There’s a very large difference between “could not” and “chooses not to.” If she just walked into the quad with a big “open for business” sign she’d get swamped in half a second.
His face is pretty good, but I’ve seen him in his undies and he was looking a little noodlie. He’s very much a guy with good genetics who is coasting on that. I’m not saying he needs more mass, but a bit more definition couldn’t hurt. Guys like Jacob and Joe, and even Ethan exist. If we ever find out he has abs I might change my mind, but until then “pure sex” is an exaggeration.
Different people like different things! I tend to prefer short slim fellows, and think washboard abs just make you look like you swallowed a turtle. One of my best lady-pals prefers bearlike dudes with more to love. It’s all good!
This is literally a feel my partner has. Person can be completely hot. Smokes though? Attraction is dead in the water instantly. Likely would be for me too, but I’m also pretty adverse to people drinking a lot too because I dislike being around drunk people. Too unpredictable.
I could see it being like Amber’s memories of the first kidnapping/car chase, which she described at a distance (‘it wasn’t me in control, it was Amazi-Girl’) but in a way that clearly implied she was conscious during the event (because Amber was terrified, but AG was the one in control and she wouldn’t let herself retreat.) We know the convenience store is the point they consider AG’s origin, so it could be she was the one in control during the aftermath when she stabbed Sal (and AG’s been repressing that fact ever since and pinning it on Amber as the bad one, to keep herself as the Golden Alter). They also were cooperating and operating in relative sync until Family Weekend and the Sal stuff started making the lines more distinct, and then only stopped sharing memories entirely after the Ryan stabbing. (Asher happened between that and the second kidnapping, when AmbG started sharing memories again. So there was no chance AG was conscious at the time the same way.)
But complicating things is that AmbG weren’t originally envisioned as a system, just a standard Batman situation where AG was Amber’s outlet for her violent impulses/form of compartmentalization. Even once they started reading like they could be, Willis was worried about playing into the Scary Dangerous DID Person trope, so he didn’t make it deliberate and clear for a while (until some plural fans said that even with AG as a vigilante with anger issues, she still rang a lot truer to their experiences than most and valued her storyline as representation.) As a result, a lot of early stuff doesn’t read like they’re different people, since at the time they weren’t, and their backstory doesn’t map to how DID develops in the real world – 12-13 is REALLY late. (My no-prize is that they’ve been plural since early childhood but the convenience store was the first time they really realized that was what was going on.) So we don’t know for sure what was up memory-wise at that point, because it’s one of the places where the retcon doesn’t quite fit with what had already been established.
An alternative reading is that it was neither Amber nor AmaziGirl who stabbed Sal at the convenience store, but rather the rarely seen third, RageAmber (or if not a third, at least Amber’s unwanted rage). Following stabbin Sal, AmaziGirl was birthed so that Amber could give a controlled outlet to the pain and anger her father forced her to experience, but in a more safely controlled fashion, because none of them really want to see people hurt, but RageAmber knows she can’t control herself, so she doesn’t take the light unless they’re in danger. Certainly it wasn’t AmaziGirl who … corrected Ryan outside their dorm. “Unfortunately for you, I’m not AmaziGirl.”
Disclaimer here: in no way an expert, mostly building off what plural commenters have said in the past. Not gonna say Willis would never write that, because who knows, but I do think it’d go against the themes of their arc. Amber has serious rage issues that’ve manifested violently, yes, but crucially, so does Amazi-Girl. They’re not a ‘one’s the Batman, one’s the Joker’ story, and while Amber was definitely the one to stab Ryan (with, apparently, murderous intent,) we’ve also seen AG try to downplay her less-than-noble impulses and paint Amber as the ‘bad’ one, which Amber’s internalized as well. (See also, stalking and picking fights with Sal ‘wasn’t her,’ AG says after being confronted with the fact that she was assuming Sal had done something wrong for the crime of existing even when she objectively hadn’t, and that there was a nasty element of racist subtext there that bystanders were playing into. But we the readers know that the stalking was all AG, the picking fights was all AG, and looking for people to fight after the Danny breakup to have cathartic-yet-‘justified’ violence was all AG.)
If it’s Amber who was in control the whole night of the convenience store, it’s the same anger and violence issues she’s been uncomfortable with through the comic, the same ones that led her to punch Blaine in the dorm and flip a table at Ethan. If it’s AG, it’s the issues that led to her becoming a campus superhero. But neither of them is truly unable to control those impulses. They’re not destined to become Blaine. They need some better coping mechanisms and weren’t given anything but violence in the wake of the convenience store (self-defense classes, thanks Blaine,) but they’re both capable of being something else. There being an alter who’s only violence would be dangerously close to the Scary Dangerous DID person, IMO, and would imply they are in some ways destined for violence. I say fuck that.
I bet Blaine’s abuse was the catalyst that started (or worsened) Amber’s dissociation. Maybe she fantasized about kicking his ass and freeing herself and her mother from his abuse, but could never act that out herself, so Amazi-Girl formed out of those fantasies. As time went on, and she heard nothing but how meek and worthless “Amber” was, she put any positivity she internalized into Amazi-Girl instead.
The convenience store robbery was a wedge that further drove the split, but we haven’t seen Amazi-Girl assert herself in any blue flashbacks yet AFAIK, so she may have only had the opportunity once they had the freedom of on-campus college life.
It must be the weirdest goddamn feeling to ride shotgun in your own body though.
(Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a mental health expert, nor do I have DID. I’m just a dummy writing words under a comic strip on the Internet. This is just my take, however wrong it is.)
So, I am not an expert, but had a friend a while back who shared a brain with multiple identities. The way it was described, they would take turns “driving” the body, and would discuss stuff with each other internally, and sometimes I’d ask a question of a specific identity and they’d take a moment to do the asking. At the same time, they do seem to all be able to “listen” together, if the identities are interested in listening (one was very “not interested” most of the time).
So, Regalli’s description of the meta-narrative history aside (I don’t know), AG probably doesn’t necessarily remember it herself, but may have a memory of Amber telling her, or vice versa. So it’s “sharing memories” in the more common sense of talking about photos with your mom or whatever, if they’re not both “listening” for the relevant events.
Disclaimer that I’m basically summarizing hearsay-at-best, here. Other people with more direct experience have also made comments to similar effect in the past, though.
While it’s typically the original function of DID to separate out memories so the host (person handling day to day life stuff) isn’t overwhelmed by them, if the host develops good relationships and communication with their alters, they can often choose to share memories with each other when they are ready. It’s different for different systems of course. We don’t have much amnesia anymore (had more as a kid) but we do have a thing called emotional amnesia, which is where you remember what happened but it feels like it didn’t happen to *you* or it feels farther away somehow. This is how our day to day information is stored, and then occasionally when it becomes relevant to our processing, someone will share a piece of a trauma memory and it will enter this sort of shared memory.
I recently discovered that two sisters I chat to on line actually share a body. I’ve found it fascinating how they can hold a quick fire chat with each other, on separate accounts, with each person’s writing being distinctly different. One such conversation revolved around how one sister was in pain while the other was saying she was happily pain free. I have no idea how that works. But this rapid shifting in who is in control at any given time does take a lot of energy apparently and recently, after having a covid jab, they opted to leave one of them in control because they were feeling really bad from the side effects.
Then there was the curious case of the older sister having a series of bad nightmares and she ran away for the better part of a week. The younger sister, who we’ve teased about being only seven years old as opposed to her older sibling who is 23, was suddenly left entirely alone to run everything and had no idea where her sister had gone. Again, how that is possible I do not know. But she was left to figure out things like making breakfast, going to bed and then not sleeping for 14 hours like she was used to.
I understand that each system tends to be unique and in this one both girls regret the lose of the other two they once shared with but, with amnesia leading to loss of such things as their own birthday, it was a choice that had to be made. Regretfully I never got to know them but it has been wonderful seeing Hiki’s personality blossom as she becomes more confident and accepts that yes, we love her too.
I am slightly confused by what you mean in the entire last paragraph, I feel it lacks some context (is Hiki the result of the integration of two other alters that were previously unmentioned???) But I can explain a couple of things.
The pain difference is caused by different parts of the brain actually being used by alters. What this results in is that the way the body functions actually changes depending on who is in control so one alter’s control has the brain sending out pain signals while the other’s doesn’t. This can affect how muscles are used as well, hence different vision for instance as eye muscles move differently and the immune system as allergies can differ between alters as well.
The ‘running away’ part doesn’t make sense in a physical world when sharing a body obviously, but what it likely means is that the brain made it up for backstory to explain a dormancy, it happened in an Inner World (a mental space people with DID and OSDD can have or create which may be small like a room or massive like an actual running world) or the older sister ‘ran away’ in the sense of being too ‘mentally distant’ to be heard. All of these would result in the older sister being unreachable and her location unknown to the younger sister.
Like, I suppose a way to visualise that it is like if you had a friend Mack sitting right next to you that was staring out the window. His mind is a million miles away. He doesn’t snap to attention when you poke or prod him or call to him. His mind is literally somewhere else, you don’t know where. Then a week later, he walks down the stairs to greet you in the kitchen and you’re like ‘Where were you!?’ You knew physically where he was the whole time. But his mind was somewhere else and unreachable and you don’t know where it was, just that it was neither here nor near for a time.
I think they meant there were originally four sisters, but two left because they were causing Hiki and her other sister to lose too much time/information. It sounds like the elder sister still here usually takes care of things and Hiki only recently had to start growing up a little bit when big sister ran away (was unavailable) for a week.
memories in a system are kinda tricky, and also kinda depend on what type you have (DID, OSDD-1A, OSDD-1B) they can be passed around, role changes can bring you “closer” to a certain memory, some are shared, some aren’t. it’s really complicated and mostly intuitive and also every system is different
mob membership is an opt in, you have to confirm it every month or they will let you e-mails like “we miss you, when do you come back?”, “special offer for old customers: two crooked policemen for the price of a loyal henchperson” or “we inform you that your membership has been resiliated and you cannot benefit from any of you past mob advantage, please note that the mob card is the mob property and would you fail to return it -with port- the mob would feel free to take illegal action for the prejudice”
I wonder if DID people get different turn ones depending on the personality? Who knows, maybe what rustles Amber’s jimmies may not work for Amazi-Girl.
I think she was more repulsed at Amber hooking up with the twin brother of the criminal who took Ethan hostage. Walky’s looks and physique probably didn’t play into it.
I’m not actually sure if she knew about that at the time.
Since she didn’t share Amber’s memories, she apparently didn’t know that Walky and Dorothy had broken up, which might be part of the reason AG called it a garbage fire.
She didn’t actually seem repulsed by Walky or even mad at him though.
Admittedly not an expert by any stretch, but I believe alters who are part of the same system can and do sometimes have different gender identities, so different sexual orientations wouldn’t surprise me.
I’ve been told by people with that condition that they had alters with whole different sexual orientations, so a mere difference in tastes is certainly possible.
Yeah. My boyfriend at one point was friends with a girl with DID who’s alter had a crush on him, but the main identity had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested. They, with the boyfriend, ended up offering if he wanted to date the alter (before we started dating) but the situation felt too messy for him.
That puts you in mischievous scamp territory — technically a crime, but a cute harmless one.
To complete the program, you have to leverage that into a child star status, where you are typecast as a little kid always getting into trouble and given a stern but loving talking-to from your sitcom parents, and you pout a bit and nod in understanding because you really are such an innocent kid and you only did a bad thing because you didn’t understand it was bad.
When you hit your late teens, that’s when you turn into 100% sex.
Steal candy from a convenience store when she was 5 or something. Just to be fair, she thought she was paying for it with a marble. And she actually told that to my whole class.
“By all accounts”, hmm. I forget, do we know yet if Amber and Amazi-Girl are straight or bi/pan? Kind of interpreting that as her talking about Sal’s hotness on a “it is known” level, rather than her own interest, so, straight presumably.
Of course, being bi or pan doesn’t mean automatically having everyone be your type. Dating would get a whole lot simpler if it worked like that.
we’ve only ever seen evidence of straightness, but being straight doesn’t blind anyone to what’s considered conventionally attractive in their own gender. if it did, i could have avoided a lot of emotional issues growing up.
Being 0 on the Kinsey scale really does blind people like that. It’s a rare condition, though; most people who consider themselves straight don’t seem to know it exists.
I don’t know is she suspects that, but when you tell someone you left the mob, but also stole a bunch of money from them that kind of implies you’re still connected to them. When someone tells you there a thief that’s a very viable reason to be suspicious of them.
I can’t remember offhand if Sal knew Blaine was a mob stooge (at least pre-kidnapping, I can see either Amber or AG telling her after he died because of how it tied into Mike/their suspicions,) but if she does I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s got a suspicion.
It can’t have gotten out in the news because that’s what killing him was meant to avoid, so Amber or AG would have to tell her, but that’s not impossible. She just needs something to link Blaine to the mob to make her wonder.
Yeah, my only question is if they told her and when. (Also everyone who was present in the basement initially heard Amber tell Ross who Blaine was, so even if Amber or AG weren’t trying to process the death stuff, I could see either of them telling Sal figuring the secret was already out and Sal should be looped in with the rest of their circle.)
Agreed. I could also see Walky hesitating to tell Sal without checking with Amber, but the mobster element of it all definitely adds some extra terror to ‘dude killed my roommate and then kidnapped me along with our friends and killed his accomplice in front of us.’ So much mortal peril there!
But yeah, while we haven’t heard her say she knows about the Blaine-mob connection, I’d be surprised if someone didn’t tell her in the aftermath. Especially since, as you said, Sal knew about his stealing from Gramps and seemed pretty okay with everything when they talked directly, so her apparent suspicion here is a shift. ‘Suspects Asher isn’t as out of the life as he claimed/wanted to be’ would be a good reason to worry about your surrogate sister dating him.
I forget is the Amber/Amazi-Girl situation a CW’s The Flash Killer Frost situation where the two personalities swap in and out to share the body and have their own memories and experiences or is it just one singular personality now?
It wasn’t at first, but slowly over the first arc Amber and AG separated into completely unique personalities. I think AG stopped sharing memories with Amber around the Ryan stabbing incident. Although now I don’t know if they share memories of if they have like a journal but they apparently at least keep each other up to date on things.
And it’s only gotten more pronounced since then. I’d say Amber needs professional help , but she seems to function fine and lot of the “professionals” in DoA are pretty incompetent.
Also even in the real world, current psychological and psychiatric theory about DID and related conditions is… uh, not great. Very real potential to make things worse, even. But she could try and seek out a support community of some sort online, which might be much more helpful.
Though they reconciled enough during the kidnapping sequence that they’re at least communicating. We haven’t seen enough since then to know if they’re sharing memories I think.
AFAIK, there’s no official Word of God on how it works in Amber/AG’s specific case. We’re mostly just Ouija-boarding it strip by strip and hoping Willis has done enough research to be sensitive and not-inaccurate.
I think what you’re trying to describe is Dissociative Identity Disorder. I don’t know that Willis has officially confirmed it but comments have been suspecting it and we and a few other DID systems have definitely chimed in to say these patterns are familiar AF to us.
I don’t think Willis will ever confirm that. Not saying it’s impossible to depict extreme psychological abnormalities accurately, but it’s a pretty dangerous line to cross if you don’t have first hand or professional experience with. Dissociation in particular has this issue but I’ve seen media fuck up depicting even more common things such as bipolar or depression. It’s just not a can of worms you want to open.
i mean, i would assume, i never click on those. i do click on titles like “17 Inanimate Objects That Look Like They Have Faces”. That stuff makes me ridiculously happy
neat video!
though a more economical explanation i think is that being very social animals, we are hardwired to pick out anything remotely resembling a face within our optical input. so, it’s not so much a case of, our brains will accidentally see faces out of the sheer mass of data available, as, our brains are constantly trying to see faces everywhere, all the time. we’re all about that face, ’bout that face =P
I know right? Psychologists have even uncovered a subconscious heuristic where human brains automatically form impressions on personal characteristics from faces (like leadership capacity, trustworthiness, etc.) within mere milliseconds of seeing them. Some experts have suggested that this mechanism is even powerful enough to predict the outcome of elections! Oh so fascinating!
By the way, is it rather arid today, or is it just me? I’ve had my third iced coffee already…
To be fair, elections are ridiculously easy to predict. With something as simple as predicting the tallest candidate, you’ll get it right a surprisingly large part of the time. Restrict it to presidential elections and the accuracy is uncanny.
I’m excited to see where this goes, since Asher’s one of the more interesting characters running right now.
He’s sincerely remorseful and clearly wants to be a decent dude, but he’s struggling with that due to a combination of external pressures and character flaws. That’s a dynamic character that could go in a lot of interesting directions
He may want to be a decent guy, but other than telling Walky to tell Sal he’s sorry and then telling Sal he was sorry when she came to him, I haven’t seen much remorse. Doesn’t prevent him from wanting to do better, tho.
Hmm, so they’re fully aware about his family’s mob influence, that’s good. Though I don’t entirely trust him yet I’m not going to write him off just yet…. Do you know what would be funny? If Walky was also fully aware of Asher’s family and he mentions it in passing to Jennifer and she freaks out about it and he’s like “I thought you already knew? Like seeing pass his history and stuff.”
Huh. He’s supposed to be hot? I just thought he was supposed to be skeevy… Just when you think you’ve wrapped your head around what is generally considered to be attractive in men…
I’m assuming Asher’s supposed to be hot, though I wouldn’t know personally since I’m not attracted to other men and I’m not any good at telling if other people find me attractive either.
Me thinks the AG doth protest too much with that “By many accounts…. []
I would’ve thought Amazi-Girl would be more suspicious towards Asher. He emancipated himself… How? Everyone who Should Know (except of Jennifer?) about these details oughta be rightfully distrustful of the dude. saying “I don’t do that anymore” referring to the mob (and dating someone that in my opinion has growing shady af post-time skip) doesn’t correlate with directly calling a hit – No matter how much were relieved to know Blaine is GONE.
AG isn’t a vigilante anymore though, so it’s none of her business.
Also, calling Jennifer “shady af” is a bit much. She’s a neurotic teenager who’s known to have serious psychological problems, major lifestyle changes are normal and to be expected.
I legitimately hope whatever changes Jennifer has made during the timeskip are for the best. Because she was in a bad place last time we saw her, and every time she hits that “reset” button it’s the same old same old of wanting things to be like in High School but before the DIU.
It’s a noted pattern and that’s one of the reasons some of us are worried she’s gonna get in even worse trouble now she’s dating the wayward grandson of THE Mob Boss.
Jennifer wasn’t in a bad place the last we saw her before the timeskip. The last we saw her before the timeskip she was actually going to therapy and stopping the drinking and was ready to do some recovering. Did someone mind erase a whole bunch of people to forget the end of Jennifer’s plotline before the time skip??? Because this has come up a few times now as if she was still in complete denial and spiraling then when she wasn’t. She was getting help and was moving towards a better place.
I think the confusion may be that that started (mostly offscreen) shortly before the timeskip, and I think actually going to therapy started after her ‘introduce Forest Quad to her girlfriend’ meeting that turned into ‘attempted self-sabotage with Forest Quad that turned into Wait Shit that DUI was actually REALLY BAD processing.’ Which was worrisome, to be sure! (Not 100% on the timing though, she could have started therapy just before it.)
She reconciled with Ruth in Vote For Robin, promising to stop drinking and go to therapy. As soon as the next day in Birthday Pursuit we say the withdrawal effects. The next day was the Forest Quad thing. We basically didn’t see Jennifer the following day, since it was the kidnapping. It was the day after that she mentioned going to therapy.
So the actual first therapy session was probably after Forest Quad, but the intention was a couple days earlier and the drinking had stopped before it.
And yes, it’s commonly forgotten that she made any progress at all, even by people who bring up their last fights before she did. It’s really kind of weird.
Me thinks the AG doth protest too much with that “By many accounts…. [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RH7wgLu6_c" title="Careless Whisper starts playing on the distance through the hacked PA system."]
I would’ve thought Amazi-Girl would be more suspicious towards Asher. He emancipated himself… How? Everyone who Should Know (except of Jennifer?) about these details oughta be rightfully distrustful of the dude. saying “I don’t do that anymore” referring to the mob (and dating someone that in my opinion has growing shady af post-time skip) doesn’t correlate with directly calling a hit – No matter how much were relieved to know Blaine is GONE.
It’s…. Not that hard, I promise. If you stick to the text-images-link holy trinity, at least. But like, my first home was Livejournal and I had some skills back in the day, lmao.
Plain old HTML started off innocently enough, but I think “human readable” got thrown out the window when everyone decided to nest a million CSS-defined DIVs together as formatting. (Never mind HTML 5 and all its special effects, or that time in the early aughts where designers thought building entire sites in Flash was a good idea…)
Just to be fair, using Flash was only a mistake in hindsight. Nobody could have predicted how vulnerable it would be, let alone its shutdown 20 years later.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we would have seen early-2000s treasures like AlbinoBlacksheep, Homestar Runner, Weebl’s Stuff, and Newgrounds without Flash.
The mistake was building entire websites inside Flash, including all the navigation elements and body text. It was never meant to be a load-bearing part of a site’s structure.
Asher saw through the disguise the same night that Mike/Jennifer discovered the scars from the operation which transplanted Asher’s grandfather’s brain into his grandson’s body.
No, no. Asher’s brain was replaced by that of his grandfather. Both now know each others secret, know that each other knows, but neither can prove it, and so the charade continues. Now they play five-dimensional chess with each others emotions. For Mike/Jennifer the endgame is Asher/grandfather destroyed by his own actions. For Asher/grandfather the endgame is Amazigirl. And each knows that when the game is finally over, they will miss the ultimate opponent.
Asher and Sal??! Sure there’s some folks who don’t like Sal here, but I wouldn’t suspect even them of wishing THAT upon Sal. There is a huge mass of toxic baggage that would come with Sal shacking up with the guy that got her arrested by the police, stabbed, sent to reform school and separated from her twin brother during their teenage years.
Sal doesn’t seem to only blame Asher, she seems to be aware of her responsibility in the event. But hanging out with the guy you were with when that went down is a recipe for recidivism.
Asher is only responsible (partly) for the police element. The stabbing was Amber (with some “help” from Blaine), sent away to school was Sal’s parents. Not saying that Asher and Sal would make a great pair, just that there are a lot of parties involved than just Asher.
I disagree with that logic. She could have been caught by the police and not stabbed. She could have been caught by the police and not sent off to boarding school. If police hadn’t been alerted at that minute, she still might have been caught later and sent away, could have had the rest of the robbery play out differently, etc.
Things are always going to follow other things and be impacted by them. I draw the line more at a more direct impact than some people, but I see it going into blaming people who aren’t responsible/are victims often enough to be opposed to the logic that would put the stabbing and being sent away on Asher.
Don’t forget that the whole reason she was at the gas station in the first place was because she tagged along with Asher and his friends while they robbed at least one other convenience store.
The clerk also gave Sal the opportunity to escape through the back door “so this can all be forgotten by morning”, then she doubled down by grabbing Ethan.
Couldn’t find this asked upthread (and probably not that important anyway), but is it bothering anyone else that Amazi-Girl refers to herself as being in the convenience store instead of Amber? I’m thinking it’s a typo on Willis’ part since nothing about that makes sense to me. (If so, maybe he can fix it when the storyline is collected.)
^That’s my personal take, particularly since AFAIK most people like Amber’ve already split (or in the case of multiple alters, split for the first time) by the time their age has hit the double-digits.
At the convenience store, before her father’s emotional abuse she was fearful, timid and frozen. Afterwards, she was focused and goal driven. In hindsight, it could have been the result of handing off control from one personality to another.
It’s not quite as curly as her natural hair, though, unless the differences are just down to Art Evolution. Not sure if that’s a conscious choice on Sal’s part (like she’s not quite ready to fully quit straightening it, what with all the social stigma she’s grown up with) or if her hair just hasn’t fully gone back to its natural state yet since whenever she decided to quit.
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“so if you’re pure sex now, how come you couldn’t get any other than that
T.A.bartender”alt: “nah, he’s at LEAST a pure EIGHT”
There’s a very large difference between “could not” and “chooses not to.” If she just walked into the quad with a big “open for business” sign she’d get swamped in half a second.
But what would such an entrance look like Yotomoe? I am curious for … research purposes.
I can say Asher might be sex but “pure sex” nah. He’s a solid 8 out of 10…He’s a 10 out of 10 on the “I don’t trust him” meter though.
I dunno, he does look like he’s a Go Nagai protagonist, and that’s really hot.
His face is pretty good, but I’ve seen him in his undies and he was looking a little noodlie. He’s very much a guy with good genetics who is coasting on that. I’m not saying he needs more mass, but a bit more definition couldn’t hurt. Guys like Jacob and Joe, and even Ethan exist. If we ever find out he has abs I might change my mind, but until then “pure sex” is an exaggeration.
Different people like different things! I tend to prefer short slim fellows, and think washboard abs just make you look like you swallowed a turtle. One of my best lady-pals prefers bearlike dudes with more to love. It’s all good!
Anyway Asher is a hottie for me, but then the smoking totally ruins it because I imagine how that smells. Your mileage may vary.
Smoking definitely ruins it.
…. I mean I’m a straight guy, so there’s not much of an it for me to have ruined, but on principle. At least, that’s how I feel about Sal.
This is literally a feel my partner has. Person can be completely hot. Smokes though? Attraction is dead in the water instantly. Likely would be for me too, but I’m also pretty adverse to people drinking a lot too because I dislike being around drunk people. Too unpredictable.
Same. Oddly enough I don’t mind the stale, musty smell smoking leaves behind (not the actual smoke cloud), but the act of smoking itself is repulsive.
Let’s go back to what’s important. When did Sirksome see Asher in his undies?
Yes. This. All day.
So do both Amber and AG remember that night as their own memory?
I think that the two can share information, but that it doesn’t mean it’s remembered first-hand.
I could see it being like Amber’s memories of the first kidnapping/car chase, which she described at a distance (‘it wasn’t me in control, it was Amazi-Girl’) but in a way that clearly implied she was conscious during the event (because Amber was terrified, but AG was the one in control and she wouldn’t let herself retreat.) We know the convenience store is the point they consider AG’s origin, so it could be she was the one in control during the aftermath when she stabbed Sal (and AG’s been repressing that fact ever since and pinning it on Amber as the bad one, to keep herself as the Golden Alter). They also were cooperating and operating in relative sync until Family Weekend and the Sal stuff started making the lines more distinct, and then only stopped sharing memories entirely after the Ryan stabbing. (Asher happened between that and the second kidnapping, when AmbG started sharing memories again. So there was no chance AG was conscious at the time the same way.)
But complicating things is that AmbG weren’t originally envisioned as a system, just a standard Batman situation where AG was Amber’s outlet for her violent impulses/form of compartmentalization. Even once they started reading like they could be, Willis was worried about playing into the Scary Dangerous DID Person trope, so he didn’t make it deliberate and clear for a while (until some plural fans said that even with AG as a vigilante with anger issues, she still rang a lot truer to their experiences than most and valued her storyline as representation.) As a result, a lot of early stuff doesn’t read like they’re different people, since at the time they weren’t, and their backstory doesn’t map to how DID develops in the real world – 12-13 is REALLY late. (My no-prize is that they’ve been plural since early childhood but the convenience store was the first time they really realized that was what was going on.) So we don’t know for sure what was up memory-wise at that point, because it’s one of the places where the retcon doesn’t quite fit with what had already been established.
An alternative reading is that it was neither Amber nor AmaziGirl who stabbed Sal at the convenience store, but rather the rarely seen third, RageAmber (or if not a third, at least Amber’s unwanted rage). Following stabbin Sal, AmaziGirl was birthed so that Amber could give a controlled outlet to the pain and anger her father forced her to experience, but in a more safely controlled fashion, because none of them really want to see people hurt, but RageAmber knows she can’t control herself, so she doesn’t take the light unless they’re in danger. Certainly it wasn’t AmaziGirl who … corrected Ryan outside their dorm. “Unfortunately for you, I’m not AmaziGirl.”
Disclaimer here: in no way an expert, mostly building off what plural commenters have said in the past. Not gonna say Willis would never write that, because who knows, but I do think it’d go against the themes of their arc. Amber has serious rage issues that’ve manifested violently, yes, but crucially, so does Amazi-Girl. They’re not a ‘one’s the Batman, one’s the Joker’ story, and while Amber was definitely the one to stab Ryan (with, apparently, murderous intent,) we’ve also seen AG try to downplay her less-than-noble impulses and paint Amber as the ‘bad’ one, which Amber’s internalized as well. (See also, stalking and picking fights with Sal ‘wasn’t her,’ AG says after being confronted with the fact that she was assuming Sal had done something wrong for the crime of existing even when she objectively hadn’t, and that there was a nasty element of racist subtext there that bystanders were playing into. But we the readers know that the stalking was all AG, the picking fights was all AG, and looking for people to fight after the Danny breakup to have cathartic-yet-‘justified’ violence was all AG.)
If it’s Amber who was in control the whole night of the convenience store, it’s the same anger and violence issues she’s been uncomfortable with through the comic, the same ones that led her to punch Blaine in the dorm and flip a table at Ethan. If it’s AG, it’s the issues that led to her becoming a campus superhero. But neither of them is truly unable to control those impulses. They’re not destined to become Blaine. They need some better coping mechanisms and weren’t given anything but violence in the wake of the convenience store (self-defense classes, thanks Blaine,) but they’re both capable of being something else. There being an alter who’s only violence would be dangerously close to the Scary Dangerous DID person, IMO, and would imply they are in some ways destined for violence. I say fuck that.
I bet Blaine’s abuse was the catalyst that started (or worsened) Amber’s dissociation. Maybe she fantasized about kicking his ass and freeing herself and her mother from his abuse, but could never act that out herself, so Amazi-Girl formed out of those fantasies. As time went on, and she heard nothing but how meek and worthless “Amber” was, she put any positivity she internalized into Amazi-Girl instead.
The convenience store robbery was a wedge that further drove the split, but we haven’t seen Amazi-Girl assert herself in any blue flashbacks yet AFAIK, so she may have only had the opportunity once they had the freedom of on-campus college life.
It must be the weirdest goddamn feeling to ride shotgun in your own body though.
(Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a mental health expert, nor do I have DID. I’m just a dummy writing words under a comic strip on the Internet. This is just my take, however wrong it is.)
So, I am not an expert, but had a friend a while back who shared a brain with multiple identities. The way it was described, they would take turns “driving” the body, and would discuss stuff with each other internally, and sometimes I’d ask a question of a specific identity and they’d take a moment to do the asking. At the same time, they do seem to all be able to “listen” together, if the identities are interested in listening (one was very “not interested” most of the time).
So, Regalli’s description of the meta-narrative history aside (I don’t know), AG probably doesn’t necessarily remember it herself, but may have a memory of Amber telling her, or vice versa. So it’s “sharing memories” in the more common sense of talking about photos with your mom or whatever, if they’re not both “listening” for the relevant events.
Disclaimer that I’m basically summarizing hearsay-at-best, here. Other people with more direct experience have also made comments to similar effect in the past, though.
We actually saw Amber get a rush of AG’s memories during the kidnapping.
DID system here!
While it’s typically the original function of DID to separate out memories so the host (person handling day to day life stuff) isn’t overwhelmed by them, if the host develops good relationships and communication with their alters, they can often choose to share memories with each other when they are ready. It’s different for different systems of course. We don’t have much amnesia anymore (had more as a kid) but we do have a thing called emotional amnesia, which is where you remember what happened but it feels like it didn’t happen to *you* or it feels farther away somehow. This is how our day to day information is stored, and then occasionally when it becomes relevant to our processing, someone will share a piece of a trauma memory and it will enter this sort of shared memory.
I recently discovered that two sisters I chat to on line actually share a body. I’ve found it fascinating how they can hold a quick fire chat with each other, on separate accounts, with each person’s writing being distinctly different. One such conversation revolved around how one sister was in pain while the other was saying she was happily pain free. I have no idea how that works. But this rapid shifting in who is in control at any given time does take a lot of energy apparently and recently, after having a covid jab, they opted to leave one of them in control because they were feeling really bad from the side effects.
Then there was the curious case of the older sister having a series of bad nightmares and she ran away for the better part of a week. The younger sister, who we’ve teased about being only seven years old as opposed to her older sibling who is 23, was suddenly left entirely alone to run everything and had no idea where her sister had gone. Again, how that is possible I do not know. But she was left to figure out things like making breakfast, going to bed and then not sleeping for 14 hours like she was used to.
I understand that each system tends to be unique and in this one both girls regret the lose of the other two they once shared with but, with amnesia leading to loss of such things as their own birthday, it was a choice that had to be made. Regretfully I never got to know them but it has been wonderful seeing Hiki’s personality blossom as she becomes more confident and accepts that yes, we love her too.
I am slightly confused by what you mean in the entire last paragraph, I feel it lacks some context (is Hiki the result of the integration of two other alters that were previously unmentioned???) But I can explain a couple of things.
The pain difference is caused by different parts of the brain actually being used by alters. What this results in is that the way the body functions actually changes depending on who is in control so one alter’s control has the brain sending out pain signals while the other’s doesn’t. This can affect how muscles are used as well, hence different vision for instance as eye muscles move differently and the immune system as allergies can differ between alters as well.
The ‘running away’ part doesn’t make sense in a physical world when sharing a body obviously, but what it likely means is that the brain made it up for backstory to explain a dormancy, it happened in an Inner World (a mental space people with DID and OSDD can have or create which may be small like a room or massive like an actual running world) or the older sister ‘ran away’ in the sense of being too ‘mentally distant’ to be heard. All of these would result in the older sister being unreachable and her location unknown to the younger sister.
Like, I suppose a way to visualise that it is like if you had a friend Mack sitting right next to you that was staring out the window. His mind is a million miles away. He doesn’t snap to attention when you poke or prod him or call to him. His mind is literally somewhere else, you don’t know where. Then a week later, he walks down the stairs to greet you in the kitchen and you’re like ‘Where were you!?’ You knew physically where he was the whole time. But his mind was somewhere else and unreachable and you don’t know where it was, just that it was neither here nor near for a time.
I think they meant there were originally four sisters, but two left because they were causing Hiki and her other sister to lose too much time/information. It sounds like the elder sister still here usually takes care of things and Hiki only recently had to start growing up a little bit when big sister ran away (was unavailable) for a week.
Yes, thank you that is indeed what I meant. And thank you Sam for the explanation, it makes a lot more sense now. 🙂
memories in a system are kinda tricky, and also kinda depend on what type you have (DID, OSDD-1A, OSDD-1B) they can be passed around, role changes can bring you “closer” to a certain memory, some are shared, some aren’t. it’s really complicated and mostly intuitive and also every system is different
Mob membership officially confirmed.
Asher’s mob connections were confirmed literally years ago, but sure, “officially confirmed” for the Nth time 😛
mob membership is an opt in, you have to confirm it every month or they will let you e-mails like “we miss you, when do you come back?”, “special offer for old customers: two crooked policemen for the price of a loyal henchperson” or “we inform you that your membership has been resiliated and you cannot benefit from any of you past mob advantage, please note that the mob card is the mob property and would you fail to return it -with port- the mob would feel free to take illegal action for the prejudice”
I wonder if DID people get different turn ones depending on the personality? Who knows, maybe what rustles Amber’s jimmies may not work for Amazi-Girl.
Both of them found/find Danny hot and Mike, but yeah, hard to say.
In that same breath, wasn’t AG repulsed when Walky told her about hooking up with Amber?
I think she was more repulsed at Amber hooking up with the twin brother of the criminal who took Ethan hostage. Walky’s looks and physique probably didn’t play into it.
I’m not actually sure if she knew about that at the time.
Since she didn’t share Amber’s memories, she apparently didn’t know that Walky and Dorothy had broken up, which might be part of the reason AG called it a garbage fire.
She didn’t actually seem repulsed by Walky or even mad at him though.
Admittedly not an expert by any stretch, but I believe alters who are part of the same system can and do sometimes have different gender identities, so different sexual orientations wouldn’t surprise me.
My two friends are different genders, one is bi and one is enby. Fortunately, they both agree they are trans and female.
I’ve been told by people with that condition that they had alters with whole different sexual orientations, so a mere difference in tastes is certainly possible.
Yup! Different sexual orientations and different genders are very common within DID systems.
Yeah. My boyfriend at one point was friends with a girl with DID who’s alter had a crush on him, but the main identity had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested. They, with the boyfriend, ended up offering if he wanted to date the alter (before we started dating) but the situation felt too messy for him.
we all have different sexualities in here, and preferences and stuff
So the lesson is to do crimes when you’re young, it will automatically add at least a 2 to your sexiness rating when you grow up.
How much do I get for swiping some candy from a gas station when I was 5?
Anyone get stabbed?
With a rap sheet like that, I assume you’re either a Chippendale or a Playboy Centerfold, depending on your gender. Maybe both?
Not nearly androgynous enough to have a shot at both, unfortunately
That puts you in mischievous scamp territory — technically a crime, but a cute harmless one.
To complete the program, you have to leverage that into a child star status, where you are typecast as a little kid always getting into trouble and given a stern but loving talking-to from your sitcom parents, and you pout a bit and nod in understanding because you really are such an innocent kid and you only did a bad thing because you didn’t understand it was bad.
When you hit your late teens, that’s when you turn into 100% sex.
~chiiiild staaaar~
Funny, I remember my 5th grade teacher telling my class she did exactly that when she was a child!
Also, great to see you Lua Milu! Mind if I call you that?
Also, why do you think it sounds better in French? Are you French or something?
Sorry I just checked last strip!
Lua is both Portuguese for moon and a programming language. Thought it was cool, but okay.
no big, i don’t mind it really, but it doesn’t feel organic
One song i’m slightly obsessed with these days is called “Lua” =)
also your 5th grade teacher did exactly what?!
Steal candy from a convenience store when she was 5 or something. Just to be fair, she thought she was paying for it with a marble. And she actually told that to my whole class.
aw come on, that’s just the cutest story though XD
also how do you keep answering so fast, do you have some sort of smart browser add-on or are you just constantly refreshing.
I just use the “find in page” feature common to nearly any web browser.
All I got for crimes so far is a few speeding tickets years ago.
*somewhere a radio is playing “Smooth Criminal”*
on the hacked muzak, obviously
What happened to your Muzak?
It was hacked.
1) This isn’t campus.
2) They’re out of doors.
3) I’m flexible when it comes to soudtrack delivery systems.
*soundtrack*
“By all accounts”, hmm. I forget, do we know yet if Amber and Amazi-Girl are straight or bi/pan? Kind of interpreting that as her talking about Sal’s hotness on a “it is known” level, rather than her own interest, so, straight presumably.
Of course, being bi or pan doesn’t mean automatically having everyone be your type. Dating would get a whole lot simpler if it worked like that.
Christ, I know that all too well
I’m pretty sure Amber is straight, not sure about AG.
we’ve only ever seen evidence of straightness, but being straight doesn’t blind anyone to what’s considered conventionally attractive in their own gender. if it did, i could have avoided a lot of emotional issues growing up.
Being 0 on the Kinsey scale really does blind people like that. It’s a rare condition, though; most people who consider themselves straight don’t seem to know it exists.
I’m wondering if Sal suspects what happened with Asher regarding Blaine.
I don’t know is she suspects that, but when you tell someone you left the mob, but also stole a bunch of money from them that kind of implies you’re still connected to them. When someone tells you there a thief that’s a very viable reason to be suspicious of them.
I’m wondering if she suspects something is up. She’s known he took the money for a long time and didn’t seem to care at the time.
I can’t remember offhand if Sal knew Blaine was a mob stooge (at least pre-kidnapping, I can see either Amber or AG telling her after he died because of how it tied into Mike/their suspicions,) but if she does I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s got a suspicion.
It can’t have gotten out in the news because that’s what killing him was meant to avoid, so Amber or AG would have to tell her, but that’s not impossible. She just needs something to link Blaine to the mob to make her wonder.
Yeah, my only question is if they told her and when. (Also everyone who was present in the basement initially heard Amber tell Ross who Blaine was, so even if Amber or AG weren’t trying to process the death stuff, I could see either of them telling Sal figuring the secret was already out and Sal should be looped in with the rest of their circle.)
Alternatively, Walky might have told her. He would’ve heard her say that. It’s also possible Joyce did, though I find that less likely.
Agreed. I could also see Walky hesitating to tell Sal without checking with Amber, but the mobster element of it all definitely adds some extra terror to ‘dude killed my roommate and then kidnapped me along with our friends and killed his accomplice in front of us.’ So much mortal peril there!
But yeah, while we haven’t heard her say she knows about the Blaine-mob connection, I’d be surprised if someone didn’t tell her in the aftermath. Especially since, as you said, Sal knew about his stealing from Gramps and seemed pretty okay with everything when they talked directly, so her apparent suspicion here is a shift. ‘Suspects Asher isn’t as out of the life as he claimed/wanted to be’ would be a good reason to worry about your surrogate sister dating him.
I forget is the Amber/Amazi-Girl situation a CW’s The Flash Killer Frost situation where the two personalities swap in and out to share the body and have their own memories and experiences or is it just one singular personality now?
It wasn’t at first, but slowly over the first arc Amber and AG separated into completely unique personalities. I think AG stopped sharing memories with Amber around the Ryan stabbing incident. Although now I don’t know if they share memories of if they have like a journal but they apparently at least keep each other up to date on things.
I recommend reading this scene here between Danny and Amber/AG possibly? I think this is the moment she started realizing the split was more severe than she thought or at least the first time she vocalized it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/beensomethin/
Also this is the first time Amber realized AG was doing things without sharing the experience with her.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/douche/
And it’s only gotten more pronounced since then. I’d say Amber needs professional help , but she seems to function fine and lot of the “professionals” in DoA are pretty incompetent.
Also even in the real world, current psychological and psychiatric theory about DID and related conditions is… uh, not great. Very real potential to make things worse, even. But she could try and seek out a support community of some sort online, which might be much more helpful.
Though they reconciled enough during the kidnapping sequence that they’re at least communicating. We haven’t seen enough since then to know if they’re sharing memories I think.
They are two separate people. They sometimes talk to each other, but last we knew they don’t directly share memories.
AFAIK, there’s no official Word of God on how it works in Amber/AG’s specific case. We’re mostly just Ouija-boarding it strip by strip and hoping Willis has done enough research to be sensitive and not-inaccurate.
Since the kidnapping they’ve been cooperating. I believe it starts here (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/predator/), where Amazi-Girl starts to get the crucial memories through to Amber’s awareness. As the arc goes on there’s more.
I think what you’re trying to describe is Dissociative Identity Disorder. I don’t know that Willis has officially confirmed it but comments have been suspecting it and we and a few other DID systems have definitely chimed in to say these patterns are familiar AF to us.
I don’t think Willis will ever confirm that. Not saying it’s impossible to depict extreme psychological abnormalities accurately, but it’s a pretty dangerous line to cross if you don’t have first hand or professional experience with. Dissociation in particular has this issue but I’ve seen media fuck up depicting even more common things such as bipolar or depression. It’s just not a can of worms you want to open.
DID is also just generally a really poorly understood condition, if I recall right.
Man…maybe if I’d committed more crimes in my younger days I would be WAY sexier.
Nah, I’ve been there and look at me: I’m still ugly as dogshit.
P.S. No offense to any dogshit out there, I know being compared to me isn’t favorable.
Should have shoplihted more art pins back in the day.
I stole Yugi-oh cards.
Just as good.
You monster! Don’t you know that some of those cards sell for tens of cents nowadays? Tens, I tell you!
That’s always in the top 5 in those clickbait listicles with titles “22 Things Old People Have Regrets About”.
Not having stolen enough as a child to be sexier?
i mean, i would assume, i never click on those. i do click on titles like “17 Inanimate Objects That Look Like They Have Faces”. That stuff makes me ridiculously happy
Quite wonderful examples of Ramsey Theory if I don’t say so myself!
By the way Milu, just curious, what time is it where you are?
neat video!
though a more economical explanation i think is that being very social animals, we are hardwired to pick out anything remotely resembling a face within our optical input. so, it’s not so much a case of, our brains will accidentally see faces out of the sheer mass of data available, as, our brains are constantly trying to see faces everywhere, all the time. we’re all about that face, ’bout that face =P
anyway, at the beep it will be 1:11 am =)
I know right? Psychologists have even uncovered a subconscious heuristic where human brains automatically form impressions on personal characteristics from faces (like leadership capacity, trustworthiness, etc.) within mere milliseconds of seeing them. Some experts have suggested that this mechanism is even powerful enough to predict the outcome of elections! Oh so fascinating!
By the way, is it rather arid today, or is it just me? I’ve had my third iced coffee already…
To be fair, elections are ridiculously easy to predict. With something as simple as predicting the tallest candidate, you’ll get it right a surprisingly large part of the time. Restrict it to presidential elections and the accuracy is uncanny.
I’m excited to see where this goes, since Asher’s one of the more interesting characters running right now.
He’s sincerely remorseful and clearly wants to be a decent dude, but he’s struggling with that due to a combination of external pressures and character flaws. That’s a dynamic character that could go in a lot of interesting directions
He may want to be a decent guy, but other than telling Walky to tell Sal he’s sorry and then telling Sal he was sorry when she came to him, I haven’t seen much remorse. Doesn’t prevent him from wanting to do better, tho.
Hmm, so they’re fully aware about his family’s mob influence, that’s good. Though I don’t entirely trust him yet I’m not going to write him off just yet…. Do you know what would be funny? If Walky was also fully aware of Asher’s family and he mentions it in passing to Jennifer and she freaks out about it and he’s like “I thought you already knew? Like seeing pass his history and stuff.”
Pure sex is overrated. Now impure sex…
is also overrated.
But not by much.
When you’re messy enough to scope out how messy other ppl are. It’s like when Highlanders sense the quickening
“So, basically, you don’t trust Asher because you cannot trust yourself?”
Bingo.
And I think she’s not wrong.
“Many accounts… including my own… haha, not that I wouldn’t… unless…?”
My thoughts exactly, and my memory might suck big time but I’m ALMOST sure she was Bi in the Walkyverse so.
(IS THIS SHIP AFLOAT YET?)
If there is anything I’ve learned from the Internet, it’s that shipping does not require afloatness.
Huh. He’s supposed to be hot? I just thought he was supposed to be skeevy… Just when you think you’ve wrapped your head around what is generally considered to be attractive in men…
I’m sure there’s someone out there whose ultimate turn-on is the “skeletal rotting crackhead” look.
Yeah, this has been remarked on a couple of times
His history and mob ties are the skeevy parts
Would Jennifer hang out with him if he wasn’t hot?
I’m assuming Asher’s supposed to be hot, though I wouldn’t know personally since I’m not attracted to other men and I’m not any good at telling if other people find me attractive either.
Word of Amber says that Asher is hot.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/what-2/
Word of Sal, too.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/check-3/
Me thinks the AG doth protest too much with that “By many accounts…. []
I would’ve thought Amazi-Girl would be more suspicious towards Asher. He emancipated himself… How? Everyone who Should Know (except of Jennifer?) about these details oughta be rightfully distrustful of the dude. saying “I don’t do that anymore” referring to the mob (and dating someone that in my opinion has growing shady af post-time skip) doesn’t correlate with directly calling a hit – No matter how much were relieved to know Blaine is GONE.
AG isn’t a vigilante anymore though, so it’s none of her business.
Also, calling Jennifer “shady af” is a bit much. She’s a neurotic teenager who’s known to have serious psychological problems, major lifestyle changes are normal and to be expected.
I legitimately hope whatever changes Jennifer has made during the timeskip are for the best. Because she was in a bad place last time we saw her, and every time she hits that “reset” button it’s the same old same old of wanting things to be like in High School but before the DIU.
It’s a noted pattern and that’s one of the reasons some of us are worried she’s gonna get in even worse trouble now she’s dating the wayward grandson of THE Mob Boss.
Jennifer wasn’t in a bad place the last we saw her before the timeskip. The last we saw her before the timeskip she was actually going to therapy and stopping the drinking and was ready to do some recovering. Did someone mind erase a whole bunch of people to forget the end of Jennifer’s plotline before the time skip??? Because this has come up a few times now as if she was still in complete denial and spiraling then when she wasn’t. She was getting help and was moving towards a better place.
I think the confusion may be that that started (mostly offscreen) shortly before the timeskip, and I think actually going to therapy started after her ‘introduce Forest Quad to her girlfriend’ meeting that turned into ‘attempted self-sabotage with Forest Quad that turned into Wait Shit that DUI was actually REALLY BAD processing.’ Which was worrisome, to be sure! (Not 100% on the timing though, she could have started therapy just before it.)
She reconciled with Ruth in Vote For Robin, promising to stop drinking and go to therapy. As soon as the next day in Birthday Pursuit we say the withdrawal effects. The next day was the Forest Quad thing. We basically didn’t see Jennifer the following day, since it was the kidnapping. It was the day after that she mentioned going to therapy.
So the actual first therapy session was probably after Forest Quad, but the intention was a couple days earlier and the drinking had stopped before it.
And yes, it’s commonly forgotten that she made any progress at all, even by people who bring up their last fights before she did. It’s really kind of weird.
Seriously, her last strips pre-skip sounded like she was genuinely starting to gain self-awareness.
Amazing Girl had a horrible father and she emancipated to him and fight against him. She has to believe to Asher because she see her in him.
Me thinks the AG doth protest too much with that “By many accounts…. [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RH7wgLu6_c" title="Careless Whisper starts playing on the distance through the hacked PA system."]
I would’ve thought Amazi-Girl would be more suspicious towards Asher. He emancipated himself… How? Everyone who Should Know (except of Jennifer?) about these details oughta be rightfully distrustful of the dude. saying “I don’t do that anymore” referring to the mob (and dating someone that in my opinion has growing shady af post-time skip) doesn’t correlate with directly calling a hit – No matter how much were relieved to know Blaine is GONE.
Goddammit, my HTML is rusty. Can some Mod/Admin delete the
sparemangled the worst? ;A;that will never happen. your horrifically mangled post will remain undead forever, and never be allowed the sweet reprieve of eternal oblivion.
they haunt us all, the HTML fuckups, the posted-in-the-wrong-place’s, the hit-post-by-mistake’s.
they haunt. us all.
The best part is, HTML was designed to be “human readable”; whatever that means….
It’s…. Not that hard, I promise. If you stick to the text-images-link holy trinity, at least. But like, my first home was Livejournal and I had some skills back in the day, lmao.
Plain old HTML started off innocently enough, but I think “human readable” got thrown out the window when everyone decided to nest a million CSS-defined DIVs together as formatting. (Never mind HTML 5 and all its special effects, or that time in the early aughts where designers thought building entire sites in Flash was a good idea…)
Just to be fair, using Flash was only a mistake in hindsight. Nobody could have predicted how vulnerable it would be, let alone its shutdown 20 years later.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we would have seen early-2000s treasures like AlbinoBlacksheep, Homestar Runner, Weebl’s Stuff, and Newgrounds without Flash.
The mistake was building entire websites inside Flash, including all the navigation elements and body text. It was never meant to be a load-bearing part of a site’s structure.
Building entire websites in Flash was a great idea. The problem was the implementation of Flash.
I can’t do that D: I have so many haunting mistakes the rattle of their chains makes me feel like Dickens’ Scrooge. It’s loud in here!
I’ve got at least a few HTML fuckups haunting my past comments, and also some typos that I wish I could’ve edited.
AmaziGirl debates internally whether to reveal her and Jennifer’s secret plan to get Asher’s confession and bring him to justice.
Have we considered the possibility that Asher might already know that Jennifer is Mike?
Asher saw through the disguise the same night that Mike/Jennifer discovered the scars from the operation which transplanted Asher’s grandfather’s brain into his grandson’s body.
It was truly a Holloween night to remember.
Are you saying that Asher has two brains now??
Who let Franken Fran in?
No, no. Asher’s brain was replaced by that of his grandfather. Both now know each others secret, know that each other knows, but neither can prove it, and so the charade continues. Now they play five-dimensional chess with each others emotions. For Mike/Jennifer the endgame is Asher/grandfather destroyed by his own actions. For Asher/grandfather the endgame is Amazigirl. And each knows that when the game is finally over, they will miss the ultimate opponent.
In the meantime, the sex is great.
I’m rooting for an Asher redemption story personally.
Also Billie and him until they break up so it can be Asher and Sal.
Asher and Sal??! Sure there’s some folks who don’t like Sal here, but I wouldn’t suspect even them of wishing THAT upon Sal. There is a huge mass of toxic baggage that would come with Sal shacking up with the guy that got her arrested by the police, stabbed, sent to reform school and separated from her twin brother during their teenage years.
Sal doesn’t seem to only blame Asher, she seems to be aware of her responsibility in the event. But hanging out with the guy you were with when that went down is a recipe for recidivism.
Asher is only responsible (partly) for the police element. The stabbing was Amber (with some “help” from Blaine), sent away to school was Sal’s parents. Not saying that Asher and Sal would make a great pair, just that there are a lot of parties involved than just Asher.
You could argue partial responsibility for the whole set, since it all hinged on her being caught by the police.
I disagree with that logic. She could have been caught by the police and not stabbed. She could have been caught by the police and not sent off to boarding school. If police hadn’t been alerted at that minute, she still might have been caught later and sent away, could have had the rest of the robbery play out differently, etc.
Things are always going to follow other things and be impacted by them. I draw the line more at a more direct impact than some people, but I see it going into blaming people who aren’t responsible/are victims often enough to be opposed to the logic that would put the stabbing and being sent away on Asher.
Don’t forget that the whole reason she was at the gas station in the first place was because she tagged along with Asher and his friends while they robbed at least one other convenience store.
The clerk also gave Sal the opportunity to escape through the back door “so this can all be forgotten by morning”, then she doubled down by grabbing Ethan.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/siiiventeen/
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
The whole reason that Amber was at the gas station in the first place was because Mike blackmailed Blaine into it.
Looks like Amber wouldn’t say no to a Walkerton sandwitch
Amazing girl is more Amber that we can see.
Sal can’t admit Amazi Girl is right. But her diffidence is perfectly understandable.
Couldn’t find this asked upthread (and probably not that important anyway), but is it bothering anyone else that Amazi-Girl refers to herself as being in the convenience store instead of Amber? I’m thinking it’s a typo on Willis’ part since nothing about that makes sense to me. (If so, maybe he can fix it when the storyline is collected.)
They were both there.
Both of them were there because that was before they began to split, right? Am I understanding correctly?
Alternatively, the split was already there but they hadn’t yet recognized it or taken on their current roles.
^That’s my personal take, particularly since AFAIK most people like Amber’ve already split (or in the case of multiple alters, split for the first time) by the time their age has hit the double-digits.
At the convenience store, before her father’s emotional abuse she was fearful, timid and frozen. Afterwards, she was focused and goal driven. In hindsight, it could have been the result of handing off control from one personality to another.
I love Sal wearing her hair curly now. ♥
It’s not quite as curly as her natural hair, though, unless the differences are just down to Art Evolution. Not sure if that’s a conscious choice on Sal’s part (like she’s not quite ready to fully quit straightening it, what with all the social stigma she’s grown up with) or if her hair just hasn’t fully gone back to its natural state yet since whenever she decided to quit.
Well, if she let it go full Donna Summer it would consume every panel she appears in.
Maybe she just stopped flat-ironing it, but still uses the same shampoo and conditioner as before which leaves it wavy.
Mob == from mafia.
Am I right?
I admit, I kinda ship Sal and Asher now.
Which of them do you hate?
Amazigirl needs to be reborn again to take on evil!!