d wonder if she was beyond help, if she had gone off a ledge.
The last panel is suicidal as hell (= ‘I wish she’d have let me die”) and she’s just generally full steaming ahead with her anger. Also, the line between Amber and AG has evaporated, there’s no line anymore. She’s really 100% terrifying and frustrating now and it’s actually hard to watch.
I do care about her and godDAMMIT she better get some help soon, but watching her just continuously spiral closer and closer to the abyss feels so oppresive to me and suffocating, like… I can’t help her and this girl is KILLING HERSELF.
Idk. It’s not fun for me to watch. Like, at all. Maybe I need to take a break from this comic for a while, because ‘The Relentless Downward Spiral of Amber O’Malley’ is not something I signed up for or can deal with right now.
Blahhhhhh. Long story short, this is just….. A LOT. Poor Amber. Somebody get her fucking help.
It’s simultaneously suicidal and homicidal.
She has no respect for herself and clearly doesn’t value her own life and in fact sees saving it or respecting it as the acts of a villain…
But she also is really close to just deciding to go off on Sal out of the blue or hurt anyone who comes to her aid.
And yeah, it’s kinda terrifying to see and I spend most of my days teaching and aiding kids with severe mental conditions. And it’s kind of an interesting thing, because I usually identify a bit with Amber because of the DID stuff, but she’s going way off the grid here into lands I was way too scared of hurting other people to even glance at.
Amber is not just a poor kid doing literally everything wrong to treat her unfortunate mental conditions, she’s starting to be someone needing observation to keep her from hurting herself and others and if it continues to worsen, Danny may have to legitimately think about potentially having her hospitalized for her own protection and the protection of folks like Sal.
Absolutely. She’s a danger to herself and others. Plus, as others have pointed out, she is so Blaine-y here, her anger is reaching her father’s level of anger and that is so scary in an 18 y/o girl. I mean, in anyone really, but both genetics and upbringing have probaly done their part, along with brain chemistry, in fucking this girl up.
Everything is awful.
Wha? Are you fucking kidding me?Wow… Okay, Amber is on my shit-list now.
I hope we eventually get some sort of battle in the center of the mind between Amber and Amazi-Girl.
There may be a car crusher and a vat of acid involved.
And tires.
…I’m at the point where I believe Amber needs to withdraw from school from the semester and check into a hospital or facility. For not only her own safety and sanity, but those around her. She is on the verge of a psychotic break, and from my own experience, it will not be pretty, and there will be casualties, Please, someone, (Ethan, Mike, DANNY) call her mom.
Even if not willingly, there are holds based on ‘danger to self or others’ and she is creating both.
She checks both boxes, unfortunately. I just hate to think of how it will tear her apart, and the people that love her, if it comes down to involuntary commitment. I spent a little time in the top floor myself, by my own choice, but seeing the kids my age kept there for their own good, against their will, was horrifying.
If only Sarah had been her roommate and not the one person completely incapable of spotting that Amber is dangerously unstable.
I love how much we’ve all changed over the last 5 years
Start of strip: Danny is the Satan and everything he does is wrong!
Now: DON’T YOU DARE HURT DANNY, YOU BONGO!
For some people they came in with decade old prejudice against him.
Looking real dad-ish there Amber
“Words with Dispassionate Associates” is my Soft Cell cover band.
Is the last panel technically true because only two things happened?
…Well you’re not wrong
PUNCH HIM! PUNCH HIS STUPID DANNY FACE!!!
What why? What did Danny do?
Yeah glorifying abuse. That’s a cool thing to do.
God, I feel terrible for everyone in this panel.
Ethan has told the story of the holdup to Danny.
Amber and Amazi-girl know it was Sal. Ethan has a twinge of recognition, Danny doesn’t know, and Sal doesn’t know it was Amber who stabbed her.
Thanks! I forgot about that!
I think I agree with the ones here predicting this is going south.
Of course Danny has no clue, she hasn’t told him anything about it. But, he has been told by Walky a lot he didn’t want to hear.
Sal saved Ambers life.
And that’s the SECOND WORSE thing she did.
Can’t imagine how scaring Amber in a robbery could possible be the basis for this solid wall of hate all these years later. Would think that stabbing Sal in the hand for it, would sort of call it even?
But then again, it was a piece of her screwed up childhood, and convenient to hang a hook on Sal as being the whole cause of it.
Run Danny.
Good start, Danny. Keep being a grown-up.
I dunno. PTSD considered, I still think Amber is really abusive towards Danny. Nobody deserves to be the yielding and apologetic punching bag for anger and frustration. I’ve been there.
Panel 6: Danny is dannying it right.
He doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s hardly ever seen Amber this bad and he is freaking out a lot, but he brings up the one thing he know that could be a gamechanger.
…I doubt it will be enough though.
Amber is really in the cocoa puffs now.
Poor, poor, Amber. She can only be blamed for Ethan getting hurt in the most paranoid abusive fantasies of Blaine – but this is situation right here, right now is hurting Danny and threatens to hurt him a lot more.
And if that happens then Amber will have a new Worst Day to look back to, one where her own guilt is much more pronounced.
What’s scary is that she seems to have bought Blaine’s paranoid abusive fantasies hook, line, and sinker and seems very loathe to abandon them to reality or in service to protecting people other than her that Blaine has harmed (let us not forget that Danny was straight up kidnapped and threatened by Blaine simply for being close to her).
And that’s not good. Eventually she’ll have to make peace with the fact that her dad was not just a piece of shit, but that everything he said to her was bullshit and lies. Including the bits about her that she has assumed must be true because he abused her until she internalized it to her very core.
Yes. Beating up Blaine was unfortunately only the first step. Now she has to defeat the internal Blaine, and that is much less fun.
So much to comment on here, I’ll really try not to rehash anything I noted up above and just stick to that I haven’t already hit.
Panel 1: Sal pointedly ignoring the girl she has every reason to believe is a) the same person who has antagonized her at every turn and b) racist as fuck. I mean, think as someone who isn’t aware of Amber’s backstory and just put yourself in the perspective of Sal. Here’s some crazed honkey immediately going off on her “not-a-boyfriend” because he dared exist near her and she’s acting like she’s dangerous because she’s existing in front of a school building. Like, holy fuck, that’s the level of shit where if I was Sal I’d be very scared of being Zimmermaned.
Panel 2 and 4: Anger, escalating threats, barely contained rage pointed at a romantic partner… yeah, that’s hitting a lot of Emotional Abuse buttons right there and it’s a completely unreasonable expectation that she has to this and to Danny in general since yesterday in comic time.
Also, I think Amazi-girl is starting to get angry that everyone isn’t locked in time like she is, still trapped in the shadow of her father’s abuse. She was sad back when confronting this fact with Ethan:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/same-person/
But with Danny it’s all rage and expectation of complete capitulation… which… even if this isn’t abuse, it’s definitely not helpful to Danny’s issues and it might be time for him to jet simply to protect himself and his emotional well-being (even though we all know he never will, even if she turns to violence).
Panel 3: And that last point is emphasized by the fact that she does her scary reiteration thing right after he tries to distract the conversation and de-escalate a situation. Her insisting on escalating when her conversation party is not down for that… it’s not a good sign to say the least. Especially since unlike Joyce, she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on (it may have been traumatizing for her, but Ethan was right when he noted that everyone else has grown up and changed).
Panel 5: Danny’s internal monologue must be some combination of warning sound screaming and a gif image of eyes growing wide. That’s a lot of a lot of things to take in at that level of intensity and while many slag him for being a doormat, I’d say…
Panel 6: This panel where he stands his ground and even points out the reality of the situation, a reality his girlfriend really doesn’t want to hear in defense of the friend she is attacking and is treating like garbage is some worthwhile brave shit.
Like, Amber is terrifying right now and could easily turn violent against him and he’s willing to just counter her directly. That’s not easy when you’ve got a partner in that kind of headspace and have spent all your life having everything you think and feel dismissed by shitty parents and friends.
Panel 7: I know I touched on this before, but that anger and rejection in that pause. That refusal to accept the raw truth of the matter because it would interfere with her imaginary mythology of herself and her relationship with Sal. That conscious choice to choose a deepening of delusional thinking rather than to accept an inconvenient reality is very human, but very scary.
Amber there made probably the biggest choice of her life and it’s going to make recovery from this point very difficult because…
Panel 8: That treatment of saving her life not just as a wrong, but an outright villainy not only betrays her complete lack of respect for herself and her investment in this outlook on life, but a conscious choice to believe in fictional things to justify hating a person and seeing them as a source of personal villainy in her life.
Like, Amber here legitimately reminds me of Candace Owen and a number of individuals wrapped up in perpetuating harassment movements. People who need to view their targets as villainous and personally harming them because their view of themselves and their worlds need said people to be villains to justify their chosen actions.
And Amber there just chose to do exactly that. To choose to view Sal as villain to interpret even the saving of her life as somehow a wrong deserving of reprisal. To view it as something Sal needs to make up for and which is only a hint that Sal will somehow do greater harm to her in the future. To view Sal leaning against a wall literally doing nothing but staring at her phone and smoking a cigarette as a grave and immediate threat.
Amber at this moment has deliberately chosen to abandon reality even when pointed at directly in order to justify hating someone harmless, just trying to live her life in peace doing no current harm to her or anyone not named Malaya.
And that’s what makes this all so terrifying, because I’m not sure how you come back from conspiratorial thinking like this. From direct rejections of reality and self-sustaining justifications for continued harassment and hatred of people for now imagined slights (like at least the robbery was real and not a complete off-the-wall like this).
I’m not sure there is a back without doing some extensive apologies and acknowledging your role with some serious wrongdoing. And it makes Amber someone that both Sal and Danny would be well to get far far away from before she decides that Danny is also a villain who has “turned on her” and “wronged her” because she’s not agreeing enough with her spiriting away on a tangent line going infinitely far away from reality.
And when you combine that with DID, that’s a really good recipe for some really not good shit. Amber may straight up need hospitalization or at the very least some form of observation and is starting to move from “yeah, this character prolly needs therapy” to “no, seriously, she needs a therapist and if I was her teacher, I would be passing along my set of resources on how to find a therapist in her area while also talking to my supervisors about a potential 911 call and isolating her from the other students”.
People keep saying Amber has DID. She doesn’t. The DSM-5 says that two of the main criterion for DID diagnosis is that the patient have some sort of amnesia of the alter personality (the “dissociative” part of Dissociative Identity Disorder), and also that they be distressed by this condition. Amber is well aware of Amazi-Girl, created her as an outlet for escape, and its just super maladaptive coping. She seems to have PTSD, isn’t dealing with her shit well, and absolutely needs therapy, but she does NOT have Dissociative Identity Disorder.
But besides that, tots agree with you!!!
Perhaps under an older version? I know my classification of Autism got bounced around a bit between the changes. Or perhaps it’s a “TV” version of a dual identity disorder, and ‘DID’ is being used as a simple shorthand? Or I could be completely wrong. Not like that hasn’t happened before.
Yea, what qualifies did get expounded upon from the last version- I believe the “must be distressed by” is new. TV DID really does it no justice, just like with TV schizophrenia.
I really think its more the TV-version thing. Or, people not wanting to think a character could be so messed up without some kind of classifiable mental illness as an excuse, maybe? She certainly has problems, I just wouldn’t say she’s DID.
Hi. I actually have DID and have had it for as much of my life as I can consciously remember. So I’m speaking from that, so please forgive me if it feels like I’m being brusque on this subject, but it’s somewhat annoying to be dictionary argumented about a condition I’ve spent my entire life living with and speaking with other DID individuals about.
And the DSM a) has had a long history of being slow to respond to the reality of conditions or ways of living (see the history of homosexualiy, transgender identities, or the fact that currently asexuality is considered a diagnosable condition rather than a sexual identity according to that manual) and b) reflects the psychologist community in really doing very little surrounding DID after it has been integrated or before it disassociates.
As such, it’s not the “TV” version or a shorthand that I’m referring to, but the actual condition. Cause I genuinely see a lot of my younger self in Amber, trying to juggle alters, trying to treat one as an emotional dumping ground, alter shifts in the middle of my routine, fights and arguments and protection rackets among the alters, and so on.
Amber is very consistent with a DID sufferer who is integrated but pushing on that point and doing behavior that is very likely to lead to amnesiac disassociation if she’s not careful.
I was only speaking in reference to Amber, not to you, Cerberus. Perhaps I didn’t convey that properly, or ended up mistyping. I know that I have problems typing in ‘NOT’ operators, which can thusly throw off meaning of some things completely. Sorry if I offended.
I’ve been much been banging on at this point for a while now. Amber WANTS to have DID because dissociating is a great way to escape from being Amber and she REALLY doesn’t like Amber. But she doesn’t. She puts on a mask and plays a role but she doesn’t actually stop being Amber and become Amazi-Girl she’s just Amber pretending to be Amazi-Girl.
I do not see where Amber has made a single threat, and I do not see how she has lost touch with reality. She is angry. She has said a lot of angry things, but she hasn’t even insulted Danny, let alone threatened him.
I’m not saying she’s treated him well, or that what she’s doing is right. And her anger is out of proportion. But it’s pretty much caused by her PTSD being triggered, and the fact that she “chose” fight instead of flight–to cover up her fear with anger.
And she knows who Danny is, and she knows what Sal did. Yes, she’s worried about Danny hanging out with her, but she kinda has reason to be–because Sal could do exactly what she did–tell Danny about what happened. About how dangerous it is for her to be Amazi-girl. And, as she is currently trying to do–she could try to get him to stop her. You know, break up with her if she doesn’t stop being Amazi-girl.
I did not read the comic in any way similar to how you read it. While I normally love your embellishments, these seem to make Amber out to be a whole lot worse than anything I saw.
To be honest, it feels a lot like when you talked about people making up stuff about Becky or Carla. Even down to the fact that I can identify really well with Amber.
Not the DID, (which I’m still not convinced she has–she doesn’t have the requisite memory issues.) Not being some sort of vigilante (unless you count defending people online). But having anger problems? Panic attacks? That’s all stuff I have. While I wouldn’t freak out about a person, no person is one of my triggers. I still could see myself in a situation where I get really angry because I’m covering up for fear.
A situation where, while I yell and posture, I specifically avoid threats or violence. Granted, now I’m more likely to withdraw, but that’s because I’ve gotten help. But not hospitalization–and I don’t see how Amber is at that point now, either.
So, yeah. Don’t get me wrong. I still love you, but I just cannot see where you are coming from here, or where others are jumping to Amber having crossed some line in this comic. Last comic, sure, since she had never been like this to Danny before. But this time? I don’t see it.
If anything, I see that second to last panel as hopeful. She had to pause. That Sal saved her put a chink in her thinking. I remember it happening to me while angry before, too. There’s a reason her anger is lessened in the final comic.
I am very sorry for that. I also have identified very strongly with Amber (PTSD, DID, anxiety attacks). And I don’t want to make others feel attacked for their shared identities as I really don’t like that when it happens to me.
I’ll try to be more measured in the future and I’m sorry for the harm I have caused here.
Also, everyone? Amnesia is not a requirement for being DID. It’s a requirement for having psychologists give a flying fuck about the fact you have DID, because that’s the sexy part of DID and makes for good research papers.
So please stop with that shit.
Amazi-Girl. You never actually told him that story.
There’s some ambiguity about the final panel that I think I may be picking up on.
See, it isn’t saving AG’s life that is the second-worst thing that Sal has done. It’s expressly telling Danny about having saved her life that is the second-worst thing.
AG’s entire self-image is based on over-the-top self-confidence; on being the hero; the one who saves the day. Sal having gone to great effort to help her doesn’t make Sal look like a good person; it makes AG look like she’s too weak to have kept on top of things. By AG’s way of thinking, Sal should have just kept silent about it.
Sal telling Danny about having saved AG’s life results in AG . . . the phrase that comes to mind is “losing face”.
Yes, this is a fucked-up way of thinking. But it does seem like the sort of honor-culture mentality that AG might have.
Or maybe I’m just imagining what AG means. *shrug*
I kinda hope that Danny picks up on that last line (and doesn’t grasp the loss of face implication) and says something like “Wait — saving your life was a bad thing? Do . . . do you really want to die?” And maybe AG gets embarrassed and backs off.
And maybe there will be ponies for everyone, too!
I dunno. I think she legitimately has decided that saving her life was a bad thing. And I think it’s partially because Sal did it. After all, anything Sal does must be bad because foundational mythology. So since she saved her life, this is now a wrong. And anyone who thinks her life is worth saving can be considered an enemy.
Like, I hope you’re right, but I worry that this might be the descent into some truly scary paranoid demonization thought patterns.
Though that might be because I’m hyperaware of those of late thanks to all the Bathroom Mythologies being spun right now in the wake of HB2.
Based on one or two preview panels I’ve seen, I suspect that we’re going to see some super self-destructive behaviour on Amber’s part because, if Sal isn’t actually a monster, does that mean that Amazi-Girl isn’t necessarily a hero?
Thaaat’s actually pretty plausible! Besides, she’s not really so hot at expressly saying what she means.
I like that theory. Less suicidal.
Nice to see someone else coming to that (alternative) conclusion! (Not being a native speaker of English myself, I wasn’t sure that I was getting all the possible nuances right.)
Plus: all the worse, since Danny kind-of has been AG’s #1 fan (with a crush, at that). So from Amber/AG’s perspective, Sal whispering those words in Danny’s ear specifically, is truly hitting her where it hurts.
Christ, Amber, he’s got no way of knowing Sal is the girl you stabbed.
Wanna clarify I understand Sal trigger’s Amber’s PTSD, just pointing out that Danny is missing the information to even make the connections, and even if he did, her emotional reaction here is out of normal ranges. He’s not doing anything wrong, her brain is attacking her.
I’m gonna be real upset if Sal loses her budding friendship with Danny over this
yeah, i’ve liked their weird little mario kart playing, math tutoring friendship. Kinda hoping at some point Sal will step in to defend Danny here if Amber keeps escalating this.
Seriously their friendship is so much better for him than his relationship with Amber and I hope to god he doesn’t ditch it to try to preserve this flaming wreck of a relationship.
Especially since Sal has so few friends and a kid like Danny is a supportive person who (while clueless) would offer an alternative to her best friend.
I see far too much of myself in Amber.
Oh, the day is still young, Amazi-Girl? She might do something worse to you? What could that be? From your body language, I’m guessing ‘make you beat up your traitorous boyfriend for consorting with your nemesis’.
Please run, Danny. Just run. Hide behind the first non-Sal person you get to.
I’m pretty sure that she’ll just tell Danny that they’re over because, if he’s taking Sal’s side, that makes him one of Amazi-Girl’s Rogue’s Gallery too.
I actually hope so, because her bunched-up body language is screaming ‘I am going to start throwing punches’ to me.
So… many… issues…
I know, right *cries, hands over kleenex box*
Offscreen: “You already did that joke, dolt.”
Bagge: “More than a year ago. Give me a break here.”
Falling down here, lol.
Amber seems to be implying she wanted to die as Amazi-girl.
She might think that it would solve a lot of her problems if things worked out that way.
Jesus Christ, Amber. SEE A THERAPIST!! You are not healthy in the head.
I actually think Amber is far far away from the point which people are trying to put her in. I think the final panel is a sign she’s NOT actually having a psychotic break from reality but accepts the fact Sal is not a monster. She accepts Sal did save her life and the Amazi-Girl portion of her personality is actively fighting the Amber portion. I believe she’s close to a breakthrough and casting aside the worst emotions of that moment.
How the hell would he know? Amber’s never told him herself, and she’s the only one who ties Sal with the convenience store incident. Ethan didn’t recognize her, and dismissed it as in the distant past when he was told. Sal didn’t recognize either of them individually. We haven’t seen conclusive proof that Sal even saw Amber that day because she was hiding.
I would play Words with Disappointed Associates. That sounds like a good game.
I like your priorities.
Everyone else has the content of the comic covered. I didn’t want Willis’s joke to go unnoticed, you know?
I keep trying to decide if Amber is “moving against,” “moving toward,” or “moving away” according to Karen Horney’s personality theory and just… Can’t figure her out.
I’d just like to add (not sure if anyone already mentioned this) that this is a reprise of her original psychotic break (as was her beatdown of Blaine). When this happens you become dissociated from reality in such a violent way that you literally are inhabiting a world no one else is. As such what makes sense to you or what seems logical or rational is something that no one else can understand, nor can you understand them. Think about it—it’s as if suddenly no one can understand the language you’re speaking even though, to your mind, what you’re saying is perfectly intelligible. There’s no point getting mad at Amber for being unreasonable with Danny; she’s getting frustrated and angry with him because of a fundamental gap in communication (“How can he not know who she is when *I* know so well who she is?!”). It’s just not helpful applying commonly accepted paradigms of rationality to psychotic situations. And this is out of Danny’s or any non-professional hands to remedy.
What psychotic break? And what violence? I guess you can see her flashing back during her attack on Blaine as such a break–though I’ve seen that trope pretty often in fiction before without it meaning that.
But I don’t see one here. I see someone who is really angry, who got triggered, and is yelling a lot. She seems completely aware of everything going on around her. What she’s saying is mean, but it makes sense. And she calmed down a bit when Danny pointed out that she saved her.
And, despite other claims upthread, it makes perfect sense that she is afraid of Sal talking to Danny. Because of what Sal actually did already say.
I mean, your basic idea is right–Amber is not fully in control of what she’s saying, due to her mental illness. But I do not understand all these people claiming a psychotic break.
I was classifying the original convenience store incident as a psychotic break because it (and whatever followed) seems to have many of the symptoms of a classic psychotic episode, including a sudden violent and uncontrollable outburst, the delusion of Sal being the villain to Amazigirl’s superhero, persecution paranoia about her alter identity, etc. I was seeing that as the originating incident after which every future incident that threatens to become a red panel situation where she gets triggered and mixes up past and present could be a relapse. However I agree that there isn’t much point using psychoanalytic terms to diagnose a fictional character. My main point was that people should remember Amber tends to spill into a state where she can’t tell reality from fantasy at least consciously and there’s no point yelling at her across the fourth wall to be rational with Danny.
So it was the second-worst thing she done ‘to’ you, but what about ‘for’ you?
this is becoming eerily familiar, and making me really hate amazi-girl/amber. i wish danny would just get the fuck out already.
Oh hi Amber’s scary, abusive side that she probably learned/inherited from Blaine, it’s really unpleasant to see you. Still hoping Amber decides to get some real help about you. You’re gonna end up hurting and driving away everyone Amber cares about.
Oh my god Amber.
Amber.
Stop.
Okay, Amber, slow, slow, quiet, quiet… now fuckign EXPLAIN what the fuck actually happened and what the problem is.
Let SOMEONE be on the same page as you about this… this is going to help, I promise
(if only so he can talk to Sal and also get HER on the same page about this)
So Amber has flipped over to Amazigirl without wearing the mask.
Good or bad, I don’t know.
I’m gonna go with “probably a sign of health” from a grand perspective and “potentially catastrophic” in the short term. 🙂
I’m kinda surprised it took me so long to realize that the reason she’s able to stand there talking right now is because she slipped into her other persona, and likewise, I’m dreading the inevitable realization that Amber’s now incapable of controlling herself in both of her personae with Danny.
It is really bad, probably even moreso than Amber going into panic attacks when she sees Sal, because Amazi-Girl would absolutely want to pick a fight with her because that’s what Amazi-Girl is made for. Amber is terrified of Sal, but Amazi-Girl sees her as a villain to defeat in combat.
And it is a really bad sign that her DID is getting worse, because she’s gotten more and more incapable of controlling which person she is at the moment. Earlier this chapter she had enough control to grab her mask and run away, but here she’s immediately switched.
Interesting that you’d interpet this as her having DID that’s getting worse, because I’m sort of reading the opposite here. If anything we’ve have been seeing the lines between “Amber” and “Amazi-girl” blurred to the point where we’re now seeing Amazi-Girl behaviour without the costume or voice. I’ve read Amazi-girl more as a pretty unstable volontary comparmentalization technique. Then again, I’m no psychologist, so what do I know.
Either way we’re in agreement on what the short-term fallout could be here.
Yes, this is what I was trying to say yesterday about the irony of Amber insisting that Danny be in a relationship ONLY with AG to prevent him from being treated …well…like this.
I think Amber is actually the more likely of the two to pick a fight with Sal, though. Something about when AG said that being up on the roof after seeing Sal in the hallway being “to prevent my other self from stabbing someone…well again.” Yes, AG will try to provoke a fight, but Amber will actually take the first swing. It’s started me wondering if Amber’s panic attacks are really just terror at seeing Sal or terror that she’s going to haul off on her again. Or a complicated and delicate blend of the two.
< HREF="http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/counterbalance/"But Sal *DID* save Amazi-Girl — so does this mean that Sal is aware that Amber is Amazi-Girl’s ‘secret identity’?
Forgot to close the tag — let’s try it again.
But Sal *DID* save Amazi-Girl — so does this mean that Sal is aware that Amber is Amazi-Girl’s ‘secret identity’?
Let’s assume Sal’s not an idiot: then yes.
Before? I don’t think so. It’s not like she’d been hanging out with Danny when Amber was around, and people who actually know Amber couldn’t figure it out just by looking at her. Remember, at least two people thought Sal could be Amazi-girl. The disguise is preternaturally good.
Now, though? If she can hear what she’s saying, which seems quite likely, then she very well should.
I don’t think Amber is actually suicidal in the final panel (probably). She doesn’t really object to Sal saving her life; she objects to [person she conceptualizes as ultimate evil] doing something 100% good. The worst thing Sal can do besides starting the whole “Amber can’t cope and so pretends to be a superhero who saves people” schtick is prove that she isn’t even an evil villain, leaving Amber with the reality that she is the only person left trying to eternally re-play that night at the convenience store after everyone else has moved on with their lives.
I do want to say what I was scrolling down to say. I thank you that, with a few minor exceptions, a couple I responded to, no one seems to be doing what was bothering me so much yesterday. I don’t know if you read what I said or not, but, either way, it’s appreciated.
Amber is not awful. She is not a bad person. She is a person with a mental disorder. One that we’ve been privy to for a long time. Please, if you can, try to have sympathy for her.
Don’t treat her like she actually is how she acts because of her mental illness.
And, with that, I’m out. I’m totally drained. Don’t even know if I’ll be able to scroll down tomorrow.
*internet hugs*
I agree. She’s not an awful person. She’s someone with a mental disorder (several mental disorders) and some nasty triggers from abusive parents and even at worst case, she’s someone who does her negative actions due to those aspects rather than being someone like Blaine who gets off on the power trip.
I’m really sorry that the comments have been draining. I’m also really sorry to have contributed to that drain. *Appropriate gesture of support* if you’re willing to accept.
You gotta admit, it’s hard not to be frustrated with her. And I think that’s what people are displaying here: frustration, not so much animosity towards her. That and concern.
You can be sympathetic and mad at someone at the same time though.
I’m just now starting to realize how much like Amber my ex was, and how much like Danny I was.
Who says comics can’t be a good coping mechanism?
I made pretty much the exact same comment yesterday. Solidarity for you, CC.
Yeah, I’m starting to see some of my ex in Amber and it’s stirring up about as many complicated emotions about it as thinking about my ex does.
Same here. While Becky’s arc seems to have made a lot of people with similar experiences relate a lot to it the Danny/Amber dynamic hits super close to home for me. Where a lot of people probably just see a mentally tormented girl and her martyr-complex of a boyfriend I can’t help but see the seeds of what, for me, eventually turned into years of mental and physical abuse.
Though, to be fair, Amber seems to be more aware than my ex that her issiues are, well, _her_ issues and not just the world being cruel and wrong. That can count for a lot.
I can definitely see the seeds of mental and physical abuse here.
But they’re still seeds. Not even the early relationship warning signs that she is an abuser. Seeds that Amber could go in that direction without help or some other breakthrough.
I don’t think we’re anywhere near the “run away now!” situation some people are seeing it as.
….nnno, you’re right, but the problem is that abusive relationships often are the kind of thing you kind of slip in to, so any red flags are really imortant. When the crystal-clear situations start showing up you’re lucky if you can still get out without too much trouble and the situation might be entirely unsalvegable already.
I think that what I and others are reacting to is mainly red flags that shouldn’t be ignored, not dealbreakers in and of themselves.
“Done to” and “Done for” … ouch!
Im just gonna say DAYUMMM DANIAL!
Hey, there’s something that has been bugging me about Sal too.
How does someone go from feeling unwanted by their parents to robbing a convenience store at knifepoint?
Sal was neglected for years on end and lashed out to try and get her parents to finally pay attention to her. If you go back to the flashback, Sal just knocks over some stands and goes up to the desk demanding money, and it isn’t until the clerk says that she can’t actually threaten him that she goes and grabs Ethan.
Actually, I suspect there was a trigger to her starting to rob stores that goes beyond the parental neglect story. But we haven’t been made aware of it yet.
We also don’t know what happened to Marcie. I first though both things were connected but it seems the time-line doesn’t fit.
Honestly this is kinda disappointing, since just yesterday in-verse we had a big scene of Amber freaking out and beating herself up because she lashed out at Danny, something apparently so awful to her that she had to put it in her Red Panel collection, and now she’s just doing it again with no hint of self awareness. Like, I thought that was the point. That she knew that rage was there and she had to keep it buried, and that expressing anger was an unforgivable sin for her, and boom, here we go again. It’s starting to come off like Amber is very much in the “cycle of abuse” story, and I was hoping that would be avoided here for a more thorough explanation of Amber’s mental health instead of going into “yes this victim of constant abuse is definitely just like her abuser, and she should learn to stop being so shit.”
At the least, I do appreciate that Amber’s story is very much told with her in the driver’s seat. Often stories about mental health issues either wholly excuse them, or treat them as irredeemable shitstains from the word go, and I like that even when Amber acts terrible, and she needs to own up to it, there’s still context that shapes her character. I think we need to start seeing some change, though, because this story has been going on way too long with very minimal development.
While the story has been going on for a long time for the readers, in-universe it’s only been a little over a month. I think Willis can be excused for not resolving Amber’s myriad issues in that amount of time.
That first paragraph seems to directly conflict with the second one. Amber’s been aware that she’s stuck in that cycle of abuse since before the comic began — Amazi-Girl exists as a coping mechanism to shunt all that rage and violent urges onto — and it’d be weird if she could instantly control it the very first time after admitting to Danny that it was a problem.
Joyce started having her character and worldview challenged, and consequently changed, a long, LONG time ago. Amber only just took her first challenge to how she operates, in the aftermath of the car chase when Sal spoke to her before she left. (I guess trying to fight Sal might count, but did she learn anything from that?) The rest of her character development has been retroactive, her backstory revealed as time went on.
Amber punching Blaine in the face and Amazi-Girl beating the tar out of him afterwards might be the ultimate example of this. That storyline was the culmination of challenges (her shitty father’s abuse) that happened before the first comic strip, which does nothing to alter the person Amber’s been throughout the run of Dumbing of Age. In fact, that was when we readers began to really see what Amber’s character arc since the comic began would entail (the consequences of that abuse, beyond her shitty dad himself)…and she’s only just starting to face pushback from other characters over it.
I never really took the earlier stuff as indicative that Amber was in a cycle of abuse. I think she definitely picked up some stuff from Blaine, whenever she has a problem she tries to control it and barks and threatens to achieve that end, but there was still way more focus on Amber struggling against that rage and the inherent guilt she felt whenever she let it out, and I felt that, largely, the focus on why Amber needed to get better was because she was so wrapped in not becoming her dad that she created a whole new slew of problems she had to deal with, her DID, her self loathing, her disregard for her own safety. This is just page after page of Danny trying to reason with her while she’s being a prick to him. I guess this could end with, like, another bit of her realizing she’s acting out in other “safe” identity and freaking out again, but their last major interaction was exactly that so I doubt it. This is just really coming off like “Amber’s main problem is that she’s actually Blaine” and I was hoping that was something this series was going to avoid with her character.
She does get to the guilt eventually, sure…except where Sal is concerned, who she still wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of despite having already STABBED HER THROUGH THE HAND in the past.
Feeling bad about her impulsive actions also doesn’t automatically make her NOT in a cycle of abuse.
To be fair, Amber IS being mathematically accurate here, considering Sal has only ever done two things to her. By the same logic, attacking her with a knife was the second best thing she ever did to her.
Hey, she helped her pick up her laundry that one time. I bet that was the nicest thing she ever did for her.
I’m quite scared for Sal right now, I have no idea where this is going, and she really doesn’t deserve any of this. She might just become another person who experiences Amber’s version of “justice”, it’s really looking to be that way the longer this festers. And I stand by my sentiment from before that Danny should leave (and get counseling) and Amber should get some sort of help. Incidents like this left unchecked quickly become a pattern (it already is a pattern), and I really don’t think either of them benefit from this relationship.
Hospitalization is good for a lot of people. It really helped me when I was in college to walk into the health services when I was dealing with severe stress/anxiety. It’s the first ever time I started counseling.
It’s vaguely upsetting the way some people are claiming that she’s not being abusive here, and what about her tragic upbringing, that’s why she does it etc. , especially as someone who’s been on the receiving end of the hatred and bullshit for “sympathetic reasons” in childhood. I zoned out a little reading the first four panels.
I love the understandable blinding rage stopping Amber from telling Danny who she is. Usually when writers write these “someone doesn’t know something” scene there is a lot of time when people can explain things (usually in TV series but Batman Vs Superman did it too.) but here there isn’t any and the emotions are still strong.
You do have to wonder if, from the perspective of a certain part of Amber’s turbulent and disintegrating psyche, Sal did do her a disservice there. I wonder if dying at the moment of her greatest triumph – saving Becky – somehow appeals to Amber as a grand and positive end for her story? I suppose that would have prevented her from having to confront her continual mental collapse and somehow live with it.
Probably. A grand heroic exit is a lot cleaner and easier for someone suicidal than the thought of having to slog through one’s life and deal with one’s issues the long and arduous way.
That last panel. It speaks so much to Amber’s burgeoning cognitive dissonance surrounding her view of Sal. Amber’s so committed to having Sal act as her figurehead for the ills in the world, that Amber almost seems to be saying that Sal saved her life to fuck with head.
I mean, obviously Amber’s profound nihilism is poking through there too, but every one else has commented on that!
I just thought of something: In the history of this comic, were we EVER supposed to like Amber?
Amber knows that Danny can’t peer into her psychotic episodes and witness the flashbacks of her tormentor, right? As far as I’m aware Danny was never explicitly told about Sal and the convenience store robbery so how can he know anything about her? Not even Sal’s brother seems to know or care.
The problem is that Amber isn’t even slightly rational at this point.
Holy crapballs, you are being way too toxic and horrible, and Danny is being way too accepting of your crappy behavior. You deserve to be taken out of the open world and put into an institution until you can learn to be safe for society.
Ha! The sense of that statement is exactly proportional to how fucked up you are. Truth.
I’m amazed at the amount of people that insist that Amber should be institutionalized/hospitalized. Like, yeah, she has issues, but the whole point of a story is seeing a person dealing with their issues.
Can you imagine the dangers she’d be put through if she were hospitalized and then, say, her father found out? Or was able to get to her?
I agree, institutionalization probably wouldn’t help Amber. She really just needs a therapist who can help her with her PTSD and how she copes with a lot of stuff.
Institutionalized? That maybe going a bit far at this point. She isn’t overtly suicidle just dangerously delusional while acting as Amazi-Girl. Well, given the car wreaks she caused in the last major outing, maybe that tips the scale there, if the police had caught her…. Before she chased a kidnapper and wreak some vehicles, an enforced hospital stay would have been too far, now she’s kinda put others lives in danger.
As to her father getting at her. Technically she is a legal adult, and if she was committed with the help of her mother, with EXPRESS instructions about her father (who would quickly be exposed as a root contributing factor), he actually should have a harder time getting at her. Currently he could stalk and accost her at any point outside the dorm. In a hospital or closed institution he’d be have to break and enter past security staff. And in doing so commit various substantive crimes in front of witnesses, that carry jail to prison terms. A restraining order would be the first thing I’d seek as her admitting counsel. Actually isn’t there already one against him?
School has barred Blaine from campus. I’m unclear as to whether there’s a Protective Order in place.
Though Blaine has no right to access information relating to Amber’s care, were she institutionalized, he could find out about it if he is carrying her on his health insurance. Since he’s been Ordered to pay support through higher education, I would be surprised if he hasn’t also been Ordered to pay for health insurance (and possibly other medical care). An EOB would let him know what was up pretty quickly (though he’s not entitled to those either, they might still be sent to his address).
Everybody here talking about Amber, the real issue here is that we are seeing Danny’s whites. Willis seems to be experimenting with full eyes for his dot-eyed characters
Hello there PTSD Amber, I see Amazi-Girl let you out in normal street cloths.
Seriously Amber calm your tits. No Danny doesn’t know who she is because you refuse to have a conversation about it.
The dialogue in this strip has been pretty decent, but this is a good example of how it can get absurd (try getting two college students to read this aloud without sounding ridiculous). The storyline is struggling under the weight of so many backstories and subplots that are dramatic to the point of being ludicrous.
It’s disheartening to me to see how many comments insist that being mentally ill and being abusive are mutually exclusive. Amber is being abusive. She’s being dangerous. And she’s mentally ill. And she needs help. There’s nothing contradictory in those terms. As a person who’s dealt with mental illness and tried to cope in ways that very badly hurt people I care a lot about, it’s honestly kind of infantilizing to hear people act as though mental illness negates or excuses the impact that ones actions have on others. It’s true that the trope of mentally ill people being continually the most violent and fearsome members of society is stupid and needs to die. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people with mental illness who can do incredible damage to those around them, deliberately or not.
Of course Danny doesn’t know who she is. Amber’s never told him, and I’m pretty sure he can’t read minds.
You know, I just realized that I do not object to shouting when angry as such – but it’s only ok to do this to people who will shout back and not be intimidated by it. Then you can both have a great row, throw everything (words, I mean) at each others heads and then start to look at things rationally when all those emotions are out of the way. I actually prefer that to people in a rage who do not realize or pretend not to realize that they are angry and just exude rage.
Danny is the kind of guy who is intimidated and thinks it is his fault even when you just have a different opinion but are not even really angry. With the kind of anger amazi-girl/amber exhude here – and in panel 4 it’s the worst – she isn’t shouting but this kind of bitten off words and the posture express total rage – is just the kind of stuff he has no protection against. It all feeds directly into his self-loathing. Still he tries to stand his ground.
That’s actually serious character development on his side.
Still cannot imagine how this will play out.
Sal will be cautiously watching because she doesn’t need rage spelled out to see it, but she is not intimidated by other people’s rages, only her own. So she would probably interfere if she thinks Danny is threatened and this would cause a mayor meltdown for amber/amazigirl.
Actually, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for both Danny and Amber. He should not have to take such shit. She needs to learn to deal with hers without involving the rest of the world and going where she needs to to stop her personas is like going voluntarily into your worst nightmare, but please, please please start!
Of course he doesn’t know who that is YOU NEVER FRICKING TOLD ANYBODY ABOUT IT
I also think people are way way too sympathetic to Sal. As far as Amber knows, she was going to kill Ethan and anyone else she could lay her hands on. Why, exactly, is she supposed to believe it wasn’t a violent hate-filled robbery?
Eh, that’s really the wrong way to look at it. Between the two, Sal really is in the right, and Amber can’t keep treating her like her archnemesis.
Anyway, we’ve been shown Sal’s history and why she committed the robberies, how she was driven to do so because of years of neglect, before we finally got any idea that Amber had any history with her. We already know Sal suffered immensely over it, whereupon we’re introduced to a new conflict where Amber already hurt her back, we know why she did it, and the main victim of the crime, Ethan, has largely dealt with it and is more concerned for Amber than he is “some girl.”
Hating Sal is fine. Amber isn’t obligated to forgive her, any more than Sal is obligated to forgive Amber for stabbing her in the hand. They both did terrible shit and both have paid consequences for it. Amber, though, is the one pushing it further and acting terribly because of it, while Sal is just standing there doing nothing, and Amber’s been consistently shown as in the wrong in her actions basically since this story has started, and that’s been years of this one character being wrong all the time.
Not to mention this goes beyond Amber’s attitude towards Sal. She is getting angry at Danny for not knowing something that he couldn’t possibly hope to know, and that is seriously not okay.
How is AMBER supposed to know Sal reformed? Sal hasn’t exactly made any attempt to contact her or make restitution to her victims. Sal isn’t the “good guy” in this, she was horribly horribly the villain. It’s just she was a stupid kid and has moved on. Amber hasn’t. Amber can’t. It doesn’t change what she did was awful.
As an isolated incident, why would Sal have to make restitution? Sal held up a convenience store *without hurting anyone* and Amber *stabbed* her. And not even in self-defense–it was assault once Sal was restrained by the police. Sal threatened violence, but Amber was the one who made the situation violent. They were both bad guys in this situation. So why are you saying that Sal should’ve apologized, but aren’t holding Amber to the same standard?
By that definition, isn’t kidnapping not harming someone? Ethan was taken hostage at knife point and could have very well been killed. Threatened violence IS violence as many abuse victims can and will attest. As for Amber, I’m well aware she’s suffering severe severe issues. Ones which perhaps ruined her father as well as her.
I’m not saying that taking Ethan hostage couldn’t have hurt him (which in this case it did not, clearly not even mentally), but I’m emphasizing the lack of physical damage to emphasize the equality of Sal and Amber, that the latter is no better than the former in the convenience store situation.
And, actually, threatening and doing are two VERY different things. You can go ahead and say that isn’t the case with abuse victims, but that’s not who we’re talking about. We’re talking about violence in terms of physical stabbing. It is VERY different to be threatened and knifepoint and to actually be stabbed.
I wonder if Sal finally takes the gloves off to show… no scar. And the attacker was just someone that *looked* a lot like Sal. (as we’ve only seen Amber Flashbacks, she might be projecting Sal’s current image onto the few details she remembered in her adrenaline-haze from the time. Would make for an interesting twist.)
But Amber must have some major self-hatred to think that Sal saving her is the 2nd-worst thing she’s ever done to her. Even more than I thought…
:Rolleyes:
I don’t remember—DOES Danny know who Sal is, to Amber?
Nope. I don’t think so, or I think he would have a very different attitude toward her.
I’ve a feeling I’m likely to catch flack for it, but I’d really love to see the arc come where she gets her confrontation with Sal out of the way so she can get the fuck over it.
Honestly, there’s a more than fair chance that arc would be in the comic’s final stages and ends with her involuntary hold.
I sincerely doubt that.
Well that explains a lot.