But the English department is where all the people who still believe in Freud’s bullshit live! We can still save him if we intervene quickly enough. Get him to Cognitive Psychology, fast.
I just wish the screenwriters didn’t learn from that and decide they know enough about psychology to write about it, thus continuing an inaccurate image in pop culture.
(I also have Words for comic writers about the subject, but I think those would be best expressed in a Batman fanfic about an institutional review board coming to Gotham and suggesting Arkham be completely dismantled.)
Ha ha…I’ve been wanting to write this fic forever. Seriously, Arkham does more harm than good, and probably half the Joker’s problems can be directly linked to his “treatment” there (not including Harley Quinn). I started one where insufficient resources to properly house all the residents led to Robin having to help Commissioner Gordon arrange supervised release to the community + proper counselor and therapy interventions as appropriate, and…it quickly spiraled out of control, so I didn’t finish it. ^^;
I think there would also be a chapter just about them explaining the criminal insanity defense in very small, easily-understood words on the grounds that every judge, lawyer, jury, and testifying psychologist in Gotham seems to critically misunderstand it.
Meh. It’s a plot device. They could all be sitting in prison, getting worse and escaping from there instead.
It’s not actually intended as the writer’s best understanding of modern therapy and the legal aspects of criminal insanity pleas.
It’s a Gothic Horror trope meant to evoke even earlier horrific asylums – real and fictional.
The issue I have with it is that it’s combined with things like ‘no one in Gotham deciding they’ll kill the Joker or die trying’ to result in this situation where yeah, of course the Joker will plead insanity and of course he’ll go to Arkham and of course he’ll escape and poison the water supply again but what can we do, huh? MANY THINGS. It’s bad writing when someone like Murderclown Joker or Zsasz is accepted as a fact of life because Batman Doesn’t Kill and no one else can deal with them, and them staying alive actively makes Batman a worse character. Batman doesn’t have to kill them! Jason or a desperate victim or SOMEONE should.
The problem with using an outdated depiction of a psychiatric hospital is that there are far fewer stories about modern ones with modern practices than stories that use them for horror factor. Very few people know what they’re actually like, and those of us who do have all the burden of talking about them and a stigma if we do so. This scares away people for whom it can be beneficial because mental illnesses are scary and they’re not That Crazy, it makes a stressful situation even more stressful, and it contributes to the public misinformation and stigma about mental illness treatments.
(I spent six weeks in an outpatient day program after the 2016 election. Could have been admitted as inpatient, but we decided I wasn’t going to hurt myself in the night and inpatient means you can’t have anything that needs charging, which would have aggravated things further. Not an experience I would care to repeat, and there were hiccups, but it was overall a pleasant experience and one I definitely NEEDED at the time. I’ve been through transcranial magnetic stimulation – sitting in a chair while magnets pulse my brain to wake it up – twice in the past year after changing medications made me need a tuneup. Highly recommend if you can talk insurance into it. Electroconvulsive therapy is, by all accounts, about That Unpleasant – hence why I picked TMS over it – but even then, sometimes it is the best option. And all of that is still very hard to write, even semi-anonymously in a supportive environment, because it can be really hard to disclose that you are in fact That Mentally Ill.)
It’s in fact exactly like why no one has killed the Joker. Because the Joker is a cool villain and they want to keep using him. (Of course the Joker has died many times over the years, usually by self-induced accident, but he always comes back anyway.)
Personally I’m fond of the theory that Batman’s genre savvy enough to know that the Joker will always come back and he’s more likely to get a warning if he breaks out of Arkham than if he’s thought dead.
Bluntly, ‘the insanity plea gets people off for transparent ways it wouldn’t’ is also a problem for making the insanity plea look like magic words that will get anyone off for anything, which both makes the voting public proclaim they hate it, and juries despise the idea and be less likely to want to give it out.
When I was in group therapy years ago the conversation had turned to the Freudian fundamentals and I had mentioned about the issues with it and the therapist got very defensive…
Sadly there are still professionals that strictly follow Freud for CBD. In the end it didn’t help at all I just felt like I was in stasis for a few years and it was friends and family that had a bigger impact in improving my mental health.
Even discredited theories are occasionally … applicable? You can talk about outliers all you want, but being that outlier doesn’t suck any less for being statistically insignificant.
Case in point, something we learned in psych is that phrenology isn’t technically a pseudo-science since useful scientific knowledge came from it, i.e. phrenologists were the first people to figure out that different parts of the brain did different things. They merely got the cause and effect backwards. (They believed that the shape of the skull affected the development of the brain, but it’s the other way around…)
The coolest thing about science is that it can be revised and adapted.
I wish more people understood that being discredited doesn’t make a theory useless. It’s still scientific process. It’s a stepping stone.
Part of the reason English/Lit majors study Freud so much isn’t because they believe him wholesale, but because he was foundational to how a lot of people, especially the authors they are studying, thought about psychology.
Well that was a powerful mess-up of html. The sentence was meant to conclude with the word “Vegan” linked to the following link: http://scottpilgrim.wikia.com/wiki/Veganism
No. It means rather than trying to get over her trauma by releasing violent urges, Walky is now an opportunity to get over her trauma through sexual ones.
She can redirect her energy and possibly make headway where violent urges have met a dead end.
That comment and the alt text. I’m blatantly copying my comment from patreon because I want to see what these comments make of it.
I mean, yeah, one of Amber’s ways of dealing with things is writing fucked up porn. Sex, trauma and violence are all tied up in there and it’s one more thing I’m sure we can say ‘fuck you Blaine’ for.
Admittedly we’ve only ever seen her slashfic in small, non-explicit bits, but the impression I get is that it’s pretty tame. I would hardly call it “fucked up porn” and it feels pretty icky to just say that it is because it’s mostly about dude-on-dude lovemaking.
That’s why I said one way of dealing with things is writing fucked up porn, because Mike and Ethan noted she specifically writes fucked up fic when she’s upset.
I don’t really have anything useful to contribute to the analysis, but I do want to say thanks- I didn’t understand how Amber could process her trauma with sex until you pointed out the fanfic angle. Not sure why that made it click for me, but it did, so thanks!
so thats why she always wrote all that slash fiction. She has very deep seeded urges that she tried to resolve through slash fiction but then walky came along and presto a new outlet is born!!!
About a month and a half has passed in-universe over the course of almost exactly eight real-world years. We can extrapolate that to roughly 48 years* for 9 months to pass in the comic at its current pace.
*Minus a few months to make up for the update-less weekends at the beginning, and the last few days of August we saw.
This is a little to psychoanalytic for me. So what? Amber wanted to fuck Sal this entire time? Or? What? Beat her up and then fuck her? Some combination of violence and or fucking and whatever Amazi-Girl’s trying to do by pushing Sal to be her sidekick?
Yeah but what does that solve. Sex with Walky doesn’t actually resolve any of Amber’s issues with Sal. Like just talk to Sal! You can fuck Walky all you want it’s still not having a conversation with Sal that desperately needs to happen to gain closure on this whole mess.
At the end of the day it’s like yeah you fucked Sal’s twin! Hooray for you. Nothing’s changed.
He’s not saying that it would work, just that sex with Walky would be another attempt to deal with it. It probably wouldn’t work just like being Amazi-girl hasn’t worked.
While we’re on this subject. What’s Amber’s deal with Sal anyway? Like I know the backstory, the “lore” if you will, but like why does she keep dodging Sal? Afraid of killing Sal, or I don’t know having a bunch of red panels that imply rage and violence (which seems the most likely)? And more important than any of that, even though Amber can’t talk to Sal Amazi-Girl is more than capable. Why hasn’t she talked to Sal about what happened? Seems like that would be very possible and a safe way to resolve the issue.
Thanks! Still a little confusing to be honest. Most of the Amber plots are to me because I haven’t read this comic from the beginning. I’ve been following for a few years but frankly this comic is super long and there are too many strips for me to archive binge and know all the details.
I think all of us routinely forget something that came up relatively recently, much less one-off lines from eight years ago. We really need to better maintain the wiki. And then describe and annotate each scene.
The problem is the burnout there is spectacular. Doing Cerberus-level commentary on the references and foreshadowing and callbacks alone would take a lot of manpower and easily months of work.
Summarizing the storylines for each character is on my wiki to-do list, I just haven’t had time between that, commenting, story ideas, school and other admin/mod commitments.
AG stalked and antagonized Sal for over a month before realizing the racist subtext to everything, seeing Ryan, enlisting Sal’s help and then blaming her actions on being influenced by terrible Amber who is terrible. A lot of things there were not handled well.
As stated, anxiety and PTSD are definitionally irrational (or at least semi-rational fears amped to irrational levels,) but I’d also add that Sal triggers Amber, but it’s not really about Sal herself. The red panel flashbacks tend to come with a more recent one of Amber punching Blaine. The stabbing looms at least as large as the holdup because Amber’s propensity for violence scares Amber, and that’s because she doesn’t want to be like Blaine. (What separates Amber from AG? AG isn’t personal.)
When in doubt, blame Blaine for at least 80% of traumatic incidents related to Amber in this strip.
I’m not sure if she realized any racist subtext. But AG was quite clear in her own mind that her stalking of Sal was related to something Sal did in the past and she, AG, was actually wrong in stalking her, so that bunches of other people being sure Sal was a villain just because AG was fighting with her made something click in her mind. Because AG truly tries to be fair and good, and that was neither.
(Might this also be a reason for the stronger split between AG and Amber, that with stalking Sal AG has gone against her own moral compass for Amber’s sake?)
Yeah, here’s the strip I think is most relevant here. AG realized the crowd was wrong before it, but the language there is SUPER-loaded (‘punch her in her thug face’ and ‘kill her!’) and Sal’s line makes it clear she knows exactly where the subtext is coming from. It’s really deliberate to put that encounter at a DeSanto rally. If that subtext wasn’t supposed to be there, those words from a sea of white faces wouldn’t have been used, but they are repeatedly. AG isn’t just uncomfortable with people siding with her against Sal (Danny couldn’t get through to her that Sal wasn’t currently a nexus of all evil,) it’s realizing the vitriol and why these people in particular are siding with her that snaps her out of it.
As to the next point, another link. Relevant line: Protect you from her. AG tried to shunt the blame on the stalking to Amber (it was not Amber who did this,) because Amber is the bad one. They were still sharing memories at this point – Amber helps put out the post on Ryan, and Amber challenging Sal to Mario Kart in the lobby happens at this point. (Meaning Amber was trying to get better about interacting with Sal.) So no, it was not the stalking causing their divide and it’s not Amber still thinking Sal is pure evil. Amber is still very much triggered by Sal – she’s gonna have to work on that one, and that’ll take quite some time – but she’s more aware now that that’s her problem and not a problem with Sal.
Maybe? The subtext is definitely there, but at least in that strip, I think she’s too distracted by having spotted Ryan to be paying much attention to Sal or the crowd’s reaction.
Way to dismiss their developing relationship as nothing more than therapy, Ethan.
Just because you just had sex with a guy you’re not sure you care for as a relationship partner doesn’t mean there can’t be genuine feelings on Amber’s part for Walky.
Not therapy. An (unhealthy) way if trying to cope with a barely controlled trauma.
Therapy would mean that at the end, something good comes out of it. I can’t see this as a healing experience at all.
Yeah, therapy would imply Walky were at all equipped to deal with the psychological Winchester House Amber’s got going on. He’s not, I’m pretty sure no 18-year-old is really equipped for that (even just dealing with their own issues of that magnitude – it takes a while to work out all your coping mechanisms,) and it would be a lot to ask for anyone who’s not a practicing, probably fairly specialized psychologist. (And you shouldn’t try to fuck your psychologist.)
Y’all are reading too much success into the meaning of the word.
Therapy doesn’t inheritly mean a positive outcome. After all, Sal apparently went to therapy and thinks it sucked.
I only used the word because Ethan is dismissing the SS Garbage Skow as an ATTEMPT at therapy.
Focus less on the term and more on how that was a messed up thing for Ethan to say.
There’s a difference between therapy (which tends to be mediated and have an attempt at the person figuring out emotions or strategies) and a coping mechanism (which are self-propelled once they’ve been established.) This as described is definitely a coping mechanism. Not all of them are bad – one of the points of therapy is to develop good ones – but it’s a distinct, recognized term in its own right and in this case it is DEFINITELY a bad one Ethan would is describing.
Yeah, that’s a bit like lumping alcohol together with prescription medication. The latter is dispensed under the care of one or more qualified professionals, with the intent of alleviating the symptoms and/or underlying issues; the former just numbs the pain (and leads to other problems).
Good metaphor. Or like drinking soda to pull an all-nighter versus sleeping and continuing whatever while you’re actually alert – it can work, and depending on the circumstances it might be your best option, but you don’t want to only finish assignments the night before after downing enough five hour energy shots to see eternity. You want some regular sleep and studying time to help. (I almost used caffeine versus Adderall to treat ADHD, but that’s not really a metaphor so much as a literal coping strategy and psychiatric treatment.)
Guys, Webster’s dictionary site says how I used therapy is accurate, and not just in one way. It’s not the medical definition, but it definitely works for a layman’s conversation. Just because you think there’s a better term doesn’t make the word choice wrong.
Visit the site yourself if you want confirmation.
(Can we get back to what Ethan said instead of what I said, now?)
Guessing a bunch of us are pedants because we actually have firsthand experience with both – I certainly am. Add in the whole ‘One of Amber’s biggest obstacles to actually improving is not realizing how badly her coping strategies are failing her and how much she needs outside, experienced help, and her reluctance to seek it out’ thing and it becomes a distinction that’s actually potentially important.
But yes, agreed that Ethan’s idea is a remarkably bad one even by this relationship’s standards. I think we all agree on that, but we thought therapy implied something good could come out of that mindset, which seems… unlikely.
On the one hand, Amber didn’t realize that Sal was Walky’s sister.
On the other hand, as Ethan said yesterday, it was staring everyone right in the face and she may well have put it together subconsciously. … Doubly so if you count AG as part of her subconscious.
Traumas work on a subconscious level. Her subconscious always knew that walky reminds her of the trauma. It’s probably not about knowing that he is sals twin but about being reminded of her on some level when seeing him.
As mentioned by some of the others Ethan doesn’t have the full details of her new relationship. He doesn’t know that they hooked up before she had any clue Walky was related so it’s not completely valid.
But as Alanari said, the subconscious doesn’t care about “related”, the subconscious cares about “reminds me of”. An unrelated like-a-look would have the same psychological effect.
You know when Ethan mentioned ” resolving your trauma through urges” I was under the impression he meant the whole “imma dress up as my own Kick-Ass Character OC and beat up some people” thing. Not something more physically intimate.
I guess we found a different emotional Outlet for her ? One that doesn’t involve channeling anger into violence?
Also, I got a Patreon email containing tomorrow’s update, but I’m only a $1 supporter, so I shouldn’t have gotten it. Just an fyi that it seems to have gone out to more than it’s supposed to.
Yeah. There’s already at least one comment where I thought “bahahaha, you’ll stop saying that tomorrow”. 😀
Twice as weird, since I got the Patreon leak before I got today’s comic, so I read them out of order and had to mentally re-order things later. Maybe I’ll go back and reread the whole conversation in a few days just to get rid of the weird feelings.
See, this is the one time when troll romance would make things simpler. If humans had kismeses (romantic rivals with an emphasis on the romantic) then this whole conflict could have resolved AGES ago!
Ethan, I like you a lot, but your psycho analysis is built on a mountain of conjecture and crap. Amber didn’t even know that Walky was Sal’s twin until last night. And they were kissing before she found that out, but I’m sure that she totally had all of those thoughts in her head since the first days of garbage roof.
Instead of offering any support or an analysis that has more solid support behind it, you have now put in Amber’s head the idea that she only wants to screw Walky because she has unresolved issues with Sal. Does she have unresolved issues with Sal? Yes. Is she projecting some of those issues onto her relationship with Walky now? Yes. Was she already interacting with Sal(as Amazi-Girl)? Also yes.
So we have a laundry list of issues to go through before we accept your interpretation of Amber’s thoughts, regardless of how long you have known her. Unless I’m wrong and Ethan is getting a degree in psychology or he is actually 100% this seems like it going from bad to worse.
Yeah ethan you’re getting in on the Dumbing a little bit- while it’s difficult to come up with a compelling “against” argument off the top of my head, it sounds distinctly unlike Amb’s usual behavior; trying to _avoid_ terrible things while somehow repeating the same situations (fighting sal over and over to try to replace the original experience) doesn’t super mesh here
Nothing you do because your trauma influences you is in any way rational. So this probably is less about knowing and more about resemblance.
Could be somehow similar to rape victims who start having lots of ons. I’ve never heard of someone trying to resolve a non-sex-related trauma through sex. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist though.
A lot of bad porn implies this gets the hate out of your system, btw, so I’d say he doesn’t speak from a psychological standpoint but from that of a regular reader of porn.
It’s worth noting that Ethan didn’t say he was analyzing how their relationship formed, just “what’s going on” at the present moment.
He points out that she goes through her trauma through *urges* in reference to how she writes really messed up gore porn when she’s in a bad state, and now she’s got the twin of a person she had violent trauma with. It’s not a bad connection to make if he’s trying to figure out what Amber thinks of her current relationship, if only because it’s easy enough for Amber to reject if it’s off the mark due to how specific it is.
It’s not psychoanalysis to say, “You have an observed history of working through trauma with violent sexuality, you’ll probably keep it up.” Psychoanalysis (at least in reference to Freud) is bullshit, but what Ethan is saying makes sense when you consider the information that he has access to. And since Amber sees the logic, too, I’m guessing he actually hit one of the handful of makrs that make up Amber’s relationship with Walky.
Heh, you know, I thought for a moment that I read Ethan asserting himself, laying out harsh truth without any punches pulled. Nothing like his usual passive evasion of…
…he did, didn’t he?
Wow. Ether getting laid did WONDERS for Ethan’s self confidence, or he is just that worried about this situation for him to stop being a doormat for once.
Even if he didn’t get therapy, he got parental support. His parents have issues and they’re not great in all sorts of ways, but those ways aren’t tied to this.
As has been pointed out, he had no Blaine. This cannot be repeated enough, because it really was how Blaine acted towards Amber after the situation, and how that pushed her into stabbing Sal, that made it all so traumatizing for her.
Or to put it another way: Ethan did -not- have the same traumatic experience. At all.
… Yeah because this was definitely what Amber needed, another complication in her head distracting from the very real complications she’s NOT thinking about.
In the meantime, I’ve decided to just turn my fort where we wait the inevitable crash and burn into McAwesomes. Because really, who doesn’t want a fort with a slide leading into a ball pit?
Can I hide in the ball pit? I want somewhere safe and cozy to set up a base when this whole thing explodes. I’ll bring my own pillows and sheets to build an extension for my fort.
Also yeah, as I said above, Ethan’s analysis of this doesn’t seem accurate in anyway and seems more likely to do harm than good.
Absolutely. Expanding it into McAwesomes allows much more room to support the comment base whenever the disaster occurs. We can make forts in the fort.
True. I still don’t blame her. Her brain has made “this will help me” decisions that were weird, or possibly misinformed, before.
And to be fair, the twins definition of “rough around the edges” are COMPLETELY different. Sal’s is closer to what Amber has buried underneath. Walky’s is much closer to what Amber is/appears to be on the surface.
Walky is literally Sal’s face transposed on to Amber’s Potentially? Least unhealthy coping mechanism. Like, almost like pre-out Danny with Sal’s face. But a more extreme version of it.
There’s a LOT of unhealthy shit twirled up in it I think, but the impulse makes sense. Whether it will be terrible or not, Idk.
But Walky, being a twin, could look enough like Sal that it stimulated a connection to “trauma resolution” BEFORE she found out. “This person looks like nemesis but is neat, friend person to deal with trauma.” Like, subconcious impulse.
And the dating/potential fucking is definitely POST that revelation.
Everything I’ve seen suggests that Amber is straight but is trying to deal with the huge symbolic importance of Sal in her psyche. Amazi-Girl on the other hand is clearly pretty bi.
Orientations, genders, ages, species… (And before people think I’m talking about the weird corners of the internet, that’s just stuff formally recorded by psychiatrists. The brain does what it thinks it needs to.)
Combination if the two, Amber doesn’t trust herself not to lose control and this is exacerbated by her friends or people around her being in danger. Which is where Amazi-Girl comes from, a “controlled” release of that aggression to be used for the protection of her friends and innocent people.
My understanding is that Amber’s trauma is about a decade of emotional and at least some physical abuse by her father, Blaine. It is a chronic stress reaction, not an acute stress reaction. The reason that Sal is so symbolically important is that Sal was the object of attention when Blaine applied the straw that broke the camel’s back and produced this: Freeze up.
(I don’t know why I even try to use HTML any more.
There were a lot of things in her life that could cause a trauma. Something about the robbery surely was, since she’s triggered by both Sal and walky. Having a trauma doesn’t make you immune to other traumas though, so it’s possible that there are multiple traumas. It’s also possible that the robbery was traumatic as a whole, not certain aspects of it.
I’ll just wait if she tells us someday. That’ll probably be the only way to say for sure
Wow. Not entirely out of character for Ethan, but wow. Something that unhealthy… at worst, may add to her trauma, and at the very least, even if true, is not *casual* conversation.
Also, unlikely in Amber’s case since as noted, Amber didn’t initially know they were twins, and because in general she’s more focused on avoiding her trauma not recreating it. Way to put ideas in Amber’s head before finding out more. Ethan may also be projecting his own obsession with sexual opportunity and sexual identity. Amber already explained what she likes about Walky, which isn’t this.
My problem is he’s saying it like it’s her fault, like he’s blaming her for it — “don’t think I don’t understand what this is really about.” And yeah, he should have thought about this a lot more before saying it.
And I should have phrased more clearly… I think him bringing up the idea, may add to her trauma. I doubt she’s actually doing this for trauma reasons like Ethan assumes.
I find it shitty of Ethan to impose that thought onto Amber. It was probably more so she sympathized with Walky’s self deprecation, like Joyce in It’s walky. This isn’t the truth, but it’s so in line with Ambers thoughts of herself that she’ll believe it.
You just dropped down on the favorite character tier Ethan
Not the best intervention for sure and it’s true her & Walky would be good most other times when the issues with said relationship weren’t in place but right now he’s right to point things out so she can make an informed choice. I’d personally prefer to make a mistake despite knowing the facts than make a mistake and then find out people could have told me and did not. I might be pissed they tried to tell me in the moment, esp if they did it badly but I’d still rather they do it,
Totally shitty. People, please do not tell folks with trauma histories what it means to them! Do not tell them what their sex lives mean to them. Do not tell them that their desires are based on trauma (unless they are predators… then this is a whole different conversation). If you care so dang much about your friend and their innermost thoughts… find a quiet time, make them comfortable (tea?), and ask them what it means to them. Help them think through it themselves. Be patient, and don’t assume they want to share everything with you. Do not add to their trauma because you have an urge to run your mouth.
Sometimes when the strip leads to comments talking about Amber’s traumas and potential (I know that there’s a strong argument for many that she has already split but I digress, lemme get my actual controversial thought out there first) DID, I wind up reading all the comments up until about an hour after I started. This comic and the comments on it are things that I do use to influence my own personality that I am broadly aware of, as well as my perspective on things. That being said, the Amber/AG situation really reminds me of doing something similar when I was younger (not that I’m actually old or anything) and makes me somewhat skeptical about there being a true divide. I still do it (talk about parts of me and decisions I make in the third person like these things are separate from me, or make decisions based off the part of me that would prefer I do it in spite of what the dominant portion says) because I have a lot of time to think to myself and a lot of inappropriate-in-many-ways thoughts going through my head that there is a need to let it all out because I am lonely and would prefer to not descend further into madness. Today, the debate rests somewhat heavily on the assumption that AG is a separate personality (that fact that she is a coping mech, I won’t debate. She is) whose firm split was caused by stress. While I personally didn’t and don’t have a situation as stressful as hers probably, simulations I’ve run on situations because I still live with most of my stressors (not all, thankfully lol it’s great to no longer be dating your rapist, that was a mess) to see what kind of mental breakdown I’d eventually have all wind up pointing to “you know too much for it to be genuine and you know it”. It’s hard to see AG as a full other personality rather than a forceful split of decisions and thoughts (part of what was so frustrating to see the breakup with Danny for me was because when it boiled down to it, that divide was more important for her than other feelings and possible growth that could come of it. Not that I don’t support single Danny but still) in a somewhat immature way of coping with the situations she’s been dealt. On one hand, don’t wanna deal with it. On the other, it needs to be dealt with otherwise you’ll explode. Let’s create someone else, an outlet, someone who understands the pain of the situation and whose purpose (ah, glorious purpose) is based heavily off doing for me what I am loathe to do for myself (or two, because there needs to be a facilitator between the two of us in the event we start to have a conflict of interest when that purpose is taken too far). Let’s grow that person into their own, to the best of our abilities, into the ideal outlet of all our violent stress, but never taint it with parts of ourselves. This person we’ve created is another person, albeit with fetters on who they can be because otherwise we’ll have created another, unfettered monster, just like us. Ultimately, when we actually split, it’s unlikely that it will be us and this person we’ve created, but probably us and this separate personality that is totally opposite to us in a way we didn’t think would be a foil. The split will happen because of a small incident, because we couldn’t take any more stress.
It’s possible you’re right, but AG and Amber have stopped sharing memories and we’ve seen them holding a conversation together, which makes me think an actual split is more likely.
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“FUCK SAL” …now you CAN!
Amber: “Hey Walky, could you put on this wig for me?”
“Wear this jacket, too.”
“And ride this motorcycle.”
“Now lets lez out!”
“Now rob this convenience store.”
“Don’t forget the gloves”
“But first, and just follow along with me here, we need to put a knife wound in your hand.”
“Why does it say ‘Ruttech’ on the sleeve?”
Rutten, actually. The jacket says “Rutten”. If it was “Ruttech”, it’d be less awkward to wear around the dorms.
You mean that luxurious chocolate river of hair?
(okay, that reference was both easy AND lame)
okay but let’s be real we all wanna
“Fuck Trauma!” is a phrase with many a potential use.
Don’t know what Ethan’s majoring in, but if it’s psychology he should know that Freudianism has mostly been discredited.
Of course it’s entirely possible Amber’s libido doesn’t know that either.
He’s undeclared, but last we heard he was considering English or Education.
…. if this is the sort of thing he’s learning, I vote he go for English.
Burn!
But the English department is where all the people who still believe in Freud’s bullshit live! We can still save him if we intervene quickly enough. Get him to Cognitive Psychology, fast.
Freudian analysis in English is apparently useful sometimes. Not so much in psych, but English and psychology are not the same thing.
I just wish the screenwriters didn’t learn from that and decide they know enough about psychology to write about it, thus continuing an inaccurate image in pop culture.
(I also have Words for comic writers about the subject, but I think those would be best expressed in a Batman fanfic about an institutional review board coming to Gotham and suggesting Arkham be completely dismantled.)
Agreed, and I would love to see that fanfic.
Ha ha…I’ve been wanting to write this fic forever. Seriously, Arkham does more harm than good, and probably half the Joker’s problems can be directly linked to his “treatment” there (not including Harley Quinn). I started one where insufficient resources to properly house all the residents led to Robin having to help Commissioner Gordon arrange supervised release to the community + proper counselor and therapy interventions as appropriate, and…it quickly spiraled out of control, so I didn’t finish it. ^^;
I think there would also be a chapter just about them explaining the criminal insanity defense in very small, easily-understood words on the grounds that every judge, lawyer, jury, and testifying psychologist in Gotham seems to critically misunderstand it.
Meh. It’s a plot device. They could all be sitting in prison, getting worse and escaping from there instead.
It’s not actually intended as the writer’s best understanding of modern therapy and the legal aspects of criminal insanity pleas.
It’s a Gothic Horror trope meant to evoke even earlier horrific asylums – real and fictional.
The issue I have with it is that it’s combined with things like ‘no one in Gotham deciding they’ll kill the Joker or die trying’ to result in this situation where yeah, of course the Joker will plead insanity and of course he’ll go to Arkham and of course he’ll escape and poison the water supply again but what can we do, huh? MANY THINGS. It’s bad writing when someone like Murderclown Joker or Zsasz is accepted as a fact of life because Batman Doesn’t Kill and no one else can deal with them, and them staying alive actively makes Batman a worse character. Batman doesn’t have to kill them! Jason or a desperate victim or SOMEONE should.
The problem with using an outdated depiction of a psychiatric hospital is that there are far fewer stories about modern ones with modern practices than stories that use them for horror factor. Very few people know what they’re actually like, and those of us who do have all the burden of talking about them and a stigma if we do so. This scares away people for whom it can be beneficial because mental illnesses are scary and they’re not That Crazy, it makes a stressful situation even more stressful, and it contributes to the public misinformation and stigma about mental illness treatments.
(I spent six weeks in an outpatient day program after the 2016 election. Could have been admitted as inpatient, but we decided I wasn’t going to hurt myself in the night and inpatient means you can’t have anything that needs charging, which would have aggravated things further. Not an experience I would care to repeat, and there were hiccups, but it was overall a pleasant experience and one I definitely NEEDED at the time. I’ve been through transcranial magnetic stimulation – sitting in a chair while magnets pulse my brain to wake it up – twice in the past year after changing medications made me need a tuneup. Highly recommend if you can talk insurance into it. Electroconvulsive therapy is, by all accounts, about That Unpleasant – hence why I picked TMS over it – but even then, sometimes it is the best option. And all of that is still very hard to write, even semi-anonymously in a supportive environment, because it can be really hard to disclose that you are in fact That Mentally Ill.)
It’s in fact exactly like why no one has killed the Joker. Because the Joker is a cool villain and they want to keep using him. (Of course the Joker has died many times over the years, usually by self-induced accident, but he always comes back anyway.)
Personally I’m fond of the theory that Batman’s genre savvy enough to know that the Joker will always come back and he’s more likely to get a warning if he breaks out of Arkham than if he’s thought dead.
Bluntly, ‘the insanity plea gets people off for transparent ways it wouldn’t’ is also a problem for making the insanity plea look like magic words that will get anyone off for anything, which both makes the voting public proclaim they hate it, and juries despise the idea and be less likely to want to give it out.
When I was in group therapy years ago the conversation had turned to the Freudian fundamentals and I had mentioned about the issues with it and the therapist got very defensive…
Sadly there are still professionals that strictly follow Freud for CBD. In the end it didn’t help at all I just felt like I was in stasis for a few years and it was friends and family that had a bigger impact in improving my mental health.
Even discredited theories are occasionally … applicable? You can talk about outliers all you want, but being that outlier doesn’t suck any less for being statistically insignificant.
Case in point, something we learned in psych is that phrenology isn’t technically a pseudo-science since useful scientific knowledge came from it, i.e. phrenologists were the first people to figure out that different parts of the brain did different things. They merely got the cause and effect backwards. (They believed that the shape of the skull affected the development of the brain, but it’s the other way around…)
The coolest thing about science is that it can be revised and adapted.
I wish more people understood that being discredited doesn’t make a theory useless. It’s still scientific process. It’s a stepping stone.
Part of the reason English/Lit majors study Freud so much isn’t because they believe him wholesale, but because he was foundational to how a lot of people, especially the authors they are studying, thought about psychology.
Sigh.
I approve of resolving trauma via fucking.
I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I highly recommend.
I’m sorta doing the opposite. It also seems to be helpful?
Stay a virgin long enough and you can cure any trauma with your wizard powers.
You’re thinking of
Well that was a powerful mess-up of html. The sentence was meant to conclude with the word “Vegan” linked to the following link: http://scottpilgrim.wikia.com/wiki/Veganism
Plasma Mongoose was making an entirely different reference
Opposite as in abstinence or opposite as in creating trauma?
Resolving fucking by trauma? Seems counterproductive.
#traumafucking
It’s not going well for me, but maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.
I don’t really think it works though. As in “actually getting better instead of just somehow managing”.
But you do end up having lots of sex. Which can be nice.
getting your cortex to sit down and shut up is pretty underrated as to difficulty *and* utility.
Aaand Ethan hit the nail with the hammer.
Pass Go, collect 200 dollars.
…Also does thius mean that Amber has been wanting to fuck Sal for half a decade?
I think he could be talking about the fanfic she writes
No. It means rather than trying to get over her trauma by releasing violent urges, Walky is now an opportunity to get over her trauma through sexual ones.
She can redirect her energy and possibly make headway where violent urges have met a dead end.
Ultimate angry sex?
This greatest of hatefucks!
Most epic of hatefucks.
damnyouwillis is saving this one for when he needs to put some kids through college.
And on that day, Amber sat down to write Amazi-Girl fanfic.
And that night, Amazi-girl set out to make it come true…
That is absolutely mental, and yet most of us are sort into it. Kind of crazy right?
That comment and the alt text. I’m blatantly copying my comment from patreon because I want to see what these comments make of it.
I mean, yeah, one of Amber’s ways of dealing with things is writing fucked up porn. Sex, trauma and violence are all tied up in there and it’s one more thing I’m sure we can say ‘fuck you Blaine’ for.
Admittedly we’ve only ever seen her slashfic in small, non-explicit bits, but the impression I get is that it’s pretty tame. I would hardly call it “fucked up porn” and it feels pretty icky to just say that it is because it’s mostly about dude-on-dude lovemaking.
Mike and Ethan both commented she writes messed up stuff when she’s upset. I believe guro in particular came up.
Ah, yeah, I forgot about that. Sorry.
No worries, it’s been a long strip. Stuff slips through the cracks.
Yes, but it’s not the only time she writes.
That’s why I said one way of dealing with things is writing fucked up porn, because Mike and Ethan noted she specifically writes fucked up fic when she’s upset.
Hey, if you don’t remember or don’t feel like checking it’s all good, but any chance you know when that was?
I know I’m not the person you were asking but:
Ugh I messed up the link: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/busy/
Yay link! 🙂
I don’t really have anything useful to contribute to the analysis, but I do want to say thanks- I didn’t understand how Amber could process her trauma with sex until you pointed out the fanfic angle. Not sure why that made it click for me, but it did, so thanks!
Glad I could help!
Woo, fuck trauma!
;-D
so thats why she always wrote all that slash fiction. She has very deep seeded urges that she tried to resolve through slash fiction but then walky came along and presto a new outlet is born!!!
Whoa, hold on! We don’t need anything being born from Amber any time soon.
Let’s be real. Nine months would take a goddamn century in this comic.
+1
About a month and a half has passed in-universe over the course of almost exactly eight real-world years. We can extrapolate that to roughly 48 years* for 9 months to pass in the comic at its current pace.
*Minus a few months to make up for the update-less weekends at the beginning, and the last few days of August we saw.
Ethan really does not feel like giving a shit today.
He finally found space for his Unite Warriors Galvatron. Compared to that Amber’s problems are small potatoes.
I dunno, I think he’s just found a temporary solution. He’s gonna want to be able to use his mouse again at some point!
Amber: How dare you what we have is pure… well pure garbage that is, but pure none the less.
I wonder if Amber, as Amazi-Girl, ever does the batman voice mid-coitus.
“WHERE’s SCARECROW?!!”
“I know I said you can talk dirty, but the nickname and the not acknowledging it is really hurtful.”
Damnit, Ethan
*throws a random KISS album on the hacked Muzak*
This is a little to psychoanalytic for me. So what? Amber wanted to fuck Sal this entire time? Or? What? Beat her up and then fuck her? Some combination of violence and or fucking and whatever Amazi-Girl’s trying to do by pushing Sal to be her sidekick?
No. He’s saying she tried to deal with trauma by being violent.
Now she has an opportunity to deal with trauma through sex.
Yeah but what does that solve. Sex with Walky doesn’t actually resolve any of Amber’s issues with Sal. Like just talk to Sal! You can fuck Walky all you want it’s still not having a conversation with Sal that desperately needs to happen to gain closure on this whole mess.
At the end of the day it’s like yeah you fucked Sal’s twin! Hooray for you. Nothing’s changed.
Well…yeah? He’s saying that this is a method her brain is using to try to cope/process, not that it’s a great solution.
He’s not saying that it would work, just that sex with Walky would be another attempt to deal with it. It probably wouldn’t work just like being Amazi-girl hasn’t worked.
While we’re on this subject. What’s Amber’s deal with Sal anyway? Like I know the backstory, the “lore” if you will, but like why does she keep dodging Sal? Afraid of killing Sal, or I don’t know having a bunch of red panels that imply rage and violence (which seems the most likely)? And more important than any of that, even though Amber can’t talk to Sal Amazi-Girl is more than capable. Why hasn’t she talked to Sal about what happened? Seems like that would be very possible and a safe way to resolve the issue.
Anxiety and PTSD are not rational. She doesn’t feel safe around Sal.
Thanks! Still a little confusing to be honest. Most of the Amber plots are to me because I haven’t read this comic from the beginning. I’ve been following for a few years but frankly this comic is super long and there are too many strips for me to archive binge and know all the details.
I think all of us routinely forget something that came up relatively recently, much less one-off lines from eight years ago. We really need to better maintain the wiki. And then describe and annotate each scene.
The problem is the burnout there is spectacular. Doing Cerberus-level commentary on the references and foreshadowing and callbacks alone would take a lot of manpower and easily months of work.
Summarizing the storylines for each character is on my wiki to-do list, I just haven’t had time between that, commenting, story ideas, school and other admin/mod commitments.
If I get around to doing a full reread, I’ll try and take notes as I go. Might at least provide framework.
Thank you!
No problem! I tend to have more free time than most, and my writing and summarizing muscles could use some work.
AG stalked and antagonized Sal for over a month before realizing the racist subtext to everything, seeing Ryan, enlisting Sal’s help and then blaming her actions on being influenced by terrible Amber who is terrible. A lot of things there were not handled well.
As stated, anxiety and PTSD are definitionally irrational (or at least semi-rational fears amped to irrational levels,) but I’d also add that Sal triggers Amber, but it’s not really about Sal herself. The red panel flashbacks tend to come with a more recent one of Amber punching Blaine. The stabbing looms at least as large as the holdup because Amber’s propensity for violence scares Amber, and that’s because she doesn’t want to be like Blaine. (What separates Amber from AG? AG isn’t personal.)
When in doubt, blame Blaine for at least 80% of traumatic incidents related to Amber in this strip.
I’m not sure if she realized any racist subtext. But AG was quite clear in her own mind that her stalking of Sal was related to something Sal did in the past and she, AG, was actually wrong in stalking her, so that bunches of other people being sure Sal was a villain just because AG was fighting with her made something click in her mind. Because AG truly tries to be fair and good, and that was neither.
(Might this also be a reason for the stronger split between AG and Amber, that with stalking Sal AG has gone against her own moral compass for Amber’s sake?)
I was thinking AG has come to see Sal as a person instead of a villain character, but Amber hasn’t passed that hurdle yet.
That being the reason would imply that it actually was for Amber’s sake.
Or maybe not, I suppose. I guess they can both buy into the “anything bad we do is Amber’s influence, anything good is Amazi-Girl” trap.
Yeah, here’s the strip I think is most relevant here. AG realized the crowd was wrong before it, but the language there is SUPER-loaded (‘punch her in her thug face’ and ‘kill her!’) and Sal’s line makes it clear she knows exactly where the subtext is coming from. It’s really deliberate to put that encounter at a DeSanto rally. If that subtext wasn’t supposed to be there, those words from a sea of white faces wouldn’t have been used, but they are repeatedly. AG isn’t just uncomfortable with people siding with her against Sal (Danny couldn’t get through to her that Sal wasn’t currently a nexus of all evil,) it’s realizing the vitriol and why these people in particular are siding with her that snaps her out of it.
As to the next point, another link. Relevant line: Protect you from her. AG tried to shunt the blame on the stalking to Amber (it was not Amber who did this,) because Amber is the bad one. They were still sharing memories at this point – Amber helps put out the post on Ryan, and Amber challenging Sal to Mario Kart in the lobby happens at this point. (Meaning Amber was trying to get better about interacting with Sal.) So no, it was not the stalking causing their divide and it’s not Amber still thinking Sal is pure evil. Amber is still very much triggered by Sal – she’s gonna have to work on that one, and that’ll take quite some time – but she’s more aware now that that’s her problem and not a problem with Sal.
Maybe? The subtext is definitely there, but at least in that strip, I think she’s too distracted by having spotted Ryan to be paying much attention to Sal or the crowd’s reaction.
I was trying to get around the filters and only link the most-relevant strip to that particular argument, but AG was definitely uncomfortable with the cheers before she saw Ryan.
Link busted, but I’m pretty sure Regalli meant this: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/alert/
Here’s the ugly crowd cheer link:
Snap
Here’s the ‘protect’ link:
Paid
Way to dismiss their developing relationship as nothing more than therapy, Ethan.
Just because you just had sex with a guy you’re not sure you care for as a relationship partner doesn’t mean there can’t be genuine feelings on Amber’s part for Walky.
Not therapy. An (unhealthy) way if trying to cope with a barely controlled trauma.
Therapy would mean that at the end, something good comes out of it. I can’t see this as a healing experience at all.
Yeah, therapy would imply Walky were at all equipped to deal with the psychological Winchester House Amber’s got going on. He’s not, I’m pretty sure no 18-year-old is really equipped for that (even just dealing with their own issues of that magnitude – it takes a while to work out all your coping mechanisms,) and it would be a lot to ask for anyone who’s not a practicing, probably fairly specialized psychologist. (And you shouldn’t try to fuck your psychologist.)
Do orgasms count as something good coming out of it? Because there’s potential for that, at least.
Y’all are reading too much success into the meaning of the word.
Therapy doesn’t inheritly mean a positive outcome. After all, Sal apparently went to therapy and thinks it sucked.
I only used the word because Ethan is dismissing the SS Garbage Skow as an ATTEMPT at therapy.
Focus less on the term and more on how that was a messed up thing for Ethan to say.
Therapy still doesn’t seem like the right term for what you’re saying. “As nothing more than a coping mechanism” might make your point more clearly.
There’s a difference between therapy (which tends to be mediated and have an attempt at the person figuring out emotions or strategies) and a coping mechanism (which are self-propelled once they’ve been established.) This as described is definitely a coping mechanism. Not all of them are bad – one of the points of therapy is to develop good ones – but it’s a distinct, recognized term in its own right and in this case it is DEFINITELY a bad one Ethan would is describing.
Yeah, that’s a bit like lumping alcohol together with prescription medication. The latter is dispensed under the care of one or more qualified professionals, with the intent of alleviating the symptoms and/or underlying issues; the former just numbs the pain (and leads to other problems).
Good metaphor. Or like drinking soda to pull an all-nighter versus sleeping and continuing whatever while you’re actually alert – it can work, and depending on the circumstances it might be your best option, but you don’t want to only finish assignments the night before after downing enough five hour energy shots to see eternity. You want some regular sleep and studying time to help. (I almost used caffeine versus Adderall to treat ADHD, but that’s not really a metaphor so much as a literal coping strategy and psychiatric treatment.)
Guys, Webster’s dictionary site says how I used therapy is accurate, and not just in one way. It’s not the medical definition, but it definitely works for a layman’s conversation. Just because you think there’s a better term doesn’t make the word choice wrong.
Visit the site yourself if you want confirmation.
(Can we get back to what Ethan said instead of what I said, now?)
Guessing a bunch of us are pedants because we actually have firsthand experience with both – I certainly am. Add in the whole ‘One of Amber’s biggest obstacles to actually improving is not realizing how badly her coping strategies are failing her and how much she needs outside, experienced help, and her reluctance to seek it out’ thing and it becomes a distinction that’s actually potentially important.
But yes, agreed that Ethan’s idea is a remarkably bad one even by this relationship’s standards. I think we all agree on that, but we thought therapy implied something good could come out of that mindset, which seems… unlikely.
Let’s say he thinks it’s an unhealthy way to try healing.
No one wants therapy, but most people want to heal and therapy can help in healing.
People want therapy. I wanted therapy for years before my parents actually let me go to it
Yeah, I volunteer at a crisis line, and there are a lot of people who want therapy.
Therapy is the means, not the aim.
Yeah, but it can still be something people want. I get what you’re saying, but it’s misleading to say that no one wants therapy.
There being genuine feelings (or at least the potential for such developing) doesn’t mean it’s not also her brain trying to cope with the trauma.
…..
Okay, does Ethan have a legit point here?
On the one hand, Amber didn’t realize that Sal was Walky’s sister.
On the other hand, as Ethan said yesterday, it was staring everyone right in the face and she may well have put it together subconsciously. … Doubly so if you count AG as part of her subconscious.
Exactly what I was wondering.
Traumas work on a subconscious level. Her subconscious always knew that walky reminds her of the trauma. It’s probably not about knowing that he is sals twin but about being reminded of her on some level when seeing him.
I mean, Amber doesn’t deny what Ethan said.
As mentioned by some of the others Ethan doesn’t have the full details of her new relationship. He doesn’t know that they hooked up before she had any clue Walky was related so it’s not completely valid.
But as Alanari said, the subconscious doesn’t care about “related”, the subconscious cares about “reminds me of”. An unrelated like-a-look would have the same psychological effect.
HELL YEAH
BANG IT OUT
The butt give solid advice.
Not always the BEST advice, but solid.
Eww.
Who doesn’t love a solid, firm butt?
You know when Ethan mentioned ” resolving your trauma through urges” I was under the impression he meant the whole “imma dress up as my own Kick-Ass Character OC and beat up some people” thing. Not something more physically intimate.
I guess we found a different emotional Outlet for her ? One that doesn’t involve channeling anger into violence?
Less violence, at least. Dangling someone from a grapple line is sorta violent, and we know she’s into that.
Also, I got a Patreon email containing tomorrow’s update, but I’m only a $1 supporter, so I shouldn’t have gotten it. Just an fyi that it seems to have gone out to more than it’s supposed to.
Same. I’m guessing it accidentally got marked the wrong tier?
Also huh, this is what it’s like thinking about tomorrow’s comic today.
Fucking weird isn’t? Not to mention pressure of keeping the weight such a secret on your shoulders.
Yeah. There’s already at least one comment where I thought “bahahaha, you’ll stop saying that tomorrow”. 😀
Twice as weird, since I got the Patreon leak before I got today’s comic, so I read them out of order and had to mentally re-order things later. Maybe I’ll go back and reread the whole conversation in a few days just to get rid of the weird feelings.
Yeah, I checked my email before pulling up the strip and whoops!
Ain’t it grand? 😛
Someday I’ll be able to actually bump up my Patreon pledges. Someday.
It was kind of a nice birthday gift for me, but I don’t know if I’d want it every day.
Thanks to being warned I deleted the post without reading tomorrow’s comic.
See, this is the one time when troll romance would make things simpler. If humans had kismeses (romantic rivals with an emphasis on the romantic) then this whole conflict could have resolved AGES ago!
Ethan, I like you a lot, but your psycho analysis is built on a mountain of conjecture and crap. Amber didn’t even know that Walky was Sal’s twin until last night. And they were kissing before she found that out, but I’m sure that she totally had all of those thoughts in her head since the first days of garbage roof.
Instead of offering any support or an analysis that has more solid support behind it, you have now put in Amber’s head the idea that she only wants to screw Walky because she has unresolved issues with Sal. Does she have unresolved issues with Sal? Yes. Is she projecting some of those issues onto her relationship with Walky now? Yes. Was she already interacting with Sal(as Amazi-Girl)? Also yes.
So we have a laundry list of issues to go through before we accept your interpretation of Amber’s thoughts, regardless of how long you have known her. Unless I’m wrong and Ethan is getting a degree in psychology or he is actually 100% this seems like it going from bad to worse.
Yeah ethan you’re getting in on the Dumbing a little bit- while it’s difficult to come up with a compelling “against” argument off the top of my head, it sounds distinctly unlike Amb’s usual behavior; trying to _avoid_ terrible things while somehow repeating the same situations (fighting sal over and over to try to replace the original experience) doesn’t super mesh here
Nothing you do because your trauma influences you is in any way rational. So this probably is less about knowing and more about resemblance.
Could be somehow similar to rape victims who start having lots of ons. I’ve never heard of someone trying to resolve a non-sex-related trauma through sex. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist though.
Seems like he might want to examine the patient a bit longer before before amputating.
A lot of bad porn implies this gets the hate out of your system, btw, so I’d say he doesn’t speak from a psychological standpoint but from that of a regular reader of porn.
It’s worth noting that Ethan didn’t say he was analyzing how their relationship formed, just “what’s going on” at the present moment.
He points out that she goes through her trauma through *urges* in reference to how she writes really messed up gore porn when she’s in a bad state, and now she’s got the twin of a person she had violent trauma with. It’s not a bad connection to make if he’s trying to figure out what Amber thinks of her current relationship, if only because it’s easy enough for Amber to reject if it’s off the mark due to how specific it is.
It’s not psychoanalysis to say, “You have an observed history of working through trauma with violent sexuality, you’ll probably keep it up.” Psychoanalysis (at least in reference to Freud) is bullshit, but what Ethan is saying makes sense when you consider the information that he has access to. And since Amber sees the logic, too, I’m guessing he actually hit one of the handful of makrs that make up Amber’s relationship with Walky.
Heh, you know, I thought for a moment that I read Ethan asserting himself, laying out harsh truth without any punches pulled. Nothing like his usual passive evasion of…
…he did, didn’t he?
Wow. Ether getting laid did WONDERS for Ethan’s self confidence, or he is just that worried about this situation for him to stop being a doormat for once.
Ethan had the same traumatic experience, but he seems to have dealt with it much better than Amber so far.
He had no Blaine.
Pretty much. He wasn’t a messed up abuse victim to start with and didn’t then get more abuse dumped on top of the trauma.
He did no stabby. Plus he got therapy
Even if he didn’t get therapy, he got parental support. His parents have issues and they’re not great in all sorts of ways, but those ways aren’t tied to this.
Plus he wasn’t out yet, so he wasn’t a ‘disappointment’.
Fuck I hate the Siegals.
Well yeah, though Naomi might have had suspicions.
But even if he was, they still would have helped with this kind of trauma.
Yes, but at this point she still thought she could ‘stop him’.
And yeah, it seems to me that they blame Amber for him being gay more than Ethan so probably.
As has been pointed out, he had no Blaine. This cannot be repeated enough, because it really was how Blaine acted towards Amber after the situation, and how that pushed her into stabbing Sal, that made it all so traumatizing for her.
Or to put it another way: Ethan did -not- have the same traumatic experience. At all.
… Yeah because this was definitely what Amber needed, another complication in her head distracting from the very real complications she’s NOT thinking about.
In the meantime, I’ve decided to just turn my fort where we wait the inevitable crash and burn into McAwesomes. Because really, who doesn’t want a fort with a slide leading into a ball pit?
Can I hide in the ball pit? I want somewhere safe and cozy to set up a base when this whole thing explodes. I’ll bring my own pillows and sheets to build an extension for my fort.
Also yeah, as I said above, Ethan’s analysis of this doesn’t seem accurate in anyway and seems more likely to do harm than good.
Absolutely. Expanding it into McAwesomes allows much more room to support the comment base whenever the disaster occurs. We can make forts in the fort.
“I think you are hot because you remind me of your sister” is an iffy subject all in itself, even BEFORE stabbings enter the picture.
True. I still don’t blame her. Her brain has made “this will help me” decisions that were weird, or possibly misinformed, before.
And to be fair, the twins definition of “rough around the edges” are COMPLETELY different. Sal’s is closer to what Amber has buried underneath. Walky’s is much closer to what Amber is/appears to be on the surface.
Walky is literally Sal’s face transposed on to Amber’s Potentially? Least unhealthy coping mechanism. Like, almost like pre-out Danny with Sal’s face. But a more extreme version of it.
There’s a LOT of unhealthy shit twirled up in it I think, but the impulse makes sense. Whether it will be terrible or not, Idk.
But…wasn’t she connecting to Walky before she realized he was Sal’s brother?It seems like an explanation that matches everything but the chronology
But Walky, being a twin, could look enough like Sal that it stimulated a connection to “trauma resolution” BEFORE she found out. “This person looks like nemesis but is neat, friend person to deal with trauma.” Like, subconcious impulse.
And the dating/potential fucking is definitely POST that revelation.
His appearance was setting the corners of her brain on fire long before she found out.
Yes. In an early garbage roof encounter she indicated that he was tripping some bells in her head.
Wait. Is She straight?
I mean it’s likey LESS than possible. But, hypothetically.
What ever.
Holy shit Amber. (had not considered this angle)
Two. Is it bad I. Don’t, blame her?
Everything I’ve seen suggests that Amber is straight but is trying to deal with the huge symbolic importance of Sal in her psyche. Amazi-Girl on the other hand is clearly pretty bi.
I had. Not even considered that they could have different orientations. I rea;;y need to learn more about DID.
Orientations, genders, ages, species… (And before people think I’m talking about the weird corners of the internet, that’s just stuff formally recorded by psychiatrists. The brain does what it thinks it needs to.)
I don’t think that’s clear at all. I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t see it.
Maniac (2018)
what is Amber’s trauma about again? is it about his best friend being put in danger? or is it about herself releasing the beast within?
Combination if the two, Amber doesn’t trust herself not to lose control and this is exacerbated by her friends or people around her being in danger. Which is where Amazi-Girl comes from, a “controlled” release of that aggression to be used for the protection of her friends and innocent people.
More the latter, IMO.
Some is from Ethan being taken hostage but most of it is her snapping under her father’s emotional abuse and stabbing Sal.
My understanding is that Amber’s trauma is about a decade of emotional and at least some physical abuse by her father, Blaine. It is a chronic stress reaction, not an acute stress reaction. The reason that Sal is so symbolically important is that Sal was the object of attention when Blaine applied the straw that broke the camel’s back and produced this: Freeze up.
(I don’t know why I even try to use HTML any more.
There were a lot of things in her life that could cause a trauma. Something about the robbery surely was, since she’s triggered by both Sal and walky. Having a trauma doesn’t make you immune to other traumas though, so it’s possible that there are multiple traumas. It’s also possible that the robbery was traumatic as a whole, not certain aspects of it.
I’ll just wait if she tells us someday. That’ll probably be the only way to say for sure
A Version Of Your Trauma That You Can Fuck
coming soon to a slipshine near you
I’m pretty sure what Ethan is talking about may be the basis of just about every kink ever.
god dammit Freud
Wow. Not entirely out of character for Ethan, but wow. Something that unhealthy… at worst, may add to her trauma, and at the very least, even if true, is not *casual* conversation.
Also, unlikely in Amber’s case since as noted, Amber didn’t initially know they were twins, and because in general she’s more focused on avoiding her trauma not recreating it. Way to put ideas in Amber’s head before finding out more. Ethan may also be projecting his own obsession with sexual opportunity and sexual identity. Amber already explained what she likes about Walky, which isn’t this.
My problem is he’s saying it like it’s her fault, like he’s blaming her for it — “don’t think I don’t understand what this is really about.” And yeah, he should have thought about this a lot more before saying it.
I agree.
And I should have phrased more clearly… I think him bringing up the idea, may add to her trauma. I doubt she’s actually doing this for trauma reasons like Ethan assumes.
Welp, now I’m half-singing “Fuck your Trauma” to the tune of “Stop the Pigeon.” I shouldn’t read comics when I’m sleepy.
…What?
I ain’t no therapist or psychoanalyst, but…
WHAT
No! Bad Ethan! You’ve (potentially) swapped the order of causality! Respect Garbage Roof!
That does sound pretty unhealthy and exactly like Amber with her self-loathing and her obsession with her self-loathing.
That’s what we call a life fack.
Third of all her and Walky are actually insanely compatible.
Trauma won’t own me. Fuck trauma.
…
Wait, not like that.
Exactly.
Make love, not war! 😀
Sal just stormed out of her room because no one understood her. Amber is fortunate to have someone who does understand her.
I’m sure she feels very fortunate right now…
(but you are right)
How… DARE you… (know me so well?)
Exactly
Ethan can be kind of an asshole sometimes, huh
Off topic:
HEY WILLIS! BATMAN: DAMNED HAS A PAGE WITH BATMAN’S PENIS IN IT! GO SEE YOUR ULTIMATE FANTASY!
wow, thank you, i definitely didn’t know about this already somehow, because clearly the internet has been extremely quiet about it
You’re welcome 🙂
Ethan, instead of slut shaming Amber you should get it together that Amber is becoming paranoid.
What?
Last two panels = me to my friend every time she successfully calls me out on my angsty social anxiety bullshit.
I find it shitty of Ethan to impose that thought onto Amber. It was probably more so she sympathized with Walky’s self deprecation, like Joyce in It’s walky. This isn’t the truth, but it’s so in line with Ambers thoughts of herself that she’ll believe it.
You just dropped down on the favorite character tier Ethan
Not the best intervention for sure and it’s true her & Walky would be good most other times when the issues with said relationship weren’t in place but right now he’s right to point things out so she can make an informed choice. I’d personally prefer to make a mistake despite knowing the facts than make a mistake and then find out people could have told me and did not. I might be pissed they tried to tell me in the moment, esp if they did it badly but I’d still rather they do it,
Totally shitty. People, please do not tell folks with trauma histories what it means to them! Do not tell them what their sex lives mean to them. Do not tell them that their desires are based on trauma (unless they are predators… then this is a whole different conversation). If you care so dang much about your friend and their innermost thoughts… find a quiet time, make them comfortable (tea?), and ask them what it means to them. Help them think through it themselves. Be patient, and don’t assume they want to share everything with you. Do not add to their trauma because you have an urge to run your mouth.
Also PSadlon, he did not add any facts.
fucking god YES
oh my god Ethan
no, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happening
Sometimes when the strip leads to comments talking about Amber’s traumas and potential (I know that there’s a strong argument for many that she has already split but I digress, lemme get my actual controversial thought out there first) DID, I wind up reading all the comments up until about an hour after I started. This comic and the comments on it are things that I do use to influence my own personality that I am broadly aware of, as well as my perspective on things. That being said, the Amber/AG situation really reminds me of doing something similar when I was younger (not that I’m actually old or anything) and makes me somewhat skeptical about there being a true divide. I still do it (talk about parts of me and decisions I make in the third person like these things are separate from me, or make decisions based off the part of me that would prefer I do it in spite of what the dominant portion says) because I have a lot of time to think to myself and a lot of inappropriate-in-many-ways thoughts going through my head that there is a need to let it all out because I am lonely and would prefer to not descend further into madness. Today, the debate rests somewhat heavily on the assumption that AG is a separate personality (that fact that she is a coping mech, I won’t debate. She is) whose firm split was caused by stress. While I personally didn’t and don’t have a situation as stressful as hers probably, simulations I’ve run on situations because I still live with most of my stressors (not all, thankfully lol it’s great to no longer be dating your rapist, that was a mess) to see what kind of mental breakdown I’d eventually have all wind up pointing to “you know too much for it to be genuine and you know it”. It’s hard to see AG as a full other personality rather than a forceful split of decisions and thoughts (part of what was so frustrating to see the breakup with Danny for me was because when it boiled down to it, that divide was more important for her than other feelings and possible growth that could come of it. Not that I don’t support single Danny but still) in a somewhat immature way of coping with the situations she’s been dealt. On one hand, don’t wanna deal with it. On the other, it needs to be dealt with otherwise you’ll explode. Let’s create someone else, an outlet, someone who understands the pain of the situation and whose purpose (ah, glorious purpose) is based heavily off doing for me what I am loathe to do for myself (or two, because there needs to be a facilitator between the two of us in the event we start to have a conflict of interest when that purpose is taken too far). Let’s grow that person into their own, to the best of our abilities, into the ideal outlet of all our violent stress, but never taint it with parts of ourselves. This person we’ve created is another person, albeit with fetters on who they can be because otherwise we’ll have created another, unfettered monster, just like us. Ultimately, when we actually split, it’s unlikely that it will be us and this person we’ve created, but probably us and this separate personality that is totally opposite to us in a way we didn’t think would be a foil. The split will happen because of a small incident, because we couldn’t take any more stress.
It’s possible you’re right, but AG and Amber have stopped sharing memories and we’ve seen them holding a conversation together, which makes me think an actual split is more likely.
Oh dear, I think Ethan has struck a nerve, Amber is making Sal face in the last panel.
Wowsers – no comments about the Venn Diagram?
Really?
I would have said that Amber’s Venn Diagram would be circles within circles within circles with her in the centre at 10 points…..
I guess when you’re young, half a decade seems long.