I….. you know what, I went through this phase. It’s not the best coping mechanism, but when you’re that quagmired in self-loathing and social anxiety you cope however you need to until you’re able to find better healthier ways to deal.
On the one hand, it’s nice to see Amber smiling. On the other hand, she’s watching her ex snog the dead friend she regularly hallucinates and has outloud conversations with.
…Which is fine, I just think Danny should have asked first before walking up and smooching Amber’s delusion. Luckily, she taking it well. Remember folks, consent is important, even with hallucinations.
Somehow this feels like the crackiest of all crack ships, despite aligning with canon sexuality. Not sure why. Maybe because Danny was among the few who made no excuses for him?
Kinda wonder how that interaction would’ve went. We know Danny did not like Mike and I don’t see Mike as so desirable that he could easily overcome that hurdle.
I would admittedly read that AU fic. Of course, Mike WAS capable of being a lot more charming when he tried and hadn’t interacted with Danny nearly as much yet, but Danny hung out with Ethan and Amber enough that I suspect he’d have heard enough stories to see through it.
I don’t think it ends in makeouts, though. Danny does not strike me as one in favor of hatefucks.
His literal first interaction with Danny was to lie to him and tell him that he was dating Dorothy. I don’t see Danny giving Mike much chance to come back from that.
Shipping someone alive with someone who’s dead (in a universe where I’m pretty sure vampires and other types of undead don’t exist) does seem like a very crack ship to me.
I mean the core problem of living in any form of fictional existence, instead of your now, is that for every step you take there is a separate step that you could have been taking a different path you could have walked.
So if you choose to live in fantasy you don’t live your life. You just live in a dream.
At the end of that road lies waking up with nothing but the memory and the wish that something like that could have been.
No. At the end of a fictional road there was no movement you alone have the memory. At the end of a shared world you have memory of changing it and the world changed.
One lets you affect your outer world one of them closes you off from. Both of them you are still operating within your memories but one of them allows you to acknowledge the world in a way in which you affect it leaving you with something more than just memories.
Fictional delusional living the reward can only be things that you think about and you spent time sitting around thinking about them not thinking about the reality of your now.
Whereas if one bases their understanding on things that are in a shared reality of “now” you can have all of the memories of moving and interacting with those other entities who actually exist in your now plus an existent now that has been affected you.
Literally living in a fictional world in your head takes up time that you could have been using to think about your actuality and now meaning you are at a loss of times in which you have spent making actions on your actual world by deciding to live in fiction.
Not that I haven’t done so in response to circumstance myself but I avoid it as a last course of action because it paralyzes me from being able to affect my world.
Very thorough. However, to some degree we will always have to fantasize or find some means of escape from reality to feel satisfied / happy.
For if you expect this unjust, crude, indifferent universe to magically support us in achieving our preconceived notions of ideal lives… well, you might as well expect a bush to grow you a fully assembled hair-dryer.
Now that we see that Amber can do stuff like this with this internal Brain Mike of hers, does that make it more likely that he’s a Tulpa or an introject? Or both?
It can be possible for one headmate to temporarily think really strongly and ‘force’ someone else to mime something out in headspace. In my experienced it doesn’t really stick more than a second or two, though? It’s almost impossible to actually make someone do something they don’t want to, which is exactly why old-style integration would often ultimately fall apart.
(SOURCE: Married to a system. Or rather, some of the people in a system. It’s Complicated™️.)
Tulpa is a term where the meaning – and the autonomy implied by it – can vary from person to person. It’s not a scientific term, so I’ve seen a lot of debate on what actually constitutes a tulpa. And personally, I don’t think it’s useful to nitpick and try to label ~what type~ a headmate is, anyway. People are people. (Imagination Danny™️ is undoubtedly just a very temporary mental image and not his own person, and functions just as a visual gag here LOL.)
And I tend to be pretty anti-integration* so I’m probably the wrong person to ask about that, haha. I’ve just never personally known a system it worked for. I know they’re out there! But it used to be seen by therapists as the goal every system should strive for, and was often coercive. So I don’t have experience with that myself, and can’t really answer that question. :C
* (The historical definition of ‘integration’, anyway! Nowadays it’s more meant like “can you all function together as a group and get along? yeah? COOL”. Which seems like a healthy goal to work for. :D)
Also whatever the Mike that Amber is interacting with is, she can still have just overlaid that momentarily with a fantasy about Danny and the Original Mike. So briefly there were two different Mike constructs extant. I think!
Okay, I feel like this “tulpa” thing has come up a few times but I’m not about to scour recent strips’ comments for specific citations. The only other times I’ve seen or heard the term before have been in horror stories or other supernatural settings. I didn’t do any sort of “deep dive”, because it’s 7am and no, but it feels like there’s a negative connotation? Or is this like Nadine from Arthur?
Alas, there are many fictional Makos. The Mass Effect one, Sailor Jupiter… and yeah, The Worst Mako. (Though I will say straight up skipping the infuriating stuff I heard secondhand happens in Book Two because I dropped early and only picked it up after hearing Books Three and Four were good? Definitely helps!)
Good rule of thumb, if people are discussing two characters who had previously dated the same person hooking with each other, and people start talking about Mako, it is always the Mako from Korra.
Amber, I feel like you need to re-evaluate your… basically everything in your life. Relatedly, finding out that your friend/ex has(or had) a thing going with them and then not addressing it, also needs re-evaluation.
In case I don’t come here tommorrow, I just wanna say that I’m REALLY REALLY SORRY if anything I wrote last strip upset or triggered or offended anyone
I just want so desperately to be understood and I’m just didn’t know what else to do
I wasn’t too present there, mostly I’m just like ‘yeah nope, there are things I defend Amber on but this ain’t one of them, stop shipping your friends Amber, especially not with dead friends.’
The last panel is funny in a morbid way, though. Excellent strip, infuriating Amber behavior.
Yeeep. Didn’t read it myself, but we are no strangers to the Webcomic About Trauma sometimes leading to discussions of our own traumas around these parts. (Or sometimes secondhand experiences.)
It’s impossible to speak on behalf of everyone, of course, so nobody can be sure of that… but I think you made it clear that you have no problem with neurodivergence in any form, so it’s not offensive at all. I’m just sad that you had that experience, and I completely understand that “autism” is often used in that infantilizing manner. I do technically have a diagnosis of “high-functioning autism”, although I think I actually have ADHD and a severe lack of self-governance (can’t convince myself to set meaningful life goals, and have impulse control issues in times of stress that sometimes result in self-harm, usually with a pencil…). As I’ve come to understand “neurodivergence” as a widely used term, it does feel like a more appropriate label than autism. Sometimes I feel like the problems are all my fault because I’m not classically asperger’s/autistic… especially with life-goal avoidance, which feels just lazy, but I can’t figure out how to change my outlook and it just depresses me to think about it and furthers my avoidance tendencies…
…but anyway i’m pretty sure you’re fine <3
Not gonna lie, the way in which Amber treats guys and their sex lives (especially gay/bisexual guys) is actually super creepy. Like, imagine I went around telling all my female friends how hot it would be if they made out.
I mean she’s mostly just talking to herself. They can’t fault you for things in your head! (And I’ve totally had female friends I thought would look cute together. Not hot but definitely cute.)
It’s also worth noting that Danny and Ethan aren’t just her friends but also her Exes so it’s not like she doesn’t already think of them in a sexual context.
I mean it definitely comes across in the first instance of her saying that it’s more of a joke. Like “Y’know me, Ethan. My imagination might run wild with that”. The fact that she’s actually doing it is weird but it’s mostly all in her own head. I guess we can argue over how inappropriate that is but I’m not exactly a beacon of morality.
See the problem with this comment section is that…me and my friends are really raunchy around each other. We just…always have been. I can’t disagree with people who hate this sorta thing but I also have a lot of friends who are like this and it’s not like…a thing. Hell it might be a feeling of trying to inject some “normalcy” if this is the kinda person you are and they know you to be.
But I rarely speak my mind on that kinda thing cuz I’m sure people have way different hangups than I do. And maybe my reaction to these things is outdated. Who knows. Such is the quiet horror of navigating the modern world.
Don’t mind me. I’m just a neurotic, socially challenged mess who calls it a win if I discover I have low-key aphrodisiac powers. If I can’t keep up a conversation with them, at least I could make them happy some other way.
I was similar with my friends as a teen- we cuddle-piled and made shippy-jokes about each other and genuinely confused a lot of people. There are a couple of male friends who got joked about a bit too much (imo in a not-great way a la Amber) they didn’t encourage it at all, but also joined in on the jesting sometimes. The joke she made is a joke *we* would have made if things were awkward because shockingly we (and she) were awkward teenagers who hadn’t figured out how to interact in a less cringey way. And most of the time you learned not to respond to serious expressions of pain (even when it’s dressed up as awkward teenage angst) by fucking up every now and then and going into a lil ol shame spiral that lasts a couple of days/years.
I think she’s totally trying to inject normalcy into their interaction by falling back on good-ol self-deprecation (her first iteration) followed by doubling down because Ethan didn’t offer the response she expected, followed by another reiteration out of shock/realisation.
Then in this strip she’s still using fantasy to lean on instead of dealing with the fall out of her real relationships, although she (Mike) realises that there is an issue with her substituting reality with fantasy.
Saying it out loud is indeed was hurtful (even if that wasn’t the intention) and Amber hasn’t been a good friend to Ethan. But sexual images that happen inside your own head isn’t the kind of thing I would be using the word “victim” for, like I’ve seen thrown around.
Maybe it’s because I’m not from the USA. All the way down here in Chile (a conga line that wants to pass as a country) we’re pretty raunchy and badmouthed even in casual conversation, which… Also helps fine-tune the “this is someone I shouldn’t be doing this with” verbal filter/boundaries and other contextual stuff. I’m all for consent – And Ethan has had no problem talking about sex with her before. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the “trying to inject some normalcy”. I also don’t think there’s an easy on/off switch to stop seeing a love interest as a sexual human being the second they become an ex.
The thing that she HAS to stop doing is insisting on this – Time has passed, trauma has happened, consent to speak like this has been strictly withdrawn. And the thing she SHOULD do is go to therapy to get better coping mechanisms, because seriously. Erotic thought-crime, tho… I wouldn’t go grab the pitchforks for that one.
You’re raunchy with your friends because you’ve established that social boundary, and you wouldn’t act differently to someone outside of that boundary.
Ethan is someone Amber’s been Like This towards the whole series, it’s an accepted part of their boundaries for each other.
agree with WanderingLynx here; this may not be a particularly healthy coping mechanism, but I don’t think it’s really hurting Ethan here since it is an established part of their relationship. if he’d told her he was uncomfortable, then of course she should avoid telling him what shipping she’s doing in her head–but he hasn’t and it probably doesn’t bother him.
Yeah, Amber dropped Ethan’s perspective from consideration as soon as the downstairs brain took helm control. That’s exactly what he was getting at; she’s not a very good friend to him, using him as a shoulder to cry on when she needs it, but rarely reciprocating that support.
Yes, in this instance she is talking to herself, but there have been multiple instances of her saying stuff like this to the people she is fantasizing about. Just yesterday, her response to Ethan talking about how much he hated Danny was basically “okay, but what if you fucked him?”
I mean, imagine if there was a scene where Amber was talking about her issues regarding Sal to Danny and Danny’s response was that they should lez out.
I read it as Amber (correctly) picking up that Ethan’s hurt was linked to his attraction to Danny. She phrased it awkwardly because she’s Amber, but she was essentially saying “If I didn’t know better, you’re feeling betrayed because you two had a thing going.” And when he doesn’t deny it – “I said, if I didn’t no better”.
Yeah, she phrases it in terms of slashfic, which is gross, but is also something he’d expect from her and never showed a sign of being bothered by before.
It’s not at all “but what if you fucked him”. She’s not suggesting it as a solution, but seeing that their attraction was part of the problem.
The parallel with her, Sal and Danny doesn’t make sense because attraction between her and Sal was never a part of their relationship.
Strongly agree. Thinking something is hot in the privacy of your own fap zone is one thing and totally fine. What Amber does is really gross and not okay.
Amber is being legitimately gross right now, mostly because she’s ignoring her (alleged) best friend’s emotional pain and shutdown because she wants to fantasize about people she knows fucking
Seriously. It’s even worse when youve met someone who thinks like this irl. I hope she gets the wakeup call she needs soon because this is rough to watch,
What’s she going to do about it? He obviously doesn’t want to talk to her right now. Not saying this is good but I don’t think that specifically is the problem here
Except he was talking to her about it. He mentioned getting stabbed in the back and she told him that he was talking about Danny like a jilted lover and her “slash ficcy brain” would go into overdrive.
Except she was right that he was talking about Danny like a jilted lover and I think it was her picking up on it that made him retreat, not the slash ficcy stuff. She was expecting him to tell her that she was wrong, not to run away.
It’s not that I expect Amber to fix Ethan mood, it’s that she freaking DID NOT NOTICE that there’s anything wrong with Ethan. Instead of reacting by thinking “wow he didn’t even respond to our usual banter” she’s actually doing the nasty shipping thing, meaning that yesterday she was 100% serious and not joking.
Which is so so nasty. I really thought yesterday that Amber was joking, but no, she was serious. If this is how she thinks when she’s alone, then she doesn’t see Ethan or Danny as people, she sees them as dolls she wants to mash together for her own entertainment.
Again, I must reiterate that I don’t expect Amber to even be qualified to help Ethan through his grief and isolation. What’s disgusting that she’s not reacting or even given a single indication that HER ALLEGED BEST FRIEND is suffering or even in a bad mood.
Given Amber’s current mental state, Ignoring it may legitimately be the best thing for Ethan. She’s kind of a mental Trainwreck right now, there’s NO WAY any attempt at discussing the matter with Ethan is going to end well for anybody.
Plus……. I think a lot of comments here aren’t quite taken into account that current Ethan has decided that Danny’s ill-timed comment of “dude this dude has abused two people I love and also the rest of the cast, and you’d let him mock me if I were in a coma” means stabbed in the back. And has kept thinking it for three months.
Like, Amber fucked up badly here but her options were attempting to diffuse the thing through humor and familiarity, comforting Ethan (something she lacks the spoons and the skills for without making things worse), or confronting Ethan on the “hey maybe Danny isn’t a horrible traitorous piece of turd” (which was never going to go well.)
Amber is alone right now so her options are no longer about defusing the situation through humour or confronting Ethan, it’s too late of either of those since the interaction has ended.
But what she COULD do, but it hasn’t apparently OCCURRED to her, is to be concerned with the huge change in Ethan. But the comic above shows that she was not joking or bantering yesterday, she was 100% serious and man that’s NASTY
Two comments:
(1) Totally forgot that Amber didn’t know Danny was bisexual. I gotta re-read the last few strips now.
(2) It is both hilarious and tragic that Danny and Ethan avoided acting on their mutual attraction for fear of upsetting Amber, when it turns out she probably would have been really into it.
Back in Shortpacked, Amber and Ethan did do the do. And it happened with Mike as a buffer.
Her getting into a poly sort of thing where she and Ethan aren’t fucking but have a sexual/romantic partner in common, and that partner being Danny, isn’t out of the realm of possibility. And it’d be healthier than Mike :’)
I’m still of the belief that Mike isn’t a hallucination but a representation of Amber’s visualization of her inner world, externalized for our benefit. Although, this development is a bit confusing because you can’t generally make alters do a thing in your head, they have to choose it. But then again, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to choose hallucinations either. So maybe it’s still an inner visualization, just a little more loosely defined. Or an inaccurate representation of mental health for a joke, which would not be the worst thing in this case.
I don’t think Mike is a tulpa because I’m pretty sure Mike comes from Trauma. We haven’t seen Danny outside of this moment so no way to know if he’s 3-dimensional of a person enough to be any kind of alter or just the equivalent of an NPC in the inner world– people who don’t have their own lives, emotions, thoughts and just exist to support the development of the system in the inner world.
NPC as in the non-player characters in a game. Danny here doesn’t appear to be part of Amber’s system in any way; he’s a fantasy, just like a person without DID might envision
I wonder if this “bisexual danny” revelation will cause Amber to try to seduce or start a relationship with Danny (thus putting his relationship with Sal at risk)
Because knowledge of Danny’s bisexuality is a new development. Amber is soooo infatuated with male-on-male sex that it might over-run any sort of plan to stay away. Something like “I (or amazigirl) had him before…. I can get him again… And have experiences with a guy who will indulge my fantasies”.
I can’t imagine she’s that desperate to get in on that action. Like she’s an introvert for a reason. It’s fun in her head but real life is complicated.
It’s 6 am on an all-nighter so my brain isn’t coming up with specific Dumbiverse!Amber evidence. I know it exists, alfjdka. It came up when she talked with Sal right before this :’D My memory’s refusing to cooperate. BUT! Willis is doing Walkyverse stuff again and I revisited it like, three days ago. And there’s this:
Willis did say we should “probably ignore” that last panel in the actual below-strip commentary, though.
(Not that it necessarily precludes the possibility of Amazi-Girl being non-straight. I’ve definitely heard of different alters having different orientations, and IIRC any Dumbiverse hints have been constricted to Maisie, not Amber. Though I could be wrong there.)
Stating my prediction now, because last strip a couple days ago it wasn’t relevant, but my personal stab is “Something happened over the break, moreso than just what we saw, that is behind this ‘stabbed me in the back’ comment” by Ethan.
More had to have happened with Amber and Ethan, but I honestly do buy that what we saw with Danny and Ethan is the bulk of what happened. I think that was severe enough to justify everything we’ve seen
Yeah seriously! Why is Ethan making such a big deal out of a guy he liked saying his childhood friend being in a coma is actually a good thing? Dude needs to grow up.
o3o Also while I’m here, I didn’t comment it at the time but the fact that anyone is ok with what Danny said while Mike was hospitalized is a really sad state of affairs. Like I just assumed everyone would agree that what Danny said was absolutely unacceptable. No ifs ands or buts.
It’s just not kosher to talk shit about someone who’s grievously injured. It’s quite rude. But it’s ESPECIALLY rude to talk shit about them to the grieving parties. Like. I’d second guess whether or not to talk shit to somebody about their friend in GENERAL. Let alone when one is knocking on deaths door. Hell even if Mike just broke his LEG it’d be super inappropriate.
You should say nothing.
I could understand, months after Mike’s death/if he hadn’t been injured, a very tentative ‘I didn’t like how he treated you two’ sort of discussion. Even then, it has to be VERY careful, VERY much emphasizing ‘you weren’t wrong to care about him and I didn’t wish him dead,’ and with frankly much more tact than I’d expect from someone this young unless they’re actively borrowing scripts from an abuse resource. You can’t really argue someone into recognizing their abuser is an abuser. That has to be handled delicately, slowly, and with the acknowledgement that the person kind of has to come to these conclusions themselves, and you are at best a helper on this train of thought. And it has to be handled under way less emotionally charged circumstances than ‘while he’s comatose and the person you care about is fresh from his hospital room.’ Like, you don’t even have to pretend to LIKE someone to say ‘I feel bad for you, because I know they’re meaningful to you’ to the person you DO care about. It’s not about you, it’s not even about the person who’s hurt or dead, it’s about being compassionate and not a complete dick to the person who’s grieving.
(Again, I remind the commentariat I call my late and not-remotely mourned biological grandfather the familial Blaine around here, and that comparison is one of the NICER ones he ever merited from the family at large. My parent didn’t expect the rest of the household to mourn him. They actively kept us away from him because he did not merit grandparent privileges and only barely got ‘occasional visits of filial piety’. But we all had compassion for THEM, because despite everything his death was still something they grieved, if only for the uncomplicated relationship it SHOULD have been if he weren’t a complete bastard, so we didn’t pretend to mourn him but we didn’t break out the champagne and party hats either. He was a bastard, but it’s hard to be glad a bastard’s dead when that death is making someone you love sad.)
I don’t think it’s okay, but I also don’t think he meant what everybody thinks he meant. What Ethan said was “They’re not sure he will for a while.” So I, (and apparently nobody else) interpret “Would that be so bad,” as meaning, like, would it be so bad if he took an extra couple of weeks to wake up, not would it be so bad if he died.
“Wouldn’t it be fine if he stayed in a coma longer” is still a fucked up thing to say. There’s no positive spin of this. “Wouldn’t it be nice if his leg stayed broken a little longer?” “Wouldn’t it be nice if his diarrhea lasted longer?” “Wouldn’t it be nice if his stubbed toe hurt for another week?”
Haha, don’t say that about people’s friends who are VERY visually concerned about them. Time and place, and even then it might not EVER be your place.
There’s a difference between “a positive spin” and “Danny stuck his foot in his mouth over someone who made everyone around him miserable all the time.”
Talking trash about someone in a coma to the concerned party is not “putting his foot in his mouth” Danny wouldn’t say that shit to Mike’s parents. Or maybe he would. He shouldn’t though. Mike being a bastard non-withstanding it’s an awful thing to wish on anyone and even worse of a thing to vocalize. If you’re ever in a similar situation I would really stress that you not do that. It’s…very hurtful to the people who care. That shit IS fucking rude.
He wasn’t gonna say it to Ethan either. He blabbed the first thing in his mind and apologized in the following strip’s first panel before the conversation moved onto Mike’s abuse of everyone around him and Ethan’s passive tolerance of it.
What he “wished” on Mike was asking, again completely on impulse which was followed by an apology, if it’d be so bad if it took a while for him to wake up, not that he stay out forever or god forbid he die.
I probably wouldn’t wish it on anyone because I don’t know a person who spends all their time being a horrible bastard to everyone around them for no reason.
Certainly true. Even Danny knew that, but he blurted out something he was thinking without intending to say it.
It was still a shitty thing to say, but it doesn’t make Danny the monster that some are painting him as for it. He didn’t actually want Mike dead.
I definitely don’t think Danny thought death was on the table. Like, he blurted it out, but I also genuinely think he had no conception of just how bad this was and how bad ‘staying in a coma for a few weeks’ would have been for Mike even if he had recovered. (Note: Under the circumstances? Probably pretty bad!)
However, he could very easily see that Amber and Ethan were really, really sad and worried about a longtime friend. Even if said friend was an abusive jerk, ‘staying like this for a while’ means that they’re going to spend this time being incredibly concerned for him. So, also a deeply dickish sentiment which I can see him just blurting out but should immediately have recognized the answer was ‘yes, if only because I don’t like my ACTUAL friends suffering because of this’. And instead of a quick ‘I’m sorry, we had our differences but obviously I hope he gets better, I don’t know why I said that’ and letting Ethan care about someone even if they are a dickweed, the Darth Vader analogy basically comes off as trying to argue that no, his statement was in some way justified, and also Ethan shouldn’t be so sad about this because Mike was a dick. Again, you’re not gonna argue someone out of grief, even when that grief is for an abusive jerk. Their friendship could have endured if Danny had left it at an apology, bit his tongue and let Ethan think nice things about the asshole for a bit, and saved ‘I know he got hurt saving Amber’s life, and I appreciate that, but I never liked how he treated you guys and I’m sad that it took literally dying to stop treating you guys badly’ for much, much later, probably while encouraging them to see a therapist for pre-Our Friend Died Under Fucked Up Circumstances reasons. I get that as an eighteen-year-old with foot in mouth syndrome, he doesn’t have the delicacy to handle the latter, but it doesn’t take much to recognize that sometimes, the jerkbag being hurt is a problem because it makes YOUR FRIENDS sad and you don’t like them being sad, and that ‘in the hospital while they’re coming off of visiting him’ is not a good time to debate his morality.
Well, leaving aside (because I don’t blame Danny for not knowing) that prolonged coma following brain injury is a bad, bad, bad sign: What Danny said in toto amounted to “fuck your grief, attend to me! Me! Me!” Ethan was waiting anxiously outside the hospital room of a gravely injured friend and Danny went to ask him out and got snotty when Ethan was worrying about Mike instead of him.
I’m gonna be real I’m unsure if this strip is supposed to make me laugh or extremely uncomfortable and it’s currently doing both but it doesn’t feel ok
I’m keeping the “this is going to fuel Amber’s selfloathing” from yesterday. This is a character who’s gone down on a spiral for faaaaar less, so. Pretty confident in my bet. Libido, Desire, and Kink ™ exist in a gray space that overlaps sometimes with fear and/or pain. Sometimes it’s stuff that’s literally impossible IRL, or that you think it’s hot but wouldn’t want to do in real life. Sometimes it’s about feeling in control (or letting go of it), and if there’s one thing she’s coped with baaaaadly it’s dealing with the people she’s hurt, pushed away, or in Mike’s case “failed to save him” which to her it’s the same thing as having killed him.
Human beings are complex and she compartimentalizes like she gets paid for it, so :’) And no, this is an explanation. DEF not a justification. At least this time it’s happening in her own head instead of, y’know, being said out loud. Victimless crime (?) unless you count her.
(As an aside, I idly wondered about Danny/Mike back in the day, if only because it either would’ve been a redemption ark for Mike, or the worst experience ever for Danny, or both. Which in all honesty is fun to read BECAUSE it’s not real, lol.)
… Look, I like Amber but this is the worst grav that I could’ve gotten to make this comment. Let’s re-roll and if it’s bad I’ll change back to my problematic fave Ruth ^^;;;
Sometimes I get the feeling the comment section forget that these are children in that awkward stage of social development where you’re still learning how to be a decent person mostly by making mistakes. Like, most of them have brains that have not finished developing and many have trauma-brain which can set you back further. In terms of psychosocial development most of them are still forming identities.
Like, if they were fully formed adults with the experience to know better, yeah, a lot of this would be really worrying, but for their age most of this is actually… healthy thrashing through the gunk-bog of adolescence.
I hear what you’re saying. But college students are not children. With the rare exception, they are adults. Yes, barely adults with a lot of growth and development to do, but that doesn’t make them children.
And even if they were, children are more than capable of grasping concepts like, “crafting elaborate stories of your friends in sexual scenarios is extremely inappropriate.” It might not be a common lesson, but it’s not that abstract of a concept
i think people also forget that ‘legal adult” and “emotionally and intellectually able to act as fully formed adults with mature decision-making skills” are different things. people don’t turn 18 and suddenly start being smarter about everything.
also pretty sure this sort of thing has always been relatively okay with ethan so her social understandings haven’t adjusted to his new outlook yet.
Exactly. We’re all constantly developing to keep up with our environment/role in society and this particular age group is right in the middle of adjusting to a new kind of social environment with the skills they developed as kids/young teens. Throw in Amber’s trauma and developed response to threat and it’s a hell of a lot to expect
And I’m still not at all convinced that the slash stuff that bothered Ethan nearly as much as it bothers the commentariat. I think he was reacting to her saying he’s acting like a jilted lover.
“Children” may not be the right word, as others have said, but the strip’s title is “Dumbing of Age”, which certainly implies they’re not fully “of Age” in at least some sense.
They’ve still got growing up to do, even if they’ve passed one of the basically arbitrary lines we’ve labeled as “adulthood”.
Okay, nah, this applies to a lot of things people are over critical about but 18 is old enough to realize being a fujoshi and shipping/fantasizing about your friends because of their sexuality is creepy. Especially in the current time period where everyone and their mother knows about the fetishization of queer people by straights. There’s a reason that stereotype is like, exclusively for 14 year olds. Amber and i would’ve been on Tumblr around the same time i know damn well she would’ve seen the posts explaining why this shit is damaging. There’s a reason 18 year olds are allowed to vote and have sex and drink in most places, she should know better by now
It’s disturbing because fetishizing your ex’s newfound bisexuality is horrible, and making your hallucination of your dead friend get hot and heavy with him to get your rocks off is. I don’t even know where to start with that one chief just. Don’t pass go, do not collect $200.
Also fuck off i love horror jrpgs and junji ito, this is a different type of disturbing all together
So, that confirm my initial statement. Amber did not come to Ethan to rub in his face that Danny ((who he had a slight interest that never resulted in anything) was getting out with the girl that took him hostage, but because she needed to talk about how she felt distraught about how the ex of her alter-ego is now dating the woman who traumatised her and is the origin of Amazi-girl in the first place.
She just needed a bit of friendly support. Ethan wasn’t really feeling being up to the task, but he helped in some way nevertheless. I think the recent dislike of Amber were a bit unwarranted for, all in all. Its not like she even know why Danny and Ethan fell apart before anything even started.
That is indeed what Amber came for, but Ethan told her the problem with that basically right off the bat: she only ever talks to him when she needs support and/or validation for her latest emotional crisis. She’s objectively a terrible friend to the point she isn’t one at all.
This is made more obvious by the fact that Ethan is obviously in a bad, bad place and she can’t even muster up the barest flicker of anything resembling caring.
Ghost Mike’s “We’re real people” is so meta that my brain hurts. Ghost Mike is quickly becoming less real Mike echo and more pure Amber hallucination. I guess that’s a bad sign.
On the one hand, I want to share this with people, it’s hilarious.
On the other, I don’t know if I want to explain that Mike is a psychosomatic ‘ghost’ representing Amber’s unresolved grief and guilt over her friend’s death….
This is honestly a lot of yaoi fangirls I used to know 10-15 years ago. I don’t encounter it as much as I used to, but I don’t know if that’s because it’s no longer in vogue to do this kind of shit or if we’re just in different circles (I no longer spend time on Livejournal/Dreamwidth or, later, Tumblr.)
Yeah. 🙁 The last panel made me laugh at first, then feel deeply sad because it’s now abundantly clear that Figment Mike is not even a projection of her mind trying to rationalize her guilt over failing to save him, but something that she’s now twisted into fulfilling personal fantasies.
But, as you said, she does seem happy in her world, in her own way. :/
I meant what I said yesterday vis a vis Amber and how she views queer men, of course I did, I already saw this strip.
All I’m gonna say here is that we’re inside her head at the moment, and having Sexy Thoughts about your hot friends is a thing. It just comes out way worse here because you can’t visualize the contents of someone else’s mind.
At least at first, I do think it would have messed her up. She would still have fantasized about it, but she would have internalized it as “They’re both better off without me” and “Any guy I’m interested in is gay”.
Doing it within an hour of Amber and Danny breaking up would be dumb and hurtful, let alone that Danny then went on to figure himself out by becoming the pun-spewing, party in the back, no fashion sense pinnacle of bisexuality that he is now.
And it’s not like they were romantically into each other at the time; Danny was terrified by his sexual feelings for men until he took ownership of them, Ethan checked him out a few times. They were friends, of course they wouldn’t date when they had a reason not to.
But, then that reason stopped mattering. It was there, but now it was a burden and Danny started realizing that, got annoyed by it, until he threw it out so he could go do what he wanted and confess to Ethan, whereupon shit went wrong in the shipping department, but he got to stand up for himself for the first time against someone he was interested in, so that was nice.
Danny took ownership of his feelings for men by confessing to Ethan. Ethan felt the same way, but they decided they could never date because it would upset Amber. It wasn’t “let’s find a good time to talk to Amber”, it was “we can NEVER date”. To me it seemed like an obvious excuse to continue the status quo instead of being brave and giving the relationship a shot.
I thought to myself “This girl needs help” and then remembered this old old comic about Therapy for Yaoi Fangirls which involved strapping them down Clockwork Orange style and showing them gay porn involving some middle aged dudes while yelling at them “THIS IS THE TRUTH! THIS IS THE REALITY!”
Per word of Willis, she already had (unrecognized-at-the-time) DID during the incident with Sal at the convenience store. Which checks out, since IIRC it’s something that most typically develops in childhood, not when you’re already 18.
To be fair, she wasn’t originally written that way, at least not explicitly, even if in-world she has now always had it. . This makes it somewhat confusing since the early presentation isn’t nearly as solid as it later becomes.
It was still pretty early though. It was obvious by the time Amber beat up Blaine in costume, but not as Amazi-Girl that something other than a secret identity was going on.
I’m imaging “My Shameless Hormones” to the tune of “My Little Pony”
♫My shamelesss homones, I always wondered what gay sex would be♫
♫Something something something Yaoi♫
I don’t know why, but the most disturbing part of this is that Amber yelled through the door at Ethan that he was stirring up her slashficcy brain, but here she’s imagining Mike and Danny.
Like, it’s all really gross to me, but somehow the true extent to which Ethan is not on her mind at all is just… chilling.
A therapist that actually knows about DID? Like finding a piece of hay in a pile of needles!
Considering her prior antics with AG as a vigilante, we were all BEGGING for a healthier, safer way for her to cope, and beggars can’t be choosers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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nice, making love not war
nope, no problems here
*backing away slowly*
(this reminds me of that 1 – 5 apple meme and how I can only see 5 and I hate it, I want to see even 4)
I can’t tell if this is super unhealthy or the most healthy
I mean its distracting her from her spiraling self loathing issues
Still a bit weird
Definitely the former. Nothing about this is helping her process anything meaningful, just more denial and trying to forget.
Well her subconscious is now actively yelling at her for treating people as *things*. That’s REAL bad
There’s a lot of stuff here that I think either belongs in the Con column, or at least is borderline for almost being put in there.
But in the Pro column, look at that smile. This is the most joy we’ve seen out of Amber since… well since at LEAST the timeskip.
She almost immediately cast Ethan’s issues aside and found a way to frame them in a way that’s appealing to her.
That’s not good.
I guess if Ethan saw it coming that I am now glad he pushed her away to do this away from him.
Definitely super unhealthy, though I’m sure there are plenty of things that are more unhealthy than this.
🤭 Oh my god…
I think my art may have predicted the future
I know I did.
Back when people were like “oh, Amber will have a meltdown if she finds out about Danny/Ethan” and I was like “won’t she just think it’s super hot?”
I was gonna comment on this yesterday, but it seemed subtle enough then that I couldn’t be sure I was right. This? This though? Yeah.
I must have missed the art you’re talking about, but I want it
Oh nothing much. Just this little [NSFW] piece where Brain Mike gives Amber a nice little reward for her speedrunning progress.
This is dementedly delightful. Well done!
Oh! THat’s so cute! I love it!
I….. you know what, I went through this phase. It’s not the best coping mechanism, but when you’re that quagmired in self-loathing and social anxiety you cope however you need to until you’re able to find better healthier ways to deal.
cosigned!
.. actually yea that’s a good point.
Hrmm. I don’t know how I feel about this. Not good. I know that at least.
On the one hand, it’s nice to see Amber smiling. On the other hand, she’s watching her ex snog the dead friend she regularly hallucinates and has outloud conversations with.
…Which is fine, I just think Danny should have asked first before walking up and smooching Amber’s delusion. Luckily, she taking it well. Remember folks, consent is important, even with hallucinations.
Well, whether or not its consensual between them in her brain may very well depend on whether these “hallucinations” still count as “her”.
If they do, then this is technically just masturbating.
Oh, I know, I was just joking that this s the actual real Danny who just came up and started snogging ImagiMike.
Weird, somehow I remember that Danny came out to her, although he didn’t dare to at first. Or was that Ethan?
IIRC he was about to, right before that conversation escalated into a fight/break-up.
He came out to Ethan (and Jacob by accident), but I don’t think Amber found out
He also came out to Dorothy, but not to Amber, not yet.
Somehow this feels like the crackiest of all crack ships, despite aligning with canon sexuality. Not sure why. Maybe because Danny was among the few who made no excuses for him?
Maybe it’s also because Mike’s dead and as weird as shipping to living people you know is it’s even weirder when one is dead?
Mike was apparently considering seducing him rather than Ethan
Kinda wonder how that interaction would’ve went. We know Danny did not like Mike and I don’t see Mike as so desirable that he could easily overcome that hurdle.
badly, it would have gone badly
I would admittedly read that AU fic. Of course, Mike WAS capable of being a lot more charming when he tried and hadn’t interacted with Danny nearly as much yet, but Danny hung out with Ethan and Amber enough that I suspect he’d have heard enough stories to see through it.
I don’t think it ends in makeouts, though. Danny does not strike me as one in favor of hatefucks.
His literal first interaction with Danny was to lie to him and tell him that he was dating Dorothy. I don’t see Danny giving Mike much chance to come back from that.
Shipping someone alive with someone who’s dead (in a universe where I’m pretty sure vampires and other types of undead don’t exist) does seem like a very crack ship to me.
This somehow feels less healthy than everything about having Amazi-Girl as a split personality
She isn’t likely to get into streetfights or car chases doing this so it probably comes out north of the line?
Less risk of physical injury, but that’s the best I can say about it.
That is significant even if it’s the only positive. Not nearly getting killed is very much a positive
I mean the core problem of living in any form of fictional existence, instead of your now, is that for every step you take there is a separate step that you could have been taking a different path you could have walked.
So if you choose to live in fantasy you don’t live your life. You just live in a dream.
At the end of that road lies waking up with nothing but the memory and the wish that something like that could have been.
At the end of all the roads, all you have is the memory.
No. At the end of a fictional road there was no movement you alone have the memory. At the end of a shared world you have memory of changing it and the world changed.
One lets you affect your outer world one of them closes you off from. Both of them you are still operating within your memories but one of them allows you to acknowledge the world in a way in which you affect it leaving you with something more than just memories.
Fictional delusional living the reward can only be things that you think about and you spent time sitting around thinking about them not thinking about the reality of your now.
Whereas if one bases their understanding on things that are in a shared reality of “now” you can have all of the memories of moving and interacting with those other entities who actually exist in your now plus an existent now that has been affected you.
Literally living in a fictional world in your head takes up time that you could have been using to think about your actuality and now meaning you are at a loss of times in which you have spent making actions on your actual world by deciding to live in fiction.
Not that I haven’t done so in response to circumstance myself but I avoid it as a last course of action because it paralyzes me from being able to affect my world.
Very thorough. However, to some degree we will always have to fantasize or find some means of escape from reality to feel satisfied / happy.
For if you expect this unjust, crude, indifferent universe to magically support us in achieving our preconceived notions of ideal lives… well, you might as well expect a bush to grow you a fully assembled hair-dryer.
Also less likely to rescue friends or strangers.
*the hacked Muzak switches to the Garth Brooks version of “Shameless”*
Elsewhere I hear “and I’m sure everybody else thought it was Amazi-Girl who had the more tenuous grip on reality”.
A thought occurs.
Now that we see that Amber can do stuff like this with this internal Brain Mike of hers, does that make it more likely that he’s a Tulpa or an introject? Or both?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_AEpDOuWk8
It can be possible for one headmate to temporarily think really strongly and ‘force’ someone else to mime something out in headspace. In my experienced it doesn’t really stick more than a second or two, though? It’s almost impossible to actually make someone do something they don’t want to, which is exactly why old-style integration would often ultimately fall apart.
(SOURCE: Married to a system. Or rather, some of the people in a system. It’s Complicated™️.)
So I take it that it’s much more likely that this couple are Tulpas?
Also, regarding Tulpas and Alters, I’m confused on how integration works.
Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but is it like that Fusion Dance from Dragon Ball Z?
Tulpa is a term where the meaning – and the autonomy implied by it – can vary from person to person. It’s not a scientific term, so I’ve seen a lot of debate on what actually constitutes a tulpa. And personally, I don’t think it’s useful to nitpick and try to label ~what type~ a headmate is, anyway. People are people. (Imagination Danny™️ is undoubtedly just a very temporary mental image and not his own person, and functions just as a visual gag here LOL.)
And I tend to be pretty anti-integration* so I’m probably the wrong person to ask about that, haha. I’ve just never personally known a system it worked for. I know they’re out there! But it used to be seen by therapists as the goal every system should strive for, and was often coercive. So I don’t have experience with that myself, and can’t really answer that question. :C
* (The historical definition of ‘integration’, anyway! Nowadays it’s more meant like “can you all function together as a group and get along? yeah? COOL”. Which seems like a healthy goal to work for. :D)
Also whatever the Mike that Amber is interacting with is, she can still have just overlaid that momentarily with a fantasy about Danny and the Original Mike. So briefly there were two different Mike constructs extant. I think!
It’s a tragedy that there isn’t enough panel space for Amber to conjure the Danny/Mike makeout image alongside Brain!Mike so we can see his reaction.
Okay, I feel like this “tulpa” thing has come up a few times but I’m not about to scour recent strips’ comments for specific citations. The only other times I’ve seen or heard the term before have been in horror stories or other supernatural settings. I didn’t do any sort of “deep dive”, because it’s 7am and no, but it feels like there’s a negative connotation? Or is this like Nadine from Arthur?
In which Amber realizes she is Mako.
never a pleasant realization
Unless it’s a different Mako I guess. There are some cool ones
Took me a moment to understand the reference.
I’m just gonna say that I don’t get it, ’cause I am totally lost on the “Mako” entry in urban dictionary.
We popping the BIGGEST bottles when Makorra happens tomorrow
Alas, there are many fictional Makos. The Mass Effect one, Sailor Jupiter… and yeah, The Worst Mako. (Though I will say straight up skipping the infuriating stuff I heard secondhand happens in Book Two because I dropped early and only picked it up after hearing Books Three and Four were good? Definitely helps!)
Good rule of thumb, if people are discussing two characters who had previously dated the same person hooking with each other, and people start talking about Mako, it is always the Mako from Korra.
Being worse than the Mako from Mass Effect is pretty bad.
(Although I’m currently playing FF VII Remake and though this was about that Mako which also confused me.)
Bite your tongue, we didn’t deserve that wonderful tank.
Yeah.
The Mako was unappreciated.
The only Mako I could think of was the one from the SWTOR MMO.
dkskdkjfgdklfg
PERFECT comment
Oh, that Mako, I was wondering what did Mankanshoku Mako do to earn such ire.
Mako from Legend of Korra. rot13: jub fnj uvf gjb tveysevraqf ubbx hc va gur raq
Are we bonky tonking yet?
Amber, I feel like you need to re-evaluate your… basically everything in your life. Relatedly, finding out that your friend/ex has(or had) a thing going with them and then not addressing it, also needs re-evaluation.
Yeah I ain’t touching this one.
Oh!
In case I don’t come here tommorrow, I just wanna say that I’m REALLY REALLY SORRY if anything I wrote last strip upset or triggered or offended anyone
I just want so desperately to be understood and I’m just didn’t know what else to do
please forgive me 😣
I wasn’t too present there, mostly I’m just like ‘yeah nope, there are things I defend Amber on but this ain’t one of them, stop shipping your friends Amber, especially not with dead friends.’
The last panel is funny in a morbid way, though. Excellent strip, infuriating Amber behavior.
No, I meant in particular about that long block of text about my trauma. I don’t know about the Amber comments though
Neither Willis nor anyone else was upset by what you wrote. Mostly because there was nothing wrong with what you wrote. It’s cool.
Honest. You are far from the first to write about their own experiences.
I second this! I went back and read it and honestly think it’s not a big deal.
Though I know what it’s like to feel anxious after posting something so personal, so you have my sympathy. ;~;
Yeeep. Didn’t read it myself, but we are no strangers to the Webcomic About Trauma sometimes leading to discussions of our own traumas around these parts. (Or sometimes secondhand experiences.)
🥺 You sure I didn’t upset Willis or anyone else?
It’s impossible to speak on behalf of everyone, of course, so nobody can be sure of that… but I think you made it clear that you have no problem with neurodivergence in any form, so it’s not offensive at all. I’m just sad that you had that experience, and I completely understand that “autism” is often used in that infantilizing manner. I do technically have a diagnosis of “high-functioning autism”, although I think I actually have ADHD and a severe lack of self-governance (can’t convince myself to set meaningful life goals, and have impulse control issues in times of stress that sometimes result in self-harm, usually with a pencil…). As I’ve come to understand “neurodivergence” as a widely used term, it does feel like a more appropriate label than autism. Sometimes I feel like the problems are all my fault because I’m not classically asperger’s/autistic… especially with life-goal avoidance, which feels just lazy, but I can’t figure out how to change my outlook and it just depresses me to think about it and furthers my avoidance tendencies…
…but anyway i’m pretty sure you’re fine <3
That’s ok, imaginary!Danny and hallucination!Mike are doing plenty of touching, you don’t need to add some of your own.
Whoops, wrong email. Also I spelled my own name wromg.
The Japanese term what Amber’s got going on is “Fujoshi.”
This is neat.
I guess my other comment got eaten.
If your other email isn’t whitelisted, it will get caught in the spam filter by default.
Shouldn’t they have much longer hands if they’re gonna be yaoi-ing?
would it be yaoi-ing, or just yaoi-ng?
Not gonna lie, the way in which Amber treats guys and their sex lives (especially gay/bisexual guys) is actually super creepy. Like, imagine I went around telling all my female friends how hot it would be if they made out.
I mean she’s mostly just talking to herself. They can’t fault you for things in your head! (And I’ve totally had female friends I thought would look cute together. Not hot but definitely cute.)
It’s also worth noting that Danny and Ethan aren’t just her friends but also her Exes so it’s not like she doesn’t already think of them in a sexual context.
Ethan put up a boundary by not elaborating on the Danny thing and she pried for details including “my fanficcy brain”.
Exes aren’t permanently open for you to sexualize to their faces.
This is private-time material and not something she should be airing to anyone she hasn’t gotten consent from.
I mean it definitely comes across in the first instance of her saying that it’s more of a joke. Like “Y’know me, Ethan. My imagination might run wild with that”. The fact that she’s actually doing it is weird but it’s mostly all in her own head. I guess we can argue over how inappropriate that is but I’m not exactly a beacon of morality.
Right, but the joke happened instead of acknowledging his feelings or the fact that he was sharing them with her.
He said “I feel betrayed” and she said “I’ve decided I’m horny”
It’s creepy and gross, moral beacon or not.
I might be biased here, but honestly in a situation like that I’d rather get an “I’ve decided I’m horny” than nothing at all.
See the problem with this comment section is that…me and my friends are really raunchy around each other. We just…always have been. I can’t disagree with people who hate this sorta thing but I also have a lot of friends who are like this and it’s not like…a thing. Hell it might be a feeling of trying to inject some “normalcy” if this is the kinda person you are and they know you to be.
But I rarely speak my mind on that kinda thing cuz I’m sure people have way different hangups than I do. And maybe my reaction to these things is outdated. Who knows. Such is the quiet horror of navigating the modern world.
Hence, “i might be biased”.
Don’t mind me. I’m just a neurotic, socially challenged mess who calls it a win if I discover I have low-key aphrodisiac powers. If I can’t keep up a conversation with them, at least I could make them happy some other way.
I was similar with my friends as a teen- we cuddle-piled and made shippy-jokes about each other and genuinely confused a lot of people. There are a couple of male friends who got joked about a bit too much (imo in a not-great way a la Amber) they didn’t encourage it at all, but also joined in on the jesting sometimes. The joke she made is a joke *we* would have made if things were awkward because shockingly we (and she) were awkward teenagers who hadn’t figured out how to interact in a less cringey way. And most of the time you learned not to respond to serious expressions of pain (even when it’s dressed up as awkward teenage angst) by fucking up every now and then and going into a lil ol shame spiral that lasts a couple of days/years.
I think she’s totally trying to inject normalcy into their interaction by falling back on good-ol self-deprecation (her first iteration) followed by doubling down because Ethan didn’t offer the response she expected, followed by another reiteration out of shock/realisation.
Then in this strip she’s still using fantasy to lean on instead of dealing with the fall out of her real relationships, although she (Mike) realises that there is an issue with her substituting reality with fantasy.
Saying it out loud is indeed was hurtful (even if that wasn’t the intention) and Amber hasn’t been a good friend to Ethan. But sexual images that happen inside your own head isn’t the kind of thing I would be using the word “victim” for, like I’ve seen thrown around.
Maybe it’s because I’m not from the USA. All the way down here in Chile (a conga line that wants to pass as a country) we’re pretty raunchy and badmouthed even in casual conversation, which… Also helps fine-tune the “this is someone I shouldn’t be doing this with” verbal filter/boundaries and other contextual stuff. I’m all for consent – And Ethan has had no problem talking about sex with her before. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the “trying to inject some normalcy”. I also don’t think there’s an easy on/off switch to stop seeing a love interest as a sexual human being the second they become an ex.
The thing that she HAS to stop doing is insisting on this – Time has passed, trauma has happened, consent to speak like this has been strictly withdrawn. And the thing she SHOULD do is go to therapy to get better coping mechanisms, because seriously. Erotic thought-crime, tho… I wouldn’t go grab the pitchforks for that one.
I mean, you’re doing it right.
You’re raunchy with your friends because you’ve established that social boundary, and you wouldn’t act differently to someone outside of that boundary.
Ethan is someone Amber’s been Like This towards the whole series, it’s an accepted part of their boundaries for each other.
agree with WanderingLynx here; this may not be a particularly healthy coping mechanism, but I don’t think it’s really hurting Ethan here since it is an established part of their relationship. if he’d told her he was uncomfortable, then of course she should avoid telling him what shipping she’s doing in her head–but he hasn’t and it probably doesn’t bother him.
and lmao that description of Chile is hilarious
Yeah, Amber dropped Ethan’s perspective from consideration as soon as the downstairs brain took helm control. That’s exactly what he was getting at; she’s not a very good friend to him, using him as a shoulder to cry on when she needs it, but rarely reciprocating that support.
Yes, in this instance she is talking to herself, but there have been multiple instances of her saying stuff like this to the people she is fantasizing about. Just yesterday, her response to Ethan talking about how much he hated Danny was basically “okay, but what if you fucked him?”
I mean, imagine if there was a scene where Amber was talking about her issues regarding Sal to Danny and Danny’s response was that they should lez out.
Wow, we read that scene completely differently.
I read it as Amber (correctly) picking up that Ethan’s hurt was linked to his attraction to Danny. She phrased it awkwardly because she’s Amber, but she was essentially saying “If I didn’t know better, you’re feeling betrayed because you two had a thing going.” And when he doesn’t deny it – “I said, if I didn’t no better”.
Yeah, she phrases it in terms of slashfic, which is gross, but is also something he’d expect from her and never showed a sign of being bothered by before.
It’s not at all “but what if you fucked him”. She’s not suggesting it as a solution, but seeing that their attraction was part of the problem.
The parallel with her, Sal and Danny doesn’t make sense because attraction between her and Sal was never a part of their relationship.
Danny wouldn’t tell Sal and Amber to lez out because it’s not within their social boundary of acceptable behaviour.
Amber going fujo is with Ethan. If she pulled it on Danny she would have to check first.
She also didn’t tell Ethan and Danny to fuck. More like “Wait, you two were a thing?”
Now that Ethan’s closed the door, she’s moved on to imagining Danny & Mike, but she’s not talking to Ethan any more.
yeah bruh. no victim no crime
The victim is her friend who was talking about his hurt feelings and got a fetishy fantasy thrown at his feet instead of helpful friendship.
It’s not a crime, but it is super yuck.
I mean the part about her imagining it
Saying it out loud is another manner
Strongly agree. Thinking something is hot in the privacy of your own fap zone is one thing and totally fine. What Amber does is really gross and not okay.
It would be exactly this creepy:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/continue/
wow it is appropriate that they’re siblings now, huh
I’m so much Walky in that strip it isn’t even funny.
Gravatar checks out.
I think the difference is, just thinking about it and telling people, the telling people part is definitely the creepy part.
Yeah iiiiii absolutely hate this
I also have a habit of referring to things that happen to me in real life as “canon”.
I’ll have to remember that for my Yotomoe fanfiction.
I’m loving this no-shading-fantasy thing we’ve got going on. The comics world hasn’t seen such a narrative heavy lifter since “the thought bubble”.
“We’re real people”, says the hallucination.
Defining appropriate scope of reality when talking about real people in this context is…tricky.
*crowd, in unison* Yes! We are all individuals!
*lone voice in crowd* I’m not!
Amber is being legitimately gross right now, mostly because she’s ignoring her (alleged) best friend’s emotional pain and shutdown because she wants to fantasize about people she knows fucking
Seriously. It’s even worse when youve met someone who thinks like this irl. I hope she gets the wakeup call she needs soon because this is rough to watch,
What’s she going to do about it? He obviously doesn’t want to talk to her right now. Not saying this is good but I don’t think that specifically is the problem here
Except he was talking to her about it. He mentioned getting stabbed in the back and she told him that he was talking about Danny like a jilted lover and her “slash ficcy brain” would go into overdrive.
That’s a gross and inappropriate response.
Except she was right that he was talking about Danny like a jilted lover and I think it was her picking up on it that made him retreat, not the slash ficcy stuff. She was expecting him to tell her that she was wrong, not to run away.
It’s not that I expect Amber to fix Ethan mood, it’s that she freaking DID NOT NOTICE that there’s anything wrong with Ethan. Instead of reacting by thinking “wow he didn’t even respond to our usual banter” she’s actually doing the nasty shipping thing, meaning that yesterday she was 100% serious and not joking.
Which is so so nasty. I really thought yesterday that Amber was joking, but no, she was serious. If this is how she thinks when she’s alone, then she doesn’t see Ethan or Danny as people, she sees them as dolls she wants to mash together for her own entertainment.
Again, I must reiterate that I don’t expect Amber to even be qualified to help Ethan through his grief and isolation. What’s disgusting that she’s not reacting or even given a single indication that HER ALLEGED BEST FRIEND is suffering or even in a bad mood.
Given Amber’s current mental state, Ignoring it may legitimately be the best thing for Ethan. She’s kind of a mental Trainwreck right now, there’s NO WAY any attempt at discussing the matter with Ethan is going to end well for anybody.
Plus……. I think a lot of comments here aren’t quite taken into account that current Ethan has decided that Danny’s ill-timed comment of “dude this dude has abused two people I love and also the rest of the cast, and you’d let him mock me if I were in a coma” means stabbed in the back. And has kept thinking it for three months.
Like, Amber fucked up badly here but her options were attempting to diffuse the thing through humor and familiarity, comforting Ethan (something she lacks the spoons and the skills for without making things worse), or confronting Ethan on the “hey maybe Danny isn’t a horrible traitorous piece of turd” (which was never going to go well.)
Amber is alone right now so her options are no longer about defusing the situation through humour or confronting Ethan, it’s too late of either of those since the interaction has ended.
But what she COULD do, but it hasn’t apparently OCCURRED to her, is to be concerned with the huge change in Ethan. But the comic above shows that she was not joking or bantering yesterday, she was 100% serious and man that’s NASTY
[Michael Scott thank you dot gif]
Two comments:
(1) Totally forgot that Amber didn’t know Danny was bisexual. I gotta re-read the last few strips now.
(2) It is both hilarious and tragic that Danny and Ethan avoided acting on their mutual attraction for fear of upsetting Amber, when it turns out she probably would have been really into it.
The ironic part is that Danny fucking hates Mike’s guts so they would definitely never make out.
Yeah, but hatefuck is a pretty popular trope.
They could potentially have the greatest of all hatefucks
OT3!!! OT3!!!
Gogo dambthan!
Back in Shortpacked, Amber and Ethan did do the do. And it happened with Mike as a buffer.
Her getting into a poly sort of thing where she and Ethan aren’t fucking but have a sexual/romantic partner in common, and that partner being Danny, isn’t out of the realm of possibility. And it’d be healthier than Mike :’)
Danny’s the most monogamous human being alive, so I dunno if he’d be up for poly.
Amber and Ethan being in a V doesn’t strike me as impossible, though. They’re pretty much in platonic love with each other.
And that’s where Asher, moody badboy heartthrob with a dark past, comes in.
I’m still of the belief that Mike isn’t a hallucination but a representation of Amber’s visualization of her inner world, externalized for our benefit. Although, this development is a bit confusing because you can’t generally make alters do a thing in your head, they have to choose it. But then again, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to choose hallucinations either. So maybe it’s still an inner visualization, just a little more loosely defined. Or an inaccurate representation of mental health for a joke, which would not be the worst thing in this case.
Is it possible that both Brain Mike and Brain Danny are tulpas?
I don’t think Mike is a tulpa because I’m pretty sure Mike comes from Trauma. We haven’t seen Danny outside of this moment so no way to know if he’s 3-dimensional of a person enough to be any kind of alter or just the equivalent of an NPC in the inner world– people who don’t have their own lives, emotions, thoughts and just exist to support the development of the system in the inner world.
Interesting.
I’d like to know more about these NPCs.
How are they similar and different from Tulpas? Can they be created intentionally?
NPC as in the non-player characters in a game. Danny here doesn’t appear to be part of Amber’s system in any way; he’s a fantasy, just like a person without DID might envision
Yup. Brain-Danny is just an extra, conjured in service of this gag.
Tibetan Buddhists: At last, the long fruition of our practices of Mindform!– Conjuring your classmates to make out inside your mind!
I’ve heard they practiced something that I guess you could call “Tulpa formation”, but I’m hazy on the details.
Kinda reminds me of the time in DBZ when Krillan and Gohan were doing mind-fighting on their way to Namek.
I wonder if this “bisexual danny” revelation will cause Amber to try to seduce or start a relationship with Danny (thus putting his relationship with Sal at risk)
Why would it do that? We’ve seen how Amber talks about Danny post break-up, she clearly does not intend to hook up with him again
Because knowledge of Danny’s bisexuality is a new development. Amber is soooo infatuated with male-on-male sex that it might over-run any sort of plan to stay away. Something like “I (or amazigirl) had him before…. I can get him again… And have experiences with a guy who will indulge my fantasies”.
I don’t think that’s a very good read on the character
I can’t imagine she’s that desperate to get in on that action. Like she’s an introvert for a reason. It’s fun in her head but real life is complicated.
In my own head, pondering an Amber/Danny/Sal sitch is fun. People forget Amber isn’t straight :’D
I’ve seen a few people say that and I don’t recall. When was this shown?
It’s 6 am on an all-nighter so my brain isn’t coming up with specific Dumbiverse!Amber evidence. I know it exists, alfjdka. It came up when she talked with Sal right before this :’D My memory’s refusing to cooperate. BUT! Willis is doing Walkyverse stuff again and I revisited it like, three days ago. And there’s this:
http://www.itswalky.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-12-01.png
Which makes more sense in context, considering that Amber is so repressed this is her sexual awakening /o/
Willis did say we should “probably ignore” that last panel in the actual below-strip commentary, though.
(Not that it necessarily precludes the possibility of Amazi-Girl being non-straight. I’ve definitely heard of different alters having different orientations, and IIRC any Dumbiverse hints have been constricted to Maisie, not Amber. Though I could be wrong there.)
…wow, she wasn’t kidding. It really went to overdrive
From North Jersey. IU class of ’68. Wright Quad, Todd Hall 2 years…off campus 1 year, married housing one year. BS Marine Zoology.
I didn’t live in Reed, but I don’t remember all the gay back then. Plenty of booze, no drugs, lotsa sex, some minor anti-war stuff.
You are now landing in Indiana, please set your watches back a hundred years.
Stating my prediction now, because last strip a couple days ago it wasn’t relevant, but my personal stab is “Something happened over the break, moreso than just what we saw, that is behind this ‘stabbed me in the back’ comment” by Ethan.
More had to have happened with Amber and Ethan, but I honestly do buy that what we saw with Danny and Ethan is the bulk of what happened. I think that was severe enough to justify everything we’ve seen
Nah. I think that’s all there was, and Ethan is making it a Huge (and Unforgivable) Thing.
Yeah seriously! Why is Ethan making such a big deal out of a guy he liked saying his childhood friend being in a coma is actually a good thing? Dude needs to grow up.
😛
Okay who’s ready for that bad joke?
There’s no such thing as bad jokes. Only bad Mintons.
What’s Ash Ketchum’s favorite condiment?
Pika-degaio!
Haha
😋
Tommorows is gonna be hella lame
Somehow that last panel is both something I wish i had never seen, and thankful that I have seen.
o3o Also while I’m here, I didn’t comment it at the time but the fact that anyone is ok with what Danny said while Mike was hospitalized is a really sad state of affairs. Like I just assumed everyone would agree that what Danny said was absolutely unacceptable. No ifs ands or buts.
“BuT It WaS tRuE!”
Being truthful without tact, kindness, or care when someone is suffering is just being an arse hole.
People be letting their dislike for Mike color their perseption of people who’ve known him since childhood’s grief.
It’s just not kosher to talk shit about someone who’s grievously injured. It’s quite rude. But it’s ESPECIALLY rude to talk shit about them to the grieving parties. Like. I’d second guess whether or not to talk shit to somebody about their friend in GENERAL. Let alone when one is knocking on deaths door. Hell even if Mike just broke his LEG it’d be super inappropriate.
You should say nothing.
I could understand, months after Mike’s death/if he hadn’t been injured, a very tentative ‘I didn’t like how he treated you two’ sort of discussion. Even then, it has to be VERY careful, VERY much emphasizing ‘you weren’t wrong to care about him and I didn’t wish him dead,’ and with frankly much more tact than I’d expect from someone this young unless they’re actively borrowing scripts from an abuse resource. You can’t really argue someone into recognizing their abuser is an abuser. That has to be handled delicately, slowly, and with the acknowledgement that the person kind of has to come to these conclusions themselves, and you are at best a helper on this train of thought. And it has to be handled under way less emotionally charged circumstances than ‘while he’s comatose and the person you care about is fresh from his hospital room.’ Like, you don’t even have to pretend to LIKE someone to say ‘I feel bad for you, because I know they’re meaningful to you’ to the person you DO care about. It’s not about you, it’s not even about the person who’s hurt or dead, it’s about being compassionate and not a complete dick to the person who’s grieving.
(Again, I remind the commentariat I call my late and not-remotely mourned biological grandfather the familial Blaine around here, and that comparison is one of the NICER ones he ever merited from the family at large. My parent didn’t expect the rest of the household to mourn him. They actively kept us away from him because he did not merit grandparent privileges and only barely got ‘occasional visits of filial piety’. But we all had compassion for THEM, because despite everything his death was still something they grieved, if only for the uncomplicated relationship it SHOULD have been if he weren’t a complete bastard, so we didn’t pretend to mourn him but we didn’t break out the champagne and party hats either. He was a bastard, but it’s hard to be glad a bastard’s dead when that death is making someone you love sad.)
“I’m not cruel, I’m honest!”
I don’t think it’s okay, but I also don’t think he meant what everybody thinks he meant. What Ethan said was “They’re not sure he will for a while.” So I, (and apparently nobody else) interpret “Would that be so bad,” as meaning, like, would it be so bad if he took an extra couple of weeks to wake up, not would it be so bad if he died.
It doesnt matter what he MEANT, thats not the impact it had, it wasnt the thing, time or place to say that.
“Wouldn’t it be fine if he stayed in a coma longer” is still a fucked up thing to say. There’s no positive spin of this. “Wouldn’t it be nice if his leg stayed broken a little longer?” “Wouldn’t it be nice if his diarrhea lasted longer?” “Wouldn’t it be nice if his stubbed toe hurt for another week?”
Haha, don’t say that about people’s friends who are VERY visually concerned about them. Time and place, and even then it might not EVER be your place.
There’s a difference between “a positive spin” and “Danny stuck his foot in his mouth over someone who made everyone around him miserable all the time.”
Talking trash about someone in a coma to the concerned party is not “putting his foot in his mouth” Danny wouldn’t say that shit to Mike’s parents. Or maybe he would. He shouldn’t though. Mike being a bastard non-withstanding it’s an awful thing to wish on anyone and even worse of a thing to vocalize. If you’re ever in a similar situation I would really stress that you not do that. It’s…very hurtful to the people who care. That shit IS fucking rude.
He wasn’t gonna say it to Ethan either. He blabbed the first thing in his mind and apologized in the following strip’s first panel before the conversation moved onto Mike’s abuse of everyone around him and Ethan’s passive tolerance of it.
What he “wished” on Mike was asking, again completely on impulse which was followed by an apology, if it’d be so bad if it took a while for him to wake up, not that he stay out forever or god forbid he die.
I probably wouldn’t wish it on anyone because I don’t know a person who spends all their time being a horrible bastard to everyone around them for no reason.
Certainly true. Even Danny knew that, but he blurted out something he was thinking without intending to say it.
It was still a shitty thing to say, but it doesn’t make Danny the monster that some are painting him as for it. He didn’t actually want Mike dead.
I definitely don’t think Danny thought death was on the table. Like, he blurted it out, but I also genuinely think he had no conception of just how bad this was and how bad ‘staying in a coma for a few weeks’ would have been for Mike even if he had recovered. (Note: Under the circumstances? Probably pretty bad!)
However, he could very easily see that Amber and Ethan were really, really sad and worried about a longtime friend. Even if said friend was an abusive jerk, ‘staying like this for a while’ means that they’re going to spend this time being incredibly concerned for him. So, also a deeply dickish sentiment which I can see him just blurting out but should immediately have recognized the answer was ‘yes, if only because I don’t like my ACTUAL friends suffering because of this’. And instead of a quick ‘I’m sorry, we had our differences but obviously I hope he gets better, I don’t know why I said that’ and letting Ethan care about someone even if they are a dickweed, the Darth Vader analogy basically comes off as trying to argue that no, his statement was in some way justified, and also Ethan shouldn’t be so sad about this because Mike was a dick. Again, you’re not gonna argue someone out of grief, even when that grief is for an abusive jerk. Their friendship could have endured if Danny had left it at an apology, bit his tongue and let Ethan think nice things about the asshole for a bit, and saved ‘I know he got hurt saving Amber’s life, and I appreciate that, but I never liked how he treated you guys and I’m sad that it took literally dying to stop treating you guys badly’ for much, much later, probably while encouraging them to see a therapist for pre-Our Friend Died Under Fucked Up Circumstances reasons. I get that as an eighteen-year-old with foot in mouth syndrome, he doesn’t have the delicacy to handle the latter, but it doesn’t take much to recognize that sometimes, the jerkbag being hurt is a problem because it makes YOUR FRIENDS sad and you don’t like them being sad, and that ‘in the hospital while they’re coming off of visiting him’ is not a good time to debate his morality.
Well, leaving aside (because I don’t blame Danny for not knowing) that prolonged coma following brain injury is a bad, bad, bad sign: What Danny said in toto amounted to “fuck your grief, attend to me! Me! Me!” Ethan was waiting anxiously outside the hospital room of a gravely injured friend and Danny went to ask him out and got snotty when Ethan was worrying about Mike instead of him.
……. And Danny and Ethan were worried Amber would be upset about them macking on each other lol….
Haha It’s the OPPOSITE problem. She might ask for front row seats.
Well, the more things change, I guess.
The thing about existing in amber’s brain is that you exist in amber’s brain…
I’m gonna be real I’m unsure if this strip is supposed to make me laugh or extremely uncomfortable and it’s currently doing both but it doesn’t feel ok
I’m keeping the “this is going to fuel Amber’s selfloathing” from yesterday. This is a character who’s gone down on a spiral for faaaaar less, so. Pretty confident in my bet. Libido, Desire, and Kink ™ exist in a gray space that overlaps sometimes with fear and/or pain. Sometimes it’s stuff that’s literally impossible IRL, or that you think it’s hot but wouldn’t want to do in real life. Sometimes it’s about feeling in control (or letting go of it), and if there’s one thing she’s coped with baaaaadly it’s dealing with the people she’s hurt, pushed away, or in Mike’s case “failed to save him” which to her it’s the same thing as having killed him.
Human beings are complex and she compartimentalizes like she gets paid for it, so :’) And no, this is an explanation. DEF not a justification. At least this time it’s happening in her own head instead of, y’know, being said out loud. Victimless crime (?) unless you count her.
(As an aside, I idly wondered about Danny/Mike back in the day, if only because it either would’ve been a redemption ark for Mike, or the worst experience ever for Danny, or both. Which in all honesty is fun to read BECAUSE it’s not real, lol.)
… Look, I like Amber but this is the worst grav that I could’ve gotten to make this comment. Let’s re-roll and if it’s bad I’ll change back to my problematic fave Ruth ^^;;;
Oh Amber…oh Amber..lol
I’m…… not that partial to Fuckface. Poor lizard, it’s not her (?) fault to be Malaya’s. Let’s try again tomorrow, I miss my Booster icon TwT
That sure is a strip I just read.
Sometimes I get the feeling the comment section forget that these are children in that awkward stage of social development where you’re still learning how to be a decent person mostly by making mistakes. Like, most of them have brains that have not finished developing and many have trauma-brain which can set you back further. In terms of psychosocial development most of them are still forming identities.
Like, if they were fully formed adults with the experience to know better, yeah, a lot of this would be really worrying, but for their age most of this is actually… healthy thrashing through the gunk-bog of adolescence.
I hear what you’re saying. But college students are not children. With the rare exception, they are adults. Yes, barely adults with a lot of growth and development to do, but that doesn’t make them children.
Cosigned. Infantilization like this is especially insidious.
Not that I think that’s your intention v.gay.person, but you get the point (I hope).
And even if they were, children are more than capable of grasping concepts like, “crafting elaborate stories of your friends in sexual scenarios is extremely inappropriate.” It might not be a common lesson, but it’s not that abstract of a concept
Well, on a tangential note, I don’t think there’s a problem so long you keep them ALL to yourself. No victim, no crime.
That’s fair. I probably did use the word to emphasise that they are still developing and I didn’t consider other implications. Point is taken.
I still maintain the point that as adolescents they are still learning to navigate the social world.
i think people also forget that ‘legal adult” and “emotionally and intellectually able to act as fully formed adults with mature decision-making skills” are different things. people don’t turn 18 and suddenly start being smarter about everything.
also pretty sure this sort of thing has always been relatively okay with ethan so her social understandings haven’t adjusted to his new outlook yet.
Exactly. We’re all constantly developing to keep up with our environment/role in society and this particular age group is right in the middle of adjusting to a new kind of social environment with the skills they developed as kids/young teens. Throw in Amber’s trauma and developed response to threat and it’s a hell of a lot to expect
And I’m still not at all convinced that the slash stuff that bothered Ethan nearly as much as it bothers the commentariat. I think he was reacting to her saying he’s acting like a jilted lover.
“Children” may not be the right word, as others have said, but the strip’s title is “Dumbing of Age”, which certainly implies they’re not fully “of Age” in at least some sense.
They’ve still got growing up to do, even if they’ve passed one of the basically arbitrary lines we’ve labeled as “adulthood”.
Okay, nah, this applies to a lot of things people are over critical about but 18 is old enough to realize being a fujoshi and shipping/fantasizing about your friends because of their sexuality is creepy. Especially in the current time period where everyone and their mother knows about the fetishization of queer people by straights. There’s a reason that stereotype is like, exclusively for 14 year olds. Amber and i would’ve been on Tumblr around the same time i know damn well she would’ve seen the posts explaining why this shit is damaging. There’s a reason 18 year olds are allowed to vote and have sex and drink in most places, she should know better by now
Yes, they’re still growing up, but for god’s sakes there is a fucking floor.
Or does Mary get a pass for her bullshit because she’s just a kid like the rest of them?
Pushing Ruth further into suicidal depression so she could throw transphobia at Carla
Being a bit of a douche on an inopportune time
theyrethesamepicture.jpg
DOA 12: Sorry, Can’t Hear You Over the Fever Pitch of My Shameless Hormones.
So is this supposed to be funny or disturbing?
Like, I’m horrified right now, but I get the impression I’m supposed to find this compounding mania endearing because fandom meta joke.
It is definitely horrifying.
Is it really THAT disturbing.
I don’t find it disturbing at all. I suspect this may be down to five possible reasons:
1. I’ve been desensitized by personal experience
2. I’ve been desensitized by watching too many YTPs
3. My scientific curiosity about Tulpas and Alters alike overrides any fear I may have otherwise had
4. You all need to play more horror games / read horror manga
5. Any combination of the above
Dude, you have no clue what kind of fucked up shit I’ve consumed or seen lol
My reactions are calibrated to the comic, not The Enigma of Amigara Fault ffs
*replace Dude with Slick
It’s disturbing because fetishizing your ex’s newfound bisexuality is horrible, and making your hallucination of your dead friend get hot and heavy with him to get your rocks off is. I don’t even know where to start with that one chief just. Don’t pass go, do not collect $200.
Also fuck off i love horror jrpgs and junji ito, this is a different type of disturbing all together
It’s hilarious, but also disgusting
Somehow I’m missing how it might be funny. I guess I have no sense of humour.
Starting to think Amber might Have Issues.
Like one or two maybe …
I suppose it’s possible but day-to-day she seems so stable…
BTW, Mike?
When you say “We’re real people”?
… what do you mean by “we”?
So mike is now not her guilt but just get common sense
Wonder what amazi-girl is doing
So, that confirm my initial statement. Amber did not come to Ethan to rub in his face that Danny ((who he had a slight interest that never resulted in anything) was getting out with the girl that took him hostage, but because she needed to talk about how she felt distraught about how the ex of her alter-ego is now dating the woman who traumatised her and is the origin of Amazi-girl in the first place.
She just needed a bit of friendly support. Ethan wasn’t really feeling being up to the task, but he helped in some way nevertheless. I think the recent dislike of Amber were a bit unwarranted for, all in all. Its not like she even know why Danny and Ethan fell apart before anything even started.
That is indeed what Amber came for, but Ethan told her the problem with that basically right off the bat: she only ever talks to him when she needs support and/or validation for her latest emotional crisis. She’s objectively a terrible friend to the point she isn’t one at all.
This is made more obvious by the fact that Ethan is obviously in a bad, bad place and she can’t even muster up the barest flicker of anything resembling caring.
You get friendly support from friends, which is to say, from people whom you don’t neglect.
Ironic for Brain Ghost Mike to say that, of all people
Last Panel : O.O
Oh my…!
Huh I guess Amber finally found a way to shut her inner Mike up. Well played.
hormones make for whore moans
Please tell me that the word you were looking for was “player”.
Amber, go check Danny if he’s ok. But I guess it’s too late, because he already disincarnate and is on hell with Mike.
Press F for Danny.
… Why Danny??
Because if he’s in her inner landscape with Mike, that must mean he’s dead like Mike.
Ghost Mike’s “We’re real people” is so meta that my brain hurts. Ghost Mike is quickly becoming less real Mike echo and more pure Amber hallucination. I guess that’s a bad sign.
On the one hand, I want to share this with people, it’s hilarious.
On the other, I don’t know if I want to explain that Mike is a psychosomatic ‘ghost’ representing Amber’s unresolved grief and guilt over her friend’s death….
Anyone in the hallway only hearing Amber’s side of the conversation: “… wtf?”
This is honestly a lot of yaoi fangirls I used to know 10-15 years ago. I don’t encounter it as much as I used to, but I don’t know if that’s because it’s no longer in vogue to do this kind of shit or if we’re just in different circles (I no longer spend time on Livejournal/Dreamwidth or, later, Tumblr.)
We lost her. Today strip is the definitive proof Amber is almost no more in contact with reality. So sad… but she seems happy in her world.
Nah, I don’t think she’s gone full saladfingers just yet.
Yeah. 🙁 The last panel made me laugh at first, then feel deeply sad because it’s now abundantly clear that Figment Mike is not even a projection of her mind trying to rationalize her guilt over failing to save him, but something that she’s now twisted into fulfilling personal fantasies.
But, as you said, she does seem happy in her world, in her own way. :/
Well even then, it’s not like she has any viable alternative. At least, not at the moment.
I meant what I said yesterday vis a vis Amber and how she views queer men, of course I did, I already saw this strip.
All I’m gonna say here is that we’re inside her head at the moment, and having Sexy Thoughts about your hot friends is a thing. It just comes out way worse here because you can’t visualize the contents of someone else’s mind.
This isn’t Real Life, that’s another webcomic entirely
And it’s been updating semi-regularly over the last year and a half or so!
Yeah, Amber would have had a huge problem with Ethan and Danny dating. It was always an excuse.
At least at first, I do think it would have messed her up. She would still have fantasized about it, but she would have internalized it as “They’re both better off without me” and “Any guy I’m interested in is gay”.
Kinda sorta.
Doing it within an hour of Amber and Danny breaking up would be dumb and hurtful, let alone that Danny then went on to figure himself out by becoming the pun-spewing, party in the back, no fashion sense pinnacle of bisexuality that he is now.
And it’s not like they were romantically into each other at the time; Danny was terrified by his sexual feelings for men until he took ownership of them, Ethan checked him out a few times. They were friends, of course they wouldn’t date when they had a reason not to.
But, then that reason stopped mattering. It was there, but now it was a burden and Danny started realizing that, got annoyed by it, until he threw it out so he could go do what he wanted and confess to Ethan, whereupon shit went wrong in the shipping department, but he got to stand up for himself for the first time against someone he was interested in, so that was nice.
Danny took ownership of his feelings for men by confessing to Ethan. Ethan felt the same way, but they decided they could never date because it would upset Amber. It wasn’t “let’s find a good time to talk to Amber”, it was “we can NEVER date”. To me it seemed like an obvious excuse to continue the status quo instead of being brave and giving the relationship a shot.
They didn’t give the relationship a shot because they didn’t want it in that moment.
Fucking hell, he broke up with Amber an hour ago
That’s a book title, right there.
Also, not everything is about you, Amber.
Dumbing of Age book 12: Sorry, can’t hear you over the fever pitch of my shameless hormones!
Look, Amber, you do you. If that makes you feel better, but please don’t tell Ethan, or Danny, I guess you can tell Mike.
Imaginary Danny: *breaks kiss* Not really sure why I’m doing this, I actually think you’re a scumbag.
Imaginary Mike: Yeah, me neither. But apparently, we’re hot as fuck.
*kissing resumes*
The amount of glee here is genuinely disturbing. I wasn’t afraid of her punches, but now she scares me.
I’m trying to be less critical of amber i really am
But she’s making it so haaaard
(like she’s making Danny and ghost mike right now, buh-dum-tish! 🥁)
Amber needs serious therapy. Someone help her.
So does Emothan
Basically the entire cast needs therapy.
I’m imaging “My Shameless Hormones” to the tune of “My Little Pony”
Oppes I meant to post that at the bottom.
I thought to myself “This girl needs help” and then remembered this old old comic about Therapy for Yaoi Fangirls which involved strapping them down Clockwork Orange style and showing them gay porn involving some middle aged dudes while yelling at them “THIS IS THE TRUTH! THIS IS THE REALITY!”
And this is why Ethan had enough sense to not deal with that whole mess.
My Shameless Hormones is my newest band name
Amber really is the best dumbing of age character
Obligatory.
$30 down on the table for “Is this insensitive?…” “Yes, maybe, ok, but it’s MIKE…”
Amber no
Ok, controversial question but…
When, and possibly *how* did Amber develop DID?
Because she didn’t start that way.
Amazi-Girl has always been DID in Dumbing of Age.
Per word of Willis, she already had (unrecognized-at-the-time) DID during the incident with Sal at the convenience store. Which checks out, since IIRC it’s something that most typically develops in childhood, not when you’re already 18.
To be fair, she wasn’t originally written that way, at least not explicitly, even if in-world she has now always had it. . This makes it somewhat confusing since the early presentation isn’t nearly as solid as it later becomes.
It was still pretty early though. It was obvious by the time Amber beat up Blaine in costume, but not as Amazi-Girl that something other than a secret identity was going on.
Do you want book titles? Because this is how you get book titles.
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances”
[Civilization flashbacks]
I’m imaging “My Shameless Hormones” to the tune of “My Little Pony”
♫My shamelesss homones, I always wondered what gay sex would be♫
♫Something something something Yaoi♫
Needs a bit of work.
The image of Danny and Mike making out is disturbing to me, on account of how nonconsensual that would be on Danny’s part.
Not that last line is a book title if I ever heard one.
*Now* that last line is a book title if I ever heard one.
I don’t know why, but the most disturbing part of this is that Amber yelled through the door at Ethan that he was stirring up her slashficcy brain, but here she’s imagining Mike and Danny.
Like, it’s all really gross to me, but somehow the true extent to which Ethan is not on her mind at all is just… chilling.
No amount of therapy will make this okay…
Holy shit, Amber, seriously, see a fucking therapist.
A therapist that actually knows about DID? Like finding a piece of hay in a pile of needles!
Considering her prior antics with AG as a vigilante, we were all BEGGING for a healthier, safer way for her to cope, and beggars can’t be choosers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nah, who cares about the DID. It’s the slashfic that seems to have everyone concerned.
We haven’t seen Amber smile like this since she gutted Ryan.
Quick! Someone say “You ought to smile more; you’re pretty when you smile”.
Whole lotta creepiness going on there.