Those bouncy balls were sweet. …. my little sister and I sawed through the few we had to get the tiny figures inside, so we could have baby pokemon for the families that lived in our block towns.
Though I suppose I could have picked a better day to voice my dislike of them than the day we finally got Trans robots in Transformers that aren’t Simon Furman’s terrible Arcee.
I just assumed you didn’t like them because you are Whirl and Whirl only likes Whirl (and maybe Cyclonus a little).
They don’t bug me. First couple of issues maybe, because they hogged a bunch of “screentime” when there were already so many story arcs, so I was annoyed to be spending time with new characters when I wanted to learn what was up with the old ones.
But they’ve grown on me. Their interactions in this issue were actually pretty sweet.
They just really don’t bring anything new to the series, but they still eat up so much panel time. They’re just cute snarky robots and that’s everyone in this series.
Don’t attract the attention of the Willis with Transformer comments. You will distract him from his goal of having his comic buffer pass beyond the heat death of the universe.
It’s just she pops it off the collar and we never see her put it in the cockpit. Could have been a thing she did. Keep the head, give the transtector to Ethan…
Okay cool, good that they know she did it in self-defense…. but the fact that she’s walking free means she at least didn’t kill him, right? Because even self-defense that could ruin her life
I suspect the “you shouldn’t have worried” isn’t directed just at ethan here. 😉
…and now I’m noticing that she said “shouldn’t have” and not “didn’t need to” or something completely different like “it’s okay, there wasn’t anything to worry about”. not sure how much of that is picking words that fit on-panel, and how much is amber actually believing he ought to not have worried about her (because she thinks so little of herself) :/
Eh, speaking from experience, picking “shouldn’t have” sounds like, “I don’t want you to be worried, even though I’m perfectly aware something’s wrong.”
The limit of how many words can squish into a panel, and how many strips Willis uses for a conversation arc, leave us with a lot to gnaw on.
“Shouldn’t have worried” could also be “Thank you for your concern, but you didn’t have to worry about visiting me in ICU for injuries Ryan inflicted, as i knew I was not in danger of that”. Of course the psychic danger is another issue still.
We’re essentially set up in such a way that, in appropriate circumstances, we can survive impalement, so long as we don’t lose too much blood before we can do some mind patching up. Our scar tissue direct look pretty, but it’s a very effective survival mechanism. We’re all some tough assholes, given the right situation, and we’re absolutely fascinating.
But we’re also incredibly fragile creatures in slightly different circumstances.
A horrific wound can heal with little problem, but a much smaller seeming one just a little differently placed can be quickly fatal. (Or, prior to modern medicine, either could be very slowly fatal.)
It doesn’t really matter whether she killed him but whether her response was proportionate. If killing him was the only way to save her or someone else’s life, then it’s self defense and she’s off the hook. If he’s only injured but that level of force wasn’t necessary, she’s in for… whatever it’s called in her jurisdiction (don’t forget she was using a deadly weapon against an unarmed guy, doesn’t matter that he brought the knife).
But that would be after a trial, if it comes to that. To have her detained before that requires good reasons and does not depend on whether Ryan survived. So probably not, given she’s a white college student who clearly didn’t initiate the attack.
The fact that he brought the knife and threatened her with it demonstrated that he posed a threat to her life, and remained so as long as he continued attacking her, even after being disarmed. Taking the knife away only made him a more manageable threat, but still a significant and potentially deadly one.
It sure as hell does matter that he brought the knife. It means there’s a knife in the fight. She can’t handicap herself by keeping the knife in hand and trying to fight one-handed. She can’t just drop it on the ground, where he can more easily retrieve it. There’s no actual way to deescalate from a knife fight. Maybe, given time, she could throw it elsewhere, but that still poses more of a risk and is hard to do if he’s still trying to gain control of it.
Obviously (or apparently not) I didn’t mean she should have dropped the knife to make the fight fair or something, this fight wasn’t for sport. If she had no choice it’s self defense, no matter what.
However we haven’t seen what exactly went down and remember this is Amber (and explicitly not Amazi-Girl, she said so herself), who is struggling with violent episodes. I wouldn’t automatically trust that she didn’t go beyond the minimum force necessary and was only saved from consequences by the circumstances.
I’m sure she did – or at least that she thinks so.
On the other hand, you really aren’t limited to some abstract “minimum force necessary”. The law generally gives some leeway, especially when it’s clearly obvious who was the aggressor and that the threat to life was real. It’s also important to remember that fights like that take place in seconds and involve mostly adrenaline and (trained) reflex
Nor do they account for Amber being a (low end) superhero level combatant who is fairly casually capable of taking on a punk with a knife or multiple attackers. That she was never really in danger is something she knows, but the law doesn’t consider. That’s a large part of why she blames herself for losing control.
Of course, that raises the question of didn’t Amazi-girl come forward and handle the situation more gracefully? This isn’t like the fight with Blaine where AG lost control to Amber while fighting him in a haze of flashbacks.
UI isn’t in the UK or Canada or somewhere “proportionate response” is a thing.
If someone comes at you with a knife in most open spaces in the USA, and you can’t retreat, you can kill the POS in self defense. You don’t have to measure your response; most times, attackers choose victims who they expect to be helpless against them and are unable to respond proportionately.
And a trial is unnecessary in most self defense cases. If the evidence is consistent with your story, why go to trial? Even Zimmerman was going to be released based on the evidence matching his story; he went to trial because of the emotional reaction to his family’s (understandable) anguish.
And that trial confirmed the original story.
Zimmerman was going to be released because of racism. Also why he was acquitted. This was the same state which – under the same law – had put a black woman in prison with a 25-year sentence because she had fired a warning shot, which injured no one in an attempt to scare off her ex, who had broken into her home and refused to leave.
Amber, on the other hand, is white, and the incident was caught on camera, and Ryan’s sinister-looking facial scar definitely worked in her favor as well. It appears that the police STILL ended up searching Amber’s room, looking for signs that she was the “real” aggressor. If they’d found some kind of weapon, illegal drugs, or perhaps even prescription psych medication, Amber may have had to spend a night or two in jail while they decided who to charge.
Zimmerman was acquitted because of the facts presented at trial, including Martin’s best friend’s testimony. Racism exists, but the more it is claimed when facts are otherwise the more it is diluted as a rallying cry.
I don’t know about the other case you mention.
The Mountain Goats have a song, “Your Belgian Things,” set to an approximation of “Don’t Don’t Go Breaking Up Heart” ‘s melody, which would actually be incredibly appropriate today as well.
It is autocorrect I think, but I can really see The Mountain Goats actually writing a song called “Don’t don’t go breaking my heart” (i.e. double negative intended).
And now I have to listen to “My Belgian Things”, just for the feels.
That’s the Titan Master gimmick. The heads turn into tinier robots. (Or, tiny robots turn into heads that can attack to larger robots.)
It’s based on the Headmasters gimmick from the original toyline, though basically any character who was part of one of the *masters sublines has become a Titan Master. (Headmasters, whose heads were tiny people, Targetmasters, whose guns were tiny people, and Powermasters, who had tiny people for engines.)
rage can blind people. well extreme levels of emotions of any sort can from what i understand. but most of the time people think of rage since it is most likely to cause harm to others.
There’s also the chance that he was planning to take care not to show his face on camera. Remember he had his hood up and was expecting to overpower amber with little trouble (of course based on his past experience, thinking a knife would be enough is yet another layer of stupid). Of course the footage would show his height and build and he was a prime suspect because of the whole situation, so yeah, not smart especially considering the level of impromptu planning he exhibited in the cell phone arc. I guess the point from behind the fourth wall is to get on with it…
Let’s also consider he thought a knife would be enough to take on the girl he assumed was amazigirl, who he needed backup to take down the last time. Hubris is a rough customer, man.
Eh, I’m with you on this one. I might be happy that the bastard got what was coming to him, but I for one would not be watching that video. Now, video of an attempted rapist getting repeatedly kneed in the crotch on the other hand… 😉
This is someone who knows he can get away with raping someone. Entitlement was built into him, so he probably never considered the consequences of this. Or never cared about how bad they could be to begin with cause he just wanted revenge on the women that “Wronged” him.
To be honest, I’ve spent five years attending a university full-time and have never considered the potential existence of security cameras at doorways to major buildings.
Granted, I’m no rapist/murderer, so I don’t really have reason to worry about them.
See, I started waving at the security cameras from my freshman year.
Of course, I was also the kid who made a map of the security cameras in my middle school, including which ones were out and blind spots, even though I didn’t do anything with that information.
I have been known to speed specifically in highway speed meter spots, and flip off the camera at the first end of it. I don’t do a great many immature things, but that’s one. (After the speed check section, I usually coast back down to 75mph)
The cameras caught him threatening them with a knife. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was identifiable from the cameras. He was presumably intending to leave, but Amber prevented that.
True, and that’s a point we can’t really know. I mean, I could drive to IU, get a job in security, and check out how identifiable people are in security footage. I am currently unemployed, after all. But I probably won’t.
*That said* the security cameras at the last high school I worked at (not as security, but right by their office) had cameras that would have made identifying someone at that distance pretty feasible. I guess he was wearing a hood, but his face was also full of Dramatic Lighting.
Watch your nearest local news station for its nightly obligatory “Can you help ID this person?” segment. It’s amazing how many miscreants, ne’er-do-wells and other generally bad’uns fail to take into account that there might be a video camera just about any damn place.
Can Amber have therapy please? I realize that people dealing with their problems in an appropriate way is not exciting, but I like Amber and want good things to happen to her.
It would be interesting to see her in the same group as Ruth, but I don’t know if that would happen, since they seem to be dealing with different sorts of issues.
Unlikely they’d be together unless there’s an open group for ragey survivors of ongoing abuse from their terrible patriarchs.
Much more likely they’d be separated by diagnosis, and they wouldn’t want to be there with somebody they know outside of the group, but hey, we can dream.
Yeah my first thought reading this comic was WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GET THIS GIRL SOME THERAPY.
I think Amber’s been convinced that she doesn’t deserve therapy or that it wouldn’t help because she thinks she’s inherently broken. It may take a therapist to convince her that there’s hope, but how do you get her to a therapist to have that conversation? Ay, there’s the rub.
I too, greatly wish for Amber to receive massive amounts of therapy from a good therapist. ASAP. As in Amber’s Mom, go lay down the law Right Now. Appointment within a week if available; if not, call daily to check for cancellations.
Sadly, in many places, finding a really good therapist is almost as hard as finding a skilled and empathetic neurologist. But they do exist. Finding these rarities is a little easier now, with websites that allow patients to honestly rate their doctors and therapists.
Showing more than a very few therapy sessions makes for dull, yet boring comics. Gradual improvement as life proceeds, with very rare “WOW, Breakthrough!” moments works.
Amber so drastically needs help that both Danny and Ethan need to tell her Mom just how bad things are (well, almost; can’t see how they could tell Mom about Amazi-girl without parental freaking reaching unhelpful levels.) They’d have to caution Mom to strictest confidence, so Amber doesn’t angrily yank out her friendship life support. I think removing Amber from school would hurt her. If “What the/how the hell, Mom?” becomes a huge factor, bring in Ruthless, who’d likely be fine with taking blame. Neither she nor Amber have enough emotional investment in each other for it to matter, & Ruthless has enough mysterious RA powers, it’s just barely plausible–especially if Amber concerns herself more with freaking out at the prospect of therapy, compared to any Mom Reasons for insisting.
Maybe Mom had/still has therapy herself, it helped her break from Blaine, etc. etc., so combine that with what Mom’s seen and now knows herself–plus a knife fight? OK, Mom’s got plenty of justification, all on her lonesome. Ethan and Danny just need to cinch the matter.
The prospect of watching Amber spiral down into more and more self-loathing, destruction, solitude and “logic”patterns tending less towards logic and more towards crazy as her self-hatred increases… is not merely unpleasant, but may teeter over into cliche; Ruthless redux. Yes, I know stuff like this happens all too often. But there’re so many different people who care at least a little bit about Amber (even Sal, for crying out loud) and have a clue or more insight to her problems. Despite her best efforts, Amber’s never been as isolated as Ruth and Billie, so there’s no reason for another near-death brush or an actual suicide attempt. Mom’s got enough today to just put her foot down and lovingly yet firmly insist Amber go to a minimum of therapy. Making therapy a condition of non-school internet time or WOW or some equally important-to-Amber non-academic activity is probably the only way to ensure compliance–along with enduring some non-trivial number of Amber protest tantrums. Hopefully insurance will cover therapy, & most state universities provide at least that along with other basic health care.
It might get easier if Amber discovers therapy isn’t weird or even uncommon; that probably more people on her floor are in therapy than are not.
ehh, that sounds likely to backfire. you can’t coerce someone into therapy. you can make them go, but you can’t make them talk, and being there unwillingly is likely to put those walls up even higher.
also, I don’t think it’s fair to call her severe mental distress “tantrums”.
but your last sentence gives me an idea: dorothy is already in therapy. maybe her talking about that could help somehow… if amber doesn’t twist it into blaming herself for dorothy needing therapy. :/
or maybe take advantage of amazi-girl’s BS, and frame it as amber needing anger management skills to “protect” people. get a foot in the door that way, get her talking to some kind of professionals, and maybe that can build enough trust for her to start talking later.
I was thinking that Dorothy would be a good one to approach Amber on this. She knows the secret, she can present the therapy as a straightforward approach to dealing with the effects of any brush with violence, much like she did to Walky.
I’m not calling Amber’s mental distress tantrums, and I never would. She has had outbursts of rage (almost certainly PTSD related, given clues in both the art and flashback details), but I never thought of those as tantrums. So far, Amber has not yet thrown what I would call a tantrum.
I’m suggesting that her possible anger resistance and protest response to required therapy might include tantrums; which would be quite different from Amber’s PTSD flashbacks and associated rage outbursts we’ve previously seen.
I’m highly aware that coercing therapy is far from ideal. I never said I liked it or was happy about it. On the other hand, Ruth is still alive now, and she would be dead if her therapy had depended on her initial cooperation.
Sometimes a very sick and very stubborn patient has to be coerced into accepting treatment–at least initially. If the treatment is good enough, and eventually proves helpful enough, hopefully treatment is gradually accepted and coercion no longer required.
If a way can be found for Amber to begin therapy without any coercion–great! That’s the way to go. But what if that’s not possible? What if Amber makes it impossible?
Do we all just watch Amber die a little more every day until she manages to definitively end it all in a dramatic Amazi-girl spectacular–which will, of course, be deemed “accidental”? Or shall we wait until she ends her pain in a very quiet, but carefully planned and extremely effective Amber method?
Amber is realistically written as a person teetering on the brink. Warning signs keep piling up. growing ever-stronger and impossible to ignore. Willis has shown us many times and in as many ways as he can, that Amber suffers severe PTSD; the only thing left to try is having a magical psychiatrist pop in from the sidelines and provide her DSM diagnoses for us. It’s likely that Amber would also diagnose with depression, and other comorbid disorders, including anxiety and even a relatively mild case of DID aka MPD. By relatively mild, at least both personalities are aware of each other, and we haven’t seen Amber demonstrating memory loss or time lapses. Without going into the whole DSM alphabet soup, I will also mention that Amber demonstrates a truly distressing number of signs and symptoms of BPD. Amber is very ill indeed, and there is no doubt she is a suicide risk. Just how high a risk is still a question–but even 10% is still way too high, given how good Amber is at finishing up tasks she decides to set her mind to.
So if Amber won’t willingly choose therapy, wait until she attempts suicide and hope she fails? Those odds are very bad. Amber is just too goal-oriented and efficient at accomplishing what she sets out to do. “Cry for help” is less likely to apply to Amber. Amber is a Get The Job Done kind of girl.
If Amber can be convinced to willingly try therapy, of course that’s much better than coercion. But Amber’s self-loathing and self-hatred have become so extreme, they’re now interfering with her ability for rational thought. Amber is very, very sick. Her illness has a good chance to prevent her accepting treatment without some kind of major motivation; at least initially.
I think we’ve all watched Amber slowly and gradually get worse and worse, so that the extreme seriousness of where she’s finally found herself is probably not realized as easily or strongly than if she were a brand-new character fully presented as-is. Plus, Amazi-girl’s antics can be quite distracting.
That old analogy of the frog in a pot of water slowly heating to boil comes to mind; the temperature rises so slowly and gradually, the frog doesn’t realize his predicament until it’s too late and he’s already dead or almost gone.
What should Amber’s Mom do? Try to get Amber into therapy–but what if Amber refuses? Does Amber’s Mom have a moral responsibility to do all she can to get her child medical treatment, which appears more urgent the more it’s examined? There’s some grey area here–how much is Amber still a child, and how much is she an adult?
Amber is too young to drink, she is not supporting herself and is probably a dependent on Mom’s tax return. Yet if Amber were male, she would be old enough for the draft and to get her head blown off in a war.
It’s not an easy question. I’m going with:
1. Amber is very ill, has been for some time, and her illness is only getting worse, to the point it is now life-threatening.
2. Amber’s illness interferes with her ability for rational decision-making.
3. If Amber refuses treatment (therapy), *under the circumstances*, I think Dorothy’s parent-child responsibility outweighs Amber’s right to make all her own decisions. Amber needs therapy. She should be given every option to accept it freely. But if she absolutely refuses, then Dorothy has a responsibility to do all she can to get Amber into therapy. If she has to finally use coercion; well, in some sense, that’s a choice Amber’s forced.
Ruth is probably one of the few people just as stubborn as Amber. Ruth didn’t want therapy at first, either. And yet somehow, Ruth gradually, (and initially with obvious resentment,) did accept therapy and it helped her. She’s not “fixed” by any means. That would take years for even an approximation. But every day she stays alive is a chance to get a little better.
Same goes for Amber, if she can just get some help before it’s too late.
*Sigh.* Substitute “Stacy” for “Dorothy” in the above screed. Stacy is Amber’s Mom. Dorothy is Amizi-girl’s friend; and perhaps also Amber’s friend, to some degree; especially given that Dorothy generally tries to be everyone’s friend, within reason.
Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been is not on boats.
For the sake of clarity, I would not actually condone something like that. Nautica can draw whatever fanart she wants, and would not actually deserve people saying she should die for it.
I’m…pretty sure that the correct course of action in the case of accidentally bringing up a spoiler is to not then put further spoiler-y details in all caps immediately beneath.
That is how toy company make money. Creating fully original action figures is more expensive than just using existing molds and making superficial changes.
Especially since Blurr would have made a much better Velocity…
I think they could have made a good one out Triggerhappy instead… but then it’d have to be a wider release.
Now if third party companie could stop fellating G1 for a minute maybe someone could gimme a bloody worthwhi Nautica! Com’on Mastermind Creation, Iron Factory, you guys do IDW! What’s taking so long!
What the hell, Amber? Are you blaming *him* for all your years of trauma? Did you think he was holding it against you and now that you’ve paif off your “debt” you’re done with him?
Coz that’s what this looks like.
I hope Dina’s home because you could use some human interaction, but I don’t think you can handle anything more than “light physical contact.” Dina’s nice and quiet and sympathetic.
“The tooth is out, the hole will heal” is a favorite of mine about needing to put up with a sharp stab of discomfort to solve a long-festering problem. I hope Amber doesn’t think she’s getting better on her own. I worry she’s so far down she’s not it even thinking of that in a proper way.
Maybe not. The whole conceit behind Amazi-Girl was to channel Amber’s worst aspects into something good. At this point I won’t be surprised if she decides she has to be Amazi-Girl 100% of the time.
Of course, that isn’t working at all and i anything has made her worse.
part of my mind is still thinking that way; I realised today it’s just asleep at the moment. maybe I should round up some evidence against that while it sleeps.
Right, but somehow it seems like she’s resentful of *him* – like now I’ve paid you back, I no longer need you in my life. And she walks away.
yes she blames herself for not saving him at the time, but if she has felt all this time that she owes *him* something, then she might somehow resent him as one might resent someone who you feel has a claim on you, and who is a reminder of your failure.
This is such a rejection of Ethan and his friendship, it’s frightening.
I don’t think it has anything really to do with Ethan, just her completely effed up head.
Yeah, that’s pretty close to my read of it. I’ve been reading it as her rejecting the attempts to show affection more than the people showing it.
She hates herself so much that seeing people she cares about try to show they care about her is upsetting. It makes her a bit angry that they’re acting that way towards someone she feels is undeserving of it, and who will only end up hurting them in the end. It’s just that she happens to be the someone in question.
Doesn’t it seem like Ethan is glad she’s alive, but she is more concerned about the risk of her going to jail for her violence? Is that implying that Ethan values her life, while that is of little-no concern for Amber?
Or is it just confidence from her side? :S
I took it to mean thet she took the bolded ‘here’ in panel 3 to mean that Ethan was glad that she wasn’t incarcerated, instead of the ‘Thank God you’re alive!’ way he meant it to be.
OT: What new fresh hell will I wake up to tomorrow? Like, I’m trying to hold on and feel Chelsea Manning about things, but I’m just watching all my rights being shredded by a fascist coup who has subverted any hope of democracy or repairing this and is getting worse by the second. Especially since I know I don’t have it in me to violently resist for my own safety for the exact reasons Amber is so broken in the comic.
Yeah, the muting worries me… a lot.
Panel 1: Like, here, for one brief moment she allows herself to be excited, to be awed, to be touched, but it fades so quickly into ash and it’s so heartbreaking. She’s so convinced of her own worthlessness that whatever Ethan can do to reach out can’t reach her.
Panels 2-3: And Ethan reaching out here is adorable. He’s never really known what to say to reach out to Amber, but he doesn’t stop trying and that’s something Amber needs right now. Someone who’s going to try and connect with her even after she goes through a patch of trying to push everyone away in an act of self-hatred, but not in a boundary violating way.
Panels 5-6: And those eyebrows as she transforms the toy, that rejection of kindness because she doesn’t view herself as worthy, deliberately eliding the emotional aspect that Ethan is worried about (and right to be worried about) to the merely lawful. She’s not hurt, she’s not in jail, that’s all that matters right? Just like last time. It’s a very her dad way of looking at things, because she’s not ready to be seen as salvageable in the emotional sense. Because she views herself as tainted and broken and bob damn have I been there.
Panel 7: Oof, this is a masterful rewriting of Ethan’s gesture to make it toxic. Instead of a gift out of worry and concern and hope she was okay, it’s an attempt to buy her protection. And the thing is, I doubt she believes this, but it makes a good origin point to reject the kindness and push others away.
Because she views herself as dangerous and toxic for others, as a monster who should not be receiving kindness, because all she can do is destroy and harm and be violent. And all she can do is shove people away to protect them getting sucked into her and getting harmed like her dad sucked others into him and harmed them.
And it’s such a twisted view of herself, but given her origins, I know exactly why she views that to be the case.
Panels 8-9: And oof, this is rough, the visual of pushing away from the light into her dark bedroom, her back turned, Ethan sitting there with the toy. It’s such a good capturing of shoving someone away. And the way of it twisting with her insecurity about the convenience store, acting as if that clears some “debt” on her soul for not acting is just worrying on nine different levels.
Like, most importantly, it implies that she can be done with Ethan because now Ethan doesn’t ‘”have to hang with her out of pity” and the debt is clear thus justifying future pushing away. It also falls into Blaine’s narrative of the event, that her natural freeze response was a sign of weakness and her having a trauma-fueled fight response is the more “mature” and “O’Malley” response. Thus that it is a sign that she is tainted and broken and becoming him.
Panel 2 Ethan even tried to set it up so that they would hang out in the future (what with visitation rights to the toy). Ethan is Good People, even though right now Amber can’t really understand his present or his presence.
I am so sorry for all you have to deal with. I love your analysis, and learn a lot from it. Appropriate gesture of support, but I hope you are getting good solid support beyond that.
Hang in there. If nothing else there’s hope they’ll eat each other alive. Our Despondent Turd-in-Chief turns on his allies and lackeys like clockwork, and is very good at getting his orders overturned
My only consolation and it’s a small one, I know, is that Trump’s incompetence at so much is on display that he’s failed at many of his attempted acts. I can hope and pray he fails at this one too.
*sympathy via internet contact*
I will probably never be able to fully understand what you’re going through right now, but what I do know is that it hurts. It hurts a lot, and it hurts for a lot of people. I’ve seen it in family, friends, students and even strangers. And I want you to know that anything I can do to help this pain go away, I will do.
…
And I also want to apologize for yesterday, when I ended up ranting under your analysis comment. That was selfish and disrespectful of me to do, even if I was in a very bad headspace. I’m sorry.
Don’t worry about it, it was all good and yeah this is all really scary and bad for so many. Like, I have friends who might not make it with the current policies. It’s all… yeah… *supportive hug*
*supportive hug back* I hope you and your friends make. I hope, I hope this mess can be sorted out somehow. If it helps at all, I’ve been doing more volunteer work as an ally since November. And I’ve been donating almost all of my income that’s not necessary for food or rent to pro-LGBT organizations. I’m still going to be working at that bar as well as being a teacher next year, and all of us employees (bouncers, bartenders, and waiters: about ten in total) talked to the manager and owner about how to make the safer for our LGBT patrons. I may also be calling both the Michigan (where I currently am and most of my family lives) and California senators and representatives a bit too much now that I think about it.
ACLU and Trans Lifeline are good. So’s Trevor Project.
Also, if you’re on social media, yell at your American friends to call their representatives and senators and tell them to oppose this bullshit. Also this nonsense regarding healthcare.
I think I’m glad amber lives in a comic strip, where things *will* get better and the author promised no deaths. I wish we could all escape into there.
TW, just in case: the rest of my comment discusses BS claims of “emotional manipulation”.
with amber back, and a bizarre thread on another comic… I’m kinda wondering if this messed-up sense of self-worth is the origin of the awful toxic idea that any display of emotion = emotional manipulation. amber.. she’s so determined not to protect herself here, not to place any value on anything about herself except in what can be sacrificed for the dubious benefit of others. I worry that she might start thinking that anyone she hasn’t successfully driven away has been “tricked” into liking her somehow. (my brain was trying to do a bit of that recently, but I’m not prone to acting on it, and I take most of my ideas with a truckload of salt.)
is that how people end up with such weird ideas about communication? hating themselves so much they try to eradicate anything about them that might inspire sympathy? some perverse attempt to compensate for privilege by handicapping themselves?
then again, maybe they were just trolls.
there’s a brandon sanderson book where the main character views even honesty as another form of manipulation. it’s a very… odd… sort of perspective. especially since it’s not entirely clear how much of what she says is what she believes, and how much is itself intended as manipulation (I suspect a lot of it is both).
You’ve got people who love you. I hope this fuckery fails to stand and there are people who will not stop fighting this. You’re valid and so are your worries, but please don’t give up.
For what it is worth, Sect. of Defense Mattis’s response (translated from politicese): “Huh? What? No. Well, he’s my boss, so yes, I think, but NO! I mean WTF?”
to be fair we don’t know what has been happening to her the past few days cause if i remember right its been about half a week since the stabbity stabbity stab stab stab
But if the camera saw that, then it also saw Amber lock the door behind her, disarm her attacker, and instead of getting behind the door make a conscious choice to use the knife on a defenseless person.
I know he totally deserved what Amber did to him, but the law probably wouldn’t see it that way. Especially if his family decided to press charges.
i mean, like. just cause she had the knife doesn’t mean he was defenseless. if you assume all men are stronger than all women, then amber using whatever advantage she had could easily be seen as self defense, i think.
i mean i’m pretty sure that’s why the stand your ground law is a thing
I’m pretty sure he announced that he had access to the building, and that he intended to attack their friend when he was done with them. So Amber would have to get on the other side of the door, make an effort to block the door, and either hope there is no other door he can access to get to Joyce, or leave Dorothy to hold the door by herself when going to protect Joyce. All this would ultimately just let him attack them more on his terms.
Actually, the cameras saw her push her friend through the door, block it so she couldn’t get back out to risk herself and then be attacked with a knife by Ryan. They saw her take the knife and they saw him get cut. There was certainly no opportunity to get through the door after disarming him – they were in close combat by then.
They also saw what happened from then on, which we haven’t. It’s quite possible he continued struggling with her – trying to get the knife back.
It’s also worth considering that, given Ryan didn’t flee (because we saw Amber still backed up against the door), chances are he was still trying to fight Amber and get to Dorothy.
Well, Enya, she was a juvenile and those records are sealed for a reason. Because in America if you let the cops have access to that kind of information then historically they’ll use it to persecute minority kids and lock them away for life.
I guess, even though she did it in front of a whole bunch of cops. I’m just feeling annoyed that nothing significant seemed to happen during the time skip, and Amber’s mental health issues are apparently still going untreated.
I think that Willis is being realistic here (a clear goal of DoA over the more ‘comic book’ Walkyverse). Mental health problems often go undiagnosed and untreated for years or even decades until something unfortunate happens.
One of Amber’s problems – the main bad thing she learned from her father – is the belief that she has to face down and defeat these demons on her own. Blaine seems to have taught her that seeking help is an act of personal weakness and she’s internalised that to an alarming degree.
I’m actually kind of happy that nothing significant seemed to happen during the skip – significant things should happen on screen.
It’s also worth considering that if wasn’t treated as self-defense, the consequence wouldn’t be Amber getting mental health treatment, it would be Amber on trial and if convicted spending years in prison with little if any treatment.
Attacking ONE person with a knife previously after a traumatic event is not a ‘history of attacking people with knives’, is likely a sealed record due to her young age if it was recorded at all because you know, it was less than 5 minutes after her friend was held hostage in front of her eyes, you can probably guess why they would think it was just a reaction to the trauma she just experienced.
Also, someone who is ‘disarmed’ is not defenseless – they can still physically try to wrestle the weapon off you again – it is not impossible to kill someone by beating them to death either so his arms and legs were still perfectly capable of harming her and Ryan easily could have removed the book from the door and attacked or used Dorothy as a hostage if she didn’t stand her ground as well – Dorothy was defenseless because she was frozen but ‘Ryan’ wasn’t. ‘RYAN’ DIDN’T STOP BEING A THREAT JUST BECAUSE THE WEAPON WASN’T IN HIS HAND. And thinking someone is no longer a threat because they aren’t holding the weapon any more is foolish – it gives an advantage, but it isn’t impossible to take it or turn it back against the person holding it considering Amber herself did that to start with!
Please Amber, these people don’t properly understand what’s going on in your mind but they care about you. Because you’re worth caring about. You aren’t a monster, monsters don’t question their actions. And AmaziGirl isn’t golden, because she left you when you needed her the most. You aren’t your father.
It sounds to me that Amber is still processing in her own mind what happened and what it means. I don’t think that she’s come to solid conclusions; she’s just in shock and a mass of confusing and contradictory emotions right now and that, in its own way, is worse for her.
At least she’s been able to express (probably for the first time) the impelling power of her guilt about the convenience store incident.
Daniel here. Had a random thought – it appears well known around the area Ryan The Outed Rapist was caught, on the grounds, & also most likely that he was stabbed by someone HE was trying to stab. Meaning word of this will most likely have spread to Sal by now. She might even know it was Amber…
Considering SAL was also stabbed by Amber, probably still has a scar considering she always wears the gloves, will she FINALLY make the connection between Amber & the kid her age who stabbed her hand after her robbery? And if she thinks about what Amazigirl has said, will Sal work out her identity too? Perhaps even tell Amber to start putting the mask back on, considering all things…
Yeah, I’m thinking about all these potentual consequences to Sal learning about Ryan getting stabbed, Screwball is freezing up over a “fellow” Cybertronian getting his head pulled off… 😛
Sal strikes me as the sort of personality who would want to leave the past in the past (as much as she can – I don’t think she’s as over it as she tries to make out, given that we occasionally see her rubbing the scar). That said, Sal’s reaction to Amber having never really left the parking lot of that convenience store might be an interesting exploration of her character and how she views those events.
Not at all sure why the rapist getting cut up with his own knife would make Sal think Amber was the kid from the robbery. I mean, there’s a bit of a coincidence vibe, but that’s all.
A related wondering: doesn’t Sal know the name of the girl that stabbed her? Maybe her parents learned the name “Amber O’Malley” while dealing with the criminal justice system, but didn’t tell her (or Walky or Billie). It certainly seems that no one from Sal’s circle knows that Amber from down the hall is the girl who stabbed Sal.
………the disarming comment makes me worry that it was…how do i put this….an actual disarming
oh ryan boy, where did your hand go?
it’ll never perv on any girl again.
i don’t think we can call this justice,
but that may be something we’ll never know.
Amber has to realize the violent part of her isn’t Blaine. It is HER and she can use that violence to kill over and over again without being like Blaine. *realizes Dexter may not be the best inspiration for her*
What Amber desperately needs right now is for her friends to refuse to let her isolate herself. By all means, give her distance and privacy (she probably needs to think about stuff) but don’t let her just shut herself away. Have a relay of visitors to ensure she is okay and have people march her down to the canteen for meals with the most supportive group you can put together (recommended: Dorothy, Danny, Ethan and maybe Joyce; Becky would likely put her foot in her mouth and Sal would just trigger a flashback). Make sure that Amber realises she isn’t being rejected and, if she asks why, make sure that you explain it to her.
….
I don’t like the sound of this. Even if Amber acknowledges that the outside fact is “It was self-defence”, a few panels earlier she still called herself a monster, so this just sounds like an automatic response, instead of the truth.
But worries me most is, that she calls giving Ethan Nautica back “being even” – as if their friendship is being done with that. I do hope Ethan persists and maybe even forces the figure onto her, because she obviously is out to isolate herself completely (as some have noted already above).
Yes – worrisome! If she possesses a toy to which Ethan has visitation rights, that’s a loose end that isn’t tied up. Much easier to give it back to him.
Agreed. Another example of Amber’s “logic” leaning more towards crazy, rather than the rational and reasonable processes we like to associate with our good friend, Logic.
That ..is bit of a crappy, abelist way to say that.
It’s not as if well-adjusted, neurotypical people never have strong emotions that get in the way of good judgment or cold, mechanical logic. We’re not machines, nor should we try to be.
Hell, in general, there’s a good deal of evidence that even without strong emotions much of our supposed “rational and reasonable processes” are an after the fact rationalization of what we’ve already decided. We use them to justify our decisions and preconceptions, not to reach them.
They’re a wonderful tool, but harder to use than we normally think.
So, I come back from another hospital stay, go back in the comic a bit to refresh my memory, and find…THIS.
Wow. Just…Wow.
I’ve been severely disabled for well over ten years. I never thought anyone would insult me by calling me an “crappy ableist” but here it is. I wonder why?
Was it not clear I was simply agreeing with CoMa’s post above? The very first word in my post indicated that. Why didn’t you have something nasty to say to them?
Did the word “logic” become a filthy insulting word when I wasn’t looking?
These insults–which appear to be about as nasty as Mr. Willis will allow in these comments–are just baffling and hurtful.
I suffer from severe depression and PTSD, so I can completely relate to Amber. I’m also Severely and Completely Disabled according to Social Security government speak. I’m a cripple. Yeah, that’s what we call ourselves. Fuck soft PC speak. We’re cripples. We laugh at all the PC terms that try to soften that fairly grim reality.
So, from one very short post, you created an entire imaginary persona for me. A Straw-Man personality that you could safely and smugly insult and knock over. I guess I can now add being called “ableist” to the imaginary bucket list of the imaginary Straw Man persona you so kindly created for me. Thank you sooo much, Fart Captor; and thejeff for chiming in to support her bullying.
I’m not some kind of unemotional Robot, nor would I ever advocate that. I was agreeing with another post. Amber is very ill, and her actions portrayed here had just deeply hurt her best friend, as well as herself.
You were both as cruel as you could be, without being banned. When you choose to be cruel and hurtful, it matters to someone. This time, it was me.
You are both smug, cruel, hurtful, hateful bullies. I do have feelings, and you hurt me badly enough to get rid of me. Well done. You succeeded. To be absolutely crystal clear, I am GONE. Maybe forever. If I ever do return, you can bet I won’t look anywhere near the comments section.
Mr. Willis, thank you for creating an exceptional comic. I’m sorry I won’t be reading it again for a long time, perhaps forever. Goodbye.
Am I a bad person for wanting to see that security footage? I really want to see the moment Karma comes for Ryan, getting his butt seriously kicked (and slashed), getting arrested and because of his own stupidity, nothing can be done to the person who did it.
Walky said he would have liked to see it. Dorothy responded that while she can understand the feeling the idea of seeing it and actually seeing it are two different things.
We’re also distanced from it both by knowing it’s fictional and by the non-realistic art style.
And even actual security camera footage is likely far less traumatic than seeing it in person in real time – blurry, bad camera angle, etc.
Given how she’s trying to distance herself from Danny, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amber thinks “being even” means Ethan should similarly not speak to her.
If Dina isn’t in the room accidentally in stealth mode about consol/terrify Amber I will be sad because it has been so long since seeing Dina and she is just so precious and as I interpret her would definitely help her friend, even if she doesn’t know how
Head over to Questionable Content for a break guys. Happy things are going on there. Neurotypicals treating neurodivergents well and new businesses opening up and Pintsoze.
We all spool need a break from both this and real life…
I don’t hate it because of it’s darkness or whatever I hated it because it was a trash fire of a storyline where Faye’s boss suddenly becomes an evil monster,
because disagreeing with Faye is a mortal sin, and then god shows up and sorts the whole thing out.
I can understand, if not agree, with most of that, but I’d question if there was anything sudden about Corpse Witch becoming an evil monster. When we finally got the big confrontation scene, she’d been negging Bubbles for how long?
I mean there’s a difference between being kind of a jerk in your illegal fight ring and evil controlling mastermind that robot god decides to personally deal with.
I looked back just now to see at what point Faye turns on Corpse Witch and CW switches from Controlling Jerk Boss to Villain.
It was when May made a second trip to the Fighting Ring to finish her repairs, and Corpse Witch began to threaten her if she did ever “breathe a word of this” to anyone.
And Corpse Witch doesn’t suddenly become a monster. We have it revealed to us just what Corpse Witch has done to Bubbles.
I’m with you on God-bot appearing and fixing everything. It wasn’t just a cheap resolution, it’s so far been wasted potential, because God-bot has yet to appear again and you don’t just ignore something like that.
I have to disagree re making God-bot a regular character. I usually don’t care for Deus Ex Machina, but Creepy Mysterious God-bot was unusually well done, and had an interesting personality with surprising and entertaining quirks.
However, God-bot has Too Much Power to be a regular character. Fixing EVERYTHING with a fingersnap gets dull quick.
Besides, God-bot clearly has a life of Their own. I mean, They’ve got a puppy-dog, and everything. They have their own stuff to do. They’re not going to pop back into the puny lives of lesser beings, unless They have a darn good reason. Or They can get in some good smirking. Tevs.
I also totally agree that Corpse Witch didn’t suddenly become a monster. Corpse Witch was always a monster. We simply didn’t know the extent and depth of her long-term, on-going monstrousness to Bubbles until it was finally revealed.
I like Jeph’s work. QC is fundamentally different from DoA’s slice of life realism in that it incorporates a fair amount of fantasy/SF; it’s also fundamentally similar in that both strips have consistently realistic characterizations.
I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to like both strips, any Diaper Eating and Butt Stew aside. 🙂
The mighty Willis is showing an astounding, inspiring, and perhaps slightly terrifying amount of forbearance today. He has demonstrated amazing tolerance towards mystifying insults directed at his friend, Jeph; and pleasantly corrected nigh-heretical Transformer remarks.
I do hope this mellowness is a side-effect of enjoying an especially pleasant day. We can all use a few of those sometimes.
Of all the red flags in this series, this is the the one that is acknowledged as such in the alt text: someone is given a Nautica toy and she gives it back.
I agree. Amber giving Nautica back is JUST WRONG, especially considering her initial awed reaction. Joint custody should eliminate Amber’s disinclination to accept such a present, even from her oldest friend, Ethan.
Although, I do suspect that Nautica’s character is more important to Amber than the actual uninspired retooled toy. A properly tooled Nautica, who looks much more like she does in the comics, would be a far more desirable toy–maybe even Amber wouldn’t be able to resist her then. As it is now, the Nautica toy is more desirable as a symbol of Nautica’s character (which would have especial appeal for Amber) than as a truly attractive Nautica figure in of itself. That whole rarity thing always affects desirability, too.
Well, is the implicit goal to achieve ever-excruciatingly longer titles; at minimum, each title candidate must exceed the previous book’s title length just to qualify for consideration? Well, here’s an early contender (Bonus–this statement applies to every character):
“Sometimes I feel like I need to step back a few feet to really get a hold on the sheer senses-shattering multifacetedness of your countless neuroses.”
Sarah to Joyce http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/sandals/
Perhaps this provides a ponderously portentous, prodigiously practical possibility?
And yet, somehow, I feel Willis will magnificently exceed this initial effort. Exceed it so profoundly that contrast shall pale and shrink it to a tiny, feeble shadow of delicate prose; fragile as the daisy before the bulldozer; failing to leave the faintest, frail, gossamer cobweb traceries of passage, as this comparatively feeble musing is weakly cast among the many, mighty,
myriad, witty, weighty, wondrous, titanic, towering, tome-like utterances his characters will yet opine before Book 7 concludes.
Who knows what stunning feats of verbosity and nounsense still await?
Only The Willis Knows.
I’m actually surprised Amber didn’t get into trouble in this situation. If he still had the knife in hand, and she happened to have a knife on her, then, yeah, that would be reason to stab him, but, after disarming him, there really was no reason to use force unless he continued to come at her. I don’t know. I’m not even necessarily saying she was definitely in the wrong, just that I’m surprised she didn’t get in trouble.
Huh, so accepting the gift wasn’t right for her, since Ethan view on what happened ran contrary to what had happened when she was challenged by that cell-phone guy.
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“but… I opened the box for you…”
Transformers fans are a lot less picky about keeping things in the box than other toy fandoms, I’ve found.
You can’t transform them in the box!
Has there ever been a box that was actually a transformer… -carrier, or something?
well a boombox transformer that had a casette tape transformer in it
that is very cute.
I doubt Ravage would agree with you. SG Ravage…
Maybe you can’t
i recently found a toy i forgot i had unopened. a pokemon mewtwo bouncy ball. from when only the first 151 pokemon existed.
I had a MIB Dragon Megatron I’d left at my parents’ house for almost twenty(!) years
resold for like $120
I keep wondering what I should squat on next–my mother was rather hit and miss with her hoarding selection
Those bouncy balls were sweet. …. my little sister and I sawed through the few we had to get the tiny figures inside, so we could have baby pokemon for the families that lived in our block towns.
That’s cause they make them too cool to leave in plastic. Plus, we’re like the original fidget cubers.
There are fidget cubes too?
Yeah. They’re not as annoying as fidget spinners, so they don’t get as much hate, and therefore not as much publicity.
This only happens for me if I bought two. Which is extremely rare.
looks like Amber isn’t a real fan.
She’s more into Anode and Lug.
Which is strange because they are the worst.
Though I suppose I could have picked a better day to voice my dislike of them than the day we finally got Trans robots in Transformers that aren’t Simon Furman’s terrible Arcee.
Ah heh.
I just assumed you didn’t like them because you are Whirl and Whirl only likes Whirl (and maybe Cyclonus a little).
They don’t bug me. First couple of issues maybe, because they hogged a bunch of “screentime” when there were already so many story arcs, so I was annoyed to be spending time with new characters when I wanted to learn what was up with the old ones.
But they’ve grown on me. Their interactions in this issue were actually pretty sweet.
They just really don’t bring anything new to the series, but they still eat up so much panel time. They’re just cute snarky robots and that’s everyone in this series.
they’re the best ones and you’re gravely mistaken
I refuse any bot in that position that isn’t Tailgate.
it’s true, tailgate is literally gravely mistaken
how dare
Don’t attract the attention of the Willis with Transformer comments. You will distract him from his goal of having his comic buffer pass beyond the heat death of the universe.
This is the best conversation.
And the saddest.
(Tailgate! Bawwww!)
UHH.
Did she just keep the Titan Master?!
I think it turns into a driver in the little cockpit.
It’s just she pops it off the collar and we never see her put it in the cockpit. Could have been a thing she did. Keep the head, give the transtector to Ethan…
He should have brought a Funko Pop Mei from Overwatch.
Well, I mean… Everybody needs one of those.
Okay cool, good that they know she did it in self-defense…. but the fact that she’s walking free means she at least didn’t kill him, right? Because even self-defense that could ruin her life
Rachel described Ryan as having been caught, not found dead, so yeah.
I suspect the “you shouldn’t have worried” isn’t directed just at ethan here. 😉
…and now I’m noticing that she said “shouldn’t have” and not “didn’t need to” or something completely different like “it’s okay, there wasn’t anything to worry about”. not sure how much of that is picking words that fit on-panel, and how much is amber actually believing he ought to not have worried about her (because she thinks so little of herself) :/
Eh, speaking from experience, picking “shouldn’t have” sounds like, “I don’t want you to be worried, even though I’m perfectly aware something’s wrong.”
The limit of how many words can squish into a panel, and how many strips Willis uses for a conversation arc, leave us with a lot to gnaw on.
“Shouldn’t have worried” could also be “Thank you for your concern, but you didn’t have to worry about visiting me in ICU for injuries Ryan inflicted, as i knew I was not in danger of that”. Of course the psychic danger is another issue still.
I thought he was glad to visit her HERE (as in Dorm) rather than jail. Which her comment of “…self defense” cleared the no jail part.
“You’d be surprised what you can live through.”
No joke, humans are extremely durable and can take a lot more damage than we think sometimes.
We’re essentially set up in such a way that, in appropriate circumstances, we can survive impalement, so long as we don’t lose too much blood before we can do some mind patching up. Our scar tissue direct look pretty, but it’s a very effective survival mechanism. We’re all some tough assholes, given the right situation, and we’re absolutely fascinating.
But we’re also incredibly fragile creatures in slightly different circumstances.
A horrific wound can heal with little problem, but a much smaller seeming one just a little differently placed can be quickly fatal. (Or, prior to modern medicine, either could be very slowly fatal.)
I mean, being born is also very slowly fatal, so.
It doesn’t really matter whether she killed him but whether her response was proportionate. If killing him was the only way to save her or someone else’s life, then it’s self defense and she’s off the hook. If he’s only injured but that level of force wasn’t necessary, she’s in for… whatever it’s called in her jurisdiction (don’t forget she was using a deadly weapon against an unarmed guy, doesn’t matter that he brought the knife).
But that would be after a trial, if it comes to that. To have her detained before that requires good reasons and does not depend on whether Ryan survived. So probably not, given she’s a white college student who clearly didn’t initiate the attack.
The fact that he brought the knife and threatened her with it demonstrated that he posed a threat to her life, and remained so as long as he continued attacking her, even after being disarmed. Taking the knife away only made him a more manageable threat, but still a significant and potentially deadly one.
It sure as hell does matter that he brought the knife. It means there’s a knife in the fight. She can’t handicap herself by keeping the knife in hand and trying to fight one-handed. She can’t just drop it on the ground, where he can more easily retrieve it. There’s no actual way to deescalate from a knife fight. Maybe, given time, she could throw it elsewhere, but that still poses more of a risk and is hard to do if he’s still trying to gain control of it.
Obviously (or apparently not) I didn’t mean she should have dropped the knife to make the fight fair or something, this fight wasn’t for sport. If she had no choice it’s self defense, no matter what.
However we haven’t seen what exactly went down and remember this is Amber (and explicitly not Amazi-Girl, she said so herself), who is struggling with violent episodes. I wouldn’t automatically trust that she didn’t go beyond the minimum force necessary and was only saved from consequences by the circumstances.
I’m sure she did – or at least that she thinks so.
On the other hand, you really aren’t limited to some abstract “minimum force necessary”. The law generally gives some leeway, especially when it’s clearly obvious who was the aggressor and that the threat to life was real. It’s also important to remember that fights like that take place in seconds and involve mostly adrenaline and (trained) reflex
Nor do they account for Amber being a (low end) superhero level combatant who is fairly casually capable of taking on a punk with a knife or multiple attackers. That she was never really in danger is something she knows, but the law doesn’t consider. That’s a large part of why she blames herself for losing control.
Of course, that raises the question of didn’t Amazi-girl come forward and handle the situation more gracefully? This isn’t like the fight with Blaine where AG lost control to Amber while fighting him in a haze of flashbacks.
I’m thinking, considering what Amber did with Sal’s knife, that in the future Ryan may have to wear gloves to hide an ugly scar too.
UI isn’t in the UK or Canada or somewhere “proportionate response” is a thing.
If someone comes at you with a knife in most open spaces in the USA, and you can’t retreat, you can kill the POS in self defense. You don’t have to measure your response; most times, attackers choose victims who they expect to be helpless against them and are unable to respond proportionately.
And a trial is unnecessary in most self defense cases. If the evidence is consistent with your story, why go to trial? Even Zimmerman was going to be released based on the evidence matching his story; he went to trial because of the emotional reaction to his family’s (understandable) anguish.
And that trial confirmed the original story.
Zimmerman was going to be released because of racism. Also why he was acquitted. This was the same state which – under the same law – had put a black woman in prison with a 25-year sentence because she had fired a warning shot, which injured no one in an attempt to scare off her ex, who had broken into her home and refused to leave.
Amber, on the other hand, is white, and the incident was caught on camera, and Ryan’s sinister-looking facial scar definitely worked in her favor as well. It appears that the police STILL ended up searching Amber’s room, looking for signs that she was the “real” aggressor. If they’d found some kind of weapon, illegal drugs, or perhaps even prescription psych medication, Amber may have had to spend a night or two in jail while they decided who to charge.
Zimmerman was acquitted because of the facts presented at trial, including Martin’s best friend’s testimony. Racism exists, but the more it is claimed when facts are otherwise the more it is diluted as a rallying cry.
I don’t know about the other case you mention.
SHIT!!!!!
:[ I know..
:C
*plays “I Shot The Sheriff” on the hacked Muzak*
BTW, today is Batman Day.
Support Your Local Vigilante
Actually, it’s Harley Quinn day.
Is that… Is that actually a thing?
Ya know what? I’m going to refuse fact checking you, because Harley Quinn>Batman, and therefore anybody who disagrees has to be wrong.
Support your local unhinged psychiatrist.
If you do requests, ‘Don’t go breaking my heart’ should be today’s theme song.
The Mountain Goats have a song, “Your Belgian Things,” set to an approximation of “Don’t Don’t Go Breaking Up Heart” ‘s melody, which would actually be incredibly appropriate today as well.
*My. Thanks, prediction based autocorrect.
It is autocorrect I think, but I can really see The Mountain Goats actually writing a song called “Don’t don’t go breaking my heart” (i.e. double negative intended).
And now I have to listen to “My Belgian Things”, just for the feels.
So I’m not a Transformers person… is the head supposed to come off like that in panel 5?
The head turns into a smaller robot that pilots the bigger one.
Thanks^^
thank you mr who. i was wondering just what dina was.
That’s Doctor.
doctor what?
Strange.
oh right the guy played by Sherlock Holmes
No, that’s Iron Man.
Maybe. Who am I to judge?
Judy? Is that you?
I Dread the answer to that question.
Marshall Law?
First base.
What?
Every penny of it.
No. He’s on Second Base.
You sunk my Battle Ship!!
40 bucks, same as in town.
No, it’s Mr. Benjamin Who, and he flies around in a box with his magic wand.
Yeah, I was wondering that too… Thought she straight up decapitated it.
I thought the word used was eviscerated but decapitated would wourk as well if it was his little friend.
Evisceration is the removal of internal organs, typically referring to the organs of the abdominal cavity. Decapitation is removal of the head.
That’s the Titan Master gimmick. The heads turn into tinier robots. (Or, tiny robots turn into heads that can attack to larger robots.)
It’s based on the Headmasters gimmick from the original toyline, though basically any character who was part of one of the *masters sublines has become a Titan Master. (Headmasters, whose heads were tiny people, Targetmasters, whose guns were tiny people, and Powermasters, who had tiny people for engines.)
But not the Headmasters Junior… because who would want a Nightbeat and a modern Minerva? Right? >.>
Can we also just appreciate how stupid Ryan is for probably not even taking security cameras into consideration
rage can blind people. well extreme levels of emotions of any sort can from what i understand. but most of the time people think of rage since it is most likely to cause harm to others.
Sure, and I get that that can happen over a period of time as well as more immediately, but it’s not like this was a spur of the moment thing for him.
yes but some people can release all their emotions in a moment. others let it simmer and boil for a long time.
add in a superiority complex or panic about secrets being revealed and well…. panic can make people stupid.
There’s also the chance that he was planning to take care not to show his face on camera. Remember he had his hood up and was expecting to overpower amber with little trouble (of course based on his past experience, thinking a knife would be enough is yet another layer of stupid). Of course the footage would show his height and build and he was a prime suspect because of the whole situation, so yeah, not smart especially considering the level of impromptu planning he exhibited in the cell phone arc. I guess the point from behind the fourth wall is to get on with it…
Let’s also consider he thought a knife would be enough to take on the girl he assumed was amazigirl, who he needed backup to take down the last time. Hubris is a rough customer, man.
rageentitlement can blind people.Ryan knew what he was doing to both Joyce and Amber were wrong, so yeah, he probably took cameras into account.
I would rather appreciate the viral video of an attempted rapist getting disassembled with his own knife by one of the girls he came to rape.
While cathartic, would you REALLY want to watch anybody, even human scum, gettin’ stabbed?
Yes.
We’re sadists. We will enjoy it. Well, most of us, anyway.
Eh, I’m with you on this one. I might be happy that the bastard got what was coming to him, but I for one would not be watching that video. Now, video of an attempted rapist getting repeatedly kneed in the crotch on the other hand… 😉
Look how many people would gather at the center of Paris during the reign of Madame Guillotine, or showed up for lynchings or public hangings.
This is someone who knows he can get away with raping someone. Entitlement was built into him, so he probably never considered the consequences of this. Or never cared about how bad they could be to begin with cause he just wanted revenge on the women that “Wronged” him.
To be honest, I’ve spent five years attending a university full-time and have never considered the potential existence of security cameras at doorways to major buildings.
Granted, I’m no rapist/murderer, so I don’t really have reason to worry about them.
See, I started waving at the security cameras from my freshman year.
Of course, I was also the kid who made a map of the security cameras in my middle school, including which ones were out and blind spots, even though I didn’t do anything with that information.
I have been known to speed specifically in highway speed meter spots, and flip off the camera at the first end of it. I don’t do a great many immature things, but that’s one. (After the speed check section, I usually coast back down to 75mph)
The cameras caught him threatening them with a knife. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was identifiable from the cameras. He was presumably intending to leave, but Amber prevented that.
o.0
0.o
True, and that’s a point we can’t really know. I mean, I could drive to IU, get a job in security, and check out how identifiable people are in security footage. I am currently unemployed, after all. But I probably won’t.
*That said* the security cameras at the last high school I worked at (not as security, but right by their office) had cameras that would have made identifying someone at that distance pretty feasible. I guess he was wearing a hood, but his face was also full of Dramatic Lighting.
He was wearing a hoodie, which would have obscured his face from the camera.
Hoods do not work like in Assassin’s Creed, magically obscuring faces in supernatural darkness.
You, Sir, need a bigger hood.
You sayin’ I got a small hood?
Watch your nearest local news station for its nightly obligatory “Can you help ID this person?” segment. It’s amazing how many miscreants, ne’er-do-wells and other generally bad’uns fail to take into account that there might be a video camera just about any damn place.
Being a dumbass as well as vile has been a consistent trait for Ryan.
He did, that was why he was wearing a hoodie.
Can Amber have therapy please? I realize that people dealing with their problems in an appropriate way is not exciting, but I like Amber and want good things to happen to her.
It would be interesting to see her in the same group as Ruth, but I don’t know if that would happen, since they seem to be dealing with different sorts of issues.
Unlikely they’d be together unless there’s an open group for ragey survivors of ongoing abuse from their terrible patriarchs.
Much more likely they’d be separated by diagnosis, and they wouldn’t want to be there with somebody they know outside of the group, but hey, we can dream.
well, if they both get into an anger management group, provided by their college…
yeah, I wanna shove all the realistic details aside and get those two some therapy already.
(Plus I can’t see Amber signing up for group anything. Alas.)
And yes, same here on wanting to mandate them some helpful therapy.
She might have gotten a session or two already but all i will say is it is a good idea.
She definitely needs it, but convincing Amber that she should see a therapist is probably going to be difficult.
Yup. It’s looking more and more like she just spent a couple of days at home with Stacy, and, NO. Therapy. Safety. She needs this shit.
for some reason your post made me imagine a certain politician talking about her former volunteer and offering help to amazagirl
Now I’m imagining Robin as Senator Brandt to Amber’s Steve Rogers.
I’m guessing Amber won’t get help until Willis is done dragging her further and further down.
Not saying that therapy need be the end of her character, just that it would probably be mainly uphill from there.
I don’t know, sometimes with therapy you get worse before you get better.
Sometimes with shitty therapy, you just get worse.
Yeah my first thought reading this comic was WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GET THIS GIRL SOME THERAPY.
I think Amber’s been convinced that she doesn’t deserve therapy or that it wouldn’t help because she thinks she’s inherently broken. It may take a therapist to convince her that there’s hope, but how do you get her to a therapist to have that conversation? Ay, there’s the rub.
I too, greatly wish for Amber to receive massive amounts of therapy from a good therapist. ASAP. As in Amber’s Mom, go lay down the law Right Now. Appointment within a week if available; if not, call daily to check for cancellations.
Sadly, in many places, finding a really good therapist is almost as hard as finding a skilled and empathetic neurologist. But they do exist. Finding these rarities is a little easier now, with websites that allow patients to honestly rate their doctors and therapists.
Showing more than a very few therapy sessions makes for dull, yet boring comics. Gradual improvement as life proceeds, with very rare “WOW, Breakthrough!” moments works.
Amber so drastically needs help that both Danny and Ethan need to tell her Mom just how bad things are (well, almost; can’t see how they could tell Mom about Amazi-girl without parental freaking reaching unhelpful levels.) They’d have to caution Mom to strictest confidence, so Amber doesn’t angrily yank out her friendship life support. I think removing Amber from school would hurt her. If “What the/how the hell, Mom?” becomes a huge factor, bring in Ruthless, who’d likely be fine with taking blame. Neither she nor Amber have enough emotional investment in each other for it to matter, & Ruthless has enough mysterious RA powers, it’s just barely plausible–especially if Amber concerns herself more with freaking out at the prospect of therapy, compared to any Mom Reasons for insisting.
Maybe Mom had/still has therapy herself, it helped her break from Blaine, etc. etc., so combine that with what Mom’s seen and now knows herself–plus a knife fight? OK, Mom’s got plenty of justification, all on her lonesome. Ethan and Danny just need to cinch the matter.
The prospect of watching Amber spiral down into more and more self-loathing, destruction, solitude and “logic”patterns tending less towards logic and more towards crazy as her self-hatred increases… is not merely unpleasant, but may teeter over into cliche; Ruthless redux. Yes, I know stuff like this happens all too often. But there’re so many different people who care at least a little bit about Amber (even Sal, for crying out loud) and have a clue or more insight to her problems. Despite her best efforts, Amber’s never been as isolated as Ruth and Billie, so there’s no reason for another near-death brush or an actual suicide attempt. Mom’s got enough today to just put her foot down and lovingly yet firmly insist Amber go to a minimum of therapy. Making therapy a condition of non-school internet time or WOW or some equally important-to-Amber non-academic activity is probably the only way to ensure compliance–along with enduring some non-trivial number of Amber protest tantrums. Hopefully insurance will cover therapy, & most state universities provide at least that along with other basic health care.
It might get easier if Amber discovers therapy isn’t weird or even uncommon; that probably more people on her floor are in therapy than are not.
ehh, that sounds likely to backfire. you can’t coerce someone into therapy. you can make them go, but you can’t make them talk, and being there unwillingly is likely to put those walls up even higher.
also, I don’t think it’s fair to call her severe mental distress “tantrums”.
but your last sentence gives me an idea: dorothy is already in therapy. maybe her talking about that could help somehow… if amber doesn’t twist it into blaming herself for dorothy needing therapy. :/
or maybe take advantage of amazi-girl’s BS, and frame it as amber needing anger management skills to “protect” people. get a foot in the door that way, get her talking to some kind of professionals, and maybe that can build enough trust for her to start talking later.
I was thinking that Dorothy would be a good one to approach Amber on this. She knows the secret, she can present the therapy as a straightforward approach to dealing with the effects of any brush with violence, much like she did to Walky.
I’m not calling Amber’s mental distress tantrums, and I never would. She has had outbursts of rage (almost certainly PTSD related, given clues in both the art and flashback details), but I never thought of those as tantrums. So far, Amber has not yet thrown what I would call a tantrum.
I’m suggesting that her possible anger resistance and protest response to required therapy might include tantrums; which would be quite different from Amber’s PTSD flashbacks and associated rage outbursts we’ve previously seen.
I’m highly aware that coercing therapy is far from ideal. I never said I liked it or was happy about it. On the other hand, Ruth is still alive now, and she would be dead if her therapy had depended on her initial cooperation.
Sometimes a very sick and very stubborn patient has to be coerced into accepting treatment–at least initially. If the treatment is good enough, and eventually proves helpful enough, hopefully treatment is gradually accepted and coercion no longer required.
If a way can be found for Amber to begin therapy without any coercion–great! That’s the way to go. But what if that’s not possible? What if Amber makes it impossible?
Do we all just watch Amber die a little more every day until she manages to definitively end it all in a dramatic Amazi-girl spectacular–which will, of course, be deemed “accidental”? Or shall we wait until she ends her pain in a very quiet, but carefully planned and extremely effective Amber method?
Amber is realistically written as a person teetering on the brink. Warning signs keep piling up. growing ever-stronger and impossible to ignore. Willis has shown us many times and in as many ways as he can, that Amber suffers severe PTSD; the only thing left to try is having a magical psychiatrist pop in from the sidelines and provide her DSM diagnoses for us. It’s likely that Amber would also diagnose with depression, and other comorbid disorders, including anxiety and even a relatively mild case of DID aka MPD. By relatively mild, at least both personalities are aware of each other, and we haven’t seen Amber demonstrating memory loss or time lapses. Without going into the whole DSM alphabet soup, I will also mention that Amber demonstrates a truly distressing number of signs and symptoms of BPD. Amber is very ill indeed, and there is no doubt she is a suicide risk. Just how high a risk is still a question–but even 10% is still way too high, given how good Amber is at finishing up tasks she decides to set her mind to.
So if Amber won’t willingly choose therapy, wait until she attempts suicide and hope she fails? Those odds are very bad. Amber is just too goal-oriented and efficient at accomplishing what she sets out to do. “Cry for help” is less likely to apply to Amber. Amber is a Get The Job Done kind of girl.
If Amber can be convinced to willingly try therapy, of course that’s much better than coercion. But Amber’s self-loathing and self-hatred have become so extreme, they’re now interfering with her ability for rational thought. Amber is very, very sick. Her illness has a good chance to prevent her accepting treatment without some kind of major motivation; at least initially.
I think we’ve all watched Amber slowly and gradually get worse and worse, so that the extreme seriousness of where she’s finally found herself is probably not realized as easily or strongly than if she were a brand-new character fully presented as-is. Plus, Amazi-girl’s antics can be quite distracting.
That old analogy of the frog in a pot of water slowly heating to boil comes to mind; the temperature rises so slowly and gradually, the frog doesn’t realize his predicament until it’s too late and he’s already dead or almost gone.
What should Amber’s Mom do? Try to get Amber into therapy–but what if Amber refuses? Does Amber’s Mom have a moral responsibility to do all she can to get her child medical treatment, which appears more urgent the more it’s examined? There’s some grey area here–how much is Amber still a child, and how much is she an adult?
Amber is too young to drink, she is not supporting herself and is probably a dependent on Mom’s tax return. Yet if Amber were male, she would be old enough for the draft and to get her head blown off in a war.
It’s not an easy question. I’m going with:
1. Amber is very ill, has been for some time, and her illness is only getting worse, to the point it is now life-threatening.
2. Amber’s illness interferes with her ability for rational decision-making.
3. If Amber refuses treatment (therapy), *under the circumstances*, I think Dorothy’s parent-child responsibility outweighs Amber’s right to make all her own decisions. Amber needs therapy. She should be given every option to accept it freely. But if she absolutely refuses, then Dorothy has a responsibility to do all she can to get Amber into therapy. If she has to finally use coercion; well, in some sense, that’s a choice Amber’s forced.
Ruth is probably one of the few people just as stubborn as Amber. Ruth didn’t want therapy at first, either. And yet somehow, Ruth gradually, (and initially with obvious resentment,) did accept therapy and it helped her. She’s not “fixed” by any means. That would take years for even an approximation. But every day she stays alive is a chance to get a little better.
Same goes for Amber, if she can just get some help before it’s too late.
*Sigh.* Substitute “Stacy” for “Dorothy” in the above screed. Stacy is Amber’s Mom. Dorothy is Amizi-girl’s friend; and perhaps also Amber’s friend, to some degree; especially given that Dorothy generally tries to be everyone’s friend, within reason.
But…why Nautica had to die?
She’s not dead.
Perhaps being a boat is kind of like being dead
For most people, I suspect becoming a boat would have that effect.
Aaargh! Sponge… Bob… Movie… flashback! DAVID HASSELHOFF!!! Get it out of my brain!
*Breathes.*
I’m okay.
If it’ll help prevent future recurrences, maybe checking Youtube for Man From Atlantis could be the thing?
… helping!
Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been is not on boats.
Nautica had to die because she drew Rule 63 fanart of Dream Daddy.
For the sake of clarity, I would not actually condone something like that. Nautica can draw whatever fanart she wants, and would not actually deserve people saying she should die for it.
Just for clarity.
so, disarming as in a weapon or an actual arm? why is wordplay my greatest concern right now?
I keep forgetting to add spoiler tags. SPOILER AHEAD:
ADAM CUTS YANG’S ARM OFF AT THE ELBOW, IN THE SEASON 3 FINALE.
I’m…pretty sure that the correct course of action in the case of accidentally bringing up a spoiler is to not then put further spoiler-y details in all caps immediately beneath.
“She BURNS!”
Her eyes, are flame.
Her heart, is flame.
She will do what had to be done!
Only if Amazigirl is mutating into James Bond. (“Why, Moneypenny, I thought I was positively… disarming!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIfSQW499Xc
Titan Master. Yeah. The head is a little mini-robot with a number of means of interacting with the larger figure.
at least she talked. and as marge on the simpsons said. something long the lines of
as long as everyone is watching everyone else justice will prevail.
not quite perfect since it was just security cameras and not someone with a phone camera but still.
also glad she at the least was able to have a conversation
Don’t forget about Dorothy, she’s an eyewitness who had a front row seat to the whole confrontation.
Aw jeez, she wants to be punished, doesn’t she.
Oh… gawd, that interpretation does make a lot of sense. Damn…
Phrasing
This can only go well…
Here is a video that shows how it is transformed. Yes, the head does come off.
I checked out the video.
Its kind of sad that her figure is literally Blur, a color change, and some added wing bits.
That is how toy company make money. Creating fully original action figures is more expensive than just using existing molds and making superficial changes.
Especially since Blurr would have made a much better Velocity…
I think they could have made a good one out Triggerhappy instead… but then it’d have to be a wider release.
Now if third party companie could stop fellating G1 for a minute maybe someone could gimme a bloody worthwhi Nautica! Com’on Mastermind Creation, Iron Factory, you guys do IDW! What’s taking so long!
What the hell, Amber? Are you blaming *him* for all your years of trauma? Did you think he was holding it against you and now that you’ve paif off your “debt” you’re done with him?
Coz that’s what this looks like.
I hope Dina’s home because you could use some human interaction, but I don’t think you can handle anything more than “light physical contact.” Dina’s nice and quiet and sympathetic.
No, she feels she failed him at the robbery, and owes him for that. She’s blaming herself for that. She’s not blaming her pain on anyone else.
Not even Sal. She only blames herself.
But this isn’t the end, is it?
“The tooth is out, the hole will heal” is a favorite of mine about needing to put up with a sharp stab of discomfort to solve a long-festering problem. I hope Amber doesn’t think she’s getting better on her own. I worry she’s so far down she’s not it even thinking of that in a proper way.
I hope Amber doesn’t think she’s getting better on her own.
I doubt that Amber thinks she’s even capable of getting better, period.
Maybe not. The whole conceit behind Amazi-Girl was to channel Amber’s worst aspects into something good. At this point I won’t be surprised if she decides she has to be Amazi-Girl 100% of the time.
Of course, that isn’t working at all and i anything has made her worse.
I’m not sure Amber thinks she’s not well, as opposed to just being bad. She doesn’t need to be healed, but controlled or isolated.
Yeah, Amber doesn’t think of it as “I have a problem to be solved”, she thinks she is the problem and there’s no hope for her.
I have deep personal experience with that.
*agos*
part of my mind is still thinking that way; I realised today it’s just asleep at the moment. maybe I should round up some evidence against that while it sleeps.
Right, but somehow it seems like she’s resentful of *him* – like now I’ve paid you back, I no longer need you in my life. And she walks away.
yes she blames herself for not saving him at the time, but if she has felt all this time that she owes *him* something, then she might somehow resent him as one might resent someone who you feel has a claim on you, and who is a reminder of your failure.
This is such a rejection of Ethan and his friendship, it’s frightening.
I don’t think it has anything really to do with Ethan, just her completely effed up head.
Yeah, that’s pretty close to my read of it. I’ve been reading it as her rejecting the attempts to show affection more than the people showing it.
She hates herself so much that seeing people she cares about try to show they care about her is upsetting. It makes her a bit angry that they’re acting that way towards someone she feels is undeserving of it, and who will only end up hurting them in the end. It’s just that she happens to be the someone in question.
Doesn’t it seem like Ethan is glad she’s alive, but she is more concerned about the risk of her going to jail for her violence? Is that implying that Ethan values her life, while that is of little-no concern for Amber?
Or is it just confidence from her side? :S
Confidence, perhaps, but I think mostly she doesn’t consider herself worth worrying about :[
I took it to mean thet she took the bolded ‘here’ in panel 3 to mean that Ethan was glad that she wasn’t incarcerated, instead of the ‘Thank God you’re alive!’ way he meant it to be.
…on the plus side, I found a TRU 86 miles from me that had the set. I now have a Nautica (and some other dudes).
Amber turns Nautica into her alternate form before beating herself up over her own perceived imperfections… sounds familiar.
Oh shit, I missed that metaphor. Fuck… I guess that’s confirmation that she’s getting married even more into the golden alter/monster alter framing.
Comic Reactions:
OT: What new fresh hell will I wake up to tomorrow? Like, I’m trying to hold on and feel Chelsea Manning about things, but I’m just watching all my rights being shredded by a fascist coup who has subverted any hope of democracy or repairing this and is getting worse by the second. Especially since I know I don’t have it in me to violently resist for my own safety for the exact reasons Amber is so broken in the comic.
Yeah, the muting worries me… a lot.
Panel 1: Like, here, for one brief moment she allows herself to be excited, to be awed, to be touched, but it fades so quickly into ash and it’s so heartbreaking. She’s so convinced of her own worthlessness that whatever Ethan can do to reach out can’t reach her.
Panels 2-3: And Ethan reaching out here is adorable. He’s never really known what to say to reach out to Amber, but he doesn’t stop trying and that’s something Amber needs right now. Someone who’s going to try and connect with her even after she goes through a patch of trying to push everyone away in an act of self-hatred, but not in a boundary violating way.
Panels 5-6: And those eyebrows as she transforms the toy, that rejection of kindness because she doesn’t view herself as worthy, deliberately eliding the emotional aspect that Ethan is worried about (and right to be worried about) to the merely lawful. She’s not hurt, she’s not in jail, that’s all that matters right? Just like last time. It’s a very her dad way of looking at things, because she’s not ready to be seen as salvageable in the emotional sense. Because she views herself as tainted and broken and bob damn have I been there.
Panel 7: Oof, this is a masterful rewriting of Ethan’s gesture to make it toxic. Instead of a gift out of worry and concern and hope she was okay, it’s an attempt to buy her protection. And the thing is, I doubt she believes this, but it makes a good origin point to reject the kindness and push others away.
Because she views herself as dangerous and toxic for others, as a monster who should not be receiving kindness, because all she can do is destroy and harm and be violent. And all she can do is shove people away to protect them getting sucked into her and getting harmed like her dad sucked others into him and harmed them.
And it’s such a twisted view of herself, but given her origins, I know exactly why she views that to be the case.
Panels 8-9: And oof, this is rough, the visual of pushing away from the light into her dark bedroom, her back turned, Ethan sitting there with the toy. It’s such a good capturing of shoving someone away. And the way of it twisting with her insecurity about the convenience store, acting as if that clears some “debt” on her soul for not acting is just worrying on nine different levels.
Like, most importantly, it implies that she can be done with Ethan because now Ethan doesn’t ‘”have to hang with her out of pity” and the debt is clear thus justifying future pushing away. It also falls into Blaine’s narrative of the event, that her natural freeze response was a sign of weakness and her having a trauma-fueled fight response is the more “mature” and “O’Malley” response. Thus that it is a sign that she is tainted and broken and becoming him.
I’m really scared for her.
Panel 2 Ethan even tried to set it up so that they would hang out in the future (what with visitation rights to the toy). Ethan is Good People, even though right now Amber can’t really understand his present or his presence.
I am so sorry for all you have to deal with. I love your analysis, and learn a lot from it. Appropriate gesture of support, but I hope you are getting good solid support beyond that.
*Hugs and then more hugs*
Hang in there. If nothing else there’s hope they’ll eat each other alive. Our Despondent Turd-in-Chief turns on his allies and lackeys like clockwork, and is very good at getting his orders overturned
My only consolation and it’s a small one, I know, is that Trump’s incompetence at so much is on display that he’s failed at many of his attempted acts. I can hope and pray he fails at this one too.
*sympathy via internet contact*
I will probably never be able to fully understand what you’re going through right now, but what I do know is that it hurts. It hurts a lot, and it hurts for a lot of people. I’ve seen it in family, friends, students and even strangers. And I want you to know that anything I can do to help this pain go away, I will do.
…
And I also want to apologize for yesterday, when I ended up ranting under your analysis comment. That was selfish and disrespectful of me to do, even if I was in a very bad headspace. I’m sorry.
Don’t worry about it, it was all good and yeah this is all really scary and bad for so many. Like, I have friends who might not make it with the current policies. It’s all… yeah… *supportive hug*
I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers as well as everyone else. It’s a horrible horrible year.
*supportive hug back* I hope you and your friends make. I hope, I hope this mess can be sorted out somehow. If it helps at all, I’ve been doing more volunteer work as an ally since November. And I’ve been donating almost all of my income that’s not necessary for food or rent to pro-LGBT organizations. I’m still going to be working at that bar as well as being a teacher next year, and all of us employees (bouncers, bartenders, and waiters: about ten in total) talked to the manager and owner about how to make the safer for our LGBT patrons. I may also be calling both the Michigan (where I currently am and most of my family lives) and California senators and representatives a bit too much now that I think about it.
what *can* we do, from outside the US? like, I don’t have a lot of spoons, but I can afford to make some donations (or rather, my husband can).
ACLU and Trans Lifeline are good. So’s Trevor Project.
Also, if you’re on social media, yell at your American friends to call their representatives and senators and tell them to oppose this bullshit. Also this nonsense regarding healthcare.
*hugs* 🙁
I think I’m glad amber lives in a comic strip, where things *will* get better and the author promised no deaths. I wish we could all escape into there.
TW, just in case: the rest of my comment discusses BS claims of “emotional manipulation”.
with amber back, and a bizarre thread on another comic… I’m kinda wondering if this messed-up sense of self-worth is the origin of the awful toxic idea that any display of emotion = emotional manipulation. amber.. she’s so determined not to protect herself here, not to place any value on anything about herself except in what can be sacrificed for the dubious benefit of others. I worry that she might start thinking that anyone she hasn’t successfully driven away has been “tricked” into liking her somehow. (my brain was trying to do a bit of that recently, but I’m not prone to acting on it, and I take most of my ideas with a truckload of salt.)
is that how people end up with such weird ideas about communication? hating themselves so much they try to eradicate anything about them that might inspire sympathy? some perverse attempt to compensate for privilege by handicapping themselves?
then again, maybe they were just trolls.
there’s a brandon sanderson book where the main character views even honesty as another form of manipulation. it’s a very… odd… sort of perspective. especially since it’s not entirely clear how much of what she says is what she believes, and how much is itself intended as manipulation (I suspect a lot of it is both).
Is it the Soother guy from Mistborn?
nope, different planet.
Yeah, I honestly do feel that all communication can be used manipulatively. Even honestly. But it’s the duty of everyone to use that power wisely
*tight hugs*
You’ve got people who love you. I hope this fuckery fails to stand and there are people who will not stop fighting this. You’re valid and so are your worries, but please don’t give up.
-hugs tightly-
everything about amber is heartbreaking right now
the hugs are for your situation which i can’t really do much about but offer sympathy
the amber statement is separate
Amber’s eyes in panel one gave me a shiver of hope.
OT: Hugs and solidarity.
For what it is worth, Sect. of Defense Mattis’s response (translated from politicese): “Huh? What? No. Well, he’s my boss, so yes, I think, but NO! I mean WTF?”
Thought for a moment that she was straight-up tearing the thing apart.
Wait, they seriously let Amber go saying it was self defense? Not even a psych eval, considering her history of attacking people with knives?
to be fair we don’t know what has been happening to her the past few days cause if i remember right its been about half a week since the stabbity stabbity stab stab stab
Well, they SAW Ryan threaten and attack her, so there’s no reason to do any of that.
And ONE prior incident is hardly “a history of attacking people with knives”, even assuming that went on her record at all
But if the camera saw that, then it also saw Amber lock the door behind her, disarm her attacker, and instead of getting behind the door make a conscious choice to use the knife on a defenseless person.
I know he totally deserved what Amber did to him, but the law probably wouldn’t see it that way. Especially if his family decided to press charges.
i mean, like. just cause she had the knife doesn’t mean he was defenseless. if you assume all men are stronger than all women, then amber using whatever advantage she had could easily be seen as self defense, i think.
i mean i’m pretty sure that’s why the stand your ground law is a thing
Indiana has stand your ground laws, which yeah, make self-defense much easier to claim legally
I’m pretty sure he announced that he had access to the building, and that he intended to attack their friend when he was done with them. So Amber would have to get on the other side of the door, make an effort to block the door, and either hope there is no other door he can access to get to Joyce, or leave Dorothy to hold the door by herself when going to protect Joyce. All this would ultimately just let him attack them more on his terms.
Actually, the cameras saw her push her friend through the door, block it so she couldn’t get back out to risk herself and then be attacked with a knife by Ryan. They saw her take the knife and they saw him get cut. There was certainly no opportunity to get through the door after disarming him – they were in close combat by then.
They also saw what happened from then on, which we haven’t. It’s quite possible he continued struggling with her – trying to get the knife back.
It’s also worth considering that, given Ryan didn’t flee (because we saw Amber still backed up against the door), chances are he was still trying to fight Amber and get to Dorothy.
Well, Enya, she was a juvenile and those records are sealed for a reason. Because in America if you let the cops have access to that kind of information then historically they’ll use it to persecute minority kids and lock them away for life.
I guess, even though she did it in front of a whole bunch of cops. I’m just feeling annoyed that nothing significant seemed to happen during the time skip, and Amber’s mental health issues are apparently still going untreated.
I think that Willis is being realistic here (a clear goal of DoA over the more ‘comic book’ Walkyverse). Mental health problems often go undiagnosed and untreated for years or even decades until something unfortunate happens.
One of Amber’s problems – the main bad thing she learned from her father – is the belief that she has to face down and defeat these demons on her own. Blaine seems to have taught her that seeking help is an act of personal weakness and she’s internalised that to an alarming degree.
I’m actually kind of happy that nothing significant seemed to happen during the skip – significant things should happen on screen.
It’s also worth considering that if wasn’t treated as self-defense, the consequence wouldn’t be Amber getting mental health treatment, it would be Amber on trial and if convicted spending years in prison with little if any treatment.
Attacking ONE person with a knife previously after a traumatic event is not a ‘history of attacking people with knives’, is likely a sealed record due to her young age if it was recorded at all because you know, it was less than 5 minutes after her friend was held hostage in front of her eyes, you can probably guess why they would think it was just a reaction to the trauma she just experienced.
Also, someone who is ‘disarmed’ is not defenseless – they can still physically try to wrestle the weapon off you again – it is not impossible to kill someone by beating them to death either so his arms and legs were still perfectly capable of harming her and Ryan easily could have removed the book from the door and attacked or used Dorothy as a hostage if she didn’t stand her ground as well – Dorothy was defenseless because she was frozen but ‘Ryan’ wasn’t. ‘RYAN’ DIDN’T STOP BEING A THREAT JUST BECAUSE THE WEAPON WASN’T IN HIS HAND. And thinking someone is no longer a threat because they aren’t holding the weapon any more is foolish – it gives an advantage, but it isn’t impossible to take it or turn it back against the person holding it considering Amber herself did that to start with!
Please Amber, these people don’t properly understand what’s going on in your mind but they care about you. Because you’re worth caring about. You aren’t a monster, monsters don’t question their actions. And AmaziGirl isn’t golden, because she left you when you needed her the most. You aren’t your father.
So is that just a retool of Blurr?
Barely. It’s a recolour, with a different head and some add-on wings.
(And it still bears no resemblance to Nautica in either mode.)
It sounds to me that Amber is still processing in her own mind what happened and what it means. I don’t think that she’s come to solid conclusions; she’s just in shock and a mass of confusing and contradictory emotions right now and that, in its own way, is worse for her.
At least she’s been able to express (probably for the first time) the impelling power of her guilt about the convenience store incident.
…hugs?
How often do these kids shower? I need names, times, frequency, and routines.
Only when shown on screen
That’s actually fucking gross.
Daniel here. Had a random thought – it appears well known around the area Ryan The Outed Rapist was caught, on the grounds, & also most likely that he was stabbed by someone HE was trying to stab. Meaning word of this will most likely have spread to Sal by now. She might even know it was Amber…
Considering SAL was also stabbed by Amber, probably still has a scar considering she always wears the gloves, will she FINALLY make the connection between Amber & the kid her age who stabbed her hand after her robbery? And if she thinks about what Amazigirl has said, will Sal work out her identity too? Perhaps even tell Amber to start putting the mask back on, considering all things…
Yeah, I’m thinking about all these potentual consequences to Sal learning about Ryan getting stabbed, Screwball is freezing up over a “fellow” Cybertronian getting his head pulled off… 😛
Sal strikes me as the sort of personality who would want to leave the past in the past (as much as she can – I don’t think she’s as over it as she tries to make out, given that we occasionally see her rubbing the scar). That said, Sal’s reaction to Amber having never really left the parking lot of that convenience store might be an interesting exploration of her character and how she views those events.
Not at all sure why the rapist getting cut up with his own knife would make Sal think Amber was the kid from the robbery. I mean, there’s a bit of a coincidence vibe, but that’s all.
A related wondering: doesn’t Sal know the name of the girl that stabbed her? Maybe her parents learned the name “Amber O’Malley” while dealing with the criminal justice system, but didn’t tell her (or Walky or Billie). It certainly seems that no one from Sal’s circle knows that Amber from down the hall is the girl who stabbed Sal.
Amber knew Sal’s name so it’s possible, but I think Sal doesn’t know because she’s moved past the robbery.
………the disarming comment makes me worry that it was…how do i put this….an actual disarming
oh ryan boy, where did your hand go?
it’ll never perv on any girl again.
i don’t think we can call this justice,
but that may be something we’ll never know.
Amber has to realize the violent part of her isn’t Blaine. It is HER and she can use that violence to kill over and over again without being like Blaine. *realizes Dexter may not be the best inspiration for her*
Mike will point it out for her.
What Amber desperately needs right now is for her friends to refuse to let her isolate herself. By all means, give her distance and privacy (she probably needs to think about stuff) but don’t let her just shut herself away. Have a relay of visitors to ensure she is okay and have people march her down to the canteen for meals with the most supportive group you can put together (recommended: Dorothy, Danny, Ethan and maybe Joyce; Becky would likely put her foot in her mouth and Sal would just trigger a flashback). Make sure that Amber realises she isn’t being rejected and, if she asks why, make sure that you explain it to her.
Did she keep the head?
“no, we’re not”
….
I don’t like the sound of this. Even if Amber acknowledges that the outside fact is “It was self-defence”, a few panels earlier she still called herself a monster, so this just sounds like an automatic response, instead of the truth.
But worries me most is, that she calls giving Ethan Nautica back “being even” – as if their friendship is being done with that. I do hope Ethan persists and maybe even forces the figure onto her, because she obviously is out to isolate herself completely (as some have noted already above).
I would say that Amber is a definite suicide risk right now and should be treated accordingly.
Yes – worrisome! If she possesses a toy to which Ethan has visitation rights, that’s a loose end that isn’t tied up. Much easier to give it back to him.
I feel the same. I think she’s looking for reasons to be abandoned by her closest friends.
She’ll probably do the same to Dina when the opportunity arises.
and I hope Dina points out that that’s not how friendship works.
Dina’s the one character in the series who seems to get Amber’s dissociation.
But I feel Dina might be too passive to get through Amber’s stonewalling.
But Dina can go anywhere, undetected. Stone walls won’t keep her out
Agreed. Another example of Amber’s “logic” leaning more towards crazy, rather than the rational and reasonable processes we like to associate with our good friend, Logic.
That ..is bit of a crappy, abelist way to say that.
It’s not as if well-adjusted, neurotypical people never have strong emotions that get in the way of good judgment or cold, mechanical logic. We’re not machines, nor should we try to be.
Hell, in general, there’s a good deal of evidence that even without strong emotions much of our supposed “rational and reasonable processes” are an after the fact rationalization of what we’ve already decided. We use them to justify our decisions and preconceptions, not to reach them.
They’re a wonderful tool, but harder to use than we normally think.
So, I come back from another hospital stay, go back in the comic a bit to refresh my memory, and find…THIS.
Wow. Just…Wow.
I’ve been severely disabled for well over ten years. I never thought anyone would insult me by calling me an “crappy ableist” but here it is. I wonder why?
Was it not clear I was simply agreeing with CoMa’s post above? The very first word in my post indicated that. Why didn’t you have something nasty to say to them?
Did the word “logic” become a filthy insulting word when I wasn’t looking?
These insults–which appear to be about as nasty as Mr. Willis will allow in these comments–are just baffling and hurtful.
I suffer from severe depression and PTSD, so I can completely relate to Amber. I’m also Severely and Completely Disabled according to Social Security government speak. I’m a cripple. Yeah, that’s what we call ourselves. Fuck soft PC speak. We’re cripples. We laugh at all the PC terms that try to soften that fairly grim reality.
So, from one very short post, you created an entire imaginary persona for me. A Straw-Man personality that you could safely and smugly insult and knock over. I guess I can now add being called “ableist” to the imaginary bucket list of the imaginary Straw Man persona you so kindly created for me. Thank you sooo much, Fart Captor; and thejeff for chiming in to support her bullying.
I’m not some kind of unemotional Robot, nor would I ever advocate that. I was agreeing with another post. Amber is very ill, and her actions portrayed here had just deeply hurt her best friend, as well as herself.
You were both as cruel as you could be, without being banned. When you choose to be cruel and hurtful, it matters to someone. This time, it was me.
You are both smug, cruel, hurtful, hateful bullies. I do have feelings, and you hurt me badly enough to get rid of me. Well done. You succeeded. To be absolutely crystal clear, I am GONE. Maybe forever. If I ever do return, you can bet I won’t look anywhere near the comments section.
Mr. Willis, thank you for creating an exceptional comic. I’m sorry I won’t be reading it again for a long time, perhaps forever. Goodbye.
Yes
Am I a bad person for wanting to see that security footage? I really want to see the moment Karma comes for Ryan, getting his butt seriously kicked (and slashed), getting arrested and because of his own stupidity, nothing can be done to the person who did it.
Walky said he would have liked to see it. Dorothy responded that while she can understand the feeling the idea of seeing it and actually seeing it are two different things.
We’re also distanced from it both by knowing it’s fictional and by the non-realistic art style.
And even actual security camera footage is likely far less traumatic than seeing it in person in real time – blurry, bad camera angle, etc.
Given how she’s trying to distance herself from Danny, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amber thinks “being even” means Ethan should similarly not speak to her.
Well at least when Ryan returns he’ll be easier to draw.
I mean… there will be less of him to draw.
If Dina isn’t in the room accidentally in stealth mode about consol/terrify Amber I will be sad because it has been so long since seeing Dina and she is just so precious and as I interpret her would definitely help her friend, even if she doesn’t know how
I think that Dina may yet save Amber’s life… Very much against Amber’s wishes.
Transformation times may vary.
Head over to Questionable Content for a break guys. Happy things are going on there. Neurotypicals treating neurodivergents well and new businesses opening up and Pintsoze.
We all spool need a break from both this and real life…
Stick to recent stuff though. It had a few pretty dark storylines right before this one
That storyline with Faye’s boss was one of the worst things ever conceived in sequential art. It was Sonichu-tier.
QC tends to diverge more from reality than DoA and deliver happier endings though, and Faye wound up doing OK out of that.
As did Bubbles, of course. Not great, but OK.
I don’t hate it because of it’s darkness or whatever I hated it because it was a trash fire of a storyline where Faye’s boss suddenly becomes an evil monster,
because disagreeing with Faye is a mortal sin, and then god shows up and sorts the whole thing out.
Harsh
I can understand, if not agree, with most of that, but I’d question if there was anything sudden about Corpse Witch becoming an evil monster. When we finally got the big confrontation scene, she’d been negging Bubbles for how long?
I mean there’s a difference between being kind of a jerk in your illegal fight ring and evil controlling mastermind that robot god decides to personally deal with.
she was a very *specific* kind of jerk, and I was quite happy to see her not get away with it.
er… I may have misread your comment. the second half of my sentence still works, though.
I think it is funny that you are arguing about a webcomic in the forum of a different webcomic.
surely there is somewhere else on the internet we can call my friend’s work a trashfire
Fair enough. You’re right that this really isn’t the place for me to criticize QC or get particularly vitriolic about it.
I looked back just now to see at what point Faye turns on Corpse Witch and CW switches from Controlling Jerk Boss to Villain.
It was when May made a second trip to the Fighting Ring to finish her repairs, and Corpse Witch began to threaten her if she did ever “breathe a word of this” to anyone.
And Corpse Witch doesn’t suddenly become a monster. We have it revealed to us just what Corpse Witch has done to Bubbles.
I’m with you on God-bot appearing and fixing everything. It wasn’t just a cheap resolution, it’s so far been wasted potential, because God-bot has yet to appear again and you don’t just ignore something like that.
But is Amber going to be ok?
I have to disagree re making God-bot a regular character. I usually don’t care for Deus Ex Machina, but Creepy Mysterious God-bot was unusually well done, and had an interesting personality with surprising and entertaining quirks.
However, God-bot has Too Much Power to be a regular character. Fixing EVERYTHING with a fingersnap gets dull quick.
Besides, God-bot clearly has a life of Their own. I mean, They’ve got a puppy-dog, and everything. They have their own stuff to do. They’re not going to pop back into the puny lives of lesser beings, unless They have a darn good reason. Or They can get in some good smirking. Tevs.
I also totally agree that Corpse Witch didn’t suddenly become a monster. Corpse Witch was always a monster. We simply didn’t know the extent and depth of her long-term, on-going monstrousness to Bubbles until it was finally revealed.
I like Jeph’s work. QC is fundamentally different from DoA’s slice of life realism in that it incorporates a fair amount of fantasy/SF; it’s also fundamentally similar in that both strips have consistently realistic characterizations.
I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to like both strips, any Diaper Eating and Butt Stew aside. 🙂
The mighty Willis is showing an astounding, inspiring, and perhaps slightly terrifying amount of forbearance today. He has demonstrated amazing tolerance towards mystifying insults directed at his friend, Jeph; and pleasantly corrected nigh-heretical Transformer remarks.
I do hope this mellowness is a side-effect of enjoying an especially pleasant day. We can all use a few of those sometimes.
Of all the red flags in this series, this is the the one that is acknowledged as such in the alt text: someone is given a Nautica toy and she gives it back.
I agree. Amber giving Nautica back is JUST WRONG, especially considering her initial awed reaction. Joint custody should eliminate Amber’s disinclination to accept such a present, even from her oldest friend, Ethan.
Although, I do suspect that Nautica’s character is more important to Amber than the actual uninspired retooled toy. A properly tooled Nautica, who looks much more like she does in the comics, would be a far more desirable toy–maybe even Amber wouldn’t be able to resist her then. As it is now, the Nautica toy is more desirable as a symbol of Nautica’s character (which would have especial appeal for Amber) than as a truly attractive Nautica figure in of itself. That whole rarity thing always affects desirability, too.
So we’re pretty far into Book 7. Have any quotes become popular among us as potentital titles?
I’m looking through random strips and so far nothin really stands out.
Well, there was “It’s his phone.”, a while back. Do comment-section memes count?
If they do I nominate “Eat Arby’s”.
IIRC it’s “You can’t run, flip over a hedge, and somersault onto a roof from the truth.”
Well, is the implicit goal to achieve ever-excruciatingly longer titles; at minimum, each title candidate must exceed the previous book’s title length just to qualify for consideration? Well, here’s an early contender (Bonus–this statement applies to every character):
“Sometimes I feel like I need to step back a few feet to really get a hold on the sheer senses-shattering multifacetedness of your countless neuroses.”
Sarah to Joyce
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/sandals/
Perhaps this provides a ponderously portentous, prodigiously practical possibility?
And yet, somehow, I feel Willis will magnificently exceed this initial effort. Exceed it so profoundly that contrast shall pale and shrink it to a tiny, feeble shadow of delicate prose; fragile as the daisy before the bulldozer; failing to leave the faintest, frail, gossamer cobweb traceries of passage, as this comparatively feeble musing is weakly cast among the many, mighty,
myriad, witty, weighty, wondrous, titanic, towering, tome-like utterances his characters will yet opine before Book 7 concludes.
Who knows what stunning feats of verbosity and nounsense still await?
Only The Willis Knows.
I’m actually surprised Amber didn’t get into trouble in this situation. If he still had the knife in hand, and she happened to have a knife on her, then, yeah, that would be reason to stab him, but, after disarming him, there really was no reason to use force unless he continued to come at her. I don’t know. I’m not even necessarily saying she was definitely in the wrong, just that I’m surprised she didn’t get in trouble.
Huh, so accepting the gift wasn’t right for her, since Ethan view on what happened ran contrary to what had happened when she was challenged by that cell-phone guy.