Although, to be accurate, it should be OLD roommate, otherwise we’re getting into Malaya’s childhood friends and that’s a rabbit hole no one wants to go down.
Ah, time as old as time. Girl meet boy, girl hold boy hostage. Girl stabs girl. Girl hook up with girls brother.
Joking aside – while Amber’s love life is a clusterfudge of epic proportions, this is a very good way of addressing it. She tells Ethan what she feels and what’s going on. No freakouts or running away to be amazi-girl or anything.
As for what to do… I think she should buy Sal a “sorry I stabbed you”-cake.
That’s phrased a little awkwardly. How about this?
Girl meets boy, other girl holds boy hostage, girl stabs other girl, boy breaks up with girl, girl hooks up with other girl’s twin brother.
Actually, I’m not sure how much that helped.
Unfortunately, Faz is the chart-maker, meaning the chart would wind up being about his penis — and his desire to put it in anyone named on the chart. Possibly also would include his opinion calculation of the likelihood of it happening.
If this had been Something Positive, this would probably happen in tomorrow’s strip; because Dear Uncle Randy was once told something like “Most times, people doing things out of spite is stupid, but you’ve turned it into f***ing performance art”.
Mind you, the times Uncle Randy’s done something in his comic out of spite, the results are usually glorious to behold. Not many people have that gift.
Because we’ve somehow reached the conclusion that Amber is completely at fault and Sal’s never done anything wrong.
Not quite sure how or when that happened.
Sal should definitely apologize for the robbery but Bagge’s specifically referring to the stabbing here. Sal can’t apologize for stabbing Amber because so far as we know, she’s never done it.
Anyone else think it’s strange that the hostage incident gave Amber an anxiety condition and extreme trauma whereas Ethan seems to have gotten away completely unscathed despite the fact that he was the one actually taken hostage? Just seems weird.
There are dimensions of personality and circumstances that modulate reactions to acute stress: personality, ego, social connectedness, behavioural skills, cultural views, …. And then there is dropping acute stress down like a fake cherry on top of a big creamy sundae of chronic stress.
Remember how Amber’s father reacted to the situation and treated her in its wake — that adds more layers of emotional trauma than a German chocolate cake.
As horrible as Ethan’s parents (particularly his mom) have been about his sexual orientation, we haven’t seen any indication that they weren’t supportive in the wake of the hostage crisis. I get the sense that Ethan was their golden boy until they found out he was gay.
It’s not a matter of being “well adjusted”. It just didn’t effect him as badly. Luck of the draw would be enough to account for something like that, but it could also have been that for Ethan, it was all over before it really registered that his life was in danger, while Amber was able to actually see the knife and Sal’s face, and she wanted to do something but didn’t know what, and was too scared to do anything even if she had.
But when it comes down to it could’ve been equally traumatic for both of them, and still had different effects in the long run
We don’t actually know anything about how Ethan was treated after the incident or how he felt about it at all because it’s almost never been discussed. That’s what I find weird, that it’s this huge turning point for Amber’s character but seems almost irrelevant to Ethan’s.
This is five years after the fact, too. Maybe Ethan was shaken up by it at first, too, but learned to move on and let it go? Amber’s clearly carried it with her and let it fester instead.
While the robbery was certainly terrifying in and of itself, I think the stabbing was far moreso. I think that was her first huge hint of what can happen when she snaps, especially with her father goading her like that. Without it, it might not have been QUITE as traumatizing. Add in that she had anxiety already and Ethan probably got therapy, plus Ethan seems less inclined to ruminate on things and more inclined to moving on (unless we’re dealing with nerd fights but that’s different), and I don’t think it’s surprising.
Well, “less inclined to ruminate than Amber” is a low bar, but sure. I think you’ve got it for the most part. Ethan was a complete non-actor in the situation, but Amber discovered a part of herself she hated and has blatantly never been able to deal with it.
PTSD generally happens when you can’t process it normally. That’s why there’s a relatively small, but extant, number of people who get PTSD from things like natural disasters or being the victim of a nonviolent crime, which people are usually able to access help and support for, but the rates skyrocket for domestic abuse and child abuse (because those things by definition tend to remove your access to support) and sexual assault (because our society is so monstrously fucking bad at not making things worse).
Hell, it’s why surviving someone trying to murder you is statistically less likely to scar you for life than your parents intentionally teaching you you’re useless. Everyone is different and every life and experience is different, but PTSD comes from not being able to heal.
Add another person that strongly shares this opinion. If Blaine hadn’t been a generally abusive asshole, and in particular being a real shithead after the situation, things would very likely have been much, much better for Amber.
And while Ethan’s mother is still generally in the “bad parents of DOA characters” camp, I think it’s not an unrealistic assumption that she at least would mainly be happy and relieved that her son was safe; and that she would have been expressing properly how that was the most important thing.
Yeah, Naomi’s love is conditional, but that’s sadly still a step up from ‘active malice’. She’s a shitty parent but at least when it doesn’t pertain to his sexuality, she cares about his wellbeing.
I don’t think the incident gave Amber the condition, though. In the flashbacks dating to before the stabbing incident, we see some pretty solid evidence that Amber *already* had the condition—isn’t that why she was riding with Blaine in the first place, instead of on the bus with everyone else? If she hadn’t already had the condition, she wouldn’t have been at the gas station in the first place—and neither would Ethan. So she was already vulnerable before Sal even entered the picture. So she took it harder than Ethan did.
Well, her trauma started earlier than that with Blaines constant abuse of her. Seeing as she was living under quite a bit of pressure, the robbery thing was probably just the triggering point for the PTSD.
Exactly. Amber was primed for it by a childhood of abuse. Ethan wasn’t. Ethan also almost certainly got more family support afterwards, even if it didn’t involve therapy.
Amber got martial arts and more abuse.
Oof. That strip puts a bad taste in my mouth now. I’m sure she believed everything she said at the time. Which was like a month ago…..Nah it still tastes bad.
I still think she was mostly trying to be supportive of Danny in the most obnoxious way possible. I doubt Amber knew or cared that much about Walky at all at that point.
That’s why it feels bad now. Makes the relationship just a tiny bit more shallow. But it’s mostly that last part about having Danny lie about not dating her because he’s dating Amazi-girl, but she’s talking to him as Amber, and now she’s casually making out and snuggling with Walky as Amber while acknowledging Amazi-girl, and honestly I get confused just thinking about it but it really stinks of hypocrisy to me. But y’know whatever. I don’t understand it so I’m letting it go.
Like a lot of people, she doesn’t care much about people she doesn’t know well, and a month ago, Walky was just this goofy and slightly annoying stranger to her. Garbage roof changed that.
and it’s Amber who is into Walky, not AG. With Danny, it was the point that AG was the one in the relationship and Amber wasn’t. It wasn’t a lie to say he is not Ambers boyfriend. He wasn’t. Which Danny didn’t understand because he doesn’t understand the state of DID Amber/AG have.
I’m not sure which way the DID is going, we saw AG acting without Ambers knowledge but also moments where Amber seems to deal with stuff she didn’t deal with but switched to AG before. It’s a very confusing state of things.
Yeah, but does that mean Walky’s not “dating” AG? Even though he knows Amber is AG. Does that mean AG can go date someone else? Also when they broke up AG said Amber needed Danny even though they weren’t dating by this reasoning. Plus Amber can speak for AG and vice versa. It’s very confusing to me. It seems to me like the divide between Amber and AG is whatever is most convenient at the time and that’s very unfair for anyone she interacts with. But I also know nothing about DID or how realistically it’s depicted in this comic. So y’know trying to not let it bother me.
No. Walky is not dating AG. He’s dating Amber. I don’t know how big a distinction that is for him as there’s only a very slight possibility that realizes they’re two separate personalities, but he’s definitely dating Amber.
I think all three (Amber, AG, and Walky) would not want Amber and AG to be dating two different people, but I’m not sure any of them realize how big a possibility that is now (it wasn’t that big a deal before).
The divide between Amber and AG has gradually gotten wider as the series has grown. Before, and I’m assuming here, AG was a persona Amber were to do or not do certain things, with Amber fully aware that it was just a way to compartmentalize her feelings and issues. But then they started speaking of each other in the third person, which eventually grew into two personalities in the same body that don’t seem to know what the other is doing.
I think the key point you’re missing here is that Amber and AG ha e no control over the divide between them. Its not something she imagines or chooses, its an actual disorder that is getting worse over time.
It is monstrously unfair to people who interact with her, but that’s often the case with illness. Its unfair to her as well! Illness sucks.
AG has basically no relationship with Walky – pretty much everything Garbage Roof-related happened after the stabbing and Amber trying to get rid of AG because she ‘failed’, and they haven’t been sharing memories since. Walky and AG have interacted maybe once? And that was before this last week or so of getting closer.
That scenario where Walky stays the night, Amber falls asleep, and AG wakes up and freaks out which leads to Walky freaking out in turn is terrifyingly plausible if nothing about the situation changes before that.
Part of the confusion is likely that the divide between Amber and AG has been growing over time. Which makes it weird when you jump back and look at an earlier strip out of context.
Way back when they were first dating, it seemed to be mostly a secret identity thing, though there were definite hints already. Still, Amber was very much involved with Danny – their first time having sex for example (“Mask or no Mask”), it started with Amazi-Girl, but she was Amber by the end.
Sometime after the car chase it became a much clearer divide. They started distinguishing more and even talking to and about each other.
Now, after the stabbing, they don’t even share memories.
None of this is “whatever’s convenient at the time”. Not for Amber or for Amazi-Girl.
Which makes sense, because stress can cause alters to become less integrated or split entirely. The Toedad and Blaine incidents were both pretty stressful.
I completely forgot about this rooftop meeting.
She was up there so Amber wouldn’t stab Sal and Walky was up there to eat the cookies he should have shared with Sal but didn’t.
It’s proto-garbage roof!
Well, Amber may currently not be aware of that. Recent implication is that Amber is dissociating during Amazi-Girl’s outings and does not remember them.
“It’s Walky.”
“Oh, yeah, I know him. Mike and him are roomies. I thought you liked taller guys.”
“He’s shorter, but he’s packed with good qualities. You might say he’s shortpacked.”
“That’s really reaching.”
The level of complex twist and turns in the cast dynamic is insane, entertainingly so. If we had one of those flow charts that display the relationships and connections between the characters how often would it update?
My initial guess would be 3-5 times per book on romantic and/or sexual relationships.
As for all types of relationships (including hate ones), the flowchart would sometimes have to be updated daily, even between the same two people; because they end up suddenly having a -really- heated argument or something that gets resolved a few strips later.
Well, they did also go through puberty, a new hairstyle, and one of them has an accent change. Looking at it like that, it’s not surprising they didn’t recognize each other.
I really think Sal’s not going to be completely over the stabbing thing.
Looking it up as well, Amber spent a lot of the actual hold-up hiding and appears to have stabbed Sal from behind – it’s perfectly reasonable Sal didn’t really get a good look at Amber and wouldn’t be able to recognize her as at the store, much less the one who stabbed her (she was pretty preoccupied once the stabbing started,) and that probably takes priority in her memory over the hostage.
That said, after Amber/AG* comes clean, I do hope Sal and Ethan get a chance to talk to each other if they want to. They both would rather leave it behind them, but I think them hearing that might be helpful.
* At this point I think it’ll be Amber who says something first, but who knows.
While I don’t think it’s ever been explicitly mentioned, many readers do assume that Sal’s wearing gloves all the time to hide the scar. I think this is reasonable until Word of Devil settles it one way or the other.
I think it’s safe to assume there is a scar, at the very least, and some serious damage since Sal says it doesn’t work very well anymore. The gloves theory feels fairly safe to me with that information.
(By comparison, I don’t buy ‘Mary wears wristbands because she self-harmed’ – no real indication, no known history of mental health issues, repeated self-harm would probably cover more than just the wrists, and the way she blackmailed Ruth and was openly suggesting to do so when the hall realized Ruth was near-suicidal says a lot about her lack of sympathy and empathy for the situation. It’s not impossible for someone who had been there to be that callous, but it seems less likely in this specific instance. Not recognizing how most people respond to ‘this person who you don’t care much for but still know is incredibly ill’, for one thing.)
Yeah, if those dinky wristbands could cover all signs of your self-harming, it probably wasn’t cutting. (Biting maybe, I think that’s where I got the scar on my forearm, but it’s pretty hard to bite yourself hard enough to do that damage and such a scar is tiny and hard to read as the result of self-harm to outsiders anyway.)
Two thirds of them could have received mental care and support in order to move past from it, while one of them had it reinforced for years that it was her fault from her dad and making her take self defense classes with nothing else as an outlet of her negative emotions.
That doesn’t mean that it’s no big deal, but just that Sal and Ethan have tried their best to move on from it while Amber hasn’t been given the chance/refuses to. It might be a completely different story if Sal is properly introduced to Ethan and Amber as the two kids from the convenience store she robbed.
Sal received mental care but apparently it was shit. As for support….I wouldn’t bet on it with the Walkertons, to put it mildly. Sal’s definitely tried moving on herself though, as much as she can when she has a permanent reminder, while Amber’s ruminates on things because anxiety likes to haunt you.
Well, not with the Walkertons, but she had Marcie, who she likely kept in touch with through letters or something. And might have received some form of support while she was in Tennessee, from either the nuns at the Catholic school or any new friends she made, though given Sal doesn’t seem to like talking about Tennessee much, that might not be as plausible.
I don’t think she received any sort of care from the nuns. If she did, I don’t think she’d have such a uniformly bad opinion on authority figures. As for friends, Sal says she was pretty much abandoned when she wasn’t what they thought or wanted her to be (which is why the fact Marcie stuck around was so important to her). It looks like she pretty much just had Marcie and while I’m sure Marcie did everything she could, it’s hard to be able to catch everything when you’re 13 years old in another state and dealing with your own fairly substantial problems (adjusting to a disability when you’re poor is rough, even after a year).
That’s why I said it wasn’t as plausible, given Sal’s attitude towards Tennessee.
I’m not saying Sal had a great support system, but she still had support. Even if it was shitty support from the Catholic school, Sal’s not knocking over convenience stores any more. She’s grown and changed and the most illegal thing she’s done since she’s come back to Indiana is try to get beer while underage. My entire point is that Sal’s been given the opportunity to move on and had people, although shitty they might have been, there to help/make her move on while Amber was actively discouraged from seeking out healthy outlets and instead ruminates on it.
No. Crappy authority figures are part of what got Sal into that mess in the first place and all accounts from her indicate her school was not better. We have absolutely no indication they helped her do anything to move on. Sal growing and changing is down to her. Can we not give credit that isn’t earned to crappy authority figures? By this logic, any progress Amber’s made since the robbery is due to support from Stacey and Ethan – which by the way, would bring her one more supportive figure than Sal had. And yet, that argument is bullshit because we know Amber grew and changed on her own, even while she had Blaine being a piece of shit. Same thing with Sal – she moved on herself, with some support from Marcie, while the authority figures and other ‘friends’ in her life added to her issues.
Ethan, while I understand that it’s clearly a sore subject, that was probably not the best response. Also, it is not Walky’s fault that Sal did any of that, besides this falls very much in line aith Amber’s superhero tropes. How many other superheroes end up falling for people related to their enemies/anti-hero counterparts?
Granted Amber being AG isn’t healthy, but that’s another can of worms we’re working our way through.
I don’t think Ethan is having a “don’t date the brother of the hostage taker” reaction. It’s more of a “Amber y u open this can of worms relating to girl who freaks you out” reaction.
Every time a character invokes God? Willis. Every time a character references the Universe, Fate, or any other kind of vague force governing their lives? Willis.
Plenty of DMYs have come from inside the comic, really.
I think his reaction is because he’s sympathetically frustrated, not judging anyone. Walky having that connection to a past trauma that triggers so much anxiety for Amber is gonna make dating him complicated for Amber, and Ethan just wants her to be happy w/o stuff constantly making that harder
Oh, I’m sure, on reflection, that his reaction’s most likely because he is sympathetically frustrated….
…But I don’t think that this really comes across well. My immediate reaction to it was “Ethan, what are you doing?”; and it’s quite possible Amber will react like that too.
And unlike me, Amber doesn’t have the luxury of reading it through more carefully and spend time considering what he really meant. And as such, I would not blame her if her immediate reaction in tomorrow’s strip would be to show some annoyance with Ethan for saying what he did.
Or even worse, she could interpret his comment to be judgemental…. and agree with it.
Did Ethan know that “the girl who held us hostage in the convenience store” goes to the same school as them? Had he identified her as Sal? I remember at Joyce’s dorm party he couldn’t recognize her. I count it as progress that Amber is talking directly about what happened when they were 13 – as far as I remember she doesn’t talk about it at all…
He knew she went to school with them (and was remarkably gracious about it, even when you consider it’s been five years and they’ve all grown a lot) and he’s met Sal but he didn’t put the pieces together.
Yeeeep. “It was a very long time ago! Years and years. She was a KID. We were ALL kids. She’s probably changed by now. If she hadn’t, she’d be in jail instead of attending college, right?” – Why I love Ethan in a nutshell. He’s a good egg.
It’s easy. You take her out for drinks in a Walmart parking lot. When you’re both buzzed enough you suggest that game where you run a knife between your fingers except you reverse it so that you do it each other. Then when Sal inevitably stabs Amber’s hand she can be all like “No big deal! Speaking of hand stabbings…” And the situation resolves itself!
She could also mention “I’m not actually Amazi-Girl. That’s another personality that takes over when I sleep. She probably won’t have any idea we’re together, so if you wake up in the night and it looks like I’m freaking out, that’s probably why.”
If she can, why is she talking to Ethan right now instead of him?
There is a whole bunch of stuff she should tell him. It’s more a “I can dump stuff on him without explaining anything” than a “I can tell him how I really feel”.
Amber, just do the thing! “Stab her again?” No, the other thing! “Have an epiphany about talking my problems with people and explaining why I feel angry against them?” Yes! “Nah, I will continue being self destructive.” No!!!!
Well it’s not like Sal and Amazi-girl are on bad terms anymore but Sal and Amber still have some shit to work through.
Amber still has a issue of faceing her long enough without the mask and as for Sal if she found out that The girl and boy who lives she threatened and had also stabbed her at the same time was at that school how would she react?
Would she have the guts to face Amber despite everything that’s happened between them? We were just shown proof that Sal has her insecurities and anxiety like everybody else so just like anybody else in that situation it wouldn’t be easy to approach two people that you probably scarred for life during your past life of mistakes.
Also, Sal might well be pissed to realize AG was stalking her because AG was the one* who stabbed her. It explains a lot, but it’s also creepy as hell. Like, horror movie levels.
* Technically Amber stabbed her and AG was born in the aftermath, but that’s a distinction I’m not sure Sal will get even if AG explains the dissociation part.
Galasso has deduced that Walky and Sal have almost everything in common except biological sex, so he figures if he can analyze the other differences between them in sufficient detail, he’ll finally be able to figure out how genders work. Amazi-Girl will thwart his nefarious plan without even trying.
I’m comfortably shaped, myself.
Of course, now that i say that, I don’t know if that means I’m comfortable with my shape, I evoke a feeling of comftableness, or comfortable to the touch.
I might need to dig through the archives to be sure, but isn’t Amber’s description about what she likes about Walky pretty much the same things Dorothy likes about him?
Maybe those are the things that women who just broke up with Danny look for?
After all, you’re likely to have something of a type, but also to want some contrast with the last person who didn’t work out.
(Probably doesn’t hold water. They broke up with Danny for different reasons. Dorothy was done with his passiveness. Amazi-Girl was pissed that he liked Amber better. Amber still misses Danny. Dorothy didn’t. )
That’s not why I thought they broke up. I thought it was because he was close to Sal and because he suggested amber stop being amazi-girl because of danger.
You make it sound like jealousy on ag’s part.
I think it might have been. Partly at least.
If you look at it from the point of view of the alters as separate personalities – separate people stuck in the same 5’3″ meat sack as Amber put it, it takes on a very different cast.
What you describe is definitely how Danny meant it. And hearing it right after seeing him with Sal certainly didn’t help.
But he did say to Amazi-Girl that he liked Amber more and he wanted her to stop being Amazi-Girl. To an alter getting more and more distinct from the other alter, that’s pretty harsh. Telling your girlfriend that you like another girl more (he wasn’t Amber’s boyfriend) and that she needs to go away isn’t exactly a good way of staying in a relationship.
Well, Amber knows about the incident at the rally and that they were all working together to track down Ryan.
She just doesn’t know they’re continuing the team-up. (I think we’re still in team-up stage and haven’t gotten to partner or sidekick.)
This is my prediction. Amber gets more into Walky, and AG starts getting “involved” with Sal. Oh the kerfuffle when the three of them meet on Garbage Roof and Sal asks Amber why she’s cheating with her brother…
Not to mention Sal saying she doesn’t like knives. Even if it didn’t do permanent damage (and Sal’s indication plus where it looked like the knife entered say it did, probably serious damage at that,) she’d probably still remember. The fact that there’s a nasty scar and it doesn’t work well anymore just makes it worse.
Yeah, I’ve asked around and the general consensus is ‘A knife all the way through her hand in that spot would probably hurt her nerves, the bones and there’s things like muscle, ligaments, etc. Thaaaaat’s probably at LEAST one surgery and physical therapy’.
You definitely did. Blaine mocked her for falling into a stupor rather than helping her best friend Ethan, and in consequence of that mocking she stabbed Sal in the hand. It’s freaking important backstory, so I suggest reading up all of it again.
Yeah, he was the one Sal held at knifepoint, and Amber felt guilty that she was unable to protect him, which is partially why she stabbed Sal afterwards.
“Come On”? The good things are to come yet. “And Amazigirl, who runs around in my body without giving notice these days, has made her her sidekick.” But wait, there is more. “She doesn’t know who I am. Or Amazigirl. She broke ties with her best friend over this, the friend she wanted to rob the store for.” But wait, there is… “Oh, come on, damn you Willis.” I was getting there.
Basically, Amber’s luck sucks; ALWAYS. Even when the chances of it happening are so absurdly remote that a jackpot-only lottery ticket would sound a better investment!
Those are like the two least important things to be focusing on her Amber come on. How about “I changed his grades against his express wishes” or “I stabbed and then stalked and harassed his sister.” Those are WAY more likely to blow up in your face horribly.
Well, “he’s the twin brother” is kind of tied into that second one. It wouldn’t even make sense to say that without that context.
But I’d say the big one that’s likely to blow up the relationship is still “If we sleep together I’ll likely wake up as someone else who has no idea we’re together.”
She’s talking to Ethan. The person Sal attacked and threatened with a knife. Maybe Amber should focus more on what she did wrong there in general, but I don’t think it’s exactly wrong to describe Sal as such to the one who was her actual victim then. The one who didn’t do anything wrong.
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Ethan tries his best, darn it
Unfortunately for both of them lick is not on their side.
The lick is strong with this one
Is this good lick or bad lick?
It’s the Devil’s Lick.
…
…
Band name! Dibs!
That’s the name of my Metallica cover band.
Damn, I’m old.
Nah ya not I used to know Blitzkrieg. I have actually fell asleep at one of their practice seasons.
IM DEAD!
“I am your hostage taker’s roommate’s childhood friend’s new girlfriend.”
“What does that make us?”
“Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become.”
Ethan has gone from suck to blow!
Does that track?
“I am your hostage taker’s (Sal) roommate’s (Billy) childhood friend’s (Walky) new girlfriend (Amber).”
Yup. Sorry, please continue
Although, to be accurate, it should be OLD roommate, otherwise we’re getting into Malaya’s childhood friends and that’s a rabbit hole no one wants to go down.
Yeah, I was getting really confused trying to remember how Malaya was connected.
Meant to use ex-roommate, as that was in the Spaceballs quote. Messed it up slightly.
space balls quote is “former roommate.” It doesn’t matter but I care.
They’ve gone to plaid!
It’s always good to read a Spaceballs reference.
*plays Sting’s “Love Is Stronger Than Justice” on the hacked Muzak–which has somehow achieved full operational capability again!*
Eh, still hit it
With a bus.
Ah, time as old as time. Girl meet boy, girl hold boy hostage. Girl stabs girl. Girl hook up with girls brother.
Joking aside – while Amber’s love life is a clusterfudge of epic proportions, this is a very good way of addressing it. She tells Ethan what she feels and what’s going on. No freakouts or running away to be amazi-girl or anything.
As for what to do… I think she should buy Sal a “sorry I stabbed you”-cake.
TALE as old as time, darnit!
time as old as time…..song as old as song. bittersweet and strange, finding you are strange, learning you can’t song.
walky and the cheese
(tried too hard, but I’m not going to erase it, i spent five minutes on this dammit! someone please do better than i did)
Not going to try to outdo that – that was awesome!
Time as old as time; time that old song sing. Count sweet time by the strange old oak whose branches sing the years.
I laughed so hard at this. I can’t do better, and I write filks and parody consistently. BRAVO!
That’s phrased a little awkwardly. How about this?
Girl meets boy, other girl holds boy hostage, girl stabs other girl, boy breaks up with girl, girl hooks up with other girl’s twin brother.
Actually, I’m not sure how much that helped.
I think we would need some sort of multicolored chart to make sense of it
Did somebody summon the Great Faz?
Unfortunately, Faz is the chart-maker, meaning the chart would wind up being about his penis — and his desire to put it in anyone named on the chart. Possibly also would include his
opinioncalculation of the likelihood of it happening.Can you imagine how obnoxious a storyline about Faz trying to ‘woo’ Amber would be.
That would be ridiculous. Willis would never do something like that.
If this had been Something Positive, this would probably happen in tomorrow’s strip; because Dear Uncle Randy was once told something like “Most times, people doing things out of spite is stupid, but you’ve turned it into f***ing performance art”.
Mind you, the times Uncle Randy’s done something in his comic out of spite, the results are usually glorious to behold. Not many people have that gift.
Wasn’t that the story about how Malaya was created?
Ethan’s entire life deciphering Transformers continuity has prepared him for this day.
Amber shouldn’t offer to cut the cake, though.
I giggle-snorted at this. Thank you.
Why does Amber have to apologize to Sal and not rather the other way around?!
Because we’ve somehow reached the conclusion that Amber is completely at fault and Sal’s never done anything wrong.
Not quite sure how or when that happened.
Sal should definitely apologize for the robbery but Bagge’s specifically referring to the stabbing here. Sal can’t apologize for stabbing Amber because so far as we know, she’s never done it.
A “sorry I stabbed you” cake will not do. She’ll need to play the bass in the band Sal is going to sing in. And she better learn to be good.
FYI Willis, tags say Ethan and Walky instead of Ethan and Amber
Well, they say you are what you eat…
Ethan’s actually talking with Walky disguised as Amber somehow?
What’s one more personality?
Anyone else think it’s strange that the hostage incident gave Amber an anxiety condition and extreme trauma whereas Ethan seems to have gotten away completely unscathed despite the fact that he was the one actually taken hostage? Just seems weird.
Nah, some people handle trauma very differently from each other.
I was going to make this longer, but really, that’s all there is to it.
I’m just saying, dude literally got held hostage with a knife and he’s like never said anything about it.
There are dimensions of personality and circumstances that modulate reactions to acute stress: personality, ego, social connectedness, behavioural skills, cultural views, …. And then there is dropping acute stress down like a fake cherry on top of a big creamy sundae of chronic stress.
Remember how Amber’s father reacted to the situation and treated her in its wake — that adds more layers of emotional trauma than a German chocolate cake.
As horrible as Ethan’s parents (particularly his mom) have been about his sexual orientation, we haven’t seen any indication that they weren’t supportive in the wake of the hostage crisis. I get the sense that Ethan was their golden boy until they found out he was gay.
what is a german chocolate cake like?
After you eat it, you feel like having some polish sausage, and french wine.
You’d also like some British fish and chips and some Russian Vodka but find that the kitchen was closed.
Not really. She already had the anxiety and not everyone responds to trauma the same way
Well sure but you’d think he’d be at least a little put off by it. Maybe he’s just extraordinarily well adjusted.
It’s not a matter of being “well adjusted”. It just didn’t effect him as badly. Luck of the draw would be enough to account for something like that, but it could also have been that for Ethan, it was all over before it really registered that his life was in danger, while Amber was able to actually see the knife and Sal’s face, and she wanted to do something but didn’t know what, and was too scared to do anything even if she had.
But when it comes down to it could’ve been equally traumatic for both of them, and still had different effects in the long run
Yeah, sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you think you got lucky, and five years later the feelings show up.
Nah. Amber already had anxiety and social issues. Ethan probably got therapy while Amber got anti-therapy.
Ethan: “Everyone wanted Amber in therapy, but her dad refused. He wanted self defense classes.”
As usual, Blaine wins the Father of the Year award.
Blaine: “Just some stupid punk with a knife. A knife. She took your little friend and you hid in a corner and did nothing. Why am I not surprised.”
We don’t actually know anything about how Ethan was treated after the incident or how he felt about it at all because it’s almost never been discussed. That’s what I find weird, that it’s this huge turning point for Amber’s character but seems almost irrelevant to Ethan’s.
I’m saying that even if Ethan didn’t get therapy, it’s still better than what we know Amber got.
This is five years after the fact, too. Maybe Ethan was shaken up by it at first, too, but learned to move on and let it go? Amber’s clearly carried it with her and let it fester instead.
While the robbery was certainly terrifying in and of itself, I think the stabbing was far moreso. I think that was her first huge hint of what can happen when she snaps, especially with her father goading her like that. Without it, it might not have been QUITE as traumatizing. Add in that she had anxiety already and Ethan probably got therapy, plus Ethan seems less inclined to ruminate on things and more inclined to moving on (unless we’re dealing with nerd fights but that’s different), and I don’t think it’s surprising.
Well, “less inclined to ruminate than Amber” is a low bar, but sure. I think you’ve got it for the most part. Ethan was a complete non-actor in the situation, but Amber discovered a part of herself she hated and has blatantly never been able to deal with it.
PTSD generally happens when you can’t process it normally. That’s why there’s a relatively small, but extant, number of people who get PTSD from things like natural disasters or being the victim of a nonviolent crime, which people are usually able to access help and support for, but the rates skyrocket for domestic abuse and child abuse (because those things by definition tend to remove your access to support) and sexual assault (because our society is so monstrously fucking bad at not making things worse).
Hell, it’s why surviving someone trying to murder you is statistically less likely to scar you for life than your parents intentionally teaching you you’re useless. Everyone is different and every life and experience is different, but PTSD comes from not being able to heal.
Makes sense.
…To put a finer point on it, now that i think about it:
Sal holding up the store was scary, but not the core of the trauna. Amber being told it was her fault, lashing out, and stabbing someone, though?
Think about what part of herself she hates more. It’s her anger (Amber), not the anxiety and reluctance to act (Amber).
It wasn’t so much the hostage situation that traumatized Amber as her father’s brutal shaming and what it drove her to do.
That’s what I got from it. Blaine’s anti-support afterward was the tipping point.
Add another person that strongly shares this opinion. If Blaine hadn’t been a generally abusive asshole, and in particular being a real shithead after the situation, things would very likely have been much, much better for Amber.
And while Ethan’s mother is still generally in the “bad parents of DOA characters” camp, I think it’s not an unrealistic assumption that she at least would mainly be happy and relieved that her son was safe; and that she would have been expressing properly how that was the most important thing.
Yeah, Naomi’s love is conditional, but that’s sadly still a step up from ‘active malice’. She’s a shitty parent but at least when it doesn’t pertain to his sexuality, she cares about his wellbeing.
I don’t think the incident gave Amber the condition, though. In the flashbacks dating to before the stabbing incident, we see some pretty solid evidence that Amber *already* had the condition—isn’t that why she was riding with Blaine in the first place, instead of on the bus with everyone else? If she hadn’t already had the condition, she wouldn’t have been at the gas station in the first place—and neither would Ethan. So she was already vulnerable before Sal even entered the picture. So she took it harder than Ethan did.
Well, her trauma started earlier than that with Blaines constant abuse of her. Seeing as she was living under quite a bit of pressure, the robbery thing was probably just the triggering point for the PTSD.
Exactly. Amber was primed for it by a childhood of abuse. Ethan wasn’t. Ethan also almost certainly got more family support afterwards, even if it didn’t involve therapy.
Amber got martial arts and more abuse.
Hey, he makes out with Mike now. If that isn’t posttraumatic, it’s pretraumatic.
Hey, remember back when Amber was describing him in slightly less glowing terms?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/goofoff/
Eh, cute but a goof-off seems to be what she likes about him now.
Heh, the irony-meter of Walky and Amber hooking up just dinged the red zone.
Oof. That strip puts a bad taste in my mouth now. I’m sure she believed everything she said at the time. Which was like a month ago…..Nah it still tastes bad.
Why are you sure? She could’ve just been trying to make Danny feel better.
I still think she was mostly trying to be supportive of Danny in the most obnoxious way possible. I doubt Amber knew or cared that much about Walky at all at that point.
That’s why it feels bad now. Makes the relationship just a tiny bit more shallow. But it’s mostly that last part about having Danny lie about not dating her because he’s dating Amazi-girl, but she’s talking to him as Amber, and now she’s casually making out and snuggling with Walky as Amber while acknowledging Amazi-girl, and honestly I get confused just thinking about it but it really stinks of hypocrisy to me. But y’know whatever. I don’t understand it so I’m letting it go.
Like a lot of people, she doesn’t care much about people she doesn’t know well, and a month ago, Walky was just this goofy and slightly annoying stranger to her. Garbage roof changed that.
and it’s Amber who is into Walky, not AG. With Danny, it was the point that AG was the one in the relationship and Amber wasn’t. It wasn’t a lie to say he is not Ambers boyfriend. He wasn’t. Which Danny didn’t understand because he doesn’t understand the state of DID Amber/AG have.
I’m not sure which way the DID is going, we saw AG acting without Ambers knowledge but also moments where Amber seems to deal with stuff she didn’t deal with but switched to AG before. It’s a very confusing state of things.
Yeah, but does that mean Walky’s not “dating” AG? Even though he knows Amber is AG. Does that mean AG can go date someone else? Also when they broke up AG said Amber needed Danny even though they weren’t dating by this reasoning. Plus Amber can speak for AG and vice versa. It’s very confusing to me. It seems to me like the divide between Amber and AG is whatever is most convenient at the time and that’s very unfair for anyone she interacts with. But I also know nothing about DID or how realistically it’s depicted in this comic. So y’know trying to not let it bother me.
No. Walky is not dating AG. He’s dating Amber. I don’t know how big a distinction that is for him as there’s only a very slight possibility that realizes they’re two separate personalities, but he’s definitely dating Amber.
I think all three (Amber, AG, and Walky) would not want Amber and AG to be dating two different people, but I’m not sure any of them realize how big a possibility that is now (it wasn’t that big a deal before).
The divide between Amber and AG has gradually gotten wider as the series has grown. Before, and I’m assuming here, AG was a persona Amber were to do or not do certain things, with Amber fully aware that it was just a way to compartmentalize her feelings and issues. But then they started speaking of each other in the third person, which eventually grew into two personalities in the same body that don’t seem to know what the other is doing.
It’s all very A Scanner Darkly, isn’t it? The right hand not knowing what the left is doing, etc.
I think the key point you’re missing here is that Amber and AG ha e no control over the divide between them. Its not something she imagines or chooses, its an actual disorder that is getting worse over time.
It is monstrously unfair to people who interact with her, but that’s often the case with illness. Its unfair to her as well! Illness sucks.
AG has basically no relationship with Walky – pretty much everything Garbage Roof-related happened after the stabbing and Amber trying to get rid of AG because she ‘failed’, and they haven’t been sharing memories since. Walky and AG have interacted maybe once? And that was before this last week or so of getting closer.
That scenario where Walky stays the night, Amber falls asleep, and AG wakes up and freaks out which leads to Walky freaking out in turn is terrifyingly plausible if nothing about the situation changes before that.
Part of the confusion is likely that the divide between Amber and AG has been growing over time. Which makes it weird when you jump back and look at an earlier strip out of context.
Way back when they were first dating, it seemed to be mostly a secret identity thing, though there were definite hints already. Still, Amber was very much involved with Danny – their first time having sex for example (“Mask or no Mask”), it started with Amazi-Girl, but she was Amber by the end.
Sometime after the car chase it became a much clearer divide. They started distinguishing more and even talking to and about each other.
Now, after the stabbing, they don’t even share memories.
None of this is “whatever’s convenient at the time”. Not for Amber or for Amazi-Girl.
Which makes sense, because stress can cause alters to become less integrated or split entirely. The Toedad and Blaine incidents were both pretty stressful.
Opinions can change! Especially after you get to know the person better.
And bond over your mutual terrible behavior and avoidance of talking about your problems.
I think what set the corners of her brain on fire was that he looked like Sal.
Yes, but it was misattributed to racism here!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/store-bought/
I completely forgot about this rooftop meeting.
She was up there so Amber wouldn’t stab Sal and Walky was up there to eat the cookies he should have shared with Sal but didn’t.
It’s proto-garbage roof!
If you’re going to lean into superhero tropes, try telling Ethan that Walky’s the good twin, that’s how genetics work in comics.
“Also as Amazi-Girl, I’ve teamed up with Walky’s sister to fight crime.”
Does Amber know that?
Well, Amber may currently not be aware of that. Recent implication is that Amber is dissociating during Amazi-Girl’s outings and does not remember them.
She knew it well enough to use it to beat Sal at Mario Cart.
That was before the first dissociative episode.
Long after the first dissociative episode. Before they stopped sharing memories.
I love Ethan being supportive in panel 4.
“It’s Waky”*
“Oh… Sure, why not?” <-Ethan thinks of multiple reason why not.
*) Missed opportunity for title-drop
“It’s Walky.”
“Oh, yeah, I know him. Mike and him are roomies. I thought you liked taller guys.”
“He’s shorter, but he’s packed with good qualities. You might say he’s shortpacked.”
“That’s really reaching.”
Anyway, there’s Joyce & Walky
“But was it a good idea to tell him about your secret identity?
He might rat you out to the police!”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s very Lawsome!”
The level of complex twist and turns in the cast dynamic is insane, entertainingly so. If we had one of those flow charts that display the relationships and connections between the characters how often would it update?
My initial guess would be 3-5 times per book on romantic and/or sexual relationships.
As for all types of relationships (including hate ones), the flowchart would sometimes have to be updated daily, even between the same two people; because they end up suddenly having a -really- heated argument or something that gets resolved a few strips later.
They’re garbage Ethan. You weren’t on the roof but it’s a whole thing. So don’t waste your energy on it.
Also two thirds of the people involved in the convenience store incident don’t care enough to remember each other so this is totally Amber’s hangup.
Well, they did also go through puberty, a new hairstyle, and one of them has an accent change. Looking at it like that, it’s not surprising they didn’t recognize each other.
Besides, it was a day they’d both rather leave in the past.
I really think Sal’s not going to be completely over the stabbing thing.
Looking it up as well, Amber spent a lot of the actual hold-up hiding and appears to have stabbed Sal from behind – it’s perfectly reasonable Sal didn’t really get a good look at Amber and wouldn’t be able to recognize her as at the store, much less the one who stabbed her (she was pretty preoccupied once the stabbing started,) and that probably takes priority in her memory over the hostage.
That said, after Amber/AG* comes clean, I do hope Sal and Ethan get a chance to talk to each other if they want to. They both would rather leave it behind them, but I think them hearing that might be helpful.
* At this point I think it’ll be Amber who says something first, but who knows.
While I don’t think it’s ever been explicitly mentioned, many readers do assume that Sal’s wearing gloves all the time to hide the scar. I think this is reasonable until Word of Devil settles it one way or the other.
I think it’s safe to assume there is a scar, at the very least, and some serious damage since Sal says it doesn’t work very well anymore. The gloves theory feels fairly safe to me with that information.
(By comparison, I don’t buy ‘Mary wears wristbands because she self-harmed’ – no real indication, no known history of mental health issues, repeated self-harm would probably cover more than just the wrists, and the way she blackmailed Ruth and was openly suggesting to do so when the hall realized Ruth was near-suicidal says a lot about her lack of sympathy and empathy for the situation. It’s not impossible for someone who had been there to be that callous, but it seems less likely in this specific instance. Not recognizing how most people respond to ‘this person who you don’t care much for but still know is incredibly ill’, for one thing.)
Well, this theory of the reason Mary’s wearing wristbands has been debunked officially in the meantime.
There are strips in which she’s not wearing any wristbands in public, like this.
Or http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/lie/
Completely bare arms, no wristbands. I’ve met some people who’ve cut themselves, and Mary’s tiny fashion accessories wouldn’t hide anything anyway.
Yeah, if those dinky wristbands could cover all signs of your self-harming, it probably wasn’t cutting. (Biting maybe, I think that’s where I got the scar on my forearm, but it’s pretty hard to bite yourself hard enough to do that damage and such a scar is tiny and hard to read as the result of self-harm to outsiders anyway.)
Two thirds of them could have received mental care and support in order to move past from it, while one of them had it reinforced for years that it was her fault from her dad and making her take self defense classes with nothing else as an outlet of her negative emotions.
That doesn’t mean that it’s no big deal, but just that Sal and Ethan have tried their best to move on from it while Amber hasn’t been given the chance/refuses to. It might be a completely different story if Sal is properly introduced to Ethan and Amber as the two kids from the convenience store she robbed.
Sal received mental care but apparently it was shit. As for support….I wouldn’t bet on it with the Walkertons, to put it mildly. Sal’s definitely tried moving on herself though, as much as she can when she has a permanent reminder, while Amber’s ruminates on things because anxiety likes to haunt you.
Well, not with the Walkertons, but she had Marcie, who she likely kept in touch with through letters or something. And might have received some form of support while she was in Tennessee, from either the nuns at the Catholic school or any new friends she made, though given Sal doesn’t seem to like talking about Tennessee much, that might not be as plausible.
I don’t think she received any sort of care from the nuns. If she did, I don’t think she’d have such a uniformly bad opinion on authority figures. As for friends, Sal says she was pretty much abandoned when she wasn’t what they thought or wanted her to be (which is why the fact Marcie stuck around was so important to her). It looks like she pretty much just had Marcie and while I’m sure Marcie did everything she could, it’s hard to be able to catch everything when you’re 13 years old in another state and dealing with your own fairly substantial problems (adjusting to a disability when you’re poor is rough, even after a year).
That’s why I said it wasn’t as plausible, given Sal’s attitude towards Tennessee.
I’m not saying Sal had a great support system, but she still had support. Even if it was shitty support from the Catholic school, Sal’s not knocking over convenience stores any more. She’s grown and changed and the most illegal thing she’s done since she’s come back to Indiana is try to get beer while underage. My entire point is that Sal’s been given the opportunity to move on and had people, although shitty they might have been, there to help/make her move on while Amber was actively discouraged from seeking out healthy outlets and instead ruminates on it.
No. Crappy authority figures are part of what got Sal into that mess in the first place and all accounts from her indicate her school was not better. We have absolutely no indication they helped her do anything to move on. Sal growing and changing is down to her. Can we not give credit that isn’t earned to crappy authority figures? By this logic, any progress Amber’s made since the robbery is due to support from Stacey and Ethan – which by the way, would bring her one more supportive figure than Sal had. And yet, that argument is bullshit because we know Amber grew and changed on her own, even while she had Blaine being a piece of shit. Same thing with Sal – she moved on herself, with some support from Marcie, while the authority figures and other ‘friends’ in her life added to her issues.
Ethan, while I understand that it’s clearly a sore subject, that was probably not the best response. Also, it is not Walky’s fault that Sal did any of that, besides this falls very much in line aith Amber’s superhero tropes. How many other superheroes end up falling for people related to their enemies/anti-hero counterparts?
Granted Amber being AG isn’t healthy, but that’s another can of worms we’re working our way through.
I don’t think Ethan is having a “don’t date the brother of the hostage taker” reaction. It’s more of a “Amber y u open this can of worms relating to girl who freaks you out” reaction.
It’s not even necessarily an “Oh come on, Amber!” It could totally be an “Oh come on, Universe!”
That’s how I read it.
Me too. But I am Always Wrong™.
I read it that way, too, and I am never wrong. I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out to be a mistake.
…now that I think about it “Oh come on, Universe!” is just in-comic “DAMN YOU WILLIS.”
Every time a character invokes God? Willis. Every time a character references the Universe, Fate, or any other kind of vague force governing their lives? Willis.
Plenty of DMYs have come from inside the comic, really.
What does Greg or Steven have to do with this?
I think his reaction is because he’s sympathetically frustrated, not judging anyone. Walky having that connection to a past trauma that triggers so much anxiety for Amber is gonna make dating him complicated for Amber, and Ethan just wants her to be happy w/o stuff constantly making that harder
Oh, I’m sure, on reflection, that his reaction’s most likely because he is sympathetically frustrated….
…But I don’t think that this really comes across well. My immediate reaction to it was “Ethan, what are you doing?”; and it’s quite possible Amber will react like that too.
And unlike me, Amber doesn’t have the luxury of reading it through more carefully and spend time considering what he really meant. And as such, I would not blame her if her immediate reaction in tomorrow’s strip would be to show some annoyance with Ethan for saying what he did.
Or even worse, she could interpret his comment to be judgemental…. and agree with it.
OTOH, she gets to hear the tone and a better impression of body language than we get.
She has also known him for years and should be able to tell how he meant it.
Did Ethan know that “the girl who held us hostage in the convenience store” goes to the same school as them? Had he identified her as Sal? I remember at Joyce’s dorm party he couldn’t recognize her. I count it as progress that Amber is talking directly about what happened when they were 13 – as far as I remember she doesn’t talk about it at all…
Amber mentioned it to him in a previous strip though I don’t think he knows it’s Sal.
He did not identify Sal although he’s “haven’t i seen you before?” as seen in this strip
He knew she went to school with them (and was remarkably gracious about it, even when you consider it’s been five years and they’ve all grown a lot) and he’s met Sal but he didn’t put the pieces together.
AG climed through his window to tell him about Sal after she recognized her. He didn’t react strongly.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/sheshere/
Yeeeep. “It was a very long time ago! Years and years. She was a KID. We were ALL kids. She’s probably changed by now. If she hadn’t, she’d be in jail instead of attending college, right?” – Why I love Ethan in a nutshell. He’s a good egg.
WHOOP THERE IT IS
I’m glad Amber feels she can talk to Walky about anything. She still needs to put that into practice, but talking to Ethan is a good start, right?
Yeah… but how do you even build up to “sorry I stabbed your sister”? Is there, like, a card or something?
That’s assuming she is sorry about that.
Yeah, she told Sal she was sorry “for more than you know.”
It’s easy. You take her out for drinks in a Walmart parking lot. When you’re both buzzed enough you suggest that game where you run a knife between your fingers except you reverse it so that you do it each other. Then when Sal inevitably stabs Amber’s hand she can be all like “No big deal! Speaking of hand stabbings…” And the situation resolves itself!
There’s an elaborate plan for everything!
She could also mention “I’m not actually Amazi-Girl. That’s another personality that takes over when I sleep. She probably won’t have any idea we’re together, so if you wake up in the night and it looks like I’m freaking out, that’s probably why.”
If she can, why is she talking to Ethan right now instead of him?
There is a whole bunch of stuff she should tell him. It’s more a “I can dump stuff on him without explaining anything” than a “I can tell him how I really feel”.
“And that’s when I heard it: the Universe was cocking its Fuck-With-Me Gun.”
“Then the clouds opened up and God said, ‘I hate you, Amber!’ “
Just be glad you’re not chopped up in a fridge, Ethan.
Amber, just do the thing! “Stab her again?” No, the other thing! “Have an epiphany about talking my problems with people and explaining why I feel angry against them?” Yes! “Nah, I will continue being self destructive.” No!!!!
said girl who’s being kind of a sidekick now, so she turned around?
the world is just that freaking small
Well it’s not like Sal and Amazi-girl are on bad terms anymore but Sal and Amber still have some shit to work through.
Amber still has a issue of faceing her long enough without the mask and as for Sal if she found out that The girl and boy who lives she threatened and had also stabbed her at the same time was at that school how would she react?
Would she have the guts to face Amber despite everything that’s happened between them? We were just shown proof that Sal has her insecurities and anxiety like everybody else so just like anybody else in that situation it wouldn’t be easy to approach two people that you probably scarred for life during your past life of mistakes.
Also, Sal might well be pissed to realize AG was stalking her because AG was the one* who stabbed her. It explains a lot, but it’s also creepy as hell. Like, horror movie levels.
* Technically Amber stabbed her and AG was born in the aftermath, but that’s a distinction I’m not sure Sal will get even if AG explains the dissociation part.
But wait!!! There’s more!!!! (when Dorothy, Sal, or Danny find out, even money says one of them is not going to take this well)
Surprise twist: None of them care, but for some reason Galasso is very invested in the outcome.
Galasso has deduced that Walky and Sal have almost everything in common except biological sex, so he figures if he can analyze the other differences between them in sufficient detail, he’ll finally be able to figure out how genders work. Amazi-Girl will thwart his nefarious plan without even trying.
We will see Kris… We will see….. (laughs evilly)
Why is Walky tagged in this strip but not Amber?
Must be Freaky Friday.
I didn’t know Ethan’s eyebrows could go that high.
Only during conversations about dating guys.
Note to self: put “pleasingly shaped” in my dating site profile.
I’m comfortably shaped, myself.
Of course, now that i say that, I don’t know if that means I’m comfortable with my shape, I evoke a feeling of comftableness, or comfortable to the touch.
The ambiguity makes for a good conversation starter with interested people.
…….
……. I wonder how well “plump cuddly marshmallow” would play…
Extremely well to extremely poorly depending on the viewer.
I might need to dig through the archives to be sure, but isn’t Amber’s description about what she likes about Walky pretty much the same things Dorothy likes about him?
Well, maybe those are things that women of his age look for?
Maybe those are the things that women who just broke up with Danny look for?
After all, you’re likely to have something of a type, but also to want some contrast with the last person who didn’t work out.
(Probably doesn’t hold water. They broke up with Danny for different reasons. Dorothy was done with his passiveness. Amazi-Girl was pissed that he liked Amber better. Amber still misses Danny. Dorothy didn’t. )
That’s not why I thought they broke up. I thought it was because he was close to Sal and because he suggested amber stop being amazi-girl because of danger.
You make it sound like jealousy on ag’s part.
I think it might have been. Partly at least.
If you look at it from the point of view of the alters as separate personalities – separate people stuck in the same 5’3″ meat sack as Amber put it, it takes on a very different cast.
What you describe is definitely how Danny meant it. And hearing it right after seeing him with Sal certainly didn’t help.
But he did say to Amazi-Girl that he liked Amber more and he wanted her to stop being Amazi-Girl. To an alter getting more and more distinct from the other alter, that’s pretty harsh. Telling your girlfriend that you like another girl more (he wasn’t Amber’s boyfriend) and that she needs to go away isn’t exactly a good way of staying in a relationship.
Yep. Proper response here.
AND, he doesn’t even know about her fighting alongside Sal yet. Bonus.
Bonus: Neither Does Amber, HA!
Well, Amber knows about the incident at the rally and that they were all working together to track down Ryan.
She just doesn’t know they’re continuing the team-up. (I think we’re still in team-up stage and haven’t gotten to partner or sidekick.)
The answer’s obvious, Amber: you have to bang her too!
I mean, your alter ego is already fighting crime and exchanging banter with her. Come on.
I;m not usually into Girl on Girl (Ok ever )
( or even Girl at all!)
BUt I’m buying that Slipshine
This is my prediction. Amber gets more into Walky, and AG starts getting “involved” with Sal. Oh the kerfuffle when the three of them meet on Garbage Roof and Sal asks Amber why she’s cheating with her brother…
Amber! Who cares!? She probably doesn’t even remember (unless I missed it somewhere). And even if she DOES, you fight along side her!
Of course, Amber doesn’t know Amazi-Girl is fighting alongside Sal. Amber is no longer in the loop in re: Amazi-Girl’s activities lately.
She definitely remembers.
The gloves?
her right hand is “not so good”?
She remembers.
Not to mention Sal saying she doesn’t like knives. Even if it didn’t do permanent damage (and Sal’s indication plus where it looked like the knife entered say it did, probably serious damage at that,) she’d probably still remember. The fact that there’s a nasty scar and it doesn’t work well anymore just makes it worse.
Yeah, I’ve asked around and the general consensus is ‘A knife all the way through her hand in that spot would probably hurt her nerves, the bones and there’s things like muscle, ligaments, etc. Thaaaaat’s probably at LEAST one surgery and physical therapy’.
I mean, I’d care if my new romantic partner had stabbed my sister in the past. That’s kinda a big deal.
I feel like that’s not stuff you talk about on the first date tho.
But the longer you wait, the worse it gets.
“This pasta’s really good, thanks for bringing me here. So, anyway, I stabbed your sister.”
I’m… pretty sure she remembers getting a knife plunged through her hand leading to permanent physical damage???
Even if it hadn’t left permanent damage, that’s… just not the sort of thing you forget!
…I kinda think that being stabbed in the hand at 13 is something you’ll remember a mere 5 years later.
Ethan embodies us all here.
He SUUUUUURE dooooes
Amber, I’ll take this as an early clue that your avoidance strategy isn’t working out well for you!
And you look like his EX. It’s an interesting thinnnnnnnnnnng
I think of Walky’s pattern with women and I’m reminded of a Bojack quote: “I’m more of a before rehab friend”.
Wait, “US”? Ethan was there? Did I miss somethin’?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/same/
Sort of?
In fact, Ethan was the hostage.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hostage/
You definitely did. Blaine mocked her for falling into a stupor rather than helping her best friend Ethan, and in consequence of that mocking she stabbed Sal in the hand. It’s freaking important backstory, so I suggest reading up all of it again.
Yeah, he was the one Sal held at knifepoint, and Amber felt guilty that she was unable to protect him, which is partially why she stabbed Sal afterwards.
“Come On”? The good things are to come yet. “And Amazigirl, who runs around in my body without giving notice these days, has made her her sidekick.” But wait, there is more. “She doesn’t know who I am. Or Amazigirl. She broke ties with her best friend over this, the friend she wanted to rob the store for.” But wait, there is… “Oh, come on, damn you Willis.” I was getting there.
Ethan was there and taken hostage.
This made more sense as a reply to All-Purpose Guru, but I see I included too many links for it to be posted on time anyway.
Basically, Amber’s luck sucks; ALWAYS. Even when the chances of it happening are so absurdly remote that a jackpot-only lottery ticket would sound a better investment!
Her and that Parker kid.
Well, at least he isn’t the girl that held them hostage.
Does Amber actually know that Sal is Amazigirl’s new sidekick? Or will that be a surprise to her?
Hehehe.
Not sure if that “Oh come on!” is aimed towards Amber or Ethan broke the fourth wall and is addressing the writer :P.
Breaking the fourth wall is for addressing the readers. Addressing the Willis, now, that would be breaking a fifth wall at least.
Well he’s speaking for a fair number of us.
Those are like the two least important things to be focusing on her Amber come on. How about “I changed his grades against his express wishes” or “I stabbed and then stalked and harassed his sister.” Those are WAY more likely to blow up in your face horribly.
Well, “he’s the twin brother” is kind of tied into that second one. It wouldn’t even make sense to say that without that context.
But I’d say the big one that’s likely to blow up the relationship is still “If we sleep together I’ll likely wake up as someone else who has no idea we’re together.”
That’s not even bad choice on Amber’s side, that’s just Fate trying to screw her over with a jackhammer…
“Oh come one! I just want to talk one friend through one normal crises.”
Hey David, the tags are wrong.
Where there is room for two, there is room for three. “Can’t get him out of my head either.”
And he’s the twin brother of the girl who held us hostage in that convenience store when we were 13… with whom I occasionally fight crime.
I think “he’s the twin brother of the girl I stabbed when we were 13” is more important here
She’s talking to Ethan. The person Sal attacked and threatened with a knife. Maybe Amber should focus more on what she did wrong there in general, but I don’t think it’s exactly wrong to describe Sal as such to the one who was her actual victim then. The one who didn’t do anything wrong.
All three of those kids were victims.
Agreed. But Ethan was the one who really didn’t do anything wrong.
And to hear some around here talk, Sal didn’t do anything but wander into the way of Amber’s rage.
Ethan is the right age to be very aware that he is dressed in teenage Ben 10 colors.
Tags are wrong, right now it’s Ethan and Walky tagged.
I hear Ethan’s “Oh come on!” sounding like Jim Belushi in The Man with One Red Shoe.