Amazigirl doesn’t actually want the liver since she doesn’t drink, but she insisted on having it in the custody battle because she still cares for Amber and doesn’t want her to drink herself to death. She thinks if Amber has the liver less often, she won’t drink as much. Amazigirl is very optimistic.
I don’t think so; they go a long way back. People can be sarcastic with their long-term friends during a trying time without it meaning the end of a friendship.
I’m sarcastic roughly 120% of the time (usually in a cheerful and joking manner), so I certainly hope so.
I think it’s a matter of tone. If the sarcasm is done in a way to make it sound like a criticism of Amber, then that’s… well, not friendship-ending territory, but at least something to call out and take a few hours to either hash out or cool down.
If instead it’s acknowledging that Amber’s situation is not 100% rosy, then that’s fine. Recognizing and acknowledging that a friend’s got troubles when they’re deflecting or trying to paint it in a good light is fine.
I sincerely hope he isn’t done with her – dumping your lifelong best friend because she’s been struggling with a mental illness and didn’t tell you something she didn’t know would be pretty shitty. Especially when she already worries about people giving up on her and leaving…
She did know she wasn’t sharing memories anymore and while I don’t remember for certain it sounds like she didn’t tell him that.
Experience with both my own mental illness and that of friends and roommates has made me feel that you really need to communicate about your mental health issues with friends if you want them to be properly supportive. I’m not sure whether either of them consider this insufficient communication or not (maybe Amber genuinely didn’t feel this was important enough to mention) but I can see the possibility being there.
yeah, but as someone with osdd its TERRIFYING to tell someone that you have a dissociative disorder, since they’re so heavily stigmatized and so many people just wont understand or believe you. most of the people I know with did/osdd don’t even understand/believe themselves a lot of the time. ambers reaction to realizing she no longer shared memories with amazigirl is 100% reasonable considering Ethan doesn’t even think of them as separate people
^ This. Amber doesn’t even have a diagnosis yet- she knows SOMETHING is wrong, but not a single useful tool for dealing with it, and frankly, if she *doesn’t* have some form of therapeutic trauma, I’ll eat all half dozen of my necklaces.
From Amber’s perspective, what’s going on is a flavor of terrifying that she is desperately- poorly- trying to cope with. Suddenly, her body is doing things, and *she has no clue what.* She’s missing chunks of time. Every deep seated, secret fear, that she’s going crazy, feels to her like it has just been confirmed.
This isn’t something she’s got years of experience dealing with. This isn’t something she’s talked with a therapist about, something she’s been taught coping methods to deal with. This is *new* to her, still- *Amazigirl*, by only a slight stretch, is still new to her- since as far as we know, Amazigirl didn’t come until she got to college, and they’re still in the *first semester*.
Within half a year of my rad friend sitting me down and telling me about her DID I met three more lovely people with it (and one asshole but hey, 4/5 is a decent rate). I hope you make lots of cool friends who share your osdd/did and lots who don’t but understand and are supportive.
I’ve lost track of the number of people with DID I’ve met. (It’s probably still single digits. My difficulties are remembering for certain who actually came out to me and who I’ve armchair diagnosed but haven’t really talked to about it.)
Most of the people with DID that I’ve met have an asshole in there somewhere, who can front when needed. Which is very different from normal people, most of whom are assholes to people they don’t know well without even realizing it. And that doesn’t *even* get into their driving skills or lack thereof.
I don’t think any of the people I’ve met with DID are always assholes. It’s generally 1-2 personalities that make up less than 10%. At least one of those always fronted whenever dealing with me for some reason, but I spoke with enough of the other people around them to know it’s a me issue. (More generally, they dislike alpha geeks, due to having been abused by a number of them in the past. I try to not be an aggressively alpha geek, but as somebody who reads technical documentation for a spare time activity, I’m pretty clearly in alpha geek territory. Also, this was college, and I offered free help, and a lot of the people around them partook of it, so it was very clear to them that I was at least in some way an alpha geek.)
For once, I am in 100% agreement with you, Clif. This *is* above Ethan’s pay grade- and the responsible thing to do, here, would be to support Amber and help her get therapy, so that someone who’s pay grade it is can help her learn to cope.
“to be fair” … yes. He should file a report with The Universe that Life is trying to assign him responsibility for things that he’s definitely not prepared to deal with. Definitely not fair.
So much is above Ethan’s pay grade…..That being said, with Blaine’s ability to dodge being associated with his criminal history by the public damaged more than ever before, I think it’s time Amber started searching for a credible psychiatrist or whatnot.
Continued self-medication is going to become less and less excusable from here on…
I’m reading it that way, too. A sort of “that is a lot to unpack and I would love to help you deal with that right now, but Mike is in a coma and I’ve been kidnapped today so I DO NOT HAVE THE BRAIN POWER FOR THIS”.
Sarcasm is fine I suppose, but as potentially Amber’s only real support or a least the one of like two or three people she’s willing to acknowledge as support I like to hope Ethan has plans on talking to her about this very real and very serious issue. Mike’s in a coma and if things had went just a little differently he could be dead without Amber ever realizing it!
In the last 12 hours Ethan has just been kidnapped, watched a man get murdered, and found of his closest friend has been keeping some pretty important stuff from him while his other closest friend is in a coma in front of him. He needs support. Amber’s pain should not be his priority right now.
(And no, Amber really didn’t know about Mike yesterday because of the not sharing memories, but there has been plenty of stuff she has known and not shared with him. She is, of course, allowed to not share stuff with him, but he is allowed to feel angry about being shut out.)
I can understand that Ethan’s been through a lot. In fairness they all have but I get that right this instant may not be the best time to drop his only feelings and address Amber’s issues. My problem is his comment read more like frustrated dismissal than sarcasm but maybe that’s my problem. He can’t go back to letting Amber’s mental issues fester in the background though like he’s been doing up to this point. I know as her friend he can’t force he to do anything, but he also didn’t really try to talk to her too much about any of this either. Amber’s just been kind of coping with it all by herself. Credit to her for even being functional most of the time. It’s a complicated issue admittedly I’m just not sure Ethan has really done enough on his part, it felt more like the bare minimum. I won’t put it all on him, that’s not fair, but snarky comments like that don’t really help things when he hasn’t been doing much himself.
Being the one person that another can trust to talk to about things can really, really suck. It can severely hurt their mental health. Amber has a loving mother, she has other friends, she has access to some mental health services. The kind of expectations you have for Ethan are past the bounds of a paid psychologist, let alone a friend who is dealing with his own stuff.
Also, Ethan’s family life was abusive too, even if it wasn’t as much as Amber’s.
For me it reads to me as frustration that Amber seems to be portraying her own issues as at some kind of resolution, which is clearly not the case to any outside observer, as well as with the expectation that she’ll likely just try to shoulder the burden on her own again, which has been her pattern. But there are a lot of potential ways this could go, and we can’t really be sure until we know what Ethan says next. Or possibly Amber.
Possibly over *actually following Blaine’s plan to the letter,* no less.
Seriously, it seemed like Blaine was blaming him for ‘ruining everything’ as part of his ‘Whenever his pride’s hurt/threatened, he lies’ quirk, and not because he actually mess up his one job. Ironic.
We’ve known for months (our time) about Amb’s DID, he’s had like 12 seconds to wrap his head around it while also having to deal with the trauma of a kidnapping and his other friend battling death.
After everything that’s happened to him in the last 24h (his time), I vote he’s allowed some defensive sarcasm.
When your mental health issues –and specifically, the mental health issues you have been refusing to manage– cause problems for other people, that privilege is kinda lost.
It’s not like she does it on purpose. But she does need to get some help, if any is available. I’m not sure how financial things will go for her now her dad will be in prison for murder.
Amber just got in the room, plus she only recently got her memories back. I know Amber shares responsibility for her alters, but I doubt she’d have kept all this a secret if she could remember any of it.
I don’t think he’ mocking her. Not all sarcasm is mockery. It’s more like he’s pointing out that she shouldn’t take “hey we’re talking to each other again” as an excuse to avoid getting professional help.
On the other hand, Parker didn’t have the excuse of DID – he really should have begun asking himself (and the symbiont) some serious questions when it began doing things like forming on him at his mental command and providing unlimited webbing. But that would have required like thirty seconds of thinking about things, and, well…
I feel like your ex girlfriend admitting she has disassociated to the point that her alter ego and her ‘just’ made back up should be the cue for you to go get a nurse and some numbers for therapy referals.
Her also tossing out that she thinks your lifelong crush and current sorta partner is in there too is also a red flag of sorts.
That is a face of SIGNIFICANT concern, to be fair. (But yeah, this is WAY THE FUCK out of everyone in the cast’s leagues, and Amber needs a DID-supportive therapist like. Three months ago. In-strip. My concern though is very much ‘needs a SUPPORTIVE therapist’ because with something as loaded as DID a bad therapist could actually make this all worse.)
Seconding that- a bad therapist will do a LOT more harm than good. Which is a major reason a lot of people will bring someone with them for their first several appointments, who’s already familiar with the issues at hand, in case things go Fucking Bad.
. . . .What would it take for Amber to get mandatory therapy? Like is her father being arrested for murder And *waves hand at this whole fiasco* be enough if she admitted her mental health issues to someone in authority? Could the school be authorized or require her to get them?
Because. . . well I can see this going very very very poorly in the next upcoming strips and it is clear that she is unwell and *needs* help.
Giving anyone other than her doctor (and in extreme cases the courts) the ability to force someone into therapy is absolutely terrifying. So no, I hope to god they dont have that authority.
Harm or threats of harm to herself or others.
And that would be short term. It is really difficult to force someone to get mental health care, legally and morally.
What the others said is all true. She would need to present a clear and present danger to herself or others. If she was given legal charges, the courts could make it part of her probation and schools can require that you get treatment if they think it negatively affects your academics or that of those around you.
That being said, they cannot FORCE you to get treatment. They can only enact consequences if you don’t (it’s a legal loophole where they refrain from the consequences if you do it and if you don’t the consequences happen). If you refuse treatment, no one can pick you up and force you into the therapy room. As a matter of fact, if you refuse services, therapists must honor that legally. At least that’s how it is in the USA.
After nearly 30 years in the mental health business I can tell you “mandatory” therapy is kind of a hit and miss proposition. The first issue is motivation. Even with all of it difficulties Amber may not be all that motivated to change. It would mean giving up the Amazigirl alter ego. The list of reasons for hanging on to a dysfunctional way of living is as varied as the people involved. For some people, mandated therapy is a blessing. They knew they needed it and now someone else confirms it and may even be paying for it. Some people are actively oppositional. The worst case is the person who pays lip service to the therapy just long enough to get whatever authority is involved off their backs. Ever since there has been a concept of mental health people have struggled with the idea of enforcing some sort of treatment versus that person’s personal freedom. 60 years ago Amber might have had an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital. Much longer than would be considered reasonable today. Today her mandatory therapy would probably be tied to her ability to remain in the community. If she were lucky she might only have to participate in therapy to stay enrolled. As Meli points out above, that is a thing. Many universities even provide mental health services. One possible outcome is that one of the people who had been injured by Amazigirl finds out that she is Amber and presses charges. If at some point she actually goes to trial then there could be a challenge to her competency. If the court finds her incompetent for trial then there could be an involuntary commitment for restoration of competency. Amber, as the character is written would be competent for trial so, unless she had a psychotic break at some time during the trial process, her hospital stay would be relatively brief. During that stay her treatment team would identify a plan for treating her disassociative disorder and depending on the time available would either initiate therapy and or set up an aftercare plan. A description of the rest of the process would be rather lengthy but the eventual outcome of a trip through the legal system would be therapy as a condition of probation or parole. I suppose this is kind of a long winded way of saying that mandatory therapy usually involves telling the person “participate or we will take something away from you”. Different states have different processes. YMMV.
I’m not reading where others are seeing Ethan as “done with” Amber’s issues. I’m not seeing that as frustration; more like “wow, this is somehow worse than I expected.”
I think he may be about to (and should) lean on her hard to get help. But knowing him I’d expect less sick of her shit, more sick of watching her suffer and willing to use the fact that other people came to harm as an “I told you so” moment.
I think ditching her because of this would be out of character. Yes, it would have been nice if she’d confided in her best friend a bit more – but he was busy getting busy, and she thought she was coping, and she didn’t want to drag him into more of her shit.
I’m a bit concerned he’ll be sarcastic about it and worry, but not actually push her to get real help though.
Especially since the comment that he’s responding too is kinda sorta jokey. “My alter ego and I made up and now we’re friends again!” is somewhat humorous. Plus “Mike’s in here too.”
I agree his expression doesn’t look fed up. It looks “holy shit!”
Ethan’s only now realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes re: Amber’s issues. He probably still thought Amazi-Girl was just roleplay.
He might need space to process everything for a bit, but I don’t see him completely severing from Amber. They’ve been through too much together, and that seems like it would be out of character for him.
Yeah, a friend he’s had for half his life and recently had sex with (in an oddly positive way from Mike, and it also helped Ethan get more comfortable with his own sexuality) is in a coma.
It’s okay for Ethan to be a little fucked up right now.
I have a feeling there’s a strong correlation between readers who say “Ethan looks so done with her, this must be the end” and readers who just don’t like Amber in the first place and think everyone should be done with her.
If it helps, I also think Amber’s face in these last two panels is very much ‘I am starting to realize how far out of my ability to Deal With This my mental health has become.’
It feels a bit disrespectful to say it… but he also needlessly escalated the situation, failed to warn people and ultimately did exactly what Sal warned amazi-girl about a long time ago.
Mike manipulated the dads into shashing him on electric scooters. He really did have other options than hammer-fights on staris.
It is a truism that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. The best-laid plans will almost always have to be modified based on response, circumstances, and conditions.
The action started outside Becky’s apartment with Mike confronting Blaine and Ross by the statue of Blowjob Cat, Mike then backed off after Blaine produced the hammer before threatening to reveal what he knew about Blaine’s money-laundering and two different set of books. BLAINE then escalated the situation by pursuing Mike (along with Ross) until they switched to the scooter — one for Mike and one for Blaine, with Ross left behind. And even then Mike seemed to have things pretty well under control until Ross — who had then by then gone back to get his car — got ahead of the chase and drove the car into Mike’s path as he emerged from Dunn’s Woods at Kirkwood Hall.
At that point any plan or options Mike might have had were blown to hell and back, and everything from there on to the near-fatal fall was being improvised on the fly.
People make mistakes. Plans fall apart. No one thinks everything through. The name of this comic is not “smart, well informed people make rational choices”.
all that is true.
But I honestly don’t believe Mike did as well as he could under the circumstances. I think he allowed himself to be caught up in an increasingly dangerous situation and didn’t try to harder than he did to defuse it because he just didn’t feel like it.
Maybe I’m buying too much into his own explanations of his motivations, but I believe him when he says that he doesn’t care, that he is just bored, that he really doesn’t care all that much what happens to him. that’s a very dangerous kind of nihilism, and a neat paralell to amazi-girl who dangerous to herself and others for other reasons.
At that point, sure. But unless there was some brilliance we didn’t see, it seems like the plan before then was scooter around hoping to attract Amazi-Girl’s attention, which isn’t really much of a plan.
I think the plan was “get these guys away from Becky and the people at the party”, and that seemed to be working. Trying to summon Amazigirl was only part of it.
Remember, Blaine and Ross really hadn’t done anything yet. You ⃥c⃥a⃥n⃥’⃥t⃥ aren’t supposed to be able to arrest people just because they are hanging around a schoolyard after hours. And while Mike could have gone to the cops with his claims about Blaine’s mob ties and so on so that they could haul Blaine in for questioning, we’ve already pretty much agreed that at least one or two of the cops on the Bloomington force has Blaine’s back anyway so there’s no guarantee that would have made any difference.
Ok, where is everyone getting anger from with Ethan? First, WHY would he be angry? Anger isn’t the correct response to any of this, and as far as I know Ethan isn’t one to have irrational responses.
Secondly, that’s not anger. That’s concern bordering on disturbed horror given the fact that his best friend just admitted that A. She’d been having full blown dissociative episodes for hours at a time for several MONTHS, and now on top of that has a new hallucination. He’s probably looking for the nurse cord for God’s sake…
Oh dear. This is the part where her friends have to start recognizing the fact of her DID, yeah? That’s going to be rough.
It seems like Amber is already starting to … forgive my lack of understanding and vocabulary… reconcile her identities? They’re sharing again. That’s good. But she’s going to need help.
Yeah, people being hard on Ethan for being mildly snappy after the last 12 hours is a little confusing. Like, he’s dealing with waaaay more stuff than he should have to.
Actually, I don’t think so. Unlike the situation in Superman III, the two primary alters here aren’t fundamentally opposed in their moral outlook or objectives. Their only problem is that, up until recently a difference in trust in the other. This current situation has helped them see that they need each other for a variety of reasons. Hopefully (as bizarre as it will be to see) Amber and Mazie will be able to discuss some of the things only one knows and the other does not.
Based on Mazie’s very obvious crush on Sal after the political rally fight, I’m wondering if she’s queer. This might make for some interesting complications if Amber wants to continue in her relationship with Walky.
everyone in the comments saying “amber get therapy” as if trauma and dissociative specialists don’t cost HUNDREDS of dollars per appointment and almost never take insurance, and getting a therapist that isn’t trained in DID/ very willing to learn wouldn’t be INFINITELY more harmful than not having a therapist at all. Dissociative disorders aren’t like anxiety and depression y’all, they’re HEAVILY stigmatized and there’s a good portion of the psychiatric community that doesn’t even believe in it.
OBVIOUSLY amber needs therapy, but saying that shes in the wrong for not getting it before now is super shitty to everyone with osdd/did that just, cant get therapy because the options not available. she wasn’t far off when she said there wasn’t a therapist who knew how to handle her
also, i REALLY hope that ethan doesnt get angry like all the comments are suggesting, because telling your friend you have an unmanaged heavily stigmatized and them getting mad about it is…. probably among the shittiest things a person can do.
I agree. For all the times I have complained about Amber’s shitty decisions, mocking her mental illness is wrong. It’s like mocking Marcie for having her throat injured, or mocking Dina for having trouble socializng, or mockingMalaya for hating her own body (Malaya is still a bastitch though).
Oof I felt that. My ex-roommate once made fun of my social anxiety, it was something I confided to him about a few month earlier, which was really hard for me to do. To be fair he went of his medication and was himself in the middle of a manic episode, still it really hurt me and while I was not really angry with him it damaged our relationship to this day.
And I never told anyone ever again how bad my social issues really get.
I think Ethan would normally be very supportive!
…but he is currently in the hospital, staring at his comatose friend who he lost his virginity to, after a night of no sleep but lots of violence and being kidnapped.
Him getting angry at Amber right now seems pretty reasonable? He has his own trauma to deal with and about zero spoons right now.
yeah, in the moment anger isn’t what I was referring to, more about the long term anger that a lot of the comments seem to be suggesting ie. ethan being “done” with her. an angry outburst is understandable but to be mad at her long term for having a mental disorder would be super shitty and hopefully out of character for him
In defense of Ethan potentially getting angry: It’s not like she’s just telling him over a cup of coffee here. He just learned his friend has been in a coma for days and that from Ethan’s perspective Amber knew. Even the absolutely kindest interpretation begs the question why AG didn’t leave a note or something. Mike could have died before his friends knew where he was.
There are times you can reasonably expect not to be yelled at. I’m not sure this is one of them.
all right, to be fair i also have no idea why amazigirl didn’t leave a note. sometimes alters don’t realize there’s dissociative barriers up but when walky told her he made out with amber and she didn’t remember it I think that would imply she does know… maybe she figured this was so big amber would remember it? that’s still a big risk to take… its possible she was protecting amber from it but.. not the best choice. AG definitely fucked up here, I hope if they continue to not share memories they start journaling about whats been happening in each their lives
A Patreon strip showed them, not in costume, asleep outside Sal’s door early that morning. AG may have just passed out on her way back home and not been able to leave a note.
Any excuse would come off as pretty darn weak, tbh. The lowest effort could have helped. Like , a “Mike @ hospital” text. Or leaving a number at the hospital.
I’m one of the people who sometimes say Amber should get therapy, but I do so more as “no don’t open that door!” audience advice than criticism.
Then again… part of the problems Amber is dealing with is a whole bunch of baggage from an abusive father who wanted to force her to be someone who was tough enough (his mindset) to deal with things on her own rather than needing help. So she might be in a chicken-and-egg situation, where she’d have a very hard time seeking out therapy because she hasn’t had the therapy which could help her into a healthier mindset which is open to seeking therapy.
yeah… the whole process of finding a dissociative specialist is SO demoralizing when you don’t even really want therapy in the first place. thankfully she has tons of friends to help, one of whom is Dorothy, so hopefully they’re able to help her find someone and she wont have to bear that burden alone
Yeah, came here to say this. A system I know said that the way they got diagnosed was they emailed FIFTY THERAPISTS and asked each one if they do assessments for DID and other dissociative disorders. Only two said yes.
Then those two have to be a. in your city or willing to work remotely b. covered by your insurance if you have insurance at all and c. accepting new patients.
Just finding a good therapist at all is hard. Finding one that treats DID is incredibly difficult.
Not finding a therapist when you want and need one is incredibly frustrating and exhausting, no matter what your problem is. Yes, getting a therapist which the skillset to deal with DID is more difficult than finding a therapist who does well on trauma-related problems, which is difficult enough.
I think, though, that people saying „Amber needs therapy“ basically mean, she shouldn’t be haven’t to deal with that all on her own.
from my interpretation, it seems like a LOT of people are treating her like shes in the wrong or the bad guy for not pursuing therapy before now. i felt like it was important to say that this isn’t the same as getting therapy for anxiety or depression, its an incredibly difficult task to even START looking for a therapist that specializes in DID. i of course agree that amber deserves a therapist that is able to assist her in all of her needs but vilifying her for not getting one (not saying you are, but other people in the comment section def are) is super shitty and out of touch with reality
And even for more common things like depression, those very problems often make it hard to motivate yourself to seek help.
In her case, there’s also the very practical concern that talking about Amazi-Girl has a very real chance of legal consequences. Whether that should be a barrier may depend on your opinion of AG’s actions. For Amber though, AG was long the golden alter who could do no wrong, who’s purpose was to keep her under control because she was the monster.
yeah… im in the same boat. and then even when you DO find someone like that you have to actually vibe with them and they have to not be shitty about other issues. had one therapist who was under my insurance and trained in dissociative disorders who wanted me to go off my medication and go ~all natural~. most of the time you dont even get a response if you mention did/osdd. hope your friend was able to find someone to help eventually, none of us should have to go through this alone <3
unfortunately thats actually not true when it comes to dissociative disorders, a bad therapist can make the disorder a LOT worse. i know a lot of systems who have trauma specifically from bad therapy they sought out/were forced into for being a system. it SUCKS but the psychiatric establishment is not the greatest here, especially to those with “controversial” disorders
Seriously. Honestly I think Amber would likely have better luck on that particular axis with, say, internet-based peer support groups. (Which still requires finding them, but it’d be people who know what it’s like too and aren’t as location and finance-specific.)
But then there’s the issue of how BOTH of them have a serious trend toward self-endangerment (in the name of helping others usually, but still VERY dangerous) that borders on suicidal at times. (Certainly self-harming, when it’s pulling things like the all-nighters.) I don’t have much familiarity with peer support groups for The Scary Mental Illnesses, but since it’s so tied up in the vigilanteism I imagine it’s out of most people’s pay grades unless they’ve got specific training. But you can’t NOT talk about the DID with the vigilante bit, if Amber saw a therapist specifically for the self-harm/deep sense of worthlessness tendencies and tried not to talk about it. So I think eventually she DOES need to find a supportive therapist… but that’s gonna be hard as hell, and I would not envy her that.
That particular axis – learning to work together as a unit and get along with each other, to be clear. That bit where they consider Amber the Bad Violent One and also a coward to AG’s virtuous bravery? Not good! Amber trying to do away with AG entirely on the grounds she ‘failed’? Seriously worrisome! Both DID-specific issues.
The dangerous self-sacrificing, less so. And so pronounced I don’t think most people are equipped to help her with that.
Has Amber ever explained her condition to Ethan? If not, this pretty much defines “a lot to take in”.
By the way, Ethan? Your friend needs a hug right now. She’s sort of coming to terms with the fact that she’s severely mentally ill and that this occasionally leads to quite strongly disabling manifestations.
In DID terms, the “split” had to have happened before age 10 (this age is still widely debated but around then). Once a DID system has established the coping mechanism of splitting in childhood, then further alters can be created into adulthood, but the first one has to be very young. So unless Amber has/had other alters we don’t know about, Amazigirl would’ve had to have split when Amber was a kid but the amnesia seemed to set in or get more complete after the situation with Joyce’s attacker.
I’m not intending to criticize Willis here, but the fact that alters form in childhood is a pretty key aspect of dissociative disorders. DID representation in media is so incredibly rare and the vast majority of it is very inaccurate which does real harm to DID systems. Creating a DID character that first splits in adulthood would be like creating a character who develops diabetes as a result of eating too large of an icecream sundae.
From what we can tell, Amber and AG consider AG’s origin point to be the convenience store holdup, when they were about 12 or so.
But at that point it was in the context of ‘AG’s superhero origin story’, because they weren’t as solidly out of sync and DID was not at all in the discussion. (I’m not even sure THEY realized they were distinct people over serious compartmentalization.) And the holdup wasn’t so much the inciting point as Blaine’s abuse immediately afterwards and Amber stabbing Sal was, so I would not be at all shocked if (if only to No Prize it more in line with actual research, since Willis didn’t start out writing Amber and AG as a system and was iffy on it for a while because he didn’t want to play into Dangerous Split Personality!1! Stereotypes until system readers started saying ‘yeah this is true to my experience and I actually value that’, similar to Dina being heavily-implied autistic,) they come to realize AG had started existing earlier, but they weren’t consciously aware of it until after that whole Incident made them more in need of an outlet and afraid of their propensity for violence. We’ve also seen through the comic that Amber and AG’s dissociation got way more pronounced over time, until the stabbing when they stopped sharing memories and Amber was trying to forcibly unmake AG. (I think it starts widening in the immediate aftermath of punching Blaine, and we see AG take control when triggered by Sal’s presence a couple times after that, but we don’t really hear her talk about things like ‘but I wasn’t the one in control’ until after the first car chase.) So I tend to think they’ve been a system since childhood, but only realized it as they got more and more out of sync.
Brain Ghost Mike seems to be a straight-up hallucination, but he’s not the first one (even discounting the ones like AG screaming through the mask as ways to show AG in a visual medium and not actual hallucinations) – she had a Brain Ghost Blaine praising her right after the stabbing. I think that’s a guilt-induced thing, yeah. Also Amber’s strips last storyline until Brain Ghost Mike showed up had little subconscious ‘MIKE’ letters in them. BG Mike seems longer lasting than the accompanying Blaine, but on the other hand she came to realize what was going on more slowly to begin with and she’s WAY more guilty about Mike getting injured than stabbing Ryan (where the violence itself was traumatic, but fuck that guy.)
So… Do Amber and her friends realize that she has DID? If so, do they understand what’s going on? I’ve especially seen Danny and Ethan be pretty insensitive to her about it… I didn’t even get it myself until I think it was Walky saying something that was sensitive about the disorder. And I don’t know if Willis has said it either
I really don’t think, and I really hope, that Ethan is about to get angry. I have anxiety and depression, and a lot of people default to sarcastic ‘humour’ when they’re stressed out. One of his oldest friends is in a coma, there’s a chance he’s seen a dead body today, he’s been kidnapped, and his other oldest friend who is also injured and whose dad did the murdering and kidnapping has just told him that on top of her many, many reasons to have PTSD and severe trauma she’s experiencing memory loss and identity disorders. I think Ethan’s not so much at the end of his patience, as he is at the end of his spoons.
I’d also sort of like to make the point that yes, Amber DOES need therapy, but also… I know people with DID and I don’t think they’d appreciate it being referred to as “a severe mental disorder”. Many people with alters live completely functional lives; Amber is just not, unfortunately, one of them.
Yeah, I gotta say, it doesn’t feel great that people seem to react so extremely to her being multiple, when just being multiple on its own is not inherently broken and dysfunctional. The trauma and the flashbacks need treatment yes. It’s a problem that her amnesia interferes with her ability to communicate important information between her selves and to other people, so that needs treatment. But… just the fact that there is two of them isn’t scary and dangerous.
To people who haven’t come into contact with DID or know anything about it, it sounds pretty scary. All the more important to talk about stuff like this. And I’m geniuenly curious how Amber will be from now on, whether or not she will change or adjust.
I know people with multies who have/had jobs, children, fiances, spouses, pets, degrees, houses, etc. Therapy is very much needed (and yes, very hard to get) but they have full, non-vigilante, lives.
Amber should get called out on her sh*t AND she should get love, therapy and support. The behaviours (closing herself off, pushing people away, etc) which protected her while in an abusive home are not the ones which are going to let her live a happy life.
I don’t know if she needs therapy for her DID, but I think as a rule it’s a good idea to get support when
you’ve been abused by your father for years,
or kidnapped by your father,
or your friends have,
or your close friend might die and you might think it’s partly your fault,
or you’ve just seen your father murder someone,
or you’ve been grappling with guilt for years and haven’t managed to solve it yourself in a healthy way,
or you have self-esteem so low it’s negative
or all of the above.
I meant people with DID need and deserve therapy to work through the abuse that caused the splits in the first place and to develop coping techniques. The multies aren’t necessary an issue, it the underling stuff.
It appears we are in agreement, I’m just clarifying in case my therapy comment was misunderstood.
I’m not saying that Amber/AG need therapy just because they’re dissociative, personally. I say it because they’ve shown near-suicidal addiction to dangerous behavior, which has put both themselves and others at risk, and a propensity for violence that also borders on addiction, all stemming from a seemingly endless wellspring of rage.
You guys are so dramatic. Why are you talking like Ethan’s about to shoot up the school just on account of a joke. DID isn’t a scary thing you need a therapist to go cure, Amber needs therapy but not for that reason. The DID can actually be pretty therapeutic on its own when it’s being acknowledged and managed properly which, like, Amber’s getting there. I support our dissociative queens.
FWIW, I suspect that this is the job that Mazie wanted Sal to do. However, before that happens, Sal will first need to convince Marcie (who is her conscience) that it is good and necessary.
And Ethan’s sitting with his second-oldest friend/(presumably) first physical lover that’s in a coma with serious internal injuries, after a night of being kidnapped, held hostage, threatened, and beaten by a man he knew from childhood, and Amber’s kinda dropping this on him outta the blue. The fact that he’s not bawling his eyes out right now is astounding, and he likely has no more emotional energy to invest in this right now. Cut him some frickin’ slack.
That’s fair, but there were loads of signs even before this. Ethan’s just not very good at confronting people. I mean, none of them really are except for Amazigirl and Mike, and I’m not sure “Imma beat you like a pinata” or “your mom’s a whore” are the best conflict resolution techniques.
People who are wondering why Ethan would want to distance himself from Amber or would judge him for doing same clearly have forgotten the extent to which Ethan’s been on the wrong end of Amber’s problems. Like the time she flipped out at him in the cafeteria for dating Joyce. Or the fact he can’t date Danny because even without knowing Amazi-Girl is Amber, both parties are aware Amber would totally lose her shit if they ever did.
Amber has issues. She is not unsympathetic because of those issues. But Ethan should not be judged for deciding *he* has enough problems without dealing with Amber’s baggage as well. I take issue with people who believe simply having a mental disorder somehow absolves a person of their responsibility for their actions, or obligates the people around them to be infinitely patient with them.
I say this as someone with a mental illness, who was in the position of having to care for a friend with that same mental illness. It is not something I’d wish on anyone, nor judge anyone for declining to do for a non-family member.
Also the part where because Amber didn’t tell anyone she had DID where her alter was a violent vigilante she also had a problem with, the victims of Blaine’s rampage lacked any warning of what was coming and Mike landed in the hospital without any of his friends knowing he was there. Not to mention that as much as I loathe the college students who joined Blaine’s group, the only reason Blaine was able to mobilize them was because Amazi-Girl had antagonized so many people. Much of the cast of DoD ended up having to foot the bill for AA’s heroics without ever knowing a bill was coming due.
Except for Dorothy, of course. Whose attitude towards AA is…troublingly uncritical.
Even if Amber had told everyone that she wasn’t sharing memories with Amazi-Girl, she still wouldn’t have been sharing memories with Amazi-Girl, so no one would have known about Blaine’s rampage or Mike’s injury anyway.
And the kids who joined Blaine were “antagonized” by Amazi-Girl because they were 1) gaybashing Danny, 2) defending a rapist, 3) going to harass/assault women who’d accused said rapist. Amazi-Girl’s done some questionable things, but the incidents those guys were drawn from are among the clearest.
I have memory problems. Not mental illness related, I’m just a ditz sometimes. You know what I do to pass messages to my future-self for things my future-self needs to know but will probably not remember? I write them down. I put named alarms in my phone. I send friggin’ e-mails to myself for more complicated things.
So the whole “not sharing memories” thing really isn’t so difficult to work-around. Amber and Amazi-Girl have just refused to even try. For that matter, Amazi-girl could have called anyone else and said “Mike is in the hospital, Ross and Blaine are in town and up to villainy”. But she didn’t. Not because of DID or some other mental illness, but because Amazi-Girl chose not to warn anyone, even knowing that people were in danger and it would be many hours before she was “awake” again.
That’s a little fairer, though it doesn’t quite cover the OP’s claim.
And yes, more communication would have been great, but I suspect much of the split was because they were fighting and didn’t trust each other. That kept them from setting anything like that up.
Also there was a Patreon strip showing them asleep in the hall early that morning. AG could have intended to leave such a note when she got back, but passed out first.
She used to see herself as the monstrous dangerous one that AG was supposed to keep from hurting anyone. After Ryan, she saw AG as having failed. That’s likely what led to the full split.
Has anyone thought or suggested that Ethan really needs therapeutic support right now, after the trauma he has just experienced (and/or re-experienced), and that that need belongs appropriately at the top of his personal stack, above even his concern for his friend’s need for same?
Really loving the representation of plurality being shown with Amber and Amazi-girl here! It’s so rare to see something accurate and simple like this, where the relationships between both individuals isn’t really evil or toxic or negative either and that there’s room for compromise and togetherness. Good job!
Please please please use this to educate people about DID. I’m seeing a lot of extreme reactions in the comments here that are, honestly, really shitty to people with DID. With therapy, people with DID can live healthy functional lives. Some people break down the mental barriers between alters to achieve a single unit, while others don’t. Neither is better than the others as long as the person or system is happy and isn’t hurting themselves or others.
I think the hostility is less to DID and more Amber’s hubris and ostrich like behavior when it came to the alter’s moonlighting. To wit: her DID manifests as badly as it does because she refused to seek help.
To quote Amber responding to Ruth’s suggestion to talk to a professional: “nobody else in the world is even remotely equipped to deal with me.”
That sounds like it could be hubris, but it’s really not, It’s her own mental problems lying to her and keeping her from seeking help. What she says there combined with her feelings that she’s the worthless monster one. ‘No one could help me and even if they could, I’m not worth it.’ Thanks Blaine.
See also her response to Ruth when Ruth tried to stop her from confronting Blaine on her own. Not only did she decline help, she all but threatened to physically assault Ruth if she got in her way.
“Dangit, Ethan, I get that you are upset because you can SEE how broken Mike is, but mentally Amber might be as fractured as his internal injuries right now.
You have TWO friends on hospital beds, even if one is only figurative, now might not be the best time for sass!”
I didn’t mean to contradict you in any way. I realize now that I was asking whether we readers expect Amber’s trauma to be more important to Ethan than his own trauma is at this moment. This might be unfair to Ethan, who cares very much about his friend’s deep internal issues yet is so in need of caring and support himself.
No worries. It didn’t cross my mind to consider which of the two individuals’ trauma was more important. And yes I am also worried about Ethan. He heard one of his best friends who is also his first time with a guy was hospitalized and could potentially be killed.
Expressions, translated:
Panel 2: Why didn’t you tell me?
Panel 4: You’re talking about your other persona as a separate person. Are you okay?
Panel 6: The situation is much worse than I had ever imagined.
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*LAUGH TRACK*
Who’s Iris and why didn’t she get a tag?
She already left the room, so she didn’t get tagged.
Iris lens something to the story line!
Iris kit all for that pun.
Will Iris shun all puns about mental stability, because of a fence?
That Time When Half of Me Broke up with the Other Half of Me
They each get a kidney and lung, but will be having joint custody of the liver.
Joint custody exists where two bones meet.
well played, you glorious maniac
Amazigirl doesn’t actually want the liver since she doesn’t drink, but she insisted on having it in the custody battle because she still cares for Amber and doesn’t want her to drink herself to death. She thinks if Amber has the liver less often, she won’t drink as much. Amazigirl is very optimistic.
Divvying up the video games after such a breakup has to be ‘problematic’.
I’m really enjoying this new Amber based Sitcom:
Two and a Half Me.
The half is ghost-Mike.
Does this mean that Amber is the Onceler?
Amber O’Malley.
Essence of normality and balance.
All Hail!
WELL WHEN YA PUT IT THAT WAY.
Alls well that ends well?! Amber is still very much mentally unwell. Wake up, Ethan!
I…I don’t think that Ethan’s last comment was sincere.
he is being sarcastic..i think he is done with her
It’s reading that way to me as well. He seems to be getting to the end of his patience rope.
I don’t think so; they go a long way back. People can be sarcastic with their long-term friends during a trying time without it meaning the end of a friendship.
I’m sarcastic roughly 120% of the time (usually in a cheerful and joking manner), so I certainly hope so.
I think it’s a matter of tone. If the sarcasm is done in a way to make it sound like a criticism of Amber, then that’s… well, not friendship-ending territory, but at least something to call out and take a few hours to either hash out or cool down.
If instead it’s acknowledging that Amber’s situation is not 100% rosy, then that’s fine. Recognizing and acknowledging that a friend’s got troubles when they’re deflecting or trying to paint it in a good light is fine.
I sincerely hope he isn’t done with her – dumping your lifelong best friend because she’s been struggling with a mental illness and didn’t tell you something she didn’t know would be pretty shitty. Especially when she already worries about people giving up on her and leaving…
She did know she wasn’t sharing memories anymore and while I don’t remember for certain it sounds like she didn’t tell him that.
Experience with both my own mental illness and that of friends and roommates has made me feel that you really need to communicate about your mental health issues with friends if you want them to be properly supportive. I’m not sure whether either of them consider this insufficient communication or not (maybe Amber genuinely didn’t feel this was important enough to mention) but I can see the possibility being there.
yeah, but as someone with osdd its TERRIFYING to tell someone that you have a dissociative disorder, since they’re so heavily stigmatized and so many people just wont understand or believe you. most of the people I know with did/osdd don’t even understand/believe themselves a lot of the time. ambers reaction to realizing she no longer shared memories with amazigirl is 100% reasonable considering Ethan doesn’t even think of them as separate people
^ This. Amber doesn’t even have a diagnosis yet- she knows SOMETHING is wrong, but not a single useful tool for dealing with it, and frankly, if she *doesn’t* have some form of therapeutic trauma, I’ll eat all half dozen of my necklaces.
From Amber’s perspective, what’s going on is a flavor of terrifying that she is desperately- poorly- trying to cope with. Suddenly, her body is doing things, and *she has no clue what.* She’s missing chunks of time. Every deep seated, secret fear, that she’s going crazy, feels to her like it has just been confirmed.
This isn’t something she’s got years of experience dealing with. This isn’t something she’s talked with a therapist about, something she’s been taught coping methods to deal with. This is *new* to her, still- *Amazigirl*, by only a slight stretch, is still new to her- since as far as we know, Amazigirl didn’t come until she got to college, and they’re still in the *first semester*.
Within half a year of my rad friend sitting me down and telling me about her DID I met three more lovely people with it (and one asshole but hey, 4/5 is a decent rate). I hope you make lots of cool friends who share your osdd/did and lots who don’t but understand and are supportive.
I’ve lost track of the number of people with DID I’ve met. (It’s probably still single digits. My difficulties are remembering for certain who actually came out to me and who I’ve armchair diagnosed but haven’t really talked to about it.)
Most of the people with DID that I’ve met have an asshole in there somewhere, who can front when needed. Which is very different from normal people, most of whom are assholes to people they don’t know well without even realizing it. And that doesn’t *even* get into their driving skills or lack thereof.
I don’t think any of the people I’ve met with DID are always assholes. It’s generally 1-2 personalities that make up less than 10%. At least one of those always fronted whenever dealing with me for some reason, but I spoke with enough of the other people around them to know it’s a me issue. (More generally, they dislike alpha geeks, due to having been abused by a number of them in the past. I try to not be an aggressively alpha geek, but as somebody who reads technical documentation for a spare time activity, I’m pretty clearly in alpha geek territory. Also, this was college, and I offered free help, and a lot of the people around them partook of it, so it was very clear to them that I was at least in some way an alpha geek.)
By butthole I meant the person assaulted another person (who also has DID) many times.
I can tell you from experience, it’s not just shitty, it’s incredibly traumatic. 2.5 years ago and I’m still recovering.
…..what implies that?
It’s more just how Ethan handles these things, provided he handles them at all.
To be fair, this is above Ethans pay grade.
I read that as Ethan’s gay parade for a second there.
Above Ethan’s Gay Parade? Have they already started making the Amazi-Girl floats, then?
No, no, no, it’s above the parade! It’s obviously an Amazi-girl balloon!
For once, I am in 100% agreement with you, Clif. This *is* above Ethan’s pay grade- and the responsible thing to do, here, would be to support Amber and help her get therapy, so that someone who’s pay grade it is can help her learn to cope.
“to be fair” … yes. He should file a report with The Universe that Life is trying to assign him responsibility for things that he’s definitely not prepared to deal with. Definitely not fair.
So much is above Ethan’s pay grade…..That being said, with Blaine’s ability to dodge being associated with his criminal history by the public damaged more than ever before, I think it’s time Amber started searching for a credible psychiatrist or whatnot.
Continued self-medication is going to become less and less excusable from here on…
I don’t think he’s done with her so much as he’s angry that she doesn’t get help.
Yes, just look at Ethan seething with anger.
Um, not seeing it. Ethan only gets angry about important things. Things like people getting Transformers wrong.
This doesn’t look like “I’m done with you.” It looks more like “I really, really don’t know how to handle what I just heard.”
I’m reading it that way, too. A sort of “that is a lot to unpack and I would love to help you deal with that right now, but Mike is in a coma and I’ve been kidnapped today so I DO NOT HAVE THE BRAIN POWER FOR THIS”.
That was sarcasm. I think we are about to see Ethan lose his shit.
Either that or Mr Non-Confrontational is aware that this isn’t really OK but is going to let it slide and quietly worry about Amber twice as much…
Sarcasm is fine I suppose, but as potentially Amber’s only real support or a least the one of like two or three people she’s willing to acknowledge as support I like to hope Ethan has plans on talking to her about this very real and very serious issue. Mike’s in a coma and if things had went just a little differently he could be dead without Amber ever realizing it!
In the last 12 hours Ethan has just been kidnapped, watched a man get murdered, and found of his closest friend has been keeping some pretty important stuff from him while his other closest friend is in a coma in front of him. He needs support. Amber’s pain should not be his priority right now.
(And no, Amber really didn’t know about Mike yesterday because of the not sharing memories, but there has been plenty of stuff she has known and not shared with him. She is, of course, allowed to not share stuff with him, but he is allowed to feel angry about being shut out.)
I can understand that Ethan’s been through a lot. In fairness they all have but I get that right this instant may not be the best time to drop his only feelings and address Amber’s issues. My problem is his comment read more like frustrated dismissal than sarcasm but maybe that’s my problem. He can’t go back to letting Amber’s mental issues fester in the background though like he’s been doing up to this point. I know as her friend he can’t force he to do anything, but he also didn’t really try to talk to her too much about any of this either. Amber’s just been kind of coping with it all by herself. Credit to her for even being functional most of the time. It’s a complicated issue admittedly I’m just not sure Ethan has really done enough on his part, it felt more like the bare minimum. I won’t put it all on him, that’s not fair, but snarky comments like that don’t really help things when he hasn’t been doing much himself.
In fairness, when Ethan has done/said something Amber didn’t like she hasn’t exactly acted…great.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/bumped/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/promised/
And he has left her openings to talk to him too-
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/goodness/
Being the one person that another can trust to talk to about things can really, really suck. It can severely hurt their mental health. Amber has a loving mother, she has other friends, she has access to some mental health services. The kind of expectations you have for Ethan are past the bounds of a paid psychologist, let alone a friend who is dealing with his own stuff.
Also, Ethan’s family life was abusive too, even if it wasn’t as much as Amber’s.
Amber needs help. But not at the expense of Ethan’s mental health.
For me it reads to me as frustration that Amber seems to be portraying her own issues as at some kind of resolution, which is clearly not the case to any outside observer, as well as with the expectation that she’ll likely just try to shoulder the burden on her own again, which has been her pattern. But there are a lot of potential ways this could go, and we can’t really be sure until we know what Ethan says next. Or possibly Amber.
All’s well that ends.
I don’t know about that. Ross ended, rather conclusively.
Possibly over *actually following Blaine’s plan to the letter,* no less.
Seriously, it seemed like Blaine was blaming him for ‘ruining everything’ as part of his ‘Whenever his pride’s hurt/threatened, he lies’ quirk, and not because he actually mess up his one job. Ironic.
“Nothing ever ends, Adrian.”
That’s why there are no happy endings.
https://vimeo.com/92054249
Stories versus Reality, in a nutshell.
This. That is uncharacteristically uncharitable of him. Amber is basically describing how broken her psyche is and he’s being sarcastic.
We’ve known for months (our time) about Amb’s DID, he’s had like 12 seconds to wrap his head around it while also having to deal with the trauma of a kidnapping and his other friend battling death.
After everything that’s happened to him in the last 24h (his time), I vote he’s allowed some defensive sarcasm.
Don’t whine about other people’s mental issues, Ethan 😛
This is going to harm their friendship more than it was, with Ethan not trusting Amber, and Amber feeling more guilty than before.
I think he’s just overwhelmed.
^A million times this.
When your mental health issues –and specifically, the mental health issues you have been refusing to manage– cause problems for other people, that privilege is kinda lost.
“Fifty percent of the game is half mental.”
TELL HER TO GET MENTAL HEALTH CARE
Are you kidding in this economy? Nah man we’re going to the local campus psychiatrist or counselor whatever.
I mean, what you are describing is mental health care.
Robbie didn’t specify the quality level of the mental health care, just that there be mental health care.
Also, have you ever tried to find a counselor that treats dissociative disorders? Cause… there aren’t a lot of them.
*bitter, hysterical laughter*
/You can fucking say that again./
Two and a Half Ambers, coming this Fall…
Wow that’s perfect.
Two Amber O’Malleys and a Mike … rophone.
Yep Ethan is sick off her bs i see
It’s not like she does it on purpose. But she does need to get some help, if any is available. I’m not sure how financial things will go for her now her dad will be in prison for murder.
imagine describing someones mental illness as bs XD couldn’t be me
Mocking people with mental problems is wrong.
Amber hasn’t yet apologised to Ethan which is pretty bs. Taking responsibility (good and bad) for both her and her alter’s actions would be progress.
Amber just got in the room, plus she only recently got her memories back. I know Amber shares responsibility for her alters, but I doubt she’d have kept all this a secret if she could remember any of it.
I don’t think he’ mocking her. Not all sarcasm is mockery. It’s more like he’s pointing out that she shouldn’t take “hey we’re talking to each other again” as an excuse to avoid getting professional help.
I’m…surprised by how big of an ass Ethan’s being to Amber right now. I guess I should cut him some slack, though.
Can I just say, damn, I love how these characters get more complex all the time
“in retrospect, maybe this is something i should have been more concerned about”
Hey, having your body go out and do vigilantism without your knowledge is just something that occasionally happens to superheroes.
Unfortunately, Amber doesn’t have the excuse of having recently acquired a black costume from space, so there may be some deeper issues at play here.
On the other hand, Parker didn’t have the excuse of DID – he really should have begun asking himself (and the symbiont) some serious questions when it began doing things like forming on him at his mental command and providing unlimited webbing. But that would have required like thirty seconds of thinking about things, and, well…
Why? Remember the world he lives in. Cool alien supersuit isn’t really out of line.
I feel like your ex girlfriend admitting she has disassociated to the point that her alter ego and her ‘just’ made back up should be the cue for you to go get a nurse and some numbers for therapy referals.
Her also tossing out that she thinks your lifelong crush and current sorta partner is in there too is also a red flag of sorts.
That is a face of SIGNIFICANT concern, to be fair. (But yeah, this is WAY THE FUCK out of everyone in the cast’s leagues, and Amber needs a DID-supportive therapist like. Three months ago. In-strip. My concern though is very much ‘needs a SUPPORTIVE therapist’ because with something as loaded as DID a bad therapist could actually make this all worse.)
Seconding that- a bad therapist will do a LOT more harm than good. Which is a major reason a lot of people will bring someone with them for their first several appointments, who’s already familiar with the issues at hand, in case things go Fucking Bad.
Just wait until Brain Mike and Amazi-Girl start dating without telling Amber.
Oh lord, NO! Please don’t joke like that 😮
And then Brain Donna comes to the front…
😮
Now that’s an idea for a Slipshine.
I really hope my face doesn’t get stuck in the expression I am currently making
Amber/AG/Mike psychic threesome? They will pound each other in the most epic of psychic hate-fucks.
My inner Mike approves.
. . . .What would it take for Amber to get mandatory therapy? Like is her father being arrested for murder And *waves hand at this whole fiasco* be enough if she admitted her mental health issues to someone in authority? Could the school be authorized or require her to get them?
Because. . . well I can see this going very very very poorly in the next upcoming strips and it is clear that she is unwell and *needs* help.
As much as she desperately needs therapy….
Giving anyone other than her doctor (and in extreme cases the courts) the ability to force someone into therapy is absolutely terrifying. So no, I hope to god they dont have that authority.
Harm or threats of harm to herself or others.
And that would be short term. It is really difficult to force someone to get mental health care, legally and morally.
Well she has harmed others. Others who needed harming. And put herself in harm’s way by doing so.
My school mandated I get semiweekly therapy to remain enrolled, so yeah, they probably could.
What the others said is all true. She would need to present a clear and present danger to herself or others. If she was given legal charges, the courts could make it part of her probation and schools can require that you get treatment if they think it negatively affects your academics or that of those around you.
That being said, they cannot FORCE you to get treatment. They can only enact consequences if you don’t (it’s a legal loophole where they refrain from the consequences if you do it and if you don’t the consequences happen). If you refuse treatment, no one can pick you up and force you into the therapy room. As a matter of fact, if you refuse services, therapists must honor that legally. At least that’s how it is in the USA.
After nearly 30 years in the mental health business I can tell you “mandatory” therapy is kind of a hit and miss proposition. The first issue is motivation. Even with all of it difficulties Amber may not be all that motivated to change. It would mean giving up the Amazigirl alter ego. The list of reasons for hanging on to a dysfunctional way of living is as varied as the people involved. For some people, mandated therapy is a blessing. They knew they needed it and now someone else confirms it and may even be paying for it. Some people are actively oppositional. The worst case is the person who pays lip service to the therapy just long enough to get whatever authority is involved off their backs. Ever since there has been a concept of mental health people have struggled with the idea of enforcing some sort of treatment versus that person’s personal freedom. 60 years ago Amber might have had an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital. Much longer than would be considered reasonable today. Today her mandatory therapy would probably be tied to her ability to remain in the community. If she were lucky she might only have to participate in therapy to stay enrolled. As Meli points out above, that is a thing. Many universities even provide mental health services. One possible outcome is that one of the people who had been injured by Amazigirl finds out that she is Amber and presses charges. If at some point she actually goes to trial then there could be a challenge to her competency. If the court finds her incompetent for trial then there could be an involuntary commitment for restoration of competency. Amber, as the character is written would be competent for trial so, unless she had a psychotic break at some time during the trial process, her hospital stay would be relatively brief. During that stay her treatment team would identify a plan for treating her disassociative disorder and depending on the time available would either initiate therapy and or set up an aftercare plan. A description of the rest of the process would be rather lengthy but the eventual outcome of a trip through the legal system would be therapy as a condition of probation or parole. I suppose this is kind of a long winded way of saying that mandatory therapy usually involves telling the person “participate or we will take something away from you”. Different states have different processes. YMMV.
dang, she’s finally just saying it.
Get.
Therapy.
You.
NEED
It.
Oh so Amber just straight up has DID then…makes sense.
I don’t know about iris out, this seems more like an “everybody starts laughing, freeze frame”
Ethan: great, my troubled best friends are both significantly worse off than I thought.
I’m not reading where others are seeing Ethan as “done with” Amber’s issues. I’m not seeing that as frustration; more like “wow, this is somehow worse than I expected.”
I think he may be about to (and should) lean on her hard to get help. But knowing him I’d expect less sick of her shit, more sick of watching her suffer and willing to use the fact that other people came to harm as an “I told you so” moment.
Yeah, that face looks less like frustration to me and more horror with snark as a coping technique. Because HOLY FUCK.
This is how I read it, too.
I think ditching her because of this would be out of character. Yes, it would have been nice if she’d confided in her best friend a bit more – but he was busy getting busy, and she thought she was coping, and she didn’t want to drag him into more of her shit.
I’m a bit concerned he’ll be sarcastic about it and worry, but not actually push her to get real help though.
Especially since the comment that he’s responding too is kinda sorta jokey. “My alter ego and I made up and now we’re friends again!” is somewhat humorous. Plus “Mike’s in here too.”
I agree his expression doesn’t look fed up. It looks “holy shit!”
Ethan’s only now realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes re: Amber’s issues. He probably still thought Amazi-Girl was just roleplay.
He might need space to process everything for a bit, but I don’t see him completely severing from Amber. They’ve been through too much together, and that seems like it would be out of character for him.
Yeah, a friend he’s had for half his life and recently had sex with (in an oddly positive way from Mike, and it also helped Ethan get more comfortable with his own sexuality) is in a coma.
It’s okay for Ethan to be a little fucked up right now.
I have a feeling there’s a strong correlation between readers who say “Ethan looks so done with her, this must be the end” and readers who just don’t like Amber in the first place and think everyone should be done with her.
Not all, though. I get that Ethan isn’t just tossing Amber away here, but I despise Amber eith a fervent passion at this point.
I feel like Ethan’s going to snap at Amber and leave, or stay there stewing in anger.
If it helps, I also think Amber’s face in these last two panels is very much ‘I am starting to realize how far out of my ability to Deal With This my mental health has become.’
It feels a bit disrespectful to say it… but he also needlessly escalated the situation, failed to warn people and ultimately did exactly what Sal warned amazi-girl about a long time ago.
Mike manipulated the dads into shashing him on electric scooters. He really did have other options than hammer-fights on staris.
It is a truism that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. The best-laid plans will almost always have to be modified based on response, circumstances, and conditions.
The action started outside Becky’s apartment with Mike confronting Blaine and Ross by the statue of Blowjob Cat, Mike then backed off after Blaine produced the hammer before threatening to reveal what he knew about Blaine’s money-laundering and two different set of books. BLAINE then escalated the situation by pursuing Mike (along with Ross) until they switched to the scooter — one for Mike and one for Blaine, with Ross left behind. And even then Mike seemed to have things pretty well under control until Ross — who had then by then gone back to get his car — got ahead of the chase and drove the car into Mike’s path as he emerged from Dunn’s Woods at Kirkwood Hall.
At that point any plan or options Mike might have had were blown to hell and back, and everything from there on to the near-fatal fall was being improvised on the fly.
People make mistakes. Plans fall apart. No one thinks everything through. The name of this comic is not “smart, well informed people make rational choices”.
all that is true.
But I honestly don’t believe Mike did as well as he could under the circumstances. I think he allowed himself to be caught up in an increasingly dangerous situation and didn’t try to harder than he did to defuse it because he just didn’t feel like it.
Maybe I’m buying too much into his own explanations of his motivations, but I believe him when he says that he doesn’t care, that he is just bored, that he really doesn’t care all that much what happens to him. that’s a very dangerous kind of nihilism, and a neat paralell to amazi-girl who dangerous to herself and others for other reasons.
At that point, sure. But unless there was some brilliance we didn’t see, it seems like the plan before then was scooter around hoping to attract Amazi-Girl’s attention, which isn’t really much of a plan.
I think the plan was “get these guys away from Becky and the people at the party”, and that seemed to be working. Trying to summon Amazigirl was only part of it.
Remember, Blaine and Ross really hadn’t done anything yet. You ⃥c⃥a⃥n⃥’⃥t⃥ aren’t supposed to be able to arrest people just because they are hanging around a schoolyard after hours. And while Mike could have gone to the cops with his claims about Blaine’s mob ties and so on so that they could haul Blaine in for questioning, we’ve already pretty much agreed that at least one or two of the cops on the Bloomington force has Blaine’s back anyway so there’s no guarantee that would have made any difference.
At the very least Ross was probably in violation of his parole, which could have led to an arrest.
….stop it. Get some help.
To be fair, she’s gotten better on her own.
After getting much, much worse on her own.
Ok, where is everyone getting anger from with Ethan? First, WHY would he be angry? Anger isn’t the correct response to any of this, and as far as I know Ethan isn’t one to have irrational responses.
Secondly, that’s not anger. That’s concern bordering on disturbed horror given the fact that his best friend just admitted that A. She’d been having full blown dissociative episodes for hours at a time for several MONTHS, and now on top of that has a new hallucination. He’s probably looking for the nurse cord for God’s sake…
Oh dear. This is the part where her friends have to start recognizing the fact of her DID, yeah? That’s going to be rough.
It seems like Amber is already starting to … forgive my lack of understanding and vocabulary… reconcile her identities? They’re sharing again. That’s good. But she’s going to need help.
its typically thought of as a removal of dissociative barriers!
Ethan the sarcasm is not helpful right now
A recent lover that Ethan’s been friends with for half his life is lying on a hospital bed, comatose.
People really shouldn’t be expecting Ethan to be in a good frame of mind.
And he’s just finding out that Amber has DID, which sounds worse to people that it probably is. (but I dunno, it’d scare me, too)
Yeah, people being hard on Ethan for being mildly snappy after the last 12 hours is a little confusing. Like, he’s dealing with waaaay more stuff than he should have to.
b’deh b’deh…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9434BoGkNQ
Amber, please, please get therapy.
In the end, this must end in a junkyard fight between Amber and Amazi-Girl.
Actually, I don’t think so. Unlike the situation in Superman III, the two primary alters here aren’t fundamentally opposed in their moral outlook or objectives. Their only problem is that, up until recently a difference in trust in the other. This current situation has helped them see that they need each other for a variety of reasons. Hopefully (as bizarre as it will be to see) Amber and Mazie will be able to discuss some of the things only one knows and the other does not.
Based on Mazie’s very obvious crush on Sal after the political rally fight, I’m wondering if she’s queer. This might make for some interesting complications if Amber wants to continue in her relationship with Walky.
Well Mazie definitely liked Danny.
I love lingual humor.
everyone in the comments saying “amber get therapy” as if trauma and dissociative specialists don’t cost HUNDREDS of dollars per appointment and almost never take insurance, and getting a therapist that isn’t trained in DID/ very willing to learn wouldn’t be INFINITELY more harmful than not having a therapist at all. Dissociative disorders aren’t like anxiety and depression y’all, they’re HEAVILY stigmatized and there’s a good portion of the psychiatric community that doesn’t even believe in it.
OBVIOUSLY amber needs therapy, but saying that shes in the wrong for not getting it before now is super shitty to everyone with osdd/did that just, cant get therapy because the options not available. she wasn’t far off when she said there wasn’t a therapist who knew how to handle her
also, i REALLY hope that ethan doesnt get angry like all the comments are suggesting, because telling your friend you have an unmanaged heavily stigmatized and them getting mad about it is…. probably among the shittiest things a person can do.
I agree. For all the times I have complained about Amber’s shitty decisions, mocking her mental illness is wrong. It’s like mocking Marcie for having her throat injured, or mocking Dina for having trouble socializng, or mockingMalaya for hating her own body (Malaya is still a bastitch though).
I thought Malaya was more indifferent than hateful about it? (That’s no excuse for being a bongo though.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/overwhelmingly/
Considering this interaction with Carla a couple of days later, I’m not 100% sure “indifferent” would be the word: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/forty/
Ambivalent?
Oof I felt that. My ex-roommate once made fun of my social anxiety, it was something I confided to him about a few month earlier, which was really hard for me to do. To be fair he went of his medication and was himself in the middle of a manic episode, still it really hurt me and while I was not really angry with him it damaged our relationship to this day.
And I never told anyone ever again how bad my social issues really get.
I think Ethan would normally be very supportive!
…but he is currently in the hospital, staring at his comatose friend who he lost his virginity to, after a night of no sleep but lots of violence and being kidnapped.
Him getting angry at Amber right now seems pretty reasonable? He has his own trauma to deal with and about zero spoons right now.
yeah, in the moment anger isn’t what I was referring to, more about the long term anger that a lot of the comments seem to be suggesting ie. ethan being “done” with her. an angry outburst is understandable but to be mad at her long term for having a mental disorder would be super shitty and hopefully out of character for him
In defense of Ethan potentially getting angry: It’s not like she’s just telling him over a cup of coffee here. He just learned his friend has been in a coma for days and that from Ethan’s perspective Amber knew. Even the absolutely kindest interpretation begs the question why AG didn’t leave a note or something. Mike could have died before his friends knew where he was.
There are times you can reasonably expect not to be yelled at. I’m not sure this is one of them.
all right, to be fair i also have no idea why amazigirl didn’t leave a note. sometimes alters don’t realize there’s dissociative barriers up but when walky told her he made out with amber and she didn’t remember it I think that would imply she does know… maybe she figured this was so big amber would remember it? that’s still a big risk to take… its possible she was protecting amber from it but.. not the best choice. AG definitely fucked up here, I hope if they continue to not share memories they start journaling about whats been happening in each their lives
A Patreon strip showed them, not in costume, asleep outside Sal’s door early that morning. AG may have just passed out on her way back home and not been able to leave a note.
Any excuse would come off as pretty darn weak, tbh. The lowest effort could have helped. Like , a “Mike @ hospital” text. Or leaving a number at the hospital.
I’m one of the people who sometimes say Amber should get therapy, but I do so more as “no don’t open that door!” audience advice than criticism.
Then again… part of the problems Amber is dealing with is a whole bunch of baggage from an abusive father who wanted to force her to be someone who was tough enough (his mindset) to deal with things on her own rather than needing help. So she might be in a chicken-and-egg situation, where she’d have a very hard time seeking out therapy because she hasn’t had the therapy which could help her into a healthier mindset which is open to seeking therapy.
yeah… the whole process of finding a dissociative specialist is SO demoralizing when you don’t even really want therapy in the first place. thankfully she has tons of friends to help, one of whom is Dorothy, so hopefully they’re able to help her find someone and she wont have to bear that burden alone
Yeah, came here to say this. A system I know said that the way they got diagnosed was they emailed FIFTY THERAPISTS and asked each one if they do assessments for DID and other dissociative disorders. Only two said yes.
Then those two have to be a. in your city or willing to work remotely b. covered by your insurance if you have insurance at all and c. accepting new patients.
Just finding a good therapist at all is hard. Finding one that treats DID is incredibly difficult.
Not finding a therapist when you want and need one is incredibly frustrating and exhausting, no matter what your problem is. Yes, getting a therapist which the skillset to deal with DID is more difficult than finding a therapist who does well on trauma-related problems, which is difficult enough.
I think, though, that people saying „Amber needs therapy“ basically mean, she shouldn’t be haven’t to deal with that all on her own.
I hate autocorrect: having, not haven’t
from my interpretation, it seems like a LOT of people are treating her like shes in the wrong or the bad guy for not pursuing therapy before now. i felt like it was important to say that this isn’t the same as getting therapy for anxiety or depression, its an incredibly difficult task to even START looking for a therapist that specializes in DID. i of course agree that amber deserves a therapist that is able to assist her in all of her needs but vilifying her for not getting one (not saying you are, but other people in the comment section def are) is super shitty and out of touch with reality
And even for more common things like depression, those very problems often make it hard to motivate yourself to seek help.
In her case, there’s also the very practical concern that talking about Amazi-Girl has a very real chance of legal consequences. Whether that should be a barrier may depend on your opinion of AG’s actions. For Amber though, AG was long the golden alter who could do no wrong, who’s purpose was to keep her under control because she was the monster.
yeah… im in the same boat. and then even when you DO find someone like that you have to actually vibe with them and they have to not be shitty about other issues. had one therapist who was under my insurance and trained in dissociative disorders who wanted me to go off my medication and go ~all natural~. most of the time you dont even get a response if you mention did/osdd. hope your friend was able to find someone to help eventually, none of us should have to go through this alone <3
Yeah no kidding, but if the other option is no therapy, therapy’s still the better option.
unfortunately thats actually not true when it comes to dissociative disorders, a bad therapist can make the disorder a LOT worse. i know a lot of systems who have trauma specifically from bad therapy they sought out/were forced into for being a system. it SUCKS but the psychiatric establishment is not the greatest here, especially to those with “controversial” disorders
Seriously. Honestly I think Amber would likely have better luck on that particular axis with, say, internet-based peer support groups. (Which still requires finding them, but it’d be people who know what it’s like too and aren’t as location and finance-specific.)
But then there’s the issue of how BOTH of them have a serious trend toward self-endangerment (in the name of helping others usually, but still VERY dangerous) that borders on suicidal at times. (Certainly self-harming, when it’s pulling things like the all-nighters.) I don’t have much familiarity with peer support groups for The Scary Mental Illnesses, but since it’s so tied up in the vigilanteism I imagine it’s out of most people’s pay grades unless they’ve got specific training. But you can’t NOT talk about the DID with the vigilante bit, if Amber saw a therapist specifically for the self-harm/deep sense of worthlessness tendencies and tried not to talk about it. So I think eventually she DOES need to find a supportive therapist… but that’s gonna be hard as hell, and I would not envy her that.
That particular axis – learning to work together as a unit and get along with each other, to be clear. That bit where they consider Amber the Bad Violent One and also a coward to AG’s virtuous bravery? Not good! Amber trying to do away with AG entirely on the grounds she ‘failed’? Seriously worrisome! Both DID-specific issues.
The dangerous self-sacrificing, less so. And so pronounced I don’t think most people are equipped to help her with that.
Imaginary Mike: *With bdeadpan voice.* “Wee I am a Persona, or whatever James Mcavoy had on Split? Maybe I am a Stand.”
Amber: “Shut up, imaginary Mike!”
Ethan: you need a therapist
Everyone keep saying that and it is no longer funny.
Has Amber ever explained her condition to Ethan? If not, this pretty much defines “a lot to take in”.
By the way, Ethan? Your friend needs a hug right now. She’s sort of coming to terms with the fact that she’s severely mentally ill and that this occasionally leads to quite strongly disabling manifestations.
No, she hasn’t.
At least we now know when the split happened
In DID terms, the “split” had to have happened before age 10 (this age is still widely debated but around then). Once a DID system has established the coping mechanism of splitting in childhood, then further alters can be created into adulthood, but the first one has to be very young. So unless Amber has/had other alters we don’t know about, Amazigirl would’ve had to have split when Amber was a kid but the amnesia seemed to set in or get more complete after the situation with Joyce’s attacker.
Then what about new Mike?
New mike could be recent but I’m not convinced that New Mike is an alter. To me he seems more like a sleep-deprived guild-induced hallucination.
I think that there’s acceptable breaks from strict medical diagnosis.
I’m not sure anyone should blame Willis if he doesn’t adhere to the strict DSM-5 criteria for what’s going on with his most reality-bending character.
I’m not intending to criticize Willis here, but the fact that alters form in childhood is a pretty key aspect of dissociative disorders. DID representation in media is so incredibly rare and the vast majority of it is very inaccurate which does real harm to DID systems. Creating a DID character that first splits in adulthood would be like creating a character who develops diabetes as a result of eating too large of an icecream sundae.
From what we can tell, Amber and AG consider AG’s origin point to be the convenience store holdup, when they were about 12 or so.
But at that point it was in the context of ‘AG’s superhero origin story’, because they weren’t as solidly out of sync and DID was not at all in the discussion. (I’m not even sure THEY realized they were distinct people over serious compartmentalization.) And the holdup wasn’t so much the inciting point as Blaine’s abuse immediately afterwards and Amber stabbing Sal was, so I would not be at all shocked if (if only to No Prize it more in line with actual research, since Willis didn’t start out writing Amber and AG as a system and was iffy on it for a while because he didn’t want to play into Dangerous Split Personality!1! Stereotypes until system readers started saying ‘yeah this is true to my experience and I actually value that’, similar to Dina being heavily-implied autistic,) they come to realize AG had started existing earlier, but they weren’t consciously aware of it until after that whole Incident made them more in need of an outlet and afraid of their propensity for violence. We’ve also seen through the comic that Amber and AG’s dissociation got way more pronounced over time, until the stabbing when they stopped sharing memories and Amber was trying to forcibly unmake AG. (I think it starts widening in the immediate aftermath of punching Blaine, and we see AG take control when triggered by Sal’s presence a couple times after that, but we don’t really hear her talk about things like ‘but I wasn’t the one in control’ until after the first car chase.) So I tend to think they’ve been a system since childhood, but only realized it as they got more and more out of sync.
Brain Ghost Mike seems to be a straight-up hallucination, but he’s not the first one (even discounting the ones like AG screaming through the mask as ways to show AG in a visual medium and not actual hallucinations) – she had a Brain Ghost Blaine praising her right after the stabbing. I think that’s a guilt-induced thing, yeah. Also Amber’s strips last storyline until Brain Ghost Mike showed up had little subconscious ‘MIKE’ letters in them. BG Mike seems longer lasting than the accompanying Blaine, but on the other hand she came to realize what was going on more slowly to begin with and she’s WAY more guilty about Mike getting injured than stabbing Ryan (where the violence itself was traumatic, but fuck that guy.)
So… Do Amber and her friends realize that she has DID? If so, do they understand what’s going on? I’ve especially seen Danny and Ethan be pretty insensitive to her about it… I didn’t even get it myself until I think it was Walky saying something that was sensitive about the disorder. And I don’t know if Willis has said it either
I really don’t think, and I really hope, that Ethan is about to get angry. I have anxiety and depression, and a lot of people default to sarcastic ‘humour’ when they’re stressed out. One of his oldest friends is in a coma, there’s a chance he’s seen a dead body today, he’s been kidnapped, and his other oldest friend who is also injured and whose dad did the murdering and kidnapping has just told him that on top of her many, many reasons to have PTSD and severe trauma she’s experiencing memory loss and identity disorders. I think Ethan’s not so much at the end of his patience, as he is at the end of his spoons.
I’d also sort of like to make the point that yes, Amber DOES need therapy, but also… I know people with DID and I don’t think they’d appreciate it being referred to as “a severe mental disorder”. Many people with alters live completely functional lives; Amber is just not, unfortunately, one of them.
Yeah, I gotta say, it doesn’t feel great that people seem to react so extremely to her being multiple, when just being multiple on its own is not inherently broken and dysfunctional. The trauma and the flashbacks need treatment yes. It’s a problem that her amnesia interferes with her ability to communicate important information between her selves and to other people, so that needs treatment. But… just the fact that there is two of them isn’t scary and dangerous.
Very well put!
To people who haven’t come into contact with DID or know anything about it, it sounds pretty scary. All the more important to talk about stuff like this. And I’m geniuenly curious how Amber will be from now on, whether or not she will change or adjust.
I know people with multies who have/had jobs, children, fiances, spouses, pets, degrees, houses, etc. Therapy is very much needed (and yes, very hard to get) but they have full, non-vigilante, lives.
Amber should get called out on her sh*t AND she should get love, therapy and support. The behaviours (closing herself off, pushing people away, etc) which protected her while in an abusive home are not the ones which are going to let her live a happy life.
I don’t know if she needs therapy for her DID, but I think as a rule it’s a good idea to get support when
you’ve been abused by your father for years,
or kidnapped by your father,
or your friends have,
or your close friend might die and you might think it’s partly your fault,
or you’ve just seen your father murder someone,
or you’ve been grappling with guilt for years and haven’t managed to solve it yourself in a healthy way,
or you have self-esteem so low it’s negative
or all of the above.
I meant people with DID need and deserve therapy to work through the abuse that caused the splits in the first place and to develop coping techniques. The multies aren’t necessary an issue, it the underling stuff.
It appears we are in agreement, I’m just clarifying in case my therapy comment was misunderstood.
Gotcha, thanks for taking the time
I’m not saying that Amber/AG need therapy just because they’re dissociative, personally. I say it because they’ve shown near-suicidal addiction to dangerous behavior, which has put both themselves and others at risk, and a propensity for violence that also borders on addiction, all stemming from a seemingly endless wellspring of rage.
To be fair she’s also been awake for like…almost 24 hours straight
Nice to see that Amber’s actually talking about her mental health problems with a friend, though I hope she can get some therapy soon.
You guys are so dramatic. Why are you talking like Ethan’s about to shoot up the school just on account of a joke. DID isn’t a scary thing you need a therapist to go cure, Amber needs therapy but not for that reason. The DID can actually be pretty therapeutic on its own when it’s being acknowledged and managed properly which, like, Amber’s getting there. I support our dissociative queens.
How’s that well. I know it’s sarcasm, but it’s kind of unwarranted, it doesn’t make sense.
Amber, please, go to a therapist.
Now that you are on speaking terms again, could you please tell AG to take indefinite leave as campus vigilante? Sure she will find a better job.
I think that Willis has done a good job establishing that the campus needed a vigilante or two and still does.
I don’t think it’s the best for Amber though.
Although…maybe if she did it with friends? Doing good but with backup and with people to tell you when you have gone too far.
FWIW, I suspect that this is the job that Mazie wanted Sal to do. However, before that happens, Sal will first need to convince Marcie (who is her conscience) that it is good and necessary.
Yeah, but working conditions suck.
Ethan, dude, I know she’s your best friend and all, but Amber has some serious mental health issues and needs professional psychiatric help.
And Ethan’s sitting with his second-oldest friend/(presumably) first physical lover that’s in a coma with serious internal injuries, after a night of being kidnapped, held hostage, threatened, and beaten by a man he knew from childhood, and Amber’s kinda dropping this on him outta the blue. The fact that he’s not bawling his eyes out right now is astounding, and he likely has no more emotional energy to invest in this right now. Cut him some frickin’ slack.
That’s fair, but there were loads of signs even before this. Ethan’s just not very good at confronting people. I mean, none of them really are except for Amazigirl and Mike, and I’m not sure “Imma beat you like a pinata” or “your mom’s a whore” are the best conflict resolution techniques.
People who are wondering why Ethan would want to distance himself from Amber or would judge him for doing same clearly have forgotten the extent to which Ethan’s been on the wrong end of Amber’s problems. Like the time she flipped out at him in the cafeteria for dating Joyce. Or the fact he can’t date Danny because even without knowing Amazi-Girl is Amber, both parties are aware Amber would totally lose her shit if they ever did.
Amber has issues. She is not unsympathetic because of those issues. But Ethan should not be judged for deciding *he* has enough problems without dealing with Amber’s baggage as well. I take issue with people who believe simply having a mental disorder somehow absolves a person of their responsibility for their actions, or obligates the people around them to be infinitely patient with them.
I say this as someone with a mental illness, who was in the position of having to care for a friend with that same mental illness. It is not something I’d wish on anyone, nor judge anyone for declining to do for a non-family member.
Also the part where because Amber didn’t tell anyone she had DID where her alter was a violent vigilante she also had a problem with, the victims of Blaine’s rampage lacked any warning of what was coming and Mike landed in the hospital without any of his friends knowing he was there. Not to mention that as much as I loathe the college students who joined Blaine’s group, the only reason Blaine was able to mobilize them was because Amazi-Girl had antagonized so many people. Much of the cast of DoD ended up having to foot the bill for AA’s heroics without ever knowing a bill was coming due.
Except for Dorothy, of course. Whose attitude towards AA is…troublingly uncritical.
Even if Amber had told everyone that she wasn’t sharing memories with Amazi-Girl, she still wouldn’t have been sharing memories with Amazi-Girl, so no one would have known about Blaine’s rampage or Mike’s injury anyway.
And the kids who joined Blaine were “antagonized” by Amazi-Girl because they were 1) gaybashing Danny, 2) defending a rapist, 3) going to harass/assault women who’d accused said rapist. Amazi-Girl’s done some questionable things, but the incidents those guys were drawn from are among the clearest.
Howdy!
I have memory problems. Not mental illness related, I’m just a ditz sometimes. You know what I do to pass messages to my future-self for things my future-self needs to know but will probably not remember? I write them down. I put named alarms in my phone. I send friggin’ e-mails to myself for more complicated things.
So the whole “not sharing memories” thing really isn’t so difficult to work-around. Amber and Amazi-Girl have just refused to even try. For that matter, Amazi-girl could have called anyone else and said “Mike is in the hospital, Ross and Blaine are in town and up to villainy”. But she didn’t. Not because of DID or some other mental illness, but because Amazi-Girl chose not to warn anyone, even knowing that people were in danger and it would be many hours before she was “awake” again.
That’s a little fairer, though it doesn’t quite cover the OP’s claim.
And yes, more communication would have been great, but I suspect much of the split was because they were fighting and didn’t trust each other. That kept them from setting anything like that up.
Also there was a Patreon strip showing them asleep in the hall early that morning. AG could have intended to leave such a note when she got back, but passed out first.
In Amber’s defense, I don’t think she’d see Amazi-Girl as violent, given that Amber herself gets considerably more violent than AG.
She used to see herself as the monstrous dangerous one that AG was supposed to keep from hurting anyone. After Ryan, she saw AG as having failed. That’s likely what led to the full split.
Ethan’s already aware Amber suffered some trauma from the convenience store incident. He just didn’t realize how far its extent reached.
Has anyone thought or suggested that Ethan really needs therapeutic support right now, after the trauma he has just experienced (and/or re-experienced), and that that need belongs appropriately at the top of his personal stack, above even his concern for his friend’s need for same?
I didn’t imply anything regarding Ethan not needing therapy but that he is in the dark about Amber having dissociative identity disorder.
Regarding your comment, yes Ethan needs therapy. Within this storyline, Joyce, Dorothy, Walky, Sarah, Amber, Dina, and Becky need therapy too.
God, I hope this will be what finally gets Amber into the damned therapy she so desperately needs.
Really loving the representation of plurality being shown with Amber and Amazi-girl here! It’s so rare to see something accurate and simple like this, where the relationships between both individuals isn’t really evil or toxic or negative either and that there’s room for compromise and togetherness. Good job!
DAMMIT WILLIS I WAS BEING SARCASTIC YESTERDAY
Please please please use this to educate people about DID. I’m seeing a lot of extreme reactions in the comments here that are, honestly, really shitty to people with DID. With therapy, people with DID can live healthy functional lives. Some people break down the mental barriers between alters to achieve a single unit, while others don’t. Neither is better than the others as long as the person or system is happy and isn’t hurting themselves or others.
I think the hostility is less to DID and more Amber’s hubris and ostrich like behavior when it came to the alter’s moonlighting. To wit: her DID manifests as badly as it does because she refused to seek help.
It’s not hubris. Far from it. It’s self-loathing.
To quote Amber responding to Ruth’s suggestion to talk to a professional: “nobody else in the world is even remotely equipped to deal with me.”
That sounds like it could be hubris, but it’s really not, It’s her own mental problems lying to her and keeping her from seeking help. What she says there combined with her feelings that she’s the worthless monster one. ‘No one could help me and even if they could, I’m not worth it.’ Thanks Blaine.
See also her response to Ruth when Ruth tried to stop her from confronting Blaine on her own. Not only did she decline help, she all but threatened to physically assault Ruth if she got in her way.
hooray, a genuine case of multiple personalities with a side order of delusional hallucinations!
A thought I keep coming back to…
“Dangit, Ethan, I get that you are upset because you can SEE how broken Mike is, but mentally Amber might be as fractured as his internal injuries right now.
You have TWO friends on hospital beds, even if one is only figurative, now might not be the best time for sass!”
I didn’t mean to contradict you in any way. I realize now that I was asking whether we readers expect Amber’s trauma to be more important to Ethan than his own trauma is at this moment. This might be unfair to Ethan, who cares very much about his friend’s deep internal issues yet is so in need of caring and support himself.
This should have been a reply to JessWitt.
No worries. It didn’t cross my mind to consider which of the two individuals’ trauma was more important. And yes I am also worried about Ethan. He heard one of his best friends who is also his first time with a guy was hospitalized and could potentially be killed.
I think there’s a little Mike in everyone…
[EEG blips]
….for a nickle.
[medical miracle occurs.]
Good for Amber for not going into shame about this! That’s gotta be tough.
So…I wonder what happened to Faz.
Expressions, translated:
Panel 2: Why didn’t you tell me?
Panel 4: You’re talking about your other persona as a separate person. Are you okay?
Panel 6: The situation is much worse than I had ever imagined.