I am unclear on the sacred protocols of the internet, but I presume one could continue to “ship” a canon relationship in the hopes that it remain so and doesn’t explode later in the story.
I love these tiny little peeks into the dramas of the unfollowed background DoA characters. It shows that Willis knows what everyone’s doing, even if we don’t.
I propose the Bradford, being equivalent to the minimum amount of hatred distributed amongst a dorm populace to result in no response to a public assualt.
Well, if Rick has proved there’s a way to detect and measure evil, then there’s probably a way to mathematically measure love and hate.
You probably also need examples to measure up the hate, but just a fair warning, don’t try to measure Mike’s hate. I know he isn’t in the comic today, but just gonna’ say it. I’m pretty sure at this point, measuring Mike’s hate or plain dickery is a fools game. You have better things to venture on.
I think the standard unit of hate should be used to gauge the intensity of hatred induced (akin to “Seymours of Sadness”), rather than the amount possessed. Because let’s face it, Mike’s cup will always runneth over. So we need someone who inspires hate in others regularly and consistently.
I propose the Faz as the standard unit of hatred. There is no one who encounters him who does not find him both appalling and pathetic.
Fazes of hatred is pretty good; also I’m pleased that other EGS readers are here.
For some weird reason trying to measure hatred of a fictional character reminded me of something a One Piece fan came up with once: the Bellamy scale. It was a scale measuring how satisfying Luffy’s most epic punches were in the comic and anime, with 10 being represented by him taking out Bellamy the Hyena in a single punch.
?
In what way would ‘everyone else’ be misreading the situation? They think Amber is awesome for getting rid of a stalker/rapist. They are aware of themselves thinking that, and cannot misread it.
Amber thinks that her actions have cemented her in the mind of everyone else as a ‘psycho knife attacker’, which is objectively false, as Sierra demonstrates here.
(And as Amber recognizes, which is very nice! Instead of her narrative just twisting to make Sierra seem untrustworthy somehow, it takes the hit head on)
(Amber’s actual mental state is irrelevant to the question of what everyone else thinks of her)
That’s just it, Amber is a hero to everyone else for what she did but Amber herself doesn’t see herself like that because of some sort of self loathing complex she has in which she see herself as the monster.
Personally I think the reason why she’s beating herself up is unnecessary, But I do understand why she feels like it’s not ok because she herself isn’t ok, I wouldn’t say her mental state is in question since she’s been through a lot of traumatic shit in what seems to be what 2 months or a month and a half ?
It sounds like it’d be most useful when you’re DMing. Like, the players won’t even take your third alternate route to finishing the adventure, and you’re running out of improv and patience:
“Your bards somehow keeps the concert going for a second encore, but everybody’s packing up when the song starts to wind down.”
“Whoo! Let’s get this show to the next town! No sleep ’til Greyhawk!”
“Now that it’s quiet, you notice the sound of marching coming from the west, where the guard said the necromancer was three weeks ago… in game.”
“We pack up the instruments as quickly as possible and load up the-”
“How dare you step on my narrative! I am not writing a whole new adventure just so you can play Band on the Run, not until you finish this one!”
We call it “The Void”. As in “Okay, if you really want to, but be warned that I didn’t prepare for this, so there’s no map and you’ll be adventuring in The Void.”
Alright, fair enough. Being a gold dragon named after a Pokémon is pretty rad. I should have clarified that, from my own experience and the tales I’ve heard and read, dragon-heavy campaigns aren’t exactly the norm.
I also should have clarified that a dragon-heavy setting can be some of the best fun a person could have.
In my experience Dungeons and Dragons’ name is wholly unearned considering the ratio of dungeons to dragons one generally encounters. It should be called Dungeons and Assorted Monsters That Are Almost Never Dragons.
“That’s not a necromancer. That’s just our agent. It’s his job to follow us around and when we’re finally washed up and dead to the public, he finds some way to bring us back.”
Aw man it’s honestly really great to see Sierra. We’ve been seeing people be jackasses for the last week or so straight, plus I’ve just been having a shitty time in general. It’s pretty wonderful seeing Sierra be wonderful and also open about her relationship. Good feelings all around right now.
I got bored after the third or fourth book. The good against the bad gets boring after some time and it seemed that she would just amp up on the violence in the books to come.
Though I did read the wrapup of the last book some years later, just to know who survived.
It actually exists, sort of, and it’s basically a cream soda with butterscotch in it.
I saw this at World Market a few years back and, since I didn’t know it was a Harry Potter thing, was thoroughly confused by the description on the label.
Butterbeer is (or was) a festive drink in Tudor times made of beer, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cloves and butter. Some recipes added extra spices, such as licorice. I think it was heated and whisked so that the eggs made it go creamy. Kind of like eggnog, but with beer in place of the milk and brandy, and butter in place of the cream.
Holy crap that would be ridiculously expensive!! Sugar? Cloves?? Nutmeg?? What are we, royalty?!
–I need to find the recipe and make this; it sounds very similar to another hot alcoholic Medieval drink I found a while ago. According to that one, you stir the eggs in and cook it very carefully over pretty low heat, not only stirring it constantly, but also scraping the sides of the pot too so the eggs don’t get thick and cooked there. Says to add a bit more ale if it gets too thick.
Psssht, I like my narratives as much as the next person, but super bleak/cynical ones, depending on the story, are usually not justified. Hooray for Sierra throwing in some reality (and polyamorous anarchy. :p).
And when Amber turns 30, she’s going to look back at this time and realize that not only none of the doors actually open, no one actually gives a shit. :/
By which I mean, she should have anticipated more people being on her side.
It makes perfect sense that when you save yourself and a friend from a knife wielding rapist YOU ARE THE GOOD GUY.
Because from Amber’s point of view ‘from the inside’, that was not a heroic moment. That was a moment of blind berserker rage at a target that was not tied to whether the target was deserving. (It was actually tied to that perfectly, but Amber doesn’t see that from her vantage point)
And from Amber’s (mental illness addled) vantage point, EVERYONE can see from that vantage point. From her point of view, it was VERY OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE that she lost control and gave in to violent impulses.
And from a yet further point of view, fed with fuel by Mike, her father and (a little bit) Rachel, losing control that one time irreversibly and unequivocally pushes Amber into ‘violent rage monster who should be locked up’ territory, makes her someone that no-one would ever willingly associate with, someone despised, hated and feared.
All three steps on this logic ladder (1. she lost control absolutely; 2. everyone saw that; 3. iit made her a monster) are flawed, that is to say, kind of bullshit. But all three of them also have a grain of truth to them (Amber did give in to a violent impulse she had, the entire school does know about the event as a whole, and public at large isn’t too kindly disposed towards mentally ill people).
So together, it builds this twisted picture of the world… except Amber is still lucid enough to be aware of uncertainities in it. This picture in her mind is just the worst-case scenario… the problem is, she is absolutely incapable of evaluating how likely it is. The mechanisms people normally use for this kind of evaluation, broadly defined as intuition, are majorly warped in Amber’s case. And she knows they are, which makes it an ouroboros of uncertainity and anxiety. If it’s not the worst-case scenario, she can make the situation worse by acting as if it were. If it is, she risks her personal physical and mental safety (the meager balance of self-control she has now) by just going outside and exposing herself to other people.
Amber has decided to act as if it were the worst-case scenario. That this guess is wrong, while good long-term, is not going to do anything to help her short-term stability )=
(She’s much more stable than she thinks, though, and much more capable of taking hits without dissolving into violent rage. So it’s going to be okay, I think)
It’s also tied into her disassociation. Amazi-Girl is the golden alter. Amber is the monster who needs AG to channel her rage into heroism and to take over to keep Amber from hurting people. This was Amber, not Amazi-Girl, so it must have been horrible. If it had been good and heroic, Amazi-Girl would have done it. Or claimed it.
That’s all bullshit of course, but it’s how her disassociation is playing out.
Speaking of dissociation, a weird thing happened to me last night. I was skimming the comment section, saw one of my posts, and a happy little thought popped up: “I like her! :)” Then I had a weird moment of vertigo as my brain got confused about which me was which and which me was “out”. It… was a good kind of weird – some parts of me actually like me, and aren’t afraid to say so now! – but still really really weird.
Ow, thinking about alters too much still hurts my head. :/ maybe I should leave that to Meta.
Because for all that we (as women and young people) like to pretend we’d cut a bongo in her situation, the vast majority of us would react the way Dorothy did. Even if we don’t like the person she fought back against, we’re not actually going to take his knife away and make him new air holes with it.
Because that’s the way her assheel of a father taught her life was:
She will always be despised because she never can do anything right.
She needs all the hugs she can get but she will bite anyone who tries.
Somewhere in al anon literature someone described they life experience as “always thinking of myself as being the main actress whose name is written in larger than life letters on the billboard – and then I realized it was just home movies.”
Amber has the same approach. I’ll hope she’ll realize it soon and get some help (because to her, the drama is important and needs someone to see her and it).
Also: Amber, you’re Mikeing too hard. Go and find the actual Mike and ask for pointers. (He maybe didn’t even do your mom for a nickel, since he seems to halfway almost pretend to have some respect for her.)
It can be difficult to realize that others do not perceive the way you perceive yourself, even without the anxiety and depression that Amber’s struggling with
You know, if you open off all angry and aggressive, that’s gonna drive people away before they even have the chance to like you. Course, I suppose it’s safer than daring to hope that they’ll treat you well. But sometimes risks are necessary.
I wonder if she’s simply misconstruing people’s stares of concern for stares of fear, or if she’s actually seeing things, and no one’s doors are actually cracked open.
On an unrelated note, while I’m pleased with how early I am to view the comic, it’s only because I’m viewing it on my phone, and this brings me to a minor gripe I have with this site. Like xkcd and SMBC and many others, this webcomic has very funny alt-text, which you can right-click on to view if you’re on a PC. However, unlike xkcd and SMBC, holding on the image, as an alternative to using a right mouse button when you’re on a phone, will not reveal the alt-text. Instead, it just shows the page’s URL. I realize this is a minor gripe, but small annoyances like this make me visit this comic less frequently than I do for my other comics, since I can’t get the full enjoyment on my phone. If there’s actually a way to view the alt-text for DoA on my phone, I’d love to hear it. If there isn’t, please consider adjusting the code to be more like what xkcd and SMBC have, seeing as they prove it is certainly doable.
yeah, that makes it *possible* to click, but then I’m zoomed in so much the alt text is offscreen, so I have to zoom out without accidentally dismissing it.
plus, mobile firefox has enough trouble just loading this site, so zooming (or even scrolling) gets pretty slow. but iirc Willis already knows about that (and some people have performance issues even on a desktop system iirc) .
Actually, I should say reptile and arthropod…most of them are arachnids (Scorponok, Tarantulas, Blackarachnia, one half of Quickstrike)…only Waspinator was an actual insect among the actual show characters. (And they also had half a mammal for a little bit, and the Maximals have a fish later on…)
…. okay, can we have a Dina-like person with evolutionary knowledge field this for question for us? Do featherless dinosaurs count as reptiles? I mean, you could argue clades, but by that standard mammals are also dinosaurs.
No, mammals are not reptiles. Mammals are synapsids, which are, by definition, not reptiles.
Some, mostly popular, works call synapsids ‘mammal-like reptiles’, but that is inaccurate. Reptile is synonymous with sauropsid, not amniote. Reptiles are the most recent common ancestor of lizards and crocodiles, and all of their descendants, both extant and extinct. This is the most parsimonious clade that includes all traditionally-defined living reptiles, and it does not include mammals, but it does include all dinosaurs, including birds. (As well as pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, ichthiosaurs, and a number of other wholly extinct groups.)
I’m fond of a more flippant, but still accurate definition: ‘All animals more closely related to the snake than to St Patrick.’
What she wants is some certainity and ability to anticipate the reaction she gets. The self-hatred monster in her brain has convinced her that the more likely reaction is rejection, hate and fear. Anything that doesn’t fit that mold just make her feel more unbalanced and incapable of predicting anything about the world around her, which does not help short-term.
So, yeah. Just keep piling on the love until the self-hatred monster starts suffocating under the weight of statistics! Just keep Mike away from Amber. Confirmation bias is one hell of a percussion instrument, and one contribution playing along with her fears can outweigh a hundred that contradicts them.
I had a period in my life where I was convinced that the only reason anyone would be sad if I died was because they failed to realize how little I was worth and how much better their lives would be without me. I think Amber probably tells herself much the same thing. It doesn’t matter how many people praise her actions, because they were wrong to her and when people don’t see that it just validates the twisted logic in her self-loathing. That they’re too blinded by ‘who’ she did what ‘she believes to be wrong’ to, to recognize what a monster she is.
But Amber has it much, much worse than I ever did because I was able to recognize that I could be of genuine worth to other people, even if to begin with, I told myself it was just because competent tanks were hard to come by in WoW back in 2005, and over time I was able to accept that there might be more than my understanding of game mechanics that made them care about me. My selfesteem has probably not fully recovered, but I learned to believe that others could see what I couldn’t.
Amber has something I didn’t. An abusive bongo to compare her actions to. Someone who would approve of her methods, even if only to pat himself on the back for his ‘exceptional’ parenting skills. To Amber it’s completely irrelevant that Ryan is a rapist. It’s irrelevant that Ryan deserved to face the consequences for his actions. Ryan is irrelevant. The only person that matters is Blaine and how her actions make her feel closer to him in ways she never want to be.
Amber cannot allow herself to accept that any method Blaine believes in could ever be justified. As long as people continue to praise her actions, it’ll only convince her even further that they can’t be trusted to see what she, from her own flawed perspective, is becoming. That their opinions can’t be trusted.
I just want to observe that staying alive because you’re a competent tank in WoW is so…relatable? Those tiny reasons go such a long way. Being late for work saved me once. I hated that job — it was one of the main reasons I was at risk — but I couldn’t bring myself to leave one person to handle the breakfast shift alone.
Local grocery store has started carrying specialty sodas (in fancy glass bottles!) It’s mostly root and ginger beers and cream sodas, but they sometimes have a ‘not licensed as Harry Potter but we still put a cauldron on it and use similar colors and fonts’ butterbeer soda. It’s like butterscotch cream soda or something; I’m not really a cream soda fan, but my mom really liked it.
“Damn it, Sierra! How am I supposed to get my self-loathing on when you’re insisting on being all nice and sunny… as usual…?”
Poor Amber! Things never go according to how she expects, does it? Still, one can hope that she’ll find out that Joyce isn’t just a weird anomaly, that Mike was talking bullshit and that everyone in the Dorm is not afraid of her!
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him …
“I am TRYING to ISOLATE myself to promote a DOWNWARD SPIRAL of UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS could you all please stop HUMANISING and SYMPATHISING with me so I can persuade myself you all hate me and SUFFER ALONE without having to get therapy”
doesn’t it just suck when you’re a good person and people see that even when you do bad things?
Panels 1-2: Agoraphobia is a hell of a thing. It sucks when it takes a ton of spoons just to leave the room and it sucks being hypervigilant the second you leave the room so you’re even more attuned to danger.
And it’s even harder when your brain is raging all sorts of awful things and driving a state of paranoia on top of all of that.
After all, one of the downsides of pushing others away as a depression side-effect is sometimes you end up alone with only your worst critic for company.
Panel 3: I loathe Mike.
Like, he knows what he’s doing, he knows his friends well enough to know what will get under their skin and really fuck with them and yet he actively goes out of his way to stab at those wounds and make recovery so much harder.
And you see that in spades here. This narrative she is clinging so hard to is her dad’s narrative, yes, but more freshly it is Mike’s narrative. It’s what he said everyone’s reaction would be. And he said it because it was Amber’s greatest fear of how everyone would act.
Like, it is such a monstrous act to actively target massive insecurities or trauma for fun or temporary advantage, especially with people who trust you enough to let you know them.
Ethan and Amber/AG need to escape him if they have any chance of successfully recovering from their individual traumas.
Panels 4-5: Sierra is amazing. This is an indisputable fact about the universe.
But what about that like one time Mike’s being a monstrous douchebag actually kinda benefited his victim in the long run somehow doesn’t that prove that he’s actually just no-nonsense, tells it like it is hero with everyone’s best interests at heart?
I can’t agree with you more on Panel 3. Also, I just was Nash and Sierra to meet and become best friends. Aside from Dina, Becky, and Carla, they are the best (well in a four way tie with Leslie and Danny).
Oh I’ll keep disliking her as long as she uses assaulting petty criminals as a coping mechanism instead of actually making an effort to recover I just don’t give a fuck about rapists getting stabbed.
I’ve always liked Amber. She’s crazy and violent and she’s struggling with that.
She’s not the monster she thinks she is. She’s a good person with serious problems.
(And Amazi-Girl isn’t the shining hero both of them think she is either)
For me, it’s a huge case of empathy. I have a very similar background as to Amber (without) the possible DID) and I can understand what she’s going through a lot. The difference between us is that I was physically weak and frail until around her age, so I never took self-defense or martial arts classes and was physically unable to vent vigilante style like she does. I also had the benefit of my abusive father leaving my life years before hers did and actually getting therapy as well as not having any toxic friends like Mike in my life (the one fringe benefit of having no friends early on in life). If circumstances were slightly different, I could very well have been in Amber’s shoes. So I do like her, because my heart aches whenever I see her, and I know that with the proper help she would be in a much better place than she currently is.
So she’s still crazy and violent and she still “abuses anyone else” okay got it.
Make up your fucking minds. Is she an abuser or not. Is what she did to Danny abusive or not. Am I supposed to hate her or not. You fucking people keep changing your fucking minds when I think I finally fucking grasp it for once.
How about “Things are actually pretty fucking complicated and you’re being a real jerk by basically demanding that we are supposed to feel only one thing, preferably what you feel”?
No, you’re telling us that we should feel one way or the other. Straight up telling us that. You’re not asking, you’re demanding. With some insults thrown in for good measure.
There is nothing about your comments that indicates you’re asking us how you should feel; especially since it’s pretty clear how you do already feel. There is nothing in your comments that indicates you’re trying to have a discussion in good faith. Nothing.
And when I make posts on Amber – and most of you commenters know I’ve made quite a few of those over the last couple of years; some of them really long too – I’m not telling anyone else how to feel. I’m only telling how I feel; and I mostly do that by my reading of the strip itself, without reading other commenters’ thoughts first.
People can agree with that or not. But I make up my own mind by thinking my own thoughts, and then people can agree or disagree with me. Heck, my favourite reply once was someone who said that they thought I made a reasonable, eloquent, sensible argument… And they disagreed with pretty much everything I said.
Im not trying to fucking make you feel one way or the other ii jsut want to fucking know whether or not im a fucking abuser
I dont know how to fucking feel because verytime I think i do you fucking people keep changing your midns for a fucking year it was just oh shes such an abuser get the fuck away from her shes fucking broken and when i finally think youre fcuking right now its just oh shes just hurt and needs help fuck that why do you people keep changing your fucking minds on me
You are not Amber. You are Spencer.
You are a real person.
How we react to Amber – a fictional character, crafted to fulfill a certain role in the story and to evoke certain responses – does not and should not reflect on you or your self-worth/esteem.
I submit that identifying this strongly with Amber is a problem. It does not seem to be healthy for you.
No, Amber is not an abuser. She’s done some shitty, potentially-abusive things to Danny, but instead of making it into a cycle of abuse just broke the relationship off, which makes her very definitely NOT an abuser.
The thing you are missing here is that the commentariat is not a hive mind. Some days people who hate Amber have things to say and so come out of their hidey holes, other days they stay in them and it’s people who like her that take the central stage.
My opinion on Amber has been very stable and definite: I empathize with her, disapprove of certain things she does but understand why she does them, and wish her all the best.
Also, the link of abuser=hatred you’re talking about here is bullshit. Mary is not an abuser, but she’s very hateable. Ryan-by-the-middle-name is not an abuser, but, you know. Ruth most definitely abused her authority over her floor, but whatever Rachel says, that does not make her An Abuser as a mark on her forehead for the rest of her life, she can and is trying to do better. I don’t hate her, despite how vividly her early behavior reminded me of my own middle school bullies.
Not to mention that yes, you’re not Literally Amber. No matter how much you empathize with her, ‘abuser’ is talking about actions and the overall situation. It’s not a personality type. Someone who continuously chooses to abuse others is ‘an abuser’, but Amber is not that, and -there is no link in that to whether you are-. Being mentally ill does not make Amber an abuser. Being an overly violent vigilante does not make her an abuser. She’s a vigilante, she was a stalker to Sal. They are their own things. Abuse is one kind of shitty thing a human person can do to another human person, it’s not every kind.
“Mary is not an abuser, but she’s very hateable. ”
I beg to disagree. She would have been perfectly happy if Ruth had ended up dead; the only part she didn’t like was that her blackmail material got public and thus she was not able to use it as blackmail anymore.
Oh, and did I mention she was blackmailing Ruth? Because, you know, that’s a classic abuse tactic in and of itself.
And then she also basically asked Billie for permission to abuse Carla into suicide. Even thought that Billie would appreciate it.
I think you two are using VERY wide definitions of abuse, and not ones I feel comfortable using. Serial rapist =/= abuser, like those are just different things? Like arsonist and knife murderer. Sure, people are dead on both cases, but there are still different words for it!
Mary is a bully. She does not have institutional power or close relationships to others on her floor. She wishes she did, but she doesn’t. So what she CAN do is terrible, but not covered by the word ‘abuse’ imho. She WOULD be one if she could, but right now it’s not a present pattern.
Ok, this now… This is you telling me what you’re really looking for.
First of all, I’m sure it must’ve been hard for you to write that. I replied to what I thought saw, but clearly, I did not see what you really wanted to know. I cannot even imagine how it must’ve sucked for you to try and have a conversation without having to admit what you just admitted, and ending up with people just being really harsh in return.
As for whether or not you are an abuser… Well, frankly, I could not in any way possibly comment on that. I do not know you. I do not know your story. You might share some similarities with Amber, but I’m also sure there are lots of differences I have no idea about.
And I feel confident talking about Amber because… Well, because I get to see an “all-seeing” kind of view about her. Because she’s a fictional character, and because the only things she’s hiding is what Willis hides from us; and he’s been pretty open about her problems.
And while I believe that I personally have been fairly consistent in my view of Amber (mainly that she really needs professional help, and that the one person she’s really abusing is herself)… Well, here’s the thing: Over the past few years, the knowledge about her has changed. She’s not the same person she was when the comic started. I’m not even sure Willis had a clear idea about what problems Amber was going to have back then, or what direction it would come to take.
So yeah, things change. And because things change, my perception must also necessarily change at least somewhat. But again, that’s about Amber, a fictional character whom I have a level of knowledge about that I do not have about you.
So because of all of these reasons, I’m afraid I cannot possibly give you the answer you want. I just cannot. To even attempt so would be, in my position, unethical on so goddamn many levels I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Spencer, what I’m hearing in your words is pain. I cannot tell you how to feel but I can tell you that if your brain is demanding you torture yourself, we will all hope for you to be OK and not do that. I can’t hug you through a computer screen but please accept this as support.
‘Abuser’ is a complicated term and the people it gets applied to much more so. How you feel is going to go back and forth. No one is obligated to stand and take abuse, but I feel everyone can have redemption. I can say please imagine yourself having worked through it, and being relieved and moving toward a balance for yourself. And keep imagining.
I see some painfully familiar patterns here. I wish I could walk into your mind and tear out the fucking mind-parasite that’s doing this to you. 🙁 you don’t deserve to feel like this.
but we don’t have that magic, so let’s see if I can give you some self-defense 101 instead 😉
first off, it wasn’t very nice of thejeff to phrase it as “crazy and violent”. too much baggage in those words. she’s mentally ill and has anger issues, and those are things for her to fix, not beat herself up about.
“Is she an abuser or not.”
in this I’m seeing Black&White Thinking. Something in your head is telling you that she has to be either 100% abuser or 100% fine, and that there is One True Answer that you have to find and conform to. That’s a big ol’ pile of bullshit, and Liliet did a good job of explaining why.
There’s going to be lots of situations where that part of your mind is telling you there are exactly two possible answers when really there’s a third path or a bazillion options. Watch out for that; try and catch it in a lie.
“Am I supposed to hate her or not.”
More of the same here; the idea that there is One True Way to feel, and that your feelings must conform to this bullshit, as if you’re expected to have magically perfect control over your feelings. There are things you can do to *influence* future feelings, but, mostly feelings are a thing that *happen* and you then figure out what to do with them. They’re not something to be judged. Your feelings are yours, and they’re valid and okay even if they’re completely disconnected from reality.
Also, it’s very important to distinguish between “I feel like X is Y” and “I know that X is Y”. They are very different things, and can easily contradict each other. Everyone gets to have their own feelings, but they don’t get their own facts. You’re probably still going to *feel* like you have to pick one of two options for an annoyingly long while after you *know* that it’s not true.
That’s where mindfulness and meditation comes in handy – learning to sit with those inconvenient feelings, and let them feel, without drowning in them. Sometimes it’s like balancing on a knife edge in a hurricane. 😛
*facepalm* I forgot about the link moderation again. time to doublepost!
—–
oh spencer… *hugs*
I see some painfully familiar patterns here. I wish I could walk into your mind and tear out the fucking mind-parasite that’s doing this to you. 🙁 you don’t deserve to feel like this.
but we don’t have that magic, so let’s see if I can give you some self-defense 101 instead 😉
first off, it wasn’t very nice of thejeff to phrase it as “crazy and violent”. too much baggage in those words. she’s mentally ill and has anger issues, and those are things for her to fix, not beat herself up about.
“Is she an abuser or not.”
in this I’m seeing Black&White Thinking. Something in your head is telling you that she has to be either 100% abuser or 100% fine, and that there is One True Answer that you have to find and conform to. That’s a big ol’ pile of bullshit, and Liliet did a good job of explaining why.
There’s going to be lots of situations where that part of your mind is telling you there are exactly two possible answers when really there’s a third path or a bazillion options. Watch out for that; try and catch it in a lie.
“Am I supposed to hate her or not.”
More of the same here; the idea that there is One True Way to feel, and that your feelings must conform to this bullshit, as if you’re expected to have magically perfect control over your feelings. There are things you can do to *influence* future feelings, but, mostly feelings are a thing that *happen* and you then figure out what to do with them. They’re not something to be judged. Your feelings are yours, and they’re valid and okay even if they’re completely disconnected from reality.
Also, it’s very important to distinguish between “I feel like X is Y” and “I know that X is Y”. They are very different things, and can easily contradict each other. Everyone gets to have their own feelings, but they don’t get their own facts. You’re probably still going to *feel* like you have to pick one of two options for an annoyingly long while after you *know* that it’s not true.
That’s where mindfulness and meditation comes in handy – learning to sit with those inconvenient feelings, and let them feel, without drowning in them. Sometimes it’s like balancing on a knife edge in a hurricane. 😛
before I forget, here’s a list of cognitive distortions to watch out for: [wikipedia]/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
and I’ll repeat my book suggestions I gave CoMa the other day:
[The Mindful Way through Depression]([amazon]/The-Mindful-Way-through-Depression/dp/1593851286) and [Feeling Good]([amazon]/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336)
(you might hate that second book as much as I did, though. That’s where switching to DBT comes in handy. but read what you can, it helps.)
For the record, I used “crazy and violent” because the post I was responding to used them. Though not inaccurate, it’s probably not how I would have phrased it without the prompting.
Strange coincidence. Over at EGS Dan Shive just offered the concept of “Allergy of the mind” to describe anxiety attacks. I think, in a way, this could also be used to describe some of the workings of Ambers mind.
… You know, as angry as I am at Mike, as pleased as I am with Sierra, as worried as I am for Amber, there’s something I gotta share.
… I finally figured out why what Rachel said about redemption pissed me off so much, and it took Dr. Seuss and Amber for me to realize it.
WARNING: POTENTIAL POLITICAL TRIGGERS AHEAD AS WELL AS LONGPOST
So that story in recent news about Mrs. Trump donating those Dr. Seuss books only to have them refused by one librarian – due to “[Dr. Seuss’s books being] full of racist propaganda” – really bothered me for something so minor. The reasons why mostly relate to my issue with what Rachel said to Ruth within earshot of Amber.
1. I dislike the First Family as much as anyone else (though my only real problem with Melania is her terrible taste in men), but that sort of pettiness is childish, regardless of the person at whom it’s directed.
This part is not directly related to what I’m talking about with Rachel, it’s just something I felt I should relate.
2. The librarian’s protest would have worked out much better had she owned up that her problem was with the books’ donor, rather than the author. I don’t care if people hate the Trumps (again, Lord knows I do), but that kind of anger is more powerful and meaningful if its source and target are clear to everyone.
Rachel ranted at Ruth when it was pretty clear that speech was meant for someone else in her life, possibly herself; and it affected Amber deeply, as we see here. I understand Rachel felt strongly about it but misdirecting her “narrative” at someone else was harmful to Ruth and Amber, and I’m disappointed in her for not seeing that.
3. YES. Dr. Seuss used to be a political cartoonist, and his work included some racist caricatures of Japanese people, usually when depicting Tojo or Hirohito. And just because the people he was depicting were evil doesn’t make that kind of casual bigotry okay. But he was paid to do a lot of that art by the US Government. Later on, the behavior of almost all countries during World War II opened his eyes to what unjustified, scapegoating, mindless hatred can do to even most normal people. And his work showed the change he went through. When the librarian blamed her problem on Dr. Seuss, it reduced the impact of this change and belittled the memory of a wonderful author and good man. Even assuming she WAS protesting Dr. Seuss himself, I’ve never seen a kids’ book he wrote with his previous bigoted views in it (we do remember The Sneetches, yes?). Also, if she has such a problem with an author who learned and changed and grew out of toxic beliefs, she should also be protesting authors who didn’t, like Orson Scott Card and H.P. Lovecraft.
And that last one reflects my central problem with Rachel.
“Redemption isn’t real” is a CROCK, and it’s not a healthy idea for Amber. And it clearly had an impact on her, what with this narrative she’s imposing on herself as the incurable violent psycho. But again, just because what Amber did was violent and awful to see, doesn’t mean she was wrong.
I’m pleased that Sierra is the first one to recognize what Amber needs to hear. She defended her friend and herself from someone who was going to kill them or worse. Sierra, Joyce, Walky, Danny, maybe even Dorothy … they see her as a good person, if not a gorram hero. They’re not focused on her violence (though her self-examining on that is good if completely misguided on why and to what end). They’re focused on what she did to protect people. And she should be too.
Because after all, as she herself said … that heroic thing she did? Wasn’t done by Amazi-Girl. And she should think about that.
TL;DR I’m pissed off at Rachel for fueling Amber’s belief that she is the villain of her own story, and proud of Sierra for affirming that lots of people consider her the hero. Also redemption is real.
And yet both Rachel and Amber have the same black/white good/evil moral dualism view of everything. Watchmen’s Rorschach, dead these 30 years but soon to be resurrected, to name another fictional comic character, had the same ideation.
The last two, at least, have been written to have symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, IMHO: the Manichean “it’s good OR evil, black OR white, no grey” view of everything, even themselves, and the Dissociative Identity Disorder (the mask bit) which manifests in extreme cases, at least according to a recent show I saw about it. Dunno what might happen if Amber/AG come to the realization that Ryans escape, and however many more rapes came about because of it, was AG’s fault. If AG isn’t perfect, maybe she’ll need a third persona….
Rachel seems to me to be very smart, but with a lot of anger about something. Maybe we’ll find out what.
Yeah, the Wikipedia article about Cognitive Distortion referred to above by inahc calls the “good/evil, no middle” ideation “splitting” and the wiki for “splitting” has some things that would seem to apply to Amber.
I have no idea why this page would take up 792 MB and 80% CPU, but it’s making things difficult.
Ooh, good call on the Rorschach comparison. I like to think Amber’s in a healthier place right now compared to where Rorschach was when he started his path to moral absolutism. So there’s still hope for her, as shown by Sierra. :3
Rorschach was – at his best – a violent murderer, who viciously assaulted people just to force information out of them.
Amber has never even come close to the level of monster he was. The only people she’s put in the hospital were actually an immediate threat. She certainly sees herself like that (or worse), but the comparison is unfair imo.
But Amber already knows that Ryan was dangerous, and something had to be done. The problem is that she can’t accept that her actions were justified, or that she feels that she’s still a monster because she didn’t hesitate. She might feel that she leapt at the chance to be violent and get away with it.
A rational analysis of why she had to do what she did won’t help, because in her mind her actions are intrinsically tainted. They felt too much like something her vicious butthole father would’ve done.
Hopefully people telling her they don’t see things that way and that they still care about and support her will still help
Well yeah, I don’t think Rorschach is a good person, even if he did act with integrity at the end. Amber is still ten times better than Rorschach at her worst. I just meant that the comparison of the characters thinking in moral absolutes was apt. “This thing was done by a Bad Person, ergo doing this thing, even to a good end, is evil.” Amber’s violent temper IS something she should examine if she’s worried about it (I recommend several fortnights of therapy and a new form of stress relief), but her reasons for attacking Blaine and Ryan are valid and she needs to hear that. I agree that her being told this is a good start to helping her.
… Also ngl, I’m relieved that what triggered a debate in this thread was moral relativism rather than the political shit I tangented on about. I kind of regretted going on about that once I posted it. (whew)
Agreed. Rorschach isn’t a good person. He’s not much of a person at all. More of a clockwork orange (book, not movie) sort of thing.
A quick google shows:
in·teg·ri·ty
noun
1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
2. the state of being whole and undivided.
The first would apply to both Amber/AG & Kovacs/Rorshach, at least in their own minds, but the second?
About Amber being ten times better….
Unless I misread the comic, she:
a) Jammed the doors shut so that nobody inside could intervene and help Ryan.
b) Had to be aware that, even with a knife (especially one held that way), Ryan was no match for her physically. She’s AG’s secret identity, after all.
c) Proceeded, with a smile on her face and tears of joy running down her face, to easily disarm and then (apparently) eviscerate an unarmed Ryan.
So, maybe not ten times better. IMHO, of course. Not sympathizing with Ryan, just pointing out that beating up on someone that you know you totally outclass isn’t quite my idea of heroic; eviscerating them (or “just” kicking the shit out of them) after they’re hors de combat isn’t either.
Which brings up the following questions: Does everyone, including Sierra, think that RYAN was the one who jammed the doors? What story did Dorothy tell?
The fuck? That’s a really twisted way of painting those events. Other people can explain better that I can, but at the very least, it was tears of desperation, not joy.
… Yeah I’m with inahc on this one. That’s a skewed telling of the story.
For starters, she didn’t jam the door shut to stop Dorothy from STOPPING her. She did it to protect Dorothy and Joyce from Ryan, orr at least that’s my reading. And the tears and smile didn’t read “happy” to me so much as “experiencing so many emotions at once that my face is breaking and leaking”.
I mean obviously I’m not Amber so I don’t know for sure, and I won’t tell you how to feel. But I have to respectfully disagree.
Also, just a quick note: to me personally, “integrity” means “sticking to your principles, regardless of whether those principles are right or wrong.” It’s not always a good thing, but it IS something that more often than not, earns my respect.
The two different (at least as far as Rorschach/Kovacs and AG/Amber are concerend) definitions for “integrity” amused me. YMMV.
Observations about the relevant comic:
(Mine. Of course. Who else’s?)
a) The book keeps the doors closed only from the inside, not the outside. It keeps anyone inside from interfering with whatever Amber has planned and doesn’t protect anyone inside from anything at all.
b) As shown (and mentioned in some of the comments there) Ryan has no idea how to hold a knife properly.
c) The title, “Unfinished”: AG has already let Ryan get away twice. Maybe Amber considers him “unfinished business” too.
(Didn’t I put enough IHMOs and other qualifications there? I guess not.)
Upwards from here is a thread about who’s misreading the situation, Amber or everyone else. My guess is that Amber (and Dorothy and Ryan) are the only ones privy to her jamming the doors shut, which, IMHO, puts a totally different slant on the encounter. So Sierra’s reaction is based on false assumptions.
As for what the tears might indicate, well, I’ll be sticking with my interpretation until proven otherwise.
I appreciated your Wikipedia link. Very insightful and relevant.
Addendum: while I think Amber might agree with your assessment of events, she wasn’t and isn’t really in the right headspace to assess those events accurately.
“Other people can explain better that I can” – an invitation for others to pile on and tell me how my INTERPRETATION is wrong and misguided, right? I’m not sure how things go here.
More like “they know I find words hard, we’ve been over the knife scene a zillion times already, and we’re a little fucking busy right now”. Seriously bad timing for this.
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spoilsport
Pedal to the metal spoiler alert
Petals to the Metal “they turn into trees in the end” spoiler alert.
I’ll ship it anyway and you can’t stop me.
Awwwwwww, Sierra loves Mandy and Grace! She’s so precious!
I ship it.
Wow, grav roulette knocked it outta the park tonight.
Oooh, let’s see what I get!
~(｡☉︵ ಠ@)>
I’ve been enjoying the fact I go by Daisy and I got…Rose
What, did we get new gravs?
Was I always Amazi-Girl?
Well you went and Danned that one up
Swiggity-swag, what’s my new Grav?
ALL CAVITIES COWER IN FEAR FOR i AM THE DENTAL KNIGHT!
Whooo?
isn’t it already a currently canon triad?
You can ship things that are canon.
Canon shipping is considered the opposite of crack shipping – a very conservative, safe shipping that everyone approves of. It’s like shipping Ground.
I am unclear on the sacred protocols of the internet, but I presume one could continue to “ship” a canon relationship in the hopes that it remain so and doesn’t explode later in the story.
Yar, these shipping lanes be treacherous.
Ship = Enjoying or wanting to see more of a relationship, usually (but not always) a romantic one.
It is canon, but this is the first time Sierra’s used the “l”word. And “not the same way I love Grace and Mandy” suggests exactly what it sounds like.
I love these tiny little peeks into the dramas of the unfollowed background DoA characters. It shows that Willis knows what everyone’s doing, even if we don’t.
Clearly, the adventures of Faz occupy a full two-thirds of his mind at all times.
Picture an even mix of Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Leisure Suit Larry.
Oh, Willis doesn’t need to remember facts about Faz the Great and Powerful, he has charts for that.
Do I have the Faz avatar?
(plz no)
Lots of cannons have ships.
…. though, admittedly fewer in modern navies.
I just discovered a few minutes ago that there is a TNT program called “The Last Ship.” Alas, the reference is naval and not fanfic.
Watched the first couple of seasons, wasn’t bad. Military sci-fi isn’t my favorite, but it had good stories.
Let your hate and fear flow through me~
“WHY DON’T YOU ALL HATE ME AS MUCH AS I HATE ME”
How does one measure hate? is there some mathematical formula for hate or happiness?
Sorry there’s no equivalent of Seymores for hate.
I propose the Bradford, being equivalent to the minimum amount of hatred distributed amongst a dorm populace to result in no response to a public assualt.
May I suggest Umbridges as a unit for hate?
That’s unwieldly large.
We need a unit that’s, like, around an “I’m not touching yoooouuu!” as a single unit, that can add up to “He punched me!” pretty quickly.
Maybe like a nano-sibling or something.
Maybe they use a face scale, like they do for pain. The angrier your face after seeing a picture, the stronger the hate.
…. HUH.
…. maybe we could calibrate an EKG or use blood samples to gauge endorphin levels?
Well, if Rick has proved there’s a way to detect and measure evil, then there’s probably a way to mathematically measure love and hate.
You probably also need examples to measure up the hate, but just a fair warning, don’t try to measure Mike’s hate. I know he isn’t in the comic today, but just gonna’ say it. I’m pretty sure at this point, measuring Mike’s hate or plain dickery is a fools game. You have better things to venture on.
I think the standard unit of hate should be used to gauge the intensity of hatred induced (akin to “Seymours of Sadness”), rather than the amount possessed. Because let’s face it, Mike’s cup will always runneth over. So we need someone who inspires hate in others regularly and consistently.
I propose the Faz as the standard unit of hatred. There is no one who encounters him who does not find him both appalling and pathetic.
Fazes of hatred is pretty good; also I’m pleased that other EGS readers are here.
For some weird reason trying to measure hatred of a fictional character reminded me of something a One Piece fan came up with once: the Bellamy scale. It was a scale measuring how satisfying Luffy’s most epic punches were in the comic and anime, with 10 being represented by him taking out Bellamy the Hyena in a single punch.
Oh, Amber! We LOVE how much you hate yourself!
Here comes Sierra to ruin Amber’s brooding. I thank her for it.
A walking smile like Sierra may be exactly what she needs right now.
Her smile didn’t make it to Panel 6.
when your internal *in this case external* monologue doesn’t match reality.
I just don’t know who’s the one miss reading the situation here, Amber or everyone else.
?
In what way would ‘everyone else’ be misreading the situation? They think Amber is awesome for getting rid of a stalker/rapist. They are aware of themselves thinking that, and cannot misread it.
Amber thinks that her actions have cemented her in the mind of everyone else as a ‘psycho knife attacker’, which is objectively false, as Sierra demonstrates here.
(And as Amber recognizes, which is very nice! Instead of her narrative just twisting to make Sierra seem untrustworthy somehow, it takes the hit head on)
(Amber’s actual mental state is irrelevant to the question of what everyone else thinks of her)
That’s just it, Amber is a hero to everyone else for what she did but Amber herself doesn’t see herself like that because of some sort of self loathing complex she has in which she see herself as the monster.
Personally I think the reason why she’s beating herself up is unnecessary, But I do understand why she feels like it’s not ok because she herself isn’t ok, I wouldn’t say her mental state is in question since she’s been through a lot of traumatic shit in what seems to be what 2 months or a month and a half ?
Not EVERYONE.
Ryan would probably take her side.
And Mike, Mike would too.
And Mary.
I love you, Sierra. In whatever way you, Mandy, and Grace are comfortable with.
Using “How dare you step on my narrative” in future conversations
It sounds like it’d be most useful when you’re DMing. Like, the players won’t even take your third alternate route to finishing the adventure, and you’re running out of improv and patience:
“Your bards somehow keeps the concert going for a second encore, but everybody’s packing up when the song starts to wind down.”
“Whoo! Let’s get this show to the next town! No sleep ’til Greyhawk!”
“Now that it’s quiet, you notice the sound of marching coming from the west, where the guard said the necromancer was three weeks ago… in game.”
“We pack up the instruments as quickly as possible and load up the-”
“How dare you step on my narrative! I am not writing a whole new adventure just so you can play Band on the Run, not until you finish this one!”
We call it “The Void”. As in “Okay, if you really want to, but be warned that I didn’t prepare for this, so there’s no map and you’ll be adventuring in The Void.”
That’s a good, short and sweet term term for that. I’ll never remember it when I need it, but that’s more of a personal problem.
You don’t just say, “Here be dragons”?
Although I guess in a typical game, that’d be pretty much everywhere.
Sure, if your DM is a fucking hack. A good DM saves dragons for Big Deal Events.
I mean, Council of Wyrms is the best setting.
I was a gold dragon named Chansey, and how can you top that? (I was also, like, 7, so the name was a bit… odd.)
Alright, fair enough. Being a gold dragon named after a Pokémon is pretty rad. I should have clarified that, from my own experience and the tales I’ve heard and read, dragon-heavy campaigns aren’t exactly the norm.
I also should have clarified that a dragon-heavy setting can be some of the best fun a person could have.
In my experience Dungeons and Dragons’ name is wholly unearned considering the ratio of dungeons to dragons one generally encounters. It should be called Dungeons and Assorted Monsters That Are Almost Never Dragons.
Dungeons & Oh My God, Use Something Other Than Goblins, coming soon to a FLGS near you.
Dungeons & Kobolds?
“That’s not a necromancer. That’s just our agent. It’s his job to follow us around and when we’re finally washed up and dead to the public, he finds some way to bring us back.”
You just made me headcanon your reply in place of part of my own skit… *Applauds.*
thankfully sierra has clean feet!
No one wants a Dirty Narrative.
I mean, I suppose the Slipshine comics prove that a lot of people want Dirty Narratives,
Thank you for adding Sayid to the favorite character poll, Willis. 🙂
..though you’re unfairly stacking things toward Sierra right now, I think. 😛
Superman probably does this to Batman all the time.
Superman can hear him monologuing all the way in Metropolis, going on about “darkness” and “vengeance” and “pearls hitting the cold hard ground”.
If it goes on for more than 20 minutes, he shows up with ice cream to kill the vibe.
*sniff* “This is the same ice cream that Mom always got me.” *sniff, sniffle*
“Huh, really Bruce? Mine too.”
“MARTHA!”
Makes for a good song, though.
I’ve been on a Steven Universe kick recently, so seeing that phrase made me imagine my favorite character getting killed. Thanks a lot.
“I love you, Batman!”
“Stop interrupting my narrative.”
“But not in the way I love Lois. I’ve miscommunicated that before.”
I ship them.
Lois can’t breathe in space.
Thank you for this : D
Aw man it’s honestly really great to see Sierra. We’ve been seeing people be jackasses for the last week or so straight, plus I’ve just been having a shitty time in general. It’s pretty wonderful seeing Sierra be wonderful and also open about her relationship. Good feelings all around right now.
Some narratives deserve to be trod upon.
Who are you to judge Ambers narrative worthiness!? (Now that’s a mouth full :P)
I love Sierra.
Not the way she loves Grace and Mandy, since that apparently needs to be specified.
And Amber… I’m actually less worried about her if she has the energy to be melodramatic.
Ooh, I didn’t even think of that, you’re right! She must be feeling a little better after all.
How can I be a lonely dark avenger when people keep hugging me!?
You know, maybe this is exactly what Amber needs. People stepping on her narrative with love and support.
That’s what Danny tried.
That was Danny Classic, so no wonder it didn’t work.
Perfect grav for that comment!
Operation become an asshole is proceeding with varying degrees of success.
Dammit now I need to retake the character poll AGAIN but this time it’s just Nash, Beatrice, and Sierra.
At the risk of sounding dumb, what’s butterbeer?
Harry Potter drink.
Ah that would explain it. I was never into Harry Potter and my knowledge of it starts and stops at the first movie.
Movie?!
They were inescapable fifteen years ago, not that I still harbor any resentment about it or anything…
I got bored after the third or fourth book. The good against the bad gets boring after some time and it seemed that she would just amp up on the violence in the books to come.
Though I did read the wrapup of the last book some years later, just to know who survived.
But that’s when people start dying!
And when JK starts bullshitting her way through the end.
I only read the last two chapters or so.
Thanks too lending libraries….
It’s like Ginger beer, but more buttery.
There’s ginger in it? I always imagined it being smooth and rich, not spicy.
That should be their slogan right there
I’d have thought it would be like cream soda, but salty rather than sweet.
It actually exists, sort of, and it’s basically a cream soda with butterscotch in it.
I saw this at World Market a few years back and, since I didn’t know it was a Harry Potter thing, was thoroughly confused by the description on the label.
http://reedsinc.com/product/flying-cauldron-butterscotch-beer/
The stuff at the Harry Potter tour is vaguely reminscent of cream soda, but much, much, much sweeter.
The ice cream is empirically the best butterbeer related thing though.
See, and I always figured it tasted like buttered rum (or rum butter, which is amazing) with overtones of rootbeer.
Hm. Now I might need to go experiment…
The version I had was rootbeer and butterscotch schnapps. Pretty good 🙂
That would be amazing and pretty much the way I imagine it!
It tastes EXACTLY like Golden Gaytime ice cream.
I don’t know, but I’d bet Butterbeer makes for really vile vomit if you over-indulge.
See all of the above.
Somewhat related: (Baileys) Irish Cream, and atholl brose.
(don’t think that worked, and I’m not going to chance it again; the link goes to a wiki article anyway, so just wiki/google that.)
Butterbeer is (or was) a festive drink in Tudor times made of beer, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cloves and butter. Some recipes added extra spices, such as licorice. I think it was heated and whisked so that the eggs made it go creamy. Kind of like eggnog, but with beer in place of the milk and brandy, and butter in place of the cream.
…butterbeer is actually historic?!
Yep. Heston Blumenthal made it for his Tudor feast.
Holy crap that would be ridiculously expensive!! Sugar? Cloves?? Nutmeg?? What are we, royalty?!
–I need to find the recipe and make this; it sounds very similar to another hot alcoholic Medieval drink I found a while ago. According to that one, you stir the eggs in and cook it very carefully over pretty low heat, not only stirring it constantly, but also scraping the sides of the pot too so the eggs don’t get thick and cooked there. Says to add a bit more ale if it gets too thick.
I love all the people expressing surprise that butterbeer is real.
They love you back!
http://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a44404/wizard-worthy-butterbeer-recipe/
Y’know, Amber, usually one escapes to a fantasy narrative that’s better than reality, not worse.
That wouldn’t be edgy enough for Amber lol
I’d make a joke about Amber drawing Sonic OCs, but frankly sega killed the joke by making those canon in what looks to be an actually good game.
Except for angsty teens.
And Amber’s an angsty teen.
Depression involves escaping to a fantasy world that’s worse then reality.
i think that might be the best damn description of depression i ever heard get said
of course, it’s usually less ‘escaping’ and more ‘being dragged’ but still
I just recovered from an eight-week bout, my third this year.
*hugs*
Thanks.
It’s less escaping to and more being trapped in regardless of your intentions.
Quite. The “escape” was sardonic.
I’m sorry if my comment was insensitive to you. My one friend with depression writes lots of happy fic as a means of escape.
No problem.
Sierra knows the way to my heart: being a big ol’ sweetie
“I see your fear, and raise. You wanna stay in the game, you gotta put in some contempt.”
ReTURN TO SENDER
aDRESS unKNOWN
NO such NUMBer
NO such ZONE
Psssht, I like my narratives as much as the next person, but super bleak/cynical ones, depending on the story, are usually not justified. Hooray for Sierra throwing in some reality (and polyamorous anarchy. :p).
And when Amber turns 30, she’s going to look back at this time and realize that not only none of the doors actually open, no one actually gives a shit. :/
Self-focused myopia sucks. :p
Sierra’s door was open! Sierra has several fucks to give!
But not the way she has to Mandy and Grace. She’s miscommunicated that before.
+1
>goes to check Slipshine
Why is it so hard to believe that people would be on her side in this?
By which I mean, she should have anticipated more people being on her side.
It makes perfect sense that when you save yourself and a friend from a knife wielding rapist YOU ARE THE GOOD GUY.
Why is she anticipating push back?
Because she’s convinced that by giving in to her urge to try and kill her attacker, she’s becoming more like her shitheel father.
Because from Amber’s point of view ‘from the inside’, that was not a heroic moment. That was a moment of blind berserker rage at a target that was not tied to whether the target was deserving. (It was actually tied to that perfectly, but Amber doesn’t see that from her vantage point)
And from Amber’s (mental illness addled) vantage point, EVERYONE can see from that vantage point. From her point of view, it was VERY OBVIOUS TO EVERYONE that she lost control and gave in to violent impulses.
And from a yet further point of view, fed with fuel by Mike, her father and (a little bit) Rachel, losing control that one time irreversibly and unequivocally pushes Amber into ‘violent rage monster who should be locked up’ territory, makes her someone that no-one would ever willingly associate with, someone despised, hated and feared.
All three steps on this logic ladder (1. she lost control absolutely; 2. everyone saw that; 3. iit made her a monster) are flawed, that is to say, kind of bullshit. But all three of them also have a grain of truth to them (Amber did give in to a violent impulse she had, the entire school does know about the event as a whole, and public at large isn’t too kindly disposed towards mentally ill people).
So together, it builds this twisted picture of the world… except Amber is still lucid enough to be aware of uncertainities in it. This picture in her mind is just the worst-case scenario… the problem is, she is absolutely incapable of evaluating how likely it is. The mechanisms people normally use for this kind of evaluation, broadly defined as intuition, are majorly warped in Amber’s case. And she knows they are, which makes it an ouroboros of uncertainity and anxiety. If it’s not the worst-case scenario, she can make the situation worse by acting as if it were. If it is, she risks her personal physical and mental safety (the meager balance of self-control she has now) by just going outside and exposing herself to other people.
Amber has decided to act as if it were the worst-case scenario. That this guess is wrong, while good long-term, is not going to do anything to help her short-term stability )=
(She’s much more stable than she thinks, though, and much more capable of taking hits without dissolving into violent rage. So it’s going to be okay, I think)
excellent analysis.
It’s also tied into her disassociation. Amazi-Girl is the golden alter. Amber is the monster who needs AG to channel her rage into heroism and to take over to keep Amber from hurting people. This was Amber, not Amazi-Girl, so it must have been horrible. If it had been good and heroic, Amazi-Girl would have done it. Or claimed it.
That’s all bullshit of course, but it’s how her disassociation is playing out.
Speaking of dissociation, a weird thing happened to me last night. I was skimming the comment section, saw one of my posts, and a happy little thought popped up: “I like her! :)” Then I had a weird moment of vertigo as my brain got confused about which me was which and which me was “out”. It… was a good kind of weird – some parts of me actually like me, and aren’t afraid to say so now! – but still really really weird.
Ow, thinking about alters too much still hurts my head. :/ maybe I should leave that to Meta.
Because for all that we (as women and young people) like to pretend we’d cut a bongo in her situation, the vast majority of us would react the way Dorothy did. Even if we don’t like the person she fought back against, we’re not actually going to take his knife away and make him new air holes with it.
Nevertheless, she’s due a couple high fives.
Has she received any?
Depression is a hell of a drug, man.
Because that’s the way her assheel of a father taught her life was:
She will always be despised because she never can do anything right.
She needs all the hugs she can get but she will bite anyone who tries.
Somewhere in al anon literature someone described they life experience as “always thinking of myself as being the main actress whose name is written in larger than life letters on the billboard – and then I realized it was just home movies.”
Amber has the same approach. I’ll hope she’ll realize it soon and get some help (because to her, the drama is important and needs someone to see her and it).
My depression convinced me that everyone was looking at me and judging me and whispering about me.
Ends up that everyone is far too wrapped up in their own lives to care about someone else so peripheral to their own. 🙂
Get down your dark gargoyle, batman.
Nonono. BIRDS have broods. Little bats are pups.
Also: Amber, you’re Mikeing too hard. Go and find the actual Mike and ask for pointers. (He maybe didn’t even do your mom for a nickel, since he seems to halfway almost pretend to have some respect for her.)
I love you Sierra! But as a friend to another friend. It’s not that I like you or anything, Baka!
Thank the gods for Sierra, optimism made flesh.
*plays Cheap Trick’s “Ohm Sweet Ohm” from the Rock-N-Rule soundtrack on the hacked Muzak*
Isn’t That NICE?
Someone else what knows that movie. Awesomesauce.
Maybe Amber has a point. There is someone in the wing known to stare darkly, judgingly from the cracks of their door…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/diddlin-2/
Yeah, but isn’t that Amber doing the staring?
Yeah, that was the joke I was going for.
Although technically, it’s Amazi-girl.
Tags say it’s Amazi-Girl, but yeah.
Well Sierra is also capable of it BTW: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/rat/
Oooooh, good catch.
I suppose it SHOULD tell Amber something (if she was in a better headspace) that Sierra saves that look for Mary
But the real curtain-twitcher in this hall is Mary.
I can hear the record scratch in the fifth panel.
Apparently Amber hasn’t realized that most decent people will think better of you for defending yourself and your friend from a knife-wielding rapist.
It can be difficult to realize that others do not perceive the way you perceive yourself, even without the anxiety and depression that Amber’s struggling with
And, in a sense, the entire residence hall.
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
You know, if you open off all angry and aggressive, that’s gonna drive people away before they even have the chance to like you. Course, I suppose it’s safer than daring to hope that they’ll treat you well. But sometimes risks are necessary.
I think that’s the point. Amber’s kinda in a “drive people away” mood.
I wonder if she’s simply misconstruing people’s stares of concern for stares of fear, or if she’s actually seeing things, and no one’s doors are actually cracked open.
On an unrelated note, while I’m pleased with how early I am to view the comic, it’s only because I’m viewing it on my phone, and this brings me to a minor gripe I have with this site. Like xkcd and SMBC and many others, this webcomic has very funny alt-text, which you can right-click on to view if you’re on a PC. However, unlike xkcd and SMBC, holding on the image, as an alternative to using a right mouse button when you’re on a phone, will not reveal the alt-text. Instead, it just shows the page’s URL. I realize this is a minor gripe, but small annoyances like this make me visit this comic less frequently than I do for my other comics, since I can’t get the full enjoyment on my phone. If there’s actually a way to view the alt-text for DoA on my phone, I’d love to hear it. If there isn’t, please consider adjusting the code to be more like what xkcd and SMBC have, seeing as they prove it is certainly doable.
Tap your phone screen once in the blank space underneath the comic next to the “latest” and “first” buttons.
the blank, like, five pixels. I like that the feature exists, I just wish it was easier to click with a finger.
Most smart phones let you embiggen the screen with a gesture.
…. no I’m NOT TALKING about a crude sexual gesture, just a two-fingered stroke!
yeah, that makes it *possible* to click, but then I’m zoomed in so much the alt text is offscreen, so I have to zoom out without accidentally dismissing it.
plus, mobile firefox has enough trouble just loading this site, so zooming (or even scrolling) gets pretty slow. but iirc Willis already knows about that (and some people have performance issues even on a desktop system iirc) .
Yay! Thank you so much, guys!
Hold your finger below the comic on the right side, and the alt-text will come up. At least on iPhone and iPad– I haven’t tried it on anything else.
Tapping it works fine on Android.
What *is* butterbeer anyway? I don’t feel like googling it.
I know that is doesn’t have alcohol, but it sounds like it has a lot of calories.
Nevermind, it was answered upstairs. Whoopsie.
She needs to go hang out with Billie. The McAwesome dorm will be highly impressed with her brooding coolness.
I don’t mind admitting that I am An Old.
What are the logos on Amber’s door? The dinosaur poster, I assume, is Dina’s contribution. But the green and the purple decals are…?
(Despite the season, “A part of it” is not a useful answer to the last question.)
something something decepticon? it’s been forever since I watched Beast Wars (Beasties?), but the faces do look vaguely transformer-y.
Predacon and Maximal faction logos from Transformers: Beast Wars.
(Purple insectoid and green wolfoid, in order.)
The Predacon (reptile and insect-alt-mode villains) and Maximal (heroes, mostly mammalian, with 2 reptiles) faction symbols from Beast Wars.
Actually, I should say reptile and arthropod…most of them are arachnids (Scorponok, Tarantulas, Blackarachnia, one half of Quickstrike)…only Waspinator was an actual insect among the actual show characters. (And they also had half a mammal for a little bit, and the Maximals have a fish later on…)
…. okay, can we have a Dina-like person with evolutionary knowledge field this for question for us? Do featherless dinosaurs count as reptiles? I mean, you could argue clades, but by that standard mammals are also dinosaurs.
(Also, Inferno was an insect.)
*mammals are also reptiles, grah. Stupid typos.
…. though that would make Airazor a dinosaur too, and Silverbolt half-dino.
And, yes, Airazor is a dinosaur, as is the avian-half of Silverbolt.
No, mammals are not reptiles. Mammals are synapsids, which are, by definition, not reptiles.
Some, mostly popular, works call synapsids ‘mammal-like reptiles’, but that is inaccurate. Reptile is synonymous with sauropsid, not amniote. Reptiles are the most recent common ancestor of lizards and crocodiles, and all of their descendants, both extant and extinct. This is the most parsimonious clade that includes all traditionally-defined living reptiles, and it does not include mammals, but it does include all dinosaurs, including birds. (As well as pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, ichthiosaurs, and a number of other wholly extinct groups.)
I’m fond of a more flippant, but still accurate definition: ‘All animals more closely related to the snake than to St Patrick.’
“Stoppit! I’m darrrk!”
Stop touching meee! I AM THE NIGHT!!!
^_^
She is so invincible to criticism, she annihilates anyone who tries to get close to her.
…..
…..
Not because of her emotional angst. Just her shirt.
Dumbiverse Amazigirl was immune to criticism. This one is immune to praise.
Now let’s listen to Amazi-Girl’s new song:
DARKNESS. NO LOVING FATHER. INTERNET HELPS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqv_LUStxDw
“Everyone either hates me, or they’re wrong.”
While I’ve never gutted a rapist, I do remember that feeling at least.
Bad brain lies.
But not the way Sierra lies with Mandy and Grace. She’s miscommu- *Vaudeville hook*
I applaud you for that Vaudeville reference. For that, your joke has been saved from the shame of overuse, and I kneel before you.
But not the way that
*GONG*
… aw, man.
Bless Sierra.
Damn it Amber why do you want people to hate you, well you know what they don’t, now yield ! Yield to excepting the love !
What she wants is some certainity and ability to anticipate the reaction she gets. The self-hatred monster in her brain has convinced her that the more likely reaction is rejection, hate and fear. Anything that doesn’t fit that mold just make her feel more unbalanced and incapable of predicting anything about the world around her, which does not help short-term.
So, yeah. Just keep piling on the love until the self-hatred monster starts suffocating under the weight of statistics! Just keep Mike away from Amber. Confirmation bias is one hell of a percussion instrument, and one contribution playing along with her fears can outweigh a hundred that contradicts them.
I had a period in my life where I was convinced that the only reason anyone would be sad if I died was because they failed to realize how little I was worth and how much better their lives would be without me. I think Amber probably tells herself much the same thing. It doesn’t matter how many people praise her actions, because they were wrong to her and when people don’t see that it just validates the twisted logic in her self-loathing. That they’re too blinded by ‘who’ she did what ‘she believes to be wrong’ to, to recognize what a monster she is.
But Amber has it much, much worse than I ever did because I was able to recognize that I could be of genuine worth to other people, even if to begin with, I told myself it was just because competent tanks were hard to come by in WoW back in 2005, and over time I was able to accept that there might be more than my understanding of game mechanics that made them care about me. My selfesteem has probably not fully recovered, but I learned to believe that others could see what I couldn’t.
Amber has something I didn’t. An abusive bongo to compare her actions to. Someone who would approve of her methods, even if only to pat himself on the back for his ‘exceptional’ parenting skills. To Amber it’s completely irrelevant that Ryan is a rapist. It’s irrelevant that Ryan deserved to face the consequences for his actions. Ryan is irrelevant. The only person that matters is Blaine and how her actions make her feel closer to him in ways she never want to be.
Amber cannot allow herself to accept that any method Blaine believes in could ever be justified. As long as people continue to praise her actions, it’ll only convince her even further that they can’t be trusted to see what she, from her own flawed perspective, is becoming. That their opinions can’t be trusted.
I just want to observe that staying alive because you’re a competent tank in WoW is so…relatable? Those tiny reasons go such a long way. Being late for work saved me once. I hated that job — it was one of the main reasons I was at risk — but I couldn’t bring myself to leave one person to handle the breakfast shift alone.
Glad we made it.
She excepts all the love. “I’ll take all the love except yours, and yours, and yours….”
Aww Sierra, what a ray of sunshine you are! More Sierra plz. -insert praying hands emoji here-
Local grocery store has started carrying specialty sodas (in fancy glass bottles!) It’s mostly root and ginger beers and cream sodas, but they sometimes have a ‘not licensed as Harry Potter but we still put a cauldron on it and use similar colors and fonts’ butterbeer soda. It’s like butterscotch cream soda or something; I’m not really a cream soda fan, but my mom really liked it.
It probably wouldn’t be good hot.
I wonder how much of Amber’s past 4 days was spent complaining about Discovery and deciding whether she liked the Orville or not.
That’s more something that I would expect of Ethan than Amber.
No, seriously someone get her a therapist. She’ll start talking about slaying Itachi and making Uchihas great again in a moment…
Only difference will be Danny is far more useful then Sakura.
Damn you Kishimoto a million times.
“Damn it, Sierra! How am I supposed to get my self-loathing on when you’re insisting on being all nice and sunny… as usual…?”
Poor Amber! Things never go according to how she expects, does it? Still, one can hope that she’ll find out that Joyce isn’t just a weird anomaly, that Mike was talking bullshit and that everyone in the Dorm is not afraid of her!
FROZEN BUTTERBEER IS THE BEST BUTTERBEER. Also, Sierra is adorable. Now I’m curious about when she ‘miscommunicated’ her love for somebody.
I’m not much of a betting man, but I’d bet dollars to dimes that it was a guy friend of hers that was receiving the wrong signal from the L word.
I’ve actually been on the inverse of that. Girl was saying it and meaning romantic love but I was too dense to realize it.
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him …
So you think Amber is like Prince Harry, hiding her true nobility?
Welp, that worked on me. Let’s go kill some French soldiers!
Some of whom I’m probably technically related too, but it’s a distant relation.-King Henry’s mind
Is Sierra basically Pinky Pie light? oO
Everything I’ve seen of her suggests that you are entirely correct.
Hadn’t thought of that but yep Sierra is best pony
Oh my god I love Sierra and relate to her so much. “I have miscommunicated this before”
I really hope that I manage to come off to people somewhat more like this and less like Buckets Of Blood Guy (I, I have my moments)
Sierra seems like the sweetest person ever! I’d love to see more of her, Mandy and Grace’s relationship.
“I am TRYING to ISOLATE myself to promote a DOWNWARD SPIRAL of UNHEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS could you all please stop HUMANISING and SYMPATHISING with me so I can persuade myself you all hate me and SUFFER ALONE without having to get therapy”
doesn’t it just suck when you’re a good person and people see that even when you do bad things?
Comic Reactions:
Panels 1-2: Agoraphobia is a hell of a thing. It sucks when it takes a ton of spoons just to leave the room and it sucks being hypervigilant the second you leave the room so you’re even more attuned to danger.
And it’s even harder when your brain is raging all sorts of awful things and driving a state of paranoia on top of all of that.
After all, one of the downsides of pushing others away as a depression side-effect is sometimes you end up alone with only your worst critic for company.
Panel 3: I loathe Mike.
Like, he knows what he’s doing, he knows his friends well enough to know what will get under their skin and really fuck with them and yet he actively goes out of his way to stab at those wounds and make recovery so much harder.
And you see that in spades here. This narrative she is clinging so hard to is her dad’s narrative, yes, but more freshly it is Mike’s narrative. It’s what he said everyone’s reaction would be. And he said it because it was Amber’s greatest fear of how everyone would act.
Like, it is such a monstrous act to actively target massive insecurities or trauma for fun or temporary advantage, especially with people who trust you enough to let you know them.
Ethan and Amber/AG need to escape him if they have any chance of successfully recovering from their individual traumas.
Panels 4-5: Sierra is amazing. This is an indisputable fact about the universe.
But what about that like one time Mike’s being a monstrous douchebag actually kinda benefited his victim in the long run somehow doesn’t that prove that he’s actually just no-nonsense, tells it like it is hero with everyone’s best interests at heart?
Can I offer you some internet hugs? Because that’s the best criticism of Mike’s defenders that I’ve yet seen.
I can’t agree with you more on Panel 3. Also, I just was Nash and Sierra to meet and become best friends. Aside from Dina, Becky, and Carla, they are the best (well in a four way tie with Leslie and Danny).
This is why, when there’s “Who’s your favorite DoA character?” things in the right column, I am stymied as to why Sierra’s not higher on the list. 🙂
She doesn’t get enough screentime )=
So, what, is it okay to like Amber again? Is she not the crazy violent abuser to you people anymore?
Oh I’ll keep disliking her as long as she uses assaulting petty criminals as a coping mechanism instead of actually making an effort to recover I just don’t give a fuck about rapists getting stabbed.
I’ve always liked Amber. She’s crazy and violent and she’s struggling with that.
She’s not the monster she thinks she is. She’s a good person with serious problems.
(And Amazi-Girl isn’t the shining hero both of them think she is either)
For me, it’s a huge case of empathy. I have a very similar background as to Amber (without) the possible DID) and I can understand what she’s going through a lot. The difference between us is that I was physically weak and frail until around her age, so I never took self-defense or martial arts classes and was physically unable to vent vigilante style like she does. I also had the benefit of my abusive father leaving my life years before hers did and actually getting therapy as well as not having any toxic friends like Mike in my life (the one fringe benefit of having no friends early on in life). If circumstances were slightly different, I could very well have been in Amber’s shoes. So I do like her, because my heart aches whenever I see her, and I know that with the proper help she would be in a much better place than she currently is.
Don’t hate her! That’s what she wants!
But if we don’t hate her, then why is her wanting us to do something grounds for not doing it?
#logicbombsillinesspleasedontkill
I mainly see someone who abuses herself more than she abuses anyone else. And that makes me sad on her behalf.
So she’s still crazy and violent and she still “abuses anyone else” okay got it.
Make up your fucking minds. Is she an abuser or not. Is what she did to Danny abusive or not. Am I supposed to hate her or not. You fucking people keep changing your fucking minds when I think I finally fucking grasp it for once.
How about “Things are actually pretty fucking complicated and you’re being a real jerk by basically demanding that we are supposed to feel only one thing, preferably what you feel”?
Is that clearly enough making up my mind for you?
I dont know what to fucking feel thats why im asking you
No, you’re telling us that we should feel one way or the other. Straight up telling us that. You’re not asking, you’re demanding. With some insults thrown in for good measure.
There is nothing about your comments that indicates you’re asking us how you should feel; especially since it’s pretty clear how you do already feel. There is nothing in your comments that indicates you’re trying to have a discussion in good faith. Nothing.
And when I make posts on Amber – and most of you commenters know I’ve made quite a few of those over the last couple of years; some of them really long too – I’m not telling anyone else how to feel. I’m only telling how I feel; and I mostly do that by my reading of the strip itself, without reading other commenters’ thoughts first.
People can agree with that or not. But I make up my own mind by thinking my own thoughts, and then people can agree or disagree with me. Heck, my favourite reply once was someone who said that they thought I made a reasonable, eloquent, sensible argument… And they disagreed with pretty much everything I said.
Im not trying to fucking make you feel one way or the other ii jsut want to fucking know whether or not im a fucking abuser
I dont know how to fucking feel because verytime I think i do you fucking people keep changing your midns for a fucking year it was just oh shes such an abuser get the fuck away from her shes fucking broken and when i finally think youre fcuking right now its just oh shes just hurt and needs help fuck that why do you people keep changing your fucking minds on me
You are not Amber. You are Spencer.
You are a real person.
How we react to Amber – a fictional character, crafted to fulfill a certain role in the story and to evoke certain responses – does not and should not reflect on you or your self-worth/esteem.
I submit that identifying this strongly with Amber is a problem. It does not seem to be healthy for you.
No, Amber is not an abuser. She’s done some shitty, potentially-abusive things to Danny, but instead of making it into a cycle of abuse just broke the relationship off, which makes her very definitely NOT an abuser.
The thing you are missing here is that the commentariat is not a hive mind. Some days people who hate Amber have things to say and so come out of their hidey holes, other days they stay in them and it’s people who like her that take the central stage.
My opinion on Amber has been very stable and definite: I empathize with her, disapprove of certain things she does but understand why she does them, and wish her all the best.
Also, the link of abuser=hatred you’re talking about here is bullshit. Mary is not an abuser, but she’s very hateable. Ryan-by-the-middle-name is not an abuser, but, you know. Ruth most definitely abused her authority over her floor, but whatever Rachel says, that does not make her An Abuser as a mark on her forehead for the rest of her life, she can and is trying to do better. I don’t hate her, despite how vividly her early behavior reminded me of my own middle school bullies.
Not to mention that yes, you’re not Literally Amber. No matter how much you empathize with her, ‘abuser’ is talking about actions and the overall situation. It’s not a personality type. Someone who continuously chooses to abuse others is ‘an abuser’, but Amber is not that, and -there is no link in that to whether you are-. Being mentally ill does not make Amber an abuser. Being an overly violent vigilante does not make her an abuser. She’s a vigilante, she was a stalker to Sal. They are their own things. Abuse is one kind of shitty thing a human person can do to another human person, it’s not every kind.
“Mary is not an abuser, but she’s very hateable. ”
I beg to disagree. She would have been perfectly happy if Ruth had ended up dead; the only part she didn’t like was that her blackmail material got public and thus she was not able to use it as blackmail anymore.
Oh, and did I mention she was blackmailing Ruth? Because, you know, that’s a classic abuse tactic in and of itself.
And then she also basically asked Billie for permission to abuse Carla into suicide. Even thought that Billie would appreciate it.
Ryan is a serial rapist. He is totally an abuser.
I think you two are using VERY wide definitions of abuse, and not ones I feel comfortable using. Serial rapist =/= abuser, like those are just different things? Like arsonist and knife murderer. Sure, people are dead on both cases, but there are still different words for it!
Mary is a bully. She does not have institutional power or close relationships to others on her floor. She wishes she did, but she doesn’t. So what she CAN do is terrible, but not covered by the word ‘abuse’ imho. She WOULD be one if she could, but right now it’s not a present pattern.
It’s just different???
Ok, this now… This is you telling me what you’re really looking for.
First of all, I’m sure it must’ve been hard for you to write that. I replied to what I thought saw, but clearly, I did not see what you really wanted to know. I cannot even imagine how it must’ve sucked for you to try and have a conversation without having to admit what you just admitted, and ending up with people just being really harsh in return.
As for whether or not you are an abuser… Well, frankly, I could not in any way possibly comment on that. I do not know you. I do not know your story. You might share some similarities with Amber, but I’m also sure there are lots of differences I have no idea about.
And I feel confident talking about Amber because… Well, because I get to see an “all-seeing” kind of view about her. Because she’s a fictional character, and because the only things she’s hiding is what Willis hides from us; and he’s been pretty open about her problems.
And while I believe that I personally have been fairly consistent in my view of Amber (mainly that she really needs professional help, and that the one person she’s really abusing is herself)… Well, here’s the thing: Over the past few years, the knowledge about her has changed. She’s not the same person she was when the comic started. I’m not even sure Willis had a clear idea about what problems Amber was going to have back then, or what direction it would come to take.
So yeah, things change. And because things change, my perception must also necessarily change at least somewhat. But again, that’s about Amber, a fictional character whom I have a level of knowledge about that I do not have about you.
So because of all of these reasons, I’m afraid I cannot possibly give you the answer you want. I just cannot. To even attempt so would be, in my position, unethical on so goddamn many levels I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I’m sorry. It sucks.
Spencer, what I’m hearing in your words is pain. I cannot tell you how to feel but I can tell you that if your brain is demanding you torture yourself, we will all hope for you to be OK and not do that. I can’t hug you through a computer screen but please accept this as support.
‘Abuser’ is a complicated term and the people it gets applied to much more so. How you feel is going to go back and forth. No one is obligated to stand and take abuse, but I feel everyone can have redemption. I can say please imagine yourself having worked through it, and being relieved and moving toward a balance for yourself. And keep imagining.
oh spencer… *hugs*
I see some painfully familiar patterns here. I wish I could walk into your mind and tear out the fucking mind-parasite that’s doing this to you. 🙁 you don’t deserve to feel like this.
but we don’t have that magic, so let’s see if I can give you some self-defense 101 instead 😉
first off, it wasn’t very nice of thejeff to phrase it as “crazy and violent”. too much baggage in those words. she’s mentally ill and has anger issues, and those are things for her to fix, not beat herself up about.
“Is she an abuser or not.”
in this I’m seeing Black&White Thinking. Something in your head is telling you that she has to be either 100% abuser or 100% fine, and that there is One True Answer that you have to find and conform to. That’s a big ol’ pile of bullshit, and Liliet did a good job of explaining why.
There’s going to be lots of situations where that part of your mind is telling you there are exactly two possible answers when really there’s a third path or a bazillion options. Watch out for that; try and catch it in a lie.
“Am I supposed to hate her or not.”
More of the same here; the idea that there is One True Way to feel, and that your feelings must conform to this bullshit, as if you’re expected to have magically perfect control over your feelings. There are things you can do to *influence* future feelings, but, mostly feelings are a thing that *happen* and you then figure out what to do with them. They’re not something to be judged. Your feelings are yours, and they’re valid and okay even if they’re completely disconnected from reality.
Also, it’s very important to distinguish between “I feel like X is Y” and “I know that X is Y”. They are very different things, and can easily contradict each other. Everyone gets to have their own feelings, but they don’t get their own facts. You’re probably still going to *feel* like you have to pick one of two options for an annoyingly long while after you *know* that it’s not true.
That’s where mindfulness and meditation comes in handy – learning to sit with those inconvenient feelings, and let them feel, without drowning in them. Sometimes it’s like balancing on a knife edge in a hurricane. 😛
before I forget, here’s a list of cognitive distortions to watch out for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
and I’ll repeat my book suggestions I gave CoMa the other day:
[The Mindful Way through Depression](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Mindful-Way-through-Depression/dp/1593851286) and [Feeling Good](http://www.amazon.ca/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336)
(you might hate that second book as much as I did, though. That’s where switching to DBT comes in handy. but read what you can, it helps.)
*facepalm* I forgot about the link moderation again. time to doublepost!
—–
oh spencer… *hugs*
I see some painfully familiar patterns here. I wish I could walk into your mind and tear out the fucking mind-parasite that’s doing this to you. 🙁 you don’t deserve to feel like this.
but we don’t have that magic, so let’s see if I can give you some self-defense 101 instead 😉
first off, it wasn’t very nice of thejeff to phrase it as “crazy and violent”. too much baggage in those words. she’s mentally ill and has anger issues, and those are things for her to fix, not beat herself up about.
“Is she an abuser or not.”
in this I’m seeing Black&White Thinking. Something in your head is telling you that she has to be either 100% abuser or 100% fine, and that there is One True Answer that you have to find and conform to. That’s a big ol’ pile of bullshit, and Liliet did a good job of explaining why.
There’s going to be lots of situations where that part of your mind is telling you there are exactly two possible answers when really there’s a third path or a bazillion options. Watch out for that; try and catch it in a lie.
“Am I supposed to hate her or not.”
More of the same here; the idea that there is One True Way to feel, and that your feelings must conform to this bullshit, as if you’re expected to have magically perfect control over your feelings. There are things you can do to *influence* future feelings, but, mostly feelings are a thing that *happen* and you then figure out what to do with them. They’re not something to be judged. Your feelings are yours, and they’re valid and okay even if they’re completely disconnected from reality.
Also, it’s very important to distinguish between “I feel like X is Y” and “I know that X is Y”. They are very different things, and can easily contradict each other. Everyone gets to have their own feelings, but they don’t get their own facts. You’re probably still going to *feel* like you have to pick one of two options for an annoyingly long while after you *know* that it’s not true.
That’s where mindfulness and meditation comes in handy – learning to sit with those inconvenient feelings, and let them feel, without drowning in them. Sometimes it’s like balancing on a knife edge in a hurricane. 😛
before I forget, here’s a list of cognitive distortions to watch out for: [wikipedia]/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
and I’ll repeat my book suggestions I gave CoMa the other day:
[The Mindful Way through Depression]([amazon]/The-Mindful-Way-through-Depression/dp/1593851286) and [Feeling Good]([amazon]/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336)
(you might hate that second book as much as I did, though. That’s where switching to DBT comes in handy. but read what you can, it helps.)
I’m sorry.
You’re allowed nuances here. For instance it’s possible to hate Mary while admiring her fashion sense and artistic ability.
She DOES dress swanky. Like, damn.
You don’t have to apologize for your feelings. (Supportive gesture)
For the record, I used “crazy and violent” because the post I was responding to used them. Though not inaccurate, it’s probably not how I would have phrased it without the prompting.
ohhh, sorry, missed that 🙂
Strange coincidence. Over at EGS Dan Shive just offered the concept of “Allergy of the mind” to describe anxiety attacks. I think, in a way, this could also be used to describe some of the workings of Ambers mind.
“I am evil! Evil, I say!!! STOP PRAISING ME YOU FOOLS, MY PROXIMITY WILL DESTROY YOU A – oooh, an unstabbed rapist.”
X3
Thank you, Sierra.
Sierra is really growing on me
She’s always been sunny, and now we get a bit of her exactly where it’s needed.
Plus, on top of those feels, two punchlines!
Mirror mirror on the wall, which Gravatar will I have this fall?
Still the bongo’s boyfriend?! Really?! Please be better new one.
MUCH BETTER! ;p
Well I mean Penny IS more likable than Peter, even if she’s not a better person by much … but yeah Nash is better than both of them so far.
… You know, as angry as I am at Mike, as pleased as I am with Sierra, as worried as I am for Amber, there’s something I gotta share.
… I finally figured out why what Rachel said about redemption pissed me off so much, and it took Dr. Seuss and Amber for me to realize it.
WARNING: POTENTIAL POLITICAL TRIGGERS AHEAD AS WELL AS LONGPOST
So that story in recent news about Mrs. Trump donating those Dr. Seuss books only to have them refused by one librarian – due to “[Dr. Seuss’s books being] full of racist propaganda” – really bothered me for something so minor. The reasons why mostly relate to my issue with what Rachel said to Ruth within earshot of Amber.
1. I dislike the First Family as much as anyone else (though my only real problem with Melania is her terrible taste in men), but that sort of pettiness is childish, regardless of the person at whom it’s directed.
This part is not directly related to what I’m talking about with Rachel, it’s just something I felt I should relate.
2. The librarian’s protest would have worked out much better had she owned up that her problem was with the books’ donor, rather than the author. I don’t care if people hate the Trumps (again, Lord knows I do), but that kind of anger is more powerful and meaningful if its source and target are clear to everyone.
Rachel ranted at Ruth when it was pretty clear that speech was meant for someone else in her life, possibly herself; and it affected Amber deeply, as we see here. I understand Rachel felt strongly about it but misdirecting her “narrative” at someone else was harmful to Ruth and Amber, and I’m disappointed in her for not seeing that.
3. YES. Dr. Seuss used to be a political cartoonist, and his work included some racist caricatures of Japanese people, usually when depicting Tojo or Hirohito. And just because the people he was depicting were evil doesn’t make that kind of casual bigotry okay. But he was paid to do a lot of that art by the US Government. Later on, the behavior of almost all countries during World War II opened his eyes to what unjustified, scapegoating, mindless hatred can do to even most normal people. And his work showed the change he went through. When the librarian blamed her problem on Dr. Seuss, it reduced the impact of this change and belittled the memory of a wonderful author and good man. Even assuming she WAS protesting Dr. Seuss himself, I’ve never seen a kids’ book he wrote with his previous bigoted views in it (we do remember The Sneetches, yes?). Also, if she has such a problem with an author who learned and changed and grew out of toxic beliefs, she should also be protesting authors who didn’t, like Orson Scott Card and H.P. Lovecraft.
And that last one reflects my central problem with Rachel.
“Redemption isn’t real” is a CROCK, and it’s not a healthy idea for Amber. And it clearly had an impact on her, what with this narrative she’s imposing on herself as the incurable violent psycho. But again, just because what Amber did was violent and awful to see, doesn’t mean she was wrong.
I’m pleased that Sierra is the first one to recognize what Amber needs to hear. She defended her friend and herself from someone who was going to kill them or worse. Sierra, Joyce, Walky, Danny, maybe even Dorothy … they see her as a good person, if not a gorram hero. They’re not focused on her violence (though her self-examining on that is good if completely misguided on why and to what end). They’re focused on what she did to protect people. And she should be too.
Because after all, as she herself said … that heroic thing she did? Wasn’t done by Amazi-Girl. And she should think about that.
TL;DR I’m pissed off at Rachel for fueling Amber’s belief that she is the villain of her own story, and proud of Sierra for affirming that lots of people consider her the hero. Also redemption is real.
And yet both Rachel and Amber have the same black/white good/evil moral dualism view of everything. Watchmen’s Rorschach, dead these 30 years but soon to be resurrected, to name another fictional comic character, had the same ideation.
The last two, at least, have been written to have symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, IMHO: the Manichean “it’s good OR evil, black OR white, no grey” view of everything, even themselves, and the Dissociative Identity Disorder (the mask bit) which manifests in extreme cases, at least according to a recent show I saw about it. Dunno what might happen if Amber/AG come to the realization that Ryans escape, and however many more rapes came about because of it, was AG’s fault. If AG isn’t perfect, maybe she’ll need a third persona….
Rachel seems to me to be very smart, but with a lot of anger about something. Maybe we’ll find out what.
Yeah, the Wikipedia article about Cognitive Distortion referred to above by inahc calls the “good/evil, no middle” ideation “splitting” and the wiki for “splitting” has some things that would seem to apply to Amber.
I have no idea why this page would take up 792 MB and 80% CPU, but it’s making things difficult.
Ooh, good call on the Rorschach comparison. I like to think Amber’s in a healthier place right now compared to where Rorschach was when he started his path to moral absolutism. So there’s still hope for her, as shown by Sierra. :3
Rorschach was – at his best – a violent murderer, who viciously assaulted people just to force information out of them.
Amber has never even come close to the level of monster he was. The only people she’s put in the hospital were actually an immediate threat. She certainly sees herself like that (or worse), but the comparison is unfair imo.
But Amber already knows that Ryan was dangerous, and something had to be done. The problem is that she can’t accept that her actions were justified, or that she feels that she’s still a monster because she didn’t hesitate. She might feel that she leapt at the chance to be violent and get away with it.
A rational analysis of why she had to do what she did won’t help, because in her mind her actions are intrinsically tainted. They felt too much like something her vicious butthole father would’ve done.
Hopefully people telling her they don’t see things that way and that they still care about and support her will still help
Well yeah, I don’t think Rorschach is a good person, even if he did act with integrity at the end. Amber is still ten times better than Rorschach at her worst. I just meant that the comparison of the characters thinking in moral absolutes was apt. “This thing was done by a Bad Person, ergo doing this thing, even to a good end, is evil.” Amber’s violent temper IS something she should examine if she’s worried about it (I recommend several fortnights of therapy and a new form of stress relief), but her reasons for attacking Blaine and Ryan are valid and she needs to hear that. I agree that her being told this is a good start to helping her.
… Also ngl, I’m relieved that what triggered a debate in this thread was moral relativism rather than the political shit I tangented on about. I kind of regretted going on about that once I posted it. (whew)
Agreed. Rorschach isn’t a good person. He’s not much of a person at all. More of a clockwork orange (book, not movie) sort of thing.
A quick google shows:
in·teg·ri·ty
noun
1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
2. the state of being whole and undivided.
The first would apply to both Amber/AG & Kovacs/Rorshach, at least in their own minds, but the second?
About Amber being ten times better….
Unless I misread the comic, she:
a) Jammed the doors shut so that nobody inside could intervene and help Ryan.
b) Had to be aware that, even with a knife (especially one held that way), Ryan was no match for her physically. She’s AG’s secret identity, after all.
c) Proceeded, with a smile on her face and tears of joy running down her face, to easily disarm and then (apparently) eviscerate an unarmed Ryan.
So, maybe not ten times better. IMHO, of course. Not sympathizing with Ryan, just pointing out that beating up on someone that you know you totally outclass isn’t quite my idea of heroic; eviscerating them (or “just” kicking the shit out of them) after they’re hors de combat isn’t either.
Which brings up the following questions: Does everyone, including Sierra, think that RYAN was the one who jammed the doors? What story did Dorothy tell?
The fuck? That’s a really twisted way of painting those events. Other people can explain better that I can, but at the very least, it was tears of desperation, not joy.
… Yeah I’m with inahc on this one. That’s a skewed telling of the story.
For starters, she didn’t jam the door shut to stop Dorothy from STOPPING her. She did it to protect Dorothy and Joyce from Ryan, orr at least that’s my reading. And the tears and smile didn’t read “happy” to me so much as “experiencing so many emotions at once that my face is breaking and leaking”.
I mean obviously I’m not Amber so I don’t know for sure, and I won’t tell you how to feel. But I have to respectfully disagree.
Also, just a quick note: to me personally, “integrity” means “sticking to your principles, regardless of whether those principles are right or wrong.” It’s not always a good thing, but it IS something that more often than not, earns my respect.
The two different (at least as far as Rorschach/Kovacs and AG/Amber are concerend) definitions for “integrity” amused me. YMMV.
Observations about the relevant comic:
(Mine. Of course. Who else’s?)
a) The book keeps the doors closed only from the inside, not the outside. It keeps anyone inside from interfering with whatever Amber has planned and doesn’t protect anyone inside from anything at all.
b) As shown (and mentioned in some of the comments there) Ryan has no idea how to hold a knife properly.
c) The title, “Unfinished”: AG has already let Ryan get away twice. Maybe Amber considers him “unfinished business” too.
(Didn’t I put enough IHMOs and other qualifications there? I guess not.)
Upwards from here is a thread about who’s misreading the situation, Amber or everyone else. My guess is that Amber (and Dorothy and Ryan) are the only ones privy to her jamming the doors shut, which, IMHO, puts a totally different slant on the encounter. So Sierra’s reaction is based on false assumptions.
As for what the tears might indicate, well, I’ll be sticking with my interpretation until proven otherwise.
I appreciated your Wikipedia link. Very insightful and relevant.
Addendum: while I think Amber might agree with your assessment of events, she wasn’t and isn’t really in the right headspace to assess those events accurately.
Yeah, that would be from Amber’s view. Which is why, from her POV, Sierra’s reaction is ill-deserved and plain bonkers.
I think we agree on that front then. Just needed to get the POV clear. Empathy for a character I can understand.
“Other people can explain better that I can” – an invitation for others to pile on and tell me how my INTERPRETATION is wrong and misguided, right? I’m not sure how things go here.
More like “they know I find words hard, we’ve been over the knife scene a zillion times already, and we’re a little fucking busy right now”. Seriously bad timing for this.
Hey guys, is Sierra the best? ’cause I’m thinking she is.