I am usually pretty on-board with, “hey, I know this comic is more serious than Shortpacked, but it’s still pretty goofy, allow for a certain leeway towards exagerated-for-comedy’s sake” as a take, but… yeah, this is kind of a Lot.
Also like there aren’t a hundred thousand extremely hot original gay works out there from small indie creators who deserve your money more than Disney does
True dat. The gay characters in those works aren’t tokens put in to appease social media or make ‘representation’-they’re actual CHARACTERS. Disney just does Tokens.
Angry doesn’t even BEGIN to cover how I feel about the practice of tokens and making “representation”, what with Disney and all those other bourgeois fucks who USE us as production value and getting social media rock hard about it. 👿👿👿
I sure hope that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Yeah it’s kind of like how Cars 2 becomes pretty disturbing when you think that in their universe so called ‘lemon cars’ are real people left to eventually die because their parts aren’t going to be produced any more versus the reality of lemon cars in our own world which aren’t alive.
I know this is random but I recently had to watch that movie with someone and I remember thinking that when I first viewed it years ago. Like a lot of people say it sucked and it did but wtf Pixar I know Cars is just a merchandise vehicle (heh) but usually you put more thought into things back then.
And the lemon cars are the bad guys. They do bad things so as… not to die. And are mocked by the ‘heroes’ and narrative. I mean I guess if /any/ Pixar franchise was going to be enamoured with capitalism to even horrifying levels it would be that one.
It could have been, I think the bluesky Robots movie took that angle, but Cars 2 plays the Lemons as a villainous conspiracy. Like Cars is already a mindfuck franchise, but Cars 2 makes everything so much worse.
It’s not just that they’re real people. It’s also that she’s saying it directly to Danny. While Danny has a girlfriend. And Ethan is hurting and mad at Danny.
Logical fallacy my friend! Shipping people romantically or sexually who are fictional is fine as long as you aren’t toxic towards the real life people behind them (such as actors, writers, or creators) or share said shipping in a way that violates the boundries of others (or requests of those directly involved in the project). Doing the same with real people gets very creepy VERY fast, ESPECIALLY if doing so oversteps that person’s boundries, ignores social norms, fetishizes their identity (culture, race, gender, sexuality,…), or involves a minor. Doing things like applauding an existing relationship, setting up a blind date, thinking people might be cute together, noticing worrying patterns, offering to give advice/information, reacting to a breakup, offering support, and so on can all be done in a way that respects boundries and doesn’t slip into toxic territory.
Amber however isn’t doing that. In a universe in which she is real and he is real and Ethan is real, she is refusing to accept no as an answer, ignoring Danny’s personal boundries repeatedly, using her issues as an excuse to act how she pleases (a diagnosis is a tool that helps us live our lives and get the help we need), fetishizing Danny and Ethan, pressing Danny until he gives her an answer, ignoring an existing relationship that is closed, and practically asking her ex to make her porn or at least give explicit details. I’m not saying Amber is bad or we should all hate on her. Frankly, I think the girl needs a semester off to do a partial hospitalization program (see below for what it is) followed by long term therapy with someone who is trained in her issues and an evaluation for diagnosis and accommodations and/or medication. What I’m saying is what she is doing is wrong in context, she can learn from this mistake and grow as a person because it IS the mistake of a kid who is still developing a brain and running on hormones, and using her mistake to shame people OUTSIDE of the comic about their feelings/opinions about people INSIDE the comic is actually faulty logic and a dangerous one at that. Wielding shame like a weapon can hurt everyone in the process, including yourself.
If anyone is curious, a partial hospitalization program is a multi week outpatient program that involves individual therapy, groups, psycological education (works like a small class), and skill building. They meet 3-7 days a week for several hours per day. The program treats those with mental illnesses and/or addiction who are in crisis, close to being in crisis, or recently finished a 72 hour hold. It takes place at a physical location or over a video call, but the individual is still in their own home and isn’t given restrictions on anything, but the process is draining so a full time load at college on top of that is too much to ask of anyone. A variety of skills and coping techniques are taught so the person can both find things that work for them and be able to remain stable on their own and/or recover faster if and when a relapse occurs.
I went to one due to PTSD and depression. While I wasn’t in danger and was still doing everything I was supposed to be doing (like paying bills and seeing a doctor), I was in a bad place and nothing I did could pull me out of that hole. They kicked my ass, but damn was it worth it. Dealt with some stuff I thought I had already healed from. Got something to fight my intrusive thoughts with and the rest of the bullshit. Learned to see myself and my brain differently. Had some epiphanies. Set some boundaries. Made some honest mistakes and learned from them. Learned interpersonal skills. And on an on. I never knew they existed until about two years ago and didn’t experience one myself until a year after that, but damn glad I did.
Oh good God, I see what you mean about the wall of text! However, sometimes thats what it takes. Thank you so much for sharing. Having spent five years in group and one on one councilling to address childhood trauma I can affirm the importance of learning those skills and little tricks that give you tools to address issues as they come up. Learning to love yourself is such a powerful thing too and, for me, meant the difference between “I cant be bothered” and “I deserve this!” So glad to see you found the help you needed when you needed it. *HUGGLES*
Right!? If she’s going to be touching herself in public, we should at least get to watch. Even masturbate indoors girl has the decency to do it beside the window!
The fact that she consistently devalues herself and casts herself as “garbage” or “the bad one” of her two distinctive identities. It’s often just a justification not to work on improving herself or hold herself accountable. Instead dumping all her good traits on AG. It’s actually kind of sad because Amber is a good person. She just chooses not to let herself be one.
the concept of a “good” and “bad” alter is a really harmful and ableist stereotype. please dont perpetuate it by saying there’s a “worse side” to someone’s DID
I don’t know a lot about DID, but I’m really sorry if I implied this with my Blade Runner comment down there regarding Amber, and I’m REALLY sorry if I caused you DID-havers any stress! 🙏
But her AG personality is the one that literally puts her into situations that could be harmful to her physical health. That’s worse than just being a gross person with a Bisexual Fetish.
Is it worse than saying one person is better or worse than another? Does them being alters instead of people in separate bodies change things that much?
Just straight up trashing either the Amber alter or the Amazing-Girl alter on their own doesn’t seem to draw the same response. Maybe there’s some nuance I’m missing.
The nuance is that it’s like trashing someone with depression for being depressed, it’s trashing someone who is mentally ill for one of the symptoms of their illness.
That’s not what’s going on here. People aren’t trashing her for having DID. They’re just saying that AG has worse behaviors than Amber. And, regardless, mental illness isn’t an excuse to treat people poorly nor does it in anyway absolve somebody of the consequences of their behavior
You can certainly call her behavior or AG’s out as inappropriate, gross, etc. It becomes problematic when you call individual alters the bad one or good one, it’s the behavior that’s bad, not the person and that goes for anyone really, calling out problematic behavior doesn’t require throwing out the whole person.
I agree with Chroma. As somone who has DID, I second all of what they said. There’s no good or bad alter, only complex, traumatized alters who may be doing unhealthy things because they don’t know better ways of coping. Promoting this trope hurts, real people, so please don’t.
By the way, I didn’t mean that as a loaded question, I’m just curious as to what your particular stance on it is, and what you think counts as a “mental illness”.
Hm. We’ve gone too deep, I can’t reply to you directly anymore. Ah well, doesn’t matter.
My stance is, simply put, DID is a sign that your brain is functioning incorrectly. Much like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, and a whole bunch of other issues.
It’s not something to be hated or treat people like they’re lesser over, obviously. That’d be fucked up.
But it’s also not something that people should aspire to have.
It is, like everything else I’ve listed, something that people need help to understand and deal with.
I’ve got high-functioning Autism. Not hugely debilitating, but enough to be annoying most days. And quite frankly, there isn’t a day that goes by where I’d be 100% happy to have a neurotypical brain, instead of one that can get easily overwhelmed by just any old shitstorm of things going on.
And then I go online and see people who act like having Autism is the best thing ever and it’s some kinda superpower. And I can almost guarantee that not a single one of those people actually HAS it.
Quite frankly, being Neuroatypical sucks. And I hate the people who fetishize it even more than I do the ableists.
If there’s only one thing I had to disagree with right off the bat, it’s referring to neurodivergence as the brain functioning “incorrectly”. I personally prefer to think of it at the brain “functioning differently”.
As someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, Vocal Dysphoria, enough obsessive compulsive tendencies to pass out inches from crossing the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder finish-line, sucking balls at the guessing game called “””social cues””, eye contact draining my energy, and lots of other neurodivergent stripes, I know how challenging it is to live with this kind of thing.
However, these personal challenges really don’t hurt me as much as getting swept up by big, overgeneralizing labels like “autism” and having people make really hurtful assumptions about me based on those labels OTHER PEOPLE decide for me, calling my personality a mental disorder that needs to be “cured”, having been physically and psychologically abused for decades because of that label.
I really just wish that the way we described neurodivergence was more like gender / sexual identity, were you can have more specific descriptors and less room for people to make hurtful assumptions, regarding both your abilities AND disabilities. Because the way the current categories are now, it’s like being forced to describe broken bones with choices of “70% or more are broken on the left half” and “70% or more are broken on the right half”.
Tell me, how many times do you reckon people have made hurtful assumptions you because of a label like “autism”? Do you think people would be less likely to make those assumptions if only we had better, more clear ways of describing our unique stripes of neurodivergence?
As an autistic person, I think if you tried to give me a neurotypical brain I would physically have to fight you. I’m one of those ones who likes how my brain works, it might not be a superpower but it’s definitely better than having whatever the fuck *not* my brain would be
Of course she needs help, but demonizing an alter in fiction sends a message in real life that’s not helpful. Nuance 100% exists online, I’ve seen it, and if you haven’t seen it you’re either missing it or looking in the wrong places. I’m autistic as well as having DID, so I get it’s hard, but to be frank learning to accept yourself where you’re at, while working to improve where you’re able, is what I see most often and that isn’t fetishizing it’s healthy and certainly better than hating yourself. Also, being proud of your differences isn’t bad either, there are of course people who take it oo far, but most of the time it comes from a place of hard-won self acceptance.
Yer wrong. Okay, simply put, it’s not Amber’s DiD that is doing it, this has nothing to do with her mental health, and everything to do with her character and environment. Amber/Amazigirl may be two psyches sharing the same body, but what Amber’s doing? That’s not because of (or in spite of) Amazi-girl.
These are separate issues. Go back and re-read the series from the start, and look for how many times sexuality is pushed and discretion is mocked-what she’s doing is fully in tune with the culture she’s involved in. She’s not acting materially different from other people who also obsess over other people’s romantic/sexual activities, from the press hounding Robin, to Becky’s father, to how Jason lost his job. Whether it’s restricting or exposing, there’s an undercurrent of people wanting to meddle, (or at least watch) other people’s sexual lives and habits.
and we even have a classroom encouraging this. Amber is perfectly in tune with her environment, it’s just creepy because it’s exaggerated for laughs.
Wait, what?
“to how Jason lost his job”? I could quibble about how the others aren’t that similar, but Jason didn’t lose his job because other people were obsessed with his romantic/sexual activities, but because he had a job where sexual abuse of people he had authority over is a serious problem and therefore is rightly banned.
Also not sure about “classroom encouraging this” unless you’re painting gender studies as a bad thing, which is a hell of a take.
I read it as “Hey. It’s me the co-inventor of Garbage Roof, known for my utter lack of shame,” implying that she doesn’t care how shitty her actions are. It kinda reminds me of the Hyperbole and a Half post about a certain kind of depression-as-superpower (because the apathy overcomes the social anxiety). This seems likely to end in a similar way.
Also specifically acknowledging that your ostensible friend is in an extremely self-destructive state and bragging about being the cause because they’re hotter now is… Like even as a joke that’s a pretty fucked thing to say
I was literally here in the comments section to see how quickly that was commented on. Because as creepy and gross as the objectification of two people is, the sexual objectification of someone’s ongoing suffering and trauma is DEFINITELY worse to me. Like neither is low on the gross scale, well done on that Amber, but- yeah, as you say, she’s BRAGGING about it. She seems downright smug at having had a hand in Ethan’s current state AND taking sexual pleasure in it and just. “Yikes” is simultaneously the only word and not remotely close to strong enough.
As I thought exercise I often swap the ostensible genders of characters.
Can you imagine a dude character going on about how hot his ex-girlfriend is now that her depression has caused her to lose a dangerous amount of weight, and bragging about it being his doing?
I think it’s for the same reason that the commentariat gave Mike a pass for being an asshole because he was an asshole all the time, because somehow bad behaviour is not as bad when it’s a pattern, I GUESS.
The main difference with Mike, massive asshole though he was, is how he was used. He was rarely a focus character, and those times that he was he was shown to be a fair bit less one-dimensional.
Most of his asshole moments, honestly, came in the final panel of a comic. It’s just a factor of the format, if you need to end most-to-all strips on a joke, having a character who can be easily inserted into a comic to make a joke is useful.
The difference here is that Amber is a main character, not a major secondary character like Mike was, and her… horrifically creepy stuff isn’t just coming in the last panel to end things on a joke.
… Yeah this is DEFINITELY some kind of self-destructing her relationships thing, because even when Amber’s a disaster she’s usually not quite this variety of disastrous.
Amber doing more of that thing she does where she angsts and beats herself constantly for being a shitty person yet when she ACTUALLY does shitty things, it rarely registers to her as wrong or bad at all.
I’m not “slash-shaming” her?? Amber’s being a really rude and inconsiderate creep right now. Not because of the “slash”. Because 1. shipping actual people you know is creepy and 2. TELLING those people about it is even creepier AND really rude, and 3. pressing on it after those people have made it very clear that they *really do not like it* is MAXED out creepy, invasive, and dehumanizing. Amber not only isn’t expressing any shame or regret about any of this, she’s happily defending herself. Like, the idea that she’s being a real shithead right now either isn’t occurring to her at all- which is bad – or it does and she doesn’t care – which is not just bad but makes her potentially dangerous to be around. That would mean that she SEES the boundaries Danny is trying to put down and that her choice to trample on them is deliberate. Which has really ugly implications for her character.
tbh I think it’s even creepier, especially if they’re people you interact with on a regular basis. Like, at least with real-person-ff about celebrities, there’s already some degree of separation and you don’t really know them at all, so they might as well register as a fictional character to your brain. Because with slashfic and fanfic in general it’s about exploring what you think a particular fictional character would do in whatever situation you’ve imagines and you can do that because they’re a fictional character with no autonomy. It’s why arguments saying cheesecake tittygirls dressed in bikini armor CHOSE to dress like that don’t work, because they didn’t choose to do anything. They’re made up people who follow the script their creators made for them.
But with friends, those are people that you know and love. They’re autonomous, sapient people with whole inner lives you have no idea of. Writing slashfic about your friends completely ignores that. Like honestly, if a close friend of mine told me that they wrote slashfic about me, I’d feel violated and lose a lot of trust in them. I wouldn’t even want to know what they wrote because I don’t want to see the fantasy they reduced me to, even if that fantasy is informed by the things they know about me.
Very true, but as long as you keep these ships not to seriously or even just all in your head, and as long as you don’t intend to make them happen in the REAL WORLD, there’s really no problem that I see.
Creepy as this kind of privately enjoyed shipping can be, it’s even CREEPIER to police people’s brains to see what kinds of private thoughts they have on their friends.
If Amber learned that Danny was bi and Ethan had been flirting with him, apologized to Ethan for opening an old wound, and then went back to her dorm room to do whatever that had inspired with her hand and her pants in private, she’d be violating neither Danny nor Ethan’s consent.
As far as I know no one is saying that having weird fantasies about your friends is less creepy than having them about celebrities. Just if you have them in the privacy of your own head its nobodies business but your own.
Committing your fantasies to paper without consent touches on creepy if its of real people and even more if they are not celebreties, but so long as you have no intent to share these with anyone else I think its a grey area.
When you start sharing your fantasies with others or when you try to push it into real life is when you become a jerk.
Eh, I think it’s one thing to be like “I think X and Y would make a great couple, I hope they get together!” But actually being like “I *ship* these two people I know” kind of places two actual human beings into a context of fictional media fandom culture that I think is, at least, really weird. I’ll allow that MAYBE it doesn’t quite reach the category of creepiness until you start externalizing that mindset.
It’s okay to slash shame. I honestly hate the whole movement of not kink shaming. There are things that should be shamed like shipping someone in a relationship and you friend who is horribly depressed and needs care not dick.
I would only call it slash shaming if both Ethan and Danny were fictional in universe, or they both consented to what Amber was doing.
Disapproving what Amber is doing is no more slash shaming than disapproving of cheating is slut shaming.
Even with the acceptable forms, the fantasies under slash can be unhealthy and I can see why even with fictional characters and even in healthy dynamics homosexuality being fetishized for the sake straight people might be uncomfortable to gay people.
The anti-kinkshaming movement is about not shaming people for their consensual sex just because it deviates from the norm. It really doesn’t apply to the kind of nonconsensual voyeurism thing Amber’s doing here.
well said. idk if it’s because she doesn’t know what wrong and what isn’t, or because she just follows her pleasure as much as possible – and both being self-depreciating and sexualising others feels goods.
If THAT were the case, I’d reckon she’d be doing it for several reasons:
1. Like Ethan, she’s trying to repel people so she can mourn over Mike.
2. She’s trying to create the ideal conditions for AG to become her main alter. Combined with sleep-deprivation, she’s basically trying to throw as much “cure” at her SELF as possible, out of shear self-hatred.
Note her last line, and remember that Amber views the world in comic book terms. Making someone is not a good thing in her book (or at least not in Amazi-Girl’s). After all, Blaine made her — no, wait, Sal made her — no, wait Asher made her…
She’s openly claiming to be a villain here, is what I’m saying.
What you need to do is to create your own original characters. Flesh them out, make them interesting people, put them into interesting situations that you yourself would enjoy reading about…
… and then make THEM fuck. They’re your characters, so you can do that.
That’s why I started writing romance novels – because I was tired of seeing the characters I related to most in basically all media get killed off for having sex drives.
Due to my publisher going out of business due to COVID last year, the better revised version of my first novel isn’t currently available – only the PoD of the first edition pre professional editing.
I’ve been meaning to either A) go hard on getting a new publisher or B) put up the edited version for PoD, but day job and general procrastination have prevented my wife and I from deciding which course of action to take, so we’ve been in book-limbo for the past year or so. One of the things I plan to do in January is get our asses moving in one direction or the other.
Which would be good because Book 2 has been finished and waiting to go up somewhere for two years now. And a short story. And Book 3 needs to be edited. And Book 4 is about 20,000 words from being finished as well. See, I didn’t stop writing during all this – just all the other stuff. Got a bit of a book log-jam going on ATM.
If Ethan is emaciated… that means he’s not healthy. Please don’t fetishize that.
And just because “it’s you” doesn’t give you permission to objectify people out loud. Even people you’ve been intimate with. If it bothers him, that’s valid. So keep that to yourself, please.
Tuberculosis was not sexy, even when La Dame aux Camélias had it.
Heroin abuse was not sexy, even when Gia Carangi had it.
Malnutrition is not sexy.
Depression is not sexy.
I’m not going to claim to know Willis’s thoughts but there’s a depressing amount of otherwise decent people who think sexual harassment isn’t a big deal when it’s a woman harassing a man
I sincerely doubt that’s the direction this is going, since it’s very clear that Ethan is very, very put-off by the whole thing – maybe Danny is slightly less put-off, but Ethan was already getting irritated by Amber asking for intimate details of his sex life with Mike, and that wasn’t really ever resolved.
i’m pretty sure she’s not supposed to be likeable here, it’s just that the format allows for punchlines even when the person making them sucks.
i’m pretty sure this is intended as self-destructive and isolating behavior. like 80% sure.
Also if this strip goes in the direction of Danny getting lured into chasing after Ethan and blowing up things with Sal, with Amber’s bullshit being the catalyst, I’m quitting this strip for good. I say this primarily to underline how done I am at this point with most of the cast lol.
I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Danny immediately rebuked any potential Ethan courtship not that Ethan would be into it either since as Danny said “people aren’t her sex puppets”
I also don’t think Amber supposed to be cute or endearing here. It’s the nature of the comic to try and end on a joke more often than not, but to recap things a bit Amber is functioning on lack of sleep and hallucinating Mike a person well known for being a bit of a prick. It kind of makes sense that she’s indulging in the worst parts of her personality right now and being a bit of a prick herself. She’s been called out twice now. Maybe three if you count Dina’s earlier concern. She’s not being rewarded for her actions today.
I sure HOPE this is just her lack of sleep talking.
To know the pain of being withheld credit for your own identity, and then inflict that same pain on someone else, is a very sad example of copying the enemy.
I can’t really read that face in the last three panels, 😑 so I can’t really tell whether she’s taking credit and therefore pride or just deviously trying to drag Ethan into the blame so she doesn’t feel like it’s all her fault.
I definitely do not think we’re ever gonna be in for a story where the most monogamous human being alive is dragged into breaking up with his new girlfriend who was already a good friend of his, and whose belief in him being a good and kind person that she can find comfort and stability with made him openly compliment himself for the first time in, like, the entire series, I think?
I didn’t think Willis would have a plot where a AG chases a gun toting fundie dad who kidnapped his daughter. I didn’t think there’d be a league of bad dads or that Blaine would decide to LARP as a supervillain. I didn’t think a character would die. I didn’t think Danny eould tell his best friend at the hospital that he hoped that the character would stay in the coma. I didn’t think the tulpa of that character would haunt another one who’d barely interacted with him previously. I didn’t think Jennifer would try to pimp out the ex I didn’t think she would break up with after a succession of arcs where they worked on their shit. I didn’t think Joyce would turn into a red pilled atheist biphobe or that Amber would backslide all her character development from an arc that culminated w her fist bumped the alter I didn’t expect her to still be in a cold war with.
I’m saying all of those seem a lot less stable than whether or not Danny’s ability to be monogamous could ever come under question.
(also Amber and AG are still reconciled, and also Jennifer is exactly enough of a disaster to pimp Ruth out to Daisy in the hopes of getting more clout at work)
I think that’s what you mean? Amber could certainly cause drama for Danny and Sal but they got together yesterday and both of them are clearly happy about it. Characters have to make mistakes to cause drama but I think the specific mistake you’re concerned about, that Amber’s behaviour here will push Sal and Danny apart so that Danny can chase after Ethan, well, the only reason I’m going to say I’m confident that won’t happen is that I technically cannot call it a fact. If Danny and Sal break up I don’t think it’ll be because of Amber or Danny’s Pants Feelings for Ethan; Danny didn’t break up over those Pants Feelings when he was with Amber either, I can’t imagine he’d go for it now.
Obviously there will be Ethan Drama but if I tried to play Guess The Narrative Intent for a second, I think it’s deliberate that Ethan only came back after Sal hooked up with Danny, a dude who previously shot the idea down because he was hung up over Ethan and explained that he’s a solidly one-person kinda guy and, at the moment, Sal was not that one person.
Oh I forgot; I didn’t think Billie would decide to completely reroll her character sheet, change her preferred name, and erase her bisexuality while dating a man who unbeknownst to her was responsible for the deaths of two people and the endangerment and trauma to a dozen more.
I’m not saying Amber will directly string pull Danny into chasing Ethan, just that somehow she’ll knock over a domino or incept Danny into pining after Ethan. Or the two find themselves working together to ‘help’ Amber because she hits a new rock bottom.
Billie has always erased her bisexuality; she said it only existed in porn and that everyone wanted to have sex with someone of the same gender sometimes.
Anyway, and I will reiterate, this series of all of them will not have Danny break up with Sal, specifically, so he could pursue Ethan. Danny can break up with Sal and at some point hook up with Ethan, I very much hope not as Walkercox is my second OTP, but if you’re worried about it for the specific in-universe reasoning of Danny dumping Sal because he can’t stop obsessing over Ethan when that specific reasoning happened and Danny never once considered leaving Amber, I’m just gonna skip over confidence and call it a fact that it won’t happen.
Well, look at it this way: The last time Danny was hot for Ethan while dating someone he was extremely convinced that his thoughts were inherently wrong and made him an unfaithful partner to Amber. It didn’t matter that Danny could figure out he was bi and what it meant to him, what mattered is that Ethan was there and Danny was hot for him, ergo Danny was a filthy, degenerate, traitorous cheater, and his thoughts for Ethan were shameful and wrong.
Danny’s in a relationship for the first time in five years of comics, Sal is someone he greatly respects and admires, and more specifically knows that she values him as a source of comfort and stability in a tumultuous, affection-deprived life, and he’s fine admitting Ethan is attractive here. He’s annoyed about it because Amber’s being a creepy weirdo, but saying Ethan is hot doesn’t imply any distress in him or that saying it makes him unfaithful.
Garbage Roof has the unintended side effect of elevating the garbage for all the world to see. Garbage will eventually slip off the edges if there’s enough of it.
No, she’s definitely worse. It seems clear her mental/emotional health has deteriorated since Mike’s death and I think that’s having an impact on her behavior.
I wouldn’t put this as generally morally worse. She’s certainly indulging this particular bad trait more than usual – though the circumstances certainly contribute to it, but I don’t see that as necessarily spilling over into other problems.
Where as I am somewhat disappointed by the news. Was it great? No, but there were points in it that made me think this has a lot of potential. I’m sad that I’ll never get to see it even try to live up to that potential.
It’s Cowboy Bebop. If you have to “live up to the potential” you are already dead. It’s a juggernaut or animation adapted for the kind of person who wants to watch anime but is too embarrassed to go through with it, so these invariably crummy shows get made to sell cartoons to fragile adults.
Also it’s somehow less forward thinking that the 23 year old anime. Jet ran afoul of The One Bad Cop on the force instead of, like, the deeply ingrained corruption that pushes him out.
Of course it wasn’t going to live up to the anime. I’m not arguing that. I am arguing that it did some things right, and if given a chance to continue, it could have become its own story that is worth watching. Why adaptations have to be as good as or surpass the original in order to be valid is beyond me.
On a side note the only bad thing I really have to say about Arcane is that it being so good will likely only perpetuate that awful sentiment.
It’s more like: who is this for and why does it exist? What about Cowboy Bebop invites the adaptation it got?
Like a pretty friggin’ major theme to Cowboy Bebop is the evils of corporate power structures, and then Netflix Bebop just really, really did not care about this. Faye Valentine became a femme fatale bombshell crook because she got scammed in a for-profit healthcare system, that’s really relevant!
Netflix Bebop is about watching that show you liked when you were 13, but now it’s not a cartoon so you don’t have to feel embarrassed, and also in the transition to not being a cartoon we took out all the political and social themes and philosophies of the characters so we can pretend they’re just funny cowpokes out for a good time. It ain’t Bebop, ’cause there’s only one Bebop and it’d only exist as it did when it was first made.
Spike Spiegal isn’t Batman; he’s not made of broad iconography who exists to be interpreted and reinterpreted, he’s a specific character in a specific universe made by a specific creative team who had specific themes they wanted to impart. What about Cowboy Bebop was carried forward, and if an adaptation does not have to carry anything, then why is it an adaptation? An adaptation does not have to be as good, but it has to have reasons to exist other than that it existing isn’t innately a crime.
And it’s taking a while, but I am working on that last part.
I see where you are coming from but damn it really feels like you are shitting on people like me who actually enjoyed parts of the show. I find it interesting that you specifically brought up Faye, because it leads me to believe you lost faith in the LA when they showed the cast photos. I actually liked and felt a lot closer to the LA Faye than I ever did to the anime one. It was nice to be shown for once that you don’t have to be a femme fatale in order to exist as a woman in a cruel and harsh world like the one that Cowboy Bebop is set in. so I guess to answer your question about, who was this made for: in some small way it was made for me. Sorry to rant like this, but I’m tired of people acting like the LA cowboy bebop is all that’s wrong in this world.
Whether or not anyone enjoys it isn’t really my beef, and I resent the idea that I could only dislike the show because Faye has more clothes on and not, like, the part where she becomes this Noir crime character because she had what can be described as a typical experience with for-profit healthcare.
the downplaying of the part where she becomes this Noir crime character because she had what can be described as a typical experience with for-profit healthcare.*
She was exactly as she was in the OG series, in that she acted the way a cartoon does except a real person doing that is, for very obvious reasons, not the kind of charming a cartoon character has when doing so.
I get the feeling it was just there to land an impression and Ed would have been toned down when she became a main character.
Oh, then I’m even more RELIEVED now that it was canceled! 😌🥲
Seriously though, I LOVE Edward. Besides technically being NB, she had traits that ALL kinds of neurodivergents could relate to without EVER needing a label!
On a side note, she even inspired me to take up programming!
Very cautiously optimistic about that one, but the news that the original creators left the project (and now have their own Avatar Studios to create new Avatar-verse movies and series set in the same universe instead of just doing a remake of the original) probably isn’t the best sign.
On mobile I’ve had an obnoxious Otterbox ad for the past week or so that takes up way more space then it should, and if I accidently swipe it it expands to take up half the screen
It’s also in just the right spot where I have to close it if I want to make a comment
Hot take: Amber gloating over how she and Danny broke Ethan into being emo hot is legitimately one of the worst things anyone in the main cast has said. Like possibly beyond “Mike should spend a little while in a coma”. At least Danny wasn’t happy about pushing him.
I sure hope she’s just taking undeserved credit and merely superficially implicating her and Danny breaking Ethan into this Emo hotness the same way Emperor Zurg is deserves credit for every lost kitten.
Because if she gets the impression that she can succeed with this method, she might be willing to taste this hotness so badly that she’d be willing to BREAK others to do it.
At least Amber is finally happy to talk with a friend after months of self isolation. They are even having fun! Sure, the conversation is kinda weird, but better than the one with Ethan and more articulate than those with Dina.
Sorry… I may have confused the meaning of the world with another one similar in my lingue. With Articulate I mean more developed, long and with fluency. With phrases that can easily express concepts.
Okay. I think I am done with Amber for now. I always kind of related to her social awkwardness and the tendency to self-isolate, especially when in emotional distress, but she is being plain creepy here. And talking about how “”hot”” a supposed friend has become because of their depression and trauma, so disgusting. I am not even going to touch that last line.
I hope ghost-mike is cussing her out.
There is the possibility she does all this knowing it is not okay because she believes that she should not have friends and should be disliked. But either way..Amber NO
As much as I love and sympathize with Amber, I have to agree. This is definitely getting into ick territory. :/ It’s one thing to joke about it with close friends who know you’re just kidding, but I’m very much getting “this is not a joke” vibe from this. Amber GENUINELY would like her friends to get carnal for her prurient interests even though they’re clearly not into the idea.
that’s hella fucking shitty, but also, it would be a massive lie if most people here wouldn’t admit that they shipped their friends at least once in their lives.
I’ve shipped a lot of characters, but never anyone I know irl, or for that matter, people I don’t know, other than maybe thinking they’re a cute couple.
If you mean like random, once in a while thoughts that you entertain for no more than a few seconds and have a giggle, then yes most people have done that I reckon.
But what Amber is doing, where she gets SERIOUS about her ships and DOESN’T keep it ALL to herself and seeks to make them REALITY?
I can honestly say I’ve never shipped my friends, mainly because I didn’t have any till I was old enough to know better to not do that kinda crap with IRL people.
What. I’ve definitely encouraged people to ask out people due to clear feelings between them, but I have never actively shipped irl people as belonging together or for fantasizing.
Characters yes, real people, no. I also really respect people that can take that stuff in stride because I always found it really annoying and it made my friendships awkward.
I think there’s a big difference between “I think you two would both be happy if you got together” and “I want you two to make out because it’s sexy”. The former has the interests of the parties getting together at the forefront, the latter is selfish.
True, but when the narrative is part of a game(or especially real life) and what your character would do is actively taking the fun away from other players for no reason other than the fact that your character is supposed to be an ass, you may want consider acting a little out of character.
“that’s just what my character would do” is a very common thing in D&D. I’ve never heard it used for characters in a single writer’s fictional universe, so unless someone clearly specifies that’s what they are talking about, I default to D&D.
It’s a D&D thing, generally spoken by people playing Chaotic Neutral characters who fuck up things for everyone for shits and giggles, but who somehow take it personally when, after been given that response, I disintegrate their character’s head and every subsequent character’s they play, because “the last person gave me trust issues.”
if you disintegrate every subsequent character that person plays, then you’re being a bad player yourself. If you don’t get along with another one of the players, you should TALK about it instead of passive/aggressive being shitty to their characters.
The DM and the other players should be able to discuss that you’re not playing a LOLrandom campaign and certain attitudes are not gonna work. Communication and trust between players is key, and if one person refuses to listen, just kick them out of the campaign
A common feature in a lot of people’s bad experiences of this type is that kicking the problem player/person out of the gaming and/or friend group (which are often one and the same, a perfect circle on the Venn diagram) isn’t really a practical option. Yay, Geek Social Fallacies.
They’re talking about when a player has their character behave obnoxiously with the excuse that “that’s what they would do”, as if their character was a real person outside their control.
I was talking about a person who can perceive a negative issue with themselves,but rather than try to do anything about it, says “that’s just how I am”. they usually don’t extend the same privilege to anyone else.
It’s a counsellor’s favourite phrase! (With sarcasm.) speaking as someone who both trained as a counsellor (/therapist) and has been working with one for a long time… it’s a very recognised choice of words. Because it implies that, on some level or for some reason, this isn’t something a client wants to change.
Recently though I’ve been working with my counsellor on my very legitimate way of using that as I come to understand my ADHD and autism. Things which we’d previously try to work through are sometimes “that really is just how I am”, but it’s never “so I can’t do anything” but rather “since I can’t change my brain function, how do we work with what I am”. And that’s a very important distinction with “that’s how I am”.
Seems more the opposite to me. Head Mike’s purpose in the system seems to be to do what Real Mike thought he was doing until shortly before the end – telling hard truths that Amber needs to hear, and stopping shit like this.
Huh. Apparently Amber has changed a lot since last semester, because when I think of AmberxDanny, I don’t think of Amber lusting over Danny while he sits there saying “stop.”
I am ashamed to admit that I read this strip 10 times in confusion at the first panel, wondering why Danny claimed not to be in a relationship with Sal. Then my mind finally registered the word “open.” I don’t know if I’ve ever face-palmed so hard in my life.
Danny! Get back in the game. Sure you gave some ground by admitting you find EEE hot too, but you can still rebuke Amber for being proud about it. Well, for feeling proud about a lot of things in this conversation actually.
I don’t know what the third middle panel is supposed to convey. “Hey’s it’s me, Amber, the cisgender straight girl with issues, that makes it okay to be gross about this”?
The fact that Amber seems to be taking pride in Ethan’s current mental and emotional state, which I am guessing is not a great one, is super fucked up.
She needs to get her ass to therapy, like yesterday.
amber problematic & fetishising af, but can’t help but think she’s coping with her many layers of fucked up by turning everyone around her into characters/taking nothing seriously/focusing on emotions like lust rather than her own pain/accountability/sympathy for others’ pain. sure there are more specific words for that but they do not live in my empty brain.
Also and this is a side thing, but I’m not actually sure what about EEE would be hot. I guess the goth aestetic is nice but he isn’t all in on that, black hair and black clothes isn’t enough for that, and ribs showing on a person is always a little odd for me. To me this seems almost like a strict downgrade in hotness from classic ethan.
Wow, that last thing is the worst thing Amber’s ever said, I think. I’ve always empathized with her before but now I’m ashamed to be stuck with her as my avatar right now.
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that
sure is a take
Nobody told Amber that Garbage Roof wasn’t an aspirational title, did they
I am usually pretty on-board with, “hey, I know this comic is more serious than Shortpacked, but it’s still pretty goofy, allow for a certain leeway towards exagerated-for-comedy’s sake” as a take, but… yeah, this is kind of a Lot.
Gloating over how hot “emaciated emo Ethan” like yeah Amber that was your friend and he’s not been eating well since his friend died a few months ago
Also like there aren’t a hundred thousand extremely hot original gay works out there from small indie creators who deserve your money more than Disney does
True dat. The gay characters in those works aren’t tokens put in to appease social media or make ‘representation’-they’re actual CHARACTERS. Disney just does Tokens.
i mean, despite Amber’s perspective, the gay(/LGBT) characters in this webcomic are pretty great too.
Angry doesn’t even BEGIN to cover how I feel about the practice of tokens and making “representation”, what with Disney and all those other bourgeois fucks who USE us as production value and getting social media rock hard about it. 👿👿👿
I sure hope that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
What the hell, Amber
And now all the people who wanted a Danny/Ethan slipshine will be mad at Amber for doing the same thing.
The difference is that Amber is doing it to, what is to her, real people.
Those people are basically doing the same as Amber in panel 2.
Oh dear god! Someone concisely said something that took me a wall of text again XD
Yeah it’s kind of like how Cars 2 becomes pretty disturbing when you think that in their universe so called ‘lemon cars’ are real people left to eventually die because their parts aren’t going to be produced any more versus the reality of lemon cars in our own world which aren’t alive.
I know this is random but I recently had to watch that movie with someone and I remember thinking that when I first viewed it years ago. Like a lot of people say it sucked and it did but wtf Pixar I know Cars is just a merchandise vehicle (heh) but usually you put more thought into things back then.
The Mouse’s cash-grabbing aura must have been particularly strong while it was in production.
That just sounds like an analogy for for-profit healthcare, to be honest
And the lemon cars are the bad guys. They do bad things so as… not to die. And are mocked by the ‘heroes’ and narrative. I mean I guess if /any/ Pixar franchise was going to be enamoured with capitalism to even horrifying levels it would be that one.
“All that is solid melts into air…”
It could have been, I think the bluesky Robots movie took that angle, but Cars 2 plays the Lemons as a villainous conspiracy. Like Cars is already a mindfuck franchise, but Cars 2 makes everything so much worse.
It’s not just that they’re real people. It’s also that she’s saying it directly to Danny. While Danny has a girlfriend. And Ethan is hurting and mad at Danny.
There’s a lot of things that make it worse.
Logical fallacy my friend! Shipping people romantically or sexually who are fictional is fine as long as you aren’t toxic towards the real life people behind them (such as actors, writers, or creators) or share said shipping in a way that violates the boundries of others (or requests of those directly involved in the project). Doing the same with real people gets very creepy VERY fast, ESPECIALLY if doing so oversteps that person’s boundries, ignores social norms, fetishizes their identity (culture, race, gender, sexuality,…), or involves a minor. Doing things like applauding an existing relationship, setting up a blind date, thinking people might be cute together, noticing worrying patterns, offering to give advice/information, reacting to a breakup, offering support, and so on can all be done in a way that respects boundries and doesn’t slip into toxic territory.
Amber however isn’t doing that. In a universe in which she is real and he is real and Ethan is real, she is refusing to accept no as an answer, ignoring Danny’s personal boundries repeatedly, using her issues as an excuse to act how she pleases (a diagnosis is a tool that helps us live our lives and get the help we need), fetishizing Danny and Ethan, pressing Danny until he gives her an answer, ignoring an existing relationship that is closed, and practically asking her ex to make her porn or at least give explicit details. I’m not saying Amber is bad or we should all hate on her. Frankly, I think the girl needs a semester off to do a partial hospitalization program (see below for what it is) followed by long term therapy with someone who is trained in her issues and an evaluation for diagnosis and accommodations and/or medication. What I’m saying is what she is doing is wrong in context, she can learn from this mistake and grow as a person because it IS the mistake of a kid who is still developing a brain and running on hormones, and using her mistake to shame people OUTSIDE of the comic about their feelings/opinions about people INSIDE the comic is actually faulty logic and a dangerous one at that. Wielding shame like a weapon can hurt everyone in the process, including yourself.
If anyone is curious, a partial hospitalization program is a multi week outpatient program that involves individual therapy, groups, psycological education (works like a small class), and skill building. They meet 3-7 days a week for several hours per day. The program treats those with mental illnesses and/or addiction who are in crisis, close to being in crisis, or recently finished a 72 hour hold. It takes place at a physical location or over a video call, but the individual is still in their own home and isn’t given restrictions on anything, but the process is draining so a full time load at college on top of that is too much to ask of anyone. A variety of skills and coping techniques are taught so the person can both find things that work for them and be able to remain stable on their own and/or recover faster if and when a relapse occurs.
I went to one due to PTSD and depression. While I wasn’t in danger and was still doing everything I was supposed to be doing (like paying bills and seeing a doctor), I was in a bad place and nothing I did could pull me out of that hole. They kicked my ass, but damn was it worth it. Dealt with some stuff I thought I had already healed from. Got something to fight my intrusive thoughts with and the rest of the bullshit. Learned to see myself and my brain differently. Had some epiphanies. Set some boundaries. Made some honest mistakes and learned from them. Learned interpersonal skills. And on an on. I never knew they existed until about two years ago and didn’t experience one myself until a year after that, but damn glad I did.
Oh good God, I see what you mean about the wall of text! However, sometimes thats what it takes. Thank you so much for sharing. Having spent five years in group and one on one councilling to address childhood trauma I can affirm the importance of learning those skills and little tricks that give you tools to address issues as they come up. Learning to love yourself is such a powerful thing too and, for me, meant the difference between “I cant be bothered” and “I deserve this!” So glad to see you found the help you needed when you needed it. *HUGGLES*
Right!? If she’s going to be touching herself in public, we should at least get to watch. Even masturbate indoors girl has the decency to do it beside the window!
Yeah, I’m skeeved out. What’s next, her trying to set up a Becky/Joyce/Dina three way, convincing Dina it’s for science?
Amber, you need some SERIOUS help
…what about it being you, Amber, makes objectifying and sexualizing your friends to their faces acceptable?
The fact that she consistently devalues herself and casts herself as “garbage” or “the bad one” of her two distinctive identities. It’s often just a justification not to work on improving herself or hold herself accountable. Instead dumping all her good traits on AG. It’s actually kind of sad because Amber is a good person. She just chooses not to let herself be one.
2hich is funny because AG is still the worse side of her DID, in my opinion.
the concept of a “good” and “bad” alter is a really harmful and ableist stereotype. please dont perpetuate it by saying there’s a “worse side” to someone’s DID
Oh! 😨
I don’t know a lot about DID, but I’m really sorry if I implied this with my Blade Runner comment down there regarding Amber, and I’m REALLY sorry if I caused you DID-havers any stress! 🙏
I didn’t say either side of her was good or bad.
But her AG personality is the one that literally puts her into situations that could be harmful to her physical health. That’s worse than just being a gross person with a Bisexual Fetish.
Is it worse than saying one person is better or worse than another? Does them being alters instead of people in separate bodies change things that much?
Just straight up trashing either the Amber alter or the Amazing-Girl alter on their own doesn’t seem to draw the same response. Maybe there’s some nuance I’m missing.
The nuance is that it’s like trashing someone with depression, it’s trashing someone who is mentally ill for one of the symptoms of their illness.
* with depression for being depressed, it lost a chunk
The nuance is that it’s like trashing someone with depression for being depressed, it’s trashing someone who is mentally ill for one of the symptoms of their illness.
That’s not what’s going on here. People aren’t trashing her for having DID. They’re just saying that AG has worse behaviors than Amber. And, regardless, mental illness isn’t an excuse to treat people poorly nor does it in anyway absolve somebody of the consequences of their behavior
Above it was literally stated “AG is the worse side of her DID”, so yes that is what was said.
So, we shouldn’t complain about Amber being creepy and gross here?
Or just that we shouldn’t compare her to Amazi-Girl when doing so?
You can certainly call her behavior or AG’s out as inappropriate, gross, etc. It becomes problematic when you call individual alters the bad one or good one, it’s the behavior that’s bad, not the person and that goes for anyone really, calling out problematic behavior doesn’t require throwing out the whole person.
I agree with Chroma. As somone who has DID, I second all of what they said. There’s no good or bad alter, only complex, traumatized alters who may be doing unhealthy things because they don’t know better ways of coping. Promoting this trope hurts, real people, so please don’t.
I’m not the one writing the character, only commenting on it. Amber needs help, but we all know she’s not gonna get it.
This is the internet, there’s basically only two stances on Mental Illness: Unrelenting hatred, and gross fetishization.
You really don’t think there’s any room for nuance?
Oh, I definitely do.
I’m just saying, those are the two stances I see 99.9% of the time when browsing the internet.
Do you think you have a stance between those two alleged binaries?
By the way, I didn’t mean that as a loaded question, I’m just curious as to what your particular stance on it is, and what you think counts as a “mental illness”.
Hm. We’ve gone too deep, I can’t reply to you directly anymore. Ah well, doesn’t matter.
My stance is, simply put, DID is a sign that your brain is functioning incorrectly. Much like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, and a whole bunch of other issues.
It’s not something to be hated or treat people like they’re lesser over, obviously. That’d be fucked up.
But it’s also not something that people should aspire to have.
It is, like everything else I’ve listed, something that people need help to understand and deal with.
I’ve got high-functioning Autism. Not hugely debilitating, but enough to be annoying most days. And quite frankly, there isn’t a day that goes by where I’d be 100% happy to have a neurotypical brain, instead of one that can get easily overwhelmed by just any old shitstorm of things going on.
And then I go online and see people who act like having Autism is the best thing ever and it’s some kinda superpower. And I can almost guarantee that not a single one of those people actually HAS it.
Quite frankly, being Neuroatypical sucks. And I hate the people who fetishize it even more than I do the ableists.
If there’s only one thing I had to disagree with right off the bat, it’s referring to neurodivergence as the brain functioning “incorrectly”. I personally prefer to think of it at the brain “functioning differently”.
As someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, Vocal Dysphoria, enough obsessive compulsive tendencies to pass out inches from crossing the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder finish-line, sucking balls at the guessing game called “””social cues””, eye contact draining my energy, and lots of other neurodivergent stripes, I know how challenging it is to live with this kind of thing.
However, these personal challenges really don’t hurt me as much as getting swept up by big, overgeneralizing labels like “autism” and having people make really hurtful assumptions about me based on those labels OTHER PEOPLE decide for me, calling my personality a mental disorder that needs to be “cured”, having been physically and psychologically abused for decades because of that label.
I really just wish that the way we described neurodivergence was more like gender / sexual identity, were you can have more specific descriptors and less room for people to make hurtful assumptions, regarding both your abilities AND disabilities. Because the way the current categories are now, it’s like being forced to describe broken bones with choices of “70% or more are broken on the left half” and “70% or more are broken on the right half”.
Tell me, how many times do you reckon people have made hurtful assumptions you because of a label like “autism”? Do you think people would be less likely to make those assumptions if only we had better, more clear ways of describing our unique stripes of neurodivergence?
*hurtful assumptions about you
I. Fucking. Hate. Typos.
As an autistic person, I think if you tried to give me a neurotypical brain I would physically have to fight you. I’m one of those ones who likes how my brain works, it might not be a superpower but it’s definitely better than having whatever the fuck *not* my brain would be
Of course she needs help, but demonizing an alter in fiction sends a message in real life that’s not helpful. Nuance 100% exists online, I’ve seen it, and if you haven’t seen it you’re either missing it or looking in the wrong places. I’m autistic as well as having DID, so I get it’s hard, but to be frank learning to accept yourself where you’re at, while working to improve where you’re able, is what I see most often and that isn’t fetishizing it’s healthy and certainly better than hating yourself. Also, being proud of your differences isn’t bad either, there are of course people who take it oo far, but most of the time it comes from a place of hard-won self acceptance.
Hey, another Autistic & DID person
Still getting used to my alters XD Known they existed for less than half a year so it’s been an interesting time for mee
Hey, hope your doing well.
Yer wrong. Okay, simply put, it’s not Amber’s DiD that is doing it, this has nothing to do with her mental health, and everything to do with her character and environment. Amber/Amazigirl may be two psyches sharing the same body, but what Amber’s doing? That’s not because of (or in spite of) Amazi-girl.
These are separate issues. Go back and re-read the series from the start, and look for how many times sexuality is pushed and discretion is mocked-what she’s doing is fully in tune with the culture she’s involved in. She’s not acting materially different from other people who also obsess over other people’s romantic/sexual activities, from the press hounding Robin, to Becky’s father, to how Jason lost his job. Whether it’s restricting or exposing, there’s an undercurrent of people wanting to meddle, (or at least watch) other people’s sexual lives and habits.
and we even have a classroom encouraging this. Amber is perfectly in tune with her environment, it’s just creepy because it’s exaggerated for laughs.
Wait, what?
“to how Jason lost his job”? I could quibble about how the others aren’t that similar, but Jason didn’t lose his job because other people were obsessed with his romantic/sexual activities, but because he had a job where sexual abuse of people he had authority over is a serious problem and therefore is rightly banned.
Also not sure about “classroom encouraging this” unless you’re painting gender studies as a bad thing, which is a hell of a take.
*chooses not to be one.
FTFY
I read it as “Hey. It’s me the co-inventor of Garbage Roof, known for my utter lack of shame,” implying that she doesn’t care how shitty her actions are. It kinda reminds me of the Hyperbole and a Half post about a certain kind of depression-as-superpower (because the apathy overcomes the social anxiety). This seems likely to end in a similar way.
Also specifically acknowledging that your ostensible friend is in an extremely self-destructive state and bragging about being the cause because they’re hotter now is… Like even as a joke that’s a pretty fucked thing to say
I was literally here in the comments section to see how quickly that was commented on. Because as creepy and gross as the objectification of two people is, the sexual objectification of someone’s ongoing suffering and trauma is DEFINITELY worse to me. Like neither is low on the gross scale, well done on that Amber, but- yeah, as you say, she’s BRAGGING about it. She seems downright smug at having had a hand in Ethan’s current state AND taking sexual pleasure in it and just. “Yikes” is simultaneously the only word and not remotely close to strong enough.
As I thought exercise I often swap the ostensible genders of characters.
Can you imagine a dude character going on about how hot his ex-girlfriend is now that her depression has caused her to lose a dangerous amount of weight, and bragging about it being his doing?
I think it’s for the same reason that the commentariat gave Mike a pass for being an asshole because he was an asshole all the time, because somehow bad behaviour is not as bad when it’s a pattern, I GUESS.
The main difference with Mike, massive asshole though he was, is how he was used. He was rarely a focus character, and those times that he was he was shown to be a fair bit less one-dimensional.
Most of his asshole moments, honestly, came in the final panel of a comic. It’s just a factor of the format, if you need to end most-to-all strips on a joke, having a character who can be easily inserted into a comic to make a joke is useful.
The difference here is that Amber is a main character, not a major secondary character like Mike was, and her… horrifically creepy stuff isn’t just coming in the last panel to end things on a joke.
… Yeah this is DEFINITELY some kind of self-destructing her relationships thing, because even when Amber’s a disaster she’s usually not quite this variety of disastrous.
As I recall she also hasn’t slept in 24 hours or more by this point, so that probably also plays a role.
There also may be a level of “I just can’t cope with the reality of what’s happened with Ethan, so I’m going to distract myself with this.”
Amber, as much as I agree with you on Ethan’s hotness and wanna see you feel release,
DAMN! Maybe dial-it-back a bit on NOT keeping it to yourself?
Besides, it’s just gonna make it LESS likely to happen if you tell them like that!
Amber doing more of that thing she does where she angsts and beats herself constantly for being a shitty person yet when she ACTUALLY does shitty things, it rarely registers to her as wrong or bad at all.
When you already consider yourself trash why care about being casually shitty? She has so much better shitty behavior to angst about.
Is slash-shaming a thing? I guess it is.
I’m not “slash-shaming” her?? Amber’s being a really rude and inconsiderate creep right now. Not because of the “slash”. Because 1. shipping actual people you know is creepy and 2. TELLING those people about it is even creepier AND really rude, and 3. pressing on it after those people have made it very clear that they *really do not like it* is MAXED out creepy, invasive, and dehumanizing. Amber not only isn’t expressing any shame or regret about any of this, she’s happily defending herself. Like, the idea that she’s being a real shithead right now either isn’t occurring to her at all- which is bad – or it does and she doesn’t care – which is not just bad but makes her potentially dangerous to be around. That would mean that she SEES the boundaries Danny is trying to put down and that her choice to trample on them is deliberate. Which has really ugly implications for her character.
I actually mostly agree with this, except for one thing.
I dunno if shipping people you know is that much creepy, as long as you keep it ALL to yourself.
tbh I think it’s even creepier, especially if they’re people you interact with on a regular basis. Like, at least with real-person-ff about celebrities, there’s already some degree of separation and you don’t really know them at all, so they might as well register as a fictional character to your brain. Because with slashfic and fanfic in general it’s about exploring what you think a particular fictional character would do in whatever situation you’ve imagines and you can do that because they’re a fictional character with no autonomy. It’s why arguments saying cheesecake tittygirls dressed in bikini armor CHOSE to dress like that don’t work, because they didn’t choose to do anything. They’re made up people who follow the script their creators made for them.
But with friends, those are people that you know and love. They’re autonomous, sapient people with whole inner lives you have no idea of. Writing slashfic about your friends completely ignores that. Like honestly, if a close friend of mine told me that they wrote slashfic about me, I’d feel violated and lose a lot of trust in them. I wouldn’t even want to know what they wrote because I don’t want to see the fantasy they reduced me to, even if that fantasy is informed by the things they know about me.
Very true, but as long as you keep these ships not to seriously or even just all in your head, and as long as you don’t intend to make them happen in the REAL WORLD, there’s really no problem that I see.
Creepy as this kind of privately enjoyed shipping can be, it’s even CREEPIER to police people’s brains to see what kinds of private thoughts they have on their friends.
Yeah, exactly.
If Amber learned that Danny was bi and Ethan had been flirting with him, apologized to Ethan for opening an old wound, and then went back to her dorm room to do whatever that had inspired with her hand and her pants in private, she’d be violating neither Danny nor Ethan’s consent.
As far as I know no one is saying that having weird fantasies about your friends is less creepy than having them about celebrities. Just if you have them in the privacy of your own head its nobodies business but your own.
Committing your fantasies to paper without consent touches on creepy if its of real people and even more if they are not celebreties, but so long as you have no intent to share these with anyone else I think its a grey area.
When you start sharing your fantasies with others or when you try to push it into real life is when you become a jerk.
Eh, I think it’s one thing to be like “I think X and Y would make a great couple, I hope they get together!” But actually being like “I *ship* these two people I know” kind of places two actual human beings into a context of fictional media fandom culture that I think is, at least, really weird. I’ll allow that MAYBE it doesn’t quite reach the category of creepiness until you start externalizing that mindset.
really depends on how you define shipping I suppose
It’s okay to slash shame. I honestly hate the whole movement of not kink shaming. There are things that should be shamed like shipping someone in a relationship and you friend who is horribly depressed and needs care not dick.
I would only call it slash shaming if both Ethan and Danny were fictional in universe, or they both consented to what Amber was doing.
Disapproving what Amber is doing is no more slash shaming than disapproving of cheating is slut shaming.
Even with the acceptable forms, the fantasies under slash can be unhealthy and I can see why even with fictional characters and even in healthy dynamics homosexuality being fetishized for the sake straight people might be uncomfortable to gay people.
The anti-kinkshaming movement is about not shaming people for their consensual sex just because it deviates from the norm. It really doesn’t apply to the kind of nonconsensual voyeurism thing Amber’s doing here.
well said. idk if it’s because she doesn’t know what wrong and what isn’t, or because she just follows her pleasure as much as possible – and both being self-depreciating and sexualising others feels goods.
Yes! Exactly that!
Goodness never registers for her, because she internally files everything “good” as Amazi-Girl’s.
Is she trying to make everyone hate her?
Good point, she very well may be.
If THAT were the case, I’d reckon she’d be doing it for several reasons:
1. Like Ethan, she’s trying to repel people so she can mourn over Mike.
2. She’s trying to create the ideal conditions for AG to become her main alter. Combined with sleep-deprivation, she’s basically trying to throw as much “cure” at her SELF as possible, out of shear self-hatred.
3. All of the above.
…
That…that WOULD be very Amber…
Note her last line, and remember that Amber views the world in comic book terms. Making someone is not a good thing in her book (or at least not in Amazi-Girl’s). After all, Blaine made her — no, wait, Sal made her — no, wait Asher made her…
She’s openly claiming to be a villain here, is what I’m saying.
Good insight.
Amber made herself. It was kinda a big deal as a declaration.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/i/
AMBER NO
I mean. YIKES, Amber.
Amber. No. Bad. Bad Amber. *gets the spray bottle*
Ethan had the right idea slamming the door in her face
Like even Joe never got as bad as she’s acting now
Starting to see some family resemblance here
I wonder if telling her she’s acting like Faz will snap her out of this
If by “snap her out of this”, you mean probably completely destroy her and allow AG to be her full-time alter, then yes.
Well I like AG better anyhow, which is what Amber was going for in the first place, so…
“LIFE does not mean LIVING.”
— Blade Runner: Black Out 2022
1. You just blew my mind.
2. Now I’m wondering how Faz is doing post-kidnapping.
Meh. Persomally found Ethan hotter when he had shoulders and optimism. His hair is pretty nice tho.
Ditto. I’ve done depressive emaciation in a university dorm, and it is not, in fact, sexy.
Same here. Let’s start the Healthy Happy Cinnamon Roll Ethan Appreciation Society.
I’ll join. New Ethan worries me.
“Unhealthiness is sexy” is a take that, like you, I was not expecting to see being thrown around, but here we are.
And it seems to be a canon Willis take. One we probably should have been expecting, given the emo Peter Parker thing he keeps referencing.
This is some Victorian, get that sexy tuberculosis look type shit
Yeah. I’m. Just going to focus on Danny. I like Danny.
Nah, I’m more into studly, emotionally healthy (if slightly doormat) Ethan.
Oh right Amber is Faz’s sister. Definitely seeing a resemblance right now
You don’t even wanna KNOW what eldritch monstrosities of thoughts just went though my head after reading this.
😵💫
Mmm super hate this color on Amber this is honestly kinda more uncomfortable than when everyone was kidnapped and their lives were in danger.
Amber, if you want Captain America and Bucky to kiss, I think Lucy can offer you advice on how to make that happen.
Amber’s a creep. But she’s a creep who’s correct.
On both her role in Emothan’s creation AND his hotness! 😵💫
She is correct.
NOPE.
So this was the danger that Amazi-Girl’s existence was saving us from.
This comment made my night lol
Yeah…, that just crossed a line.
daaaaamn
The site literally won’t let me post the one thing I wanted to say so whatever.
What did you wanna say?
Maybe say it ad-lib?
I’m guessing it’d be caught by the bongo filter.
This…This isn’t a healthy version of exes getting along is it?
that got a lot worse in one statement
Danny and Sal need to bang it out and then get back to their wholesome shtick or else there’ll be hell to pay…
Amber… honey…
What you need to do is to create your own original characters. Flesh them out, make them interesting people, put them into interesting situations that you yourself would enjoy reading about…
… and then make THEM fuck. They’re your characters, so you can do that.
That’s why I started writing romance novels – because I was tired of seeing the characters I related to most in basically all media get killed off for having sex drives.
You write romance novels?
Care to name a few?
Sure, but maybe not yet?
Due to my publisher going out of business due to COVID last year, the better revised version of my first novel isn’t currently available – only the PoD of the first edition pre professional editing.
I’ve been meaning to either A) go hard on getting a new publisher or B) put up the edited version for PoD, but day job and general procrastination have prevented my wife and I from deciding which course of action to take, so we’ve been in book-limbo for the past year or so. One of the things I plan to do in January is get our asses moving in one direction or the other.
Which would be good because Book 2 has been finished and waiting to go up somewhere for two years now. And a short story. And Book 3 needs to be edited. And Book 4 is about 20,000 words from being finished as well. See, I didn’t stop writing during all this – just all the other stuff. Got a bit of a book log-jam going on ATM.
Well that sucks. 😒
I can’t wait until they eventually get published though! ☺️
Say, not that you have to answer, but what’s your day job anyway?
Re: Amber, Yeah! And if they just HAPPEN to be based on people you know, you can always put in this little thingy:
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real places and real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
English professor. Specifically grammar/developmental writing.
I’d rather teach fiction writing, but those classes go to people with tenure or whatever passes for tenure these days.
Oooo! You have a doctorate in it?
Either way, now I REALLY wanna read you novels!!! 😍
Amber, that’s not something to be proud of.
Her oldest and most loyal friend is in a deep emotional crisis and all she cares to think about is him making out with other boys.
If Ethan is emaciated… that means he’s not healthy. Please don’t fetishize that.
And just because “it’s you” doesn’t give you permission to objectify people out loud. Even people you’ve been intimate with. If it bothers him, that’s valid. So keep that to yourself, please.
Preach it! Sick is not sexy!
Tuberculosis was not sexy, even when La Dame aux Camélias had it.
Heroin abuse was not sexy, even when Gia Carangi had it.
Malnutrition is not sexy.
Depression is not sexy.
If malnutrition weren’t sexy, there wouldn’t be thousands of corporate lobbyists trying to force it on the American population.
/S
If it helps, I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to be literally emaciated.
Given how much mass he lost in just a few months i think he might be at least a little emaciated
Go to hell, Amber.
Ain’t in the mood for your shit.
Also it really seems like Willis thinks Amber is being somewhat endearing, to the point he’s undercutting Danny’s reaction to execute the joke
I’m not going to claim to know Willis’s thoughts but there’s a depressing amount of otherwise decent people who think sexual harassment isn’t a big deal when it’s a woman harassing a man
I sincerely doubt that’s the direction this is going, since it’s very clear that Ethan is very, very put-off by the whole thing – maybe Danny is slightly less put-off, but Ethan was already getting irritated by Amber asking for intimate details of his sex life with Mike, and that wasn’t really ever resolved.
i’m pretty sure she’s not supposed to be likeable here, it’s just that the format allows for punchlines even when the person making them sucks.
i’m pretty sure this is intended as self-destructive and isolating behavior. like 80% sure.
The first two panels are Danny telling Amber not to be a creepy weirdo.
Then the last three are Amber continuing to be so, and getting Danny to agree with her. Kind of makes the first two fall flat for me.
Amber’s right hand has yet to make an appearance.
If it’s where she pointedly avoided denying it was, pretty sure that’s at least some form of harassment or indecency. This ain’t Montreal, y’know.
Also if this strip goes in the direction of Danny getting lured into chasing after Ethan and blowing up things with Sal, with Amber’s bullshit being the catalyst, I’m quitting this strip for good. I say this primarily to underline how done I am at this point with most of the cast lol.
I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Danny immediately rebuked any potential Ethan courtship not that Ethan would be into it either since as Danny said “people aren’t her sex puppets”
I also don’t think Amber supposed to be cute or endearing here. It’s the nature of the comic to try and end on a joke more often than not, but to recap things a bit Amber is functioning on lack of sleep and hallucinating Mike a person well known for being a bit of a prick. It kind of makes sense that she’s indulging in the worst parts of her personality right now and being a bit of a prick herself. She’s been called out twice now. Maybe three if you count Dina’s earlier concern. She’s not being rewarded for her actions today.
I sure HOPE this is just her lack of sleep talking.
To know the pain of being withheld credit for your own identity, and then inflict that same pain on someone else, is a very sad example of copying the enemy.
The problem is she likely considers it taking the blame rather than taking credit, even if she isn’t acting broken up about it right now.
I foresee her seriously insisting she’s partly responsible for Ethan’s depression.
I can’t really read that face in the last three panels, 😑 so I can’t really tell whether she’s taking credit and therefore pride or just deviously trying to drag Ethan into the blame so she doesn’t feel like it’s all her fault.
*drag Danny.
Typos are the WORSE
I definitely do not think we’re ever gonna be in for a story where the most monogamous human being alive is dragged into breaking up with his new girlfriend who was already a good friend of his, and whose belief in him being a good and kind person that she can find comfort and stability with made him openly compliment himself for the first time in, like, the entire series, I think?
I didn’t think Willis would have a plot where a AG chases a gun toting fundie dad who kidnapped his daughter. I didn’t think there’d be a league of bad dads or that Blaine would decide to LARP as a supervillain. I didn’t think a character would die. I didn’t think Danny eould tell his best friend at the hospital that he hoped that the character would stay in the coma. I didn’t think the tulpa of that character would haunt another one who’d barely interacted with him previously. I didn’t think Jennifer would try to pimp out the ex I didn’t think she would break up with after a succession of arcs where they worked on their shit. I didn’t think Joyce would turn into a red pilled atheist biphobe or that Amber would backslide all her character development from an arc that culminated w her fist bumped the alter I didn’t expect her to still be in a cold war with.
Do you see where I’m going?
I’m saying all of those seem a lot less stable than whether or not Danny’s ability to be monogamous could ever come under question.
(also Amber and AG are still reconciled, and also Jennifer is exactly enough of a disaster to pimp Ruth out to Daisy in the hopes of getting more clout at work)
I think that’s what you mean? Amber could certainly cause drama for Danny and Sal but they got together yesterday and both of them are clearly happy about it. Characters have to make mistakes to cause drama but I think the specific mistake you’re concerned about, that Amber’s behaviour here will push Sal and Danny apart so that Danny can chase after Ethan, well, the only reason I’m going to say I’m confident that won’t happen is that I technically cannot call it a fact. If Danny and Sal break up I don’t think it’ll be because of Amber or Danny’s Pants Feelings for Ethan; Danny didn’t break up over those Pants Feelings when he was with Amber either, I can’t imagine he’d go for it now.
Obviously there will be Ethan Drama but if I tried to play Guess The Narrative Intent for a second, I think it’s deliberate that Ethan only came back after Sal hooked up with Danny, a dude who previously shot the idea down because he was hung up over Ethan and explained that he’s a solidly one-person kinda guy and, at the moment, Sal was not that one person.
And then Sal put a hat on it. I think he’s good.
Oh I forgot; I didn’t think Billie would decide to completely reroll her character sheet, change her preferred name, and erase her bisexuality while dating a man who unbeknownst to her was responsible for the deaths of two people and the endangerment and trauma to a dozen more.
I’m not saying Amber will directly string pull Danny into chasing Ethan, just that somehow she’ll knock over a domino or incept Danny into pining after Ethan. Or the two find themselves working together to ‘help’ Amber because she hits a new rock bottom.
Billie has always erased her bisexuality; she said it only existed in porn and that everyone wanted to have sex with someone of the same gender sometimes.
Anyway, and I will reiterate, this series of all of them will not have Danny break up with Sal, specifically, so he could pursue Ethan. Danny can break up with Sal and at some point hook up with Ethan, I very much hope not as Walkercox is my second OTP, but if you’re worried about it for the specific in-universe reasoning of Danny dumping Sal because he can’t stop obsessing over Ethan when that specific reasoning happened and Danny never once considered leaving Amber, I’m just gonna skip over confidence and call it a fact that it won’t happen.
I’m more worried Willis will hotshot the angle for easy drama.
Well, look at it this way: The last time Danny was hot for Ethan while dating someone he was extremely convinced that his thoughts were inherently wrong and made him an unfaithful partner to Amber. It didn’t matter that Danny could figure out he was bi and what it meant to him, what mattered is that Ethan was there and Danny was hot for him, ergo Danny was a filthy, degenerate, traitorous cheater, and his thoughts for Ethan were shameful and wrong.
Danny’s in a relationship for the first time in five years of comics, Sal is someone he greatly respects and admires, and more specifically knows that she values him as a source of comfort and stability in a tumultuous, affection-deprived life, and he’s fine admitting Ethan is attractive here. He’s annoyed about it because Amber’s being a creepy weirdo, but saying Ethan is hot doesn’t imply any distress in him or that saying it makes him unfaithful.
Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit Amber
That’s the problem with garbage roof: there’s no ceiling on how bad it stinks.
But the entire point of Garbage Roof is to contain the garbage. Not to spread it.
That would be Garbage Pit.
Garbage Roof has the unintended side effect of elevating the garbage for all the world to see. Garbage will eventually slip off the edges if there’s enough of it.
Go home Amber… you’re Drunk (sleep deprived which can have similar effects)
Has Amber suddenly gotten much, much morally worse, or have I been missing signs for a long time?
Before this I though of her as usually trying to do the right thing and failing because of all her issues. But this is just completely indefensible.
She’s probably deteriorating overall.
she’s gotten worse, i’m fairly certain we didn’t just miss this all along.
No, she’s definitely worse. It seems clear her mental/emotional health has deteriorated since Mike’s death and I think that’s having an impact on her behavior.
I wouldn’t put this as generally morally worse. She’s certainly indulging this particular bad trait more than usual – though the circumstances certainly contribute to it, but I don’t see that as necessarily spilling over into other problems.
Incredible how Amber just keeps getting worse.
Take your right hand out of your pants now, Amber. You can’t force Danny back to Ethan. 😛
Not that I wanna distract from whatever Amber is doing, BUT…
It was just announced that Netflix’s live-action adaption of Cowboy Bebop was CANCELLED!!!!
HOOOOOORRRAAAAYYYY!!!!!
Seriously, you have no idea just how happy this makes me.
Where as I am somewhat disappointed by the news. Was it great? No, but there were points in it that made me think this has a lot of potential. I’m sad that I’ll never get to see it even try to live up to that potential.
That’s kinda the problem, and why I’m with Weller
It’s Cowboy Bebop. If you have to “live up to the potential” you are already dead. It’s a juggernaut or animation adapted for the kind of person who wants to watch anime but is too embarrassed to go through with it, so these invariably crummy shows get made to sell cartoons to fragile adults.
Also it’s somehow less forward thinking that the 23 year old anime. Jet ran afoul of The One Bad Cop on the force instead of, like, the deeply ingrained corruption that pushes him out.
Of course it wasn’t going to live up to the anime. I’m not arguing that. I am arguing that it did some things right, and if given a chance to continue, it could have become its own story that is worth watching. Why adaptations have to be as good as or surpass the original in order to be valid is beyond me.
On a side note the only bad thing I really have to say about Arcane is that it being so good will likely only perpetuate that awful sentiment.
It’s more like: who is this for and why does it exist? What about Cowboy Bebop invites the adaptation it got?
Like a pretty friggin’ major theme to Cowboy Bebop is the evils of corporate power structures, and then Netflix Bebop just really, really did not care about this. Faye Valentine became a femme fatale bombshell crook because she got scammed in a for-profit healthcare system, that’s really relevant!
Netflix Bebop is about watching that show you liked when you were 13, but now it’s not a cartoon so you don’t have to feel embarrassed, and also in the transition to not being a cartoon we took out all the political and social themes and philosophies of the characters so we can pretend they’re just funny cowpokes out for a good time. It ain’t Bebop, ’cause there’s only one Bebop and it’d only exist as it did when it was first made.
Spike Spiegal isn’t Batman; he’s not made of broad iconography who exists to be interpreted and reinterpreted, he’s a specific character in a specific universe made by a specific creative team who had specific themes they wanted to impart. What about Cowboy Bebop was carried forward, and if an adaptation does not have to carry anything, then why is it an adaptation? An adaptation does not have to be as good, but it has to have reasons to exist other than that it existing isn’t innately a crime.
And it’s taking a while, but I am working on that last part.
I see where you are coming from but damn it really feels like you are shitting on people like me who actually enjoyed parts of the show. I find it interesting that you specifically brought up Faye, because it leads me to believe you lost faith in the LA when they showed the cast photos. I actually liked and felt a lot closer to the LA Faye than I ever did to the anime one. It was nice to be shown for once that you don’t have to be a femme fatale in order to exist as a woman in a cruel and harsh world like the one that Cowboy Bebop is set in. so I guess to answer your question about, who was this made for: in some small way it was made for me. Sorry to rant like this, but I’m tired of people acting like the LA cowboy bebop is all that’s wrong in this world.
Whether or not anyone enjoys it isn’t really my beef, and I resent the idea that I could only dislike the show because Faye has more clothes on and not, like, the part where she becomes this Noir crime character because she had what can be described as a typical experience with for-profit healthcare.
the downplaying of the part where she becomes this Noir crime character because she had what can be described as a typical experience with for-profit healthcare.*
Is anyone even gonna say anything about Edward?!?!
Was she even in the adaption?
Doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause it was CANCELED!!! 😌
Later, Space Cowgirl.
Yeah the season cliffhanger.
She was exactly as she was in the OG series, in that she acted the way a cartoon does except a real person doing that is, for very obvious reasons, not the kind of charming a cartoon character has when doing so.
I get the feeling it was just there to land an impression and Ed would have been toned down when she became a main character.
Oh, then I’m even more RELIEVED now that it was canceled! 😌🥲
Seriously though, I LOVE Edward. Besides technically being NB, she had traits that ALL kinds of neurodivergents could relate to without EVER needing a label!
On a side note, she even inspired me to take up programming!
It looked like such a bad adaptation. Can’t wait to see how they fuck up the live action Last Airbender
Very cautiously optimistic about that one, but the news that the original creators left the project (and now have their own Avatar Studios to create new Avatar-verse movies and series set in the same universe instead of just doing a remake of the original) probably isn’t the best sign.
If it’s good, great, but I’m expecting a trainwreck. At least I ain’t gonna be disappointed.
Like an emo baby!
Wait.
I made it weird.
Pretty sure this conversation has been at weird at least since last strip
this would be a quick way to make me never speak to a friend again lol oh boy Amber
Willis . YOUR PAGE is OUT OF CONTROL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Two Popover VIdeo Ads AT THE SAME TIME!! ( why is there any ? Walmart, the matrix )
Then the page crashes three times.
This is garbage
ad-choices is one of the offenders
On mobile I’ve had an obnoxious Otterbox ad for the past week or so that takes up way more space then it should, and if I accidently swipe it it expands to take up half the screen
It’s also in just the right spot where I have to close it if I want to make a comment
Amber! This a breach of etiquette! This conversations are meant for trash roof!
Hot take: Amber gloating over how she and Danny broke Ethan into being emo hot is legitimately one of the worst things anyone in the main cast has said. Like possibly beyond “Mike should spend a little while in a coma”. At least Danny wasn’t happy about pushing him.
I sure hope she’s just taking undeserved credit and merely superficially implicating her and Danny breaking Ethan into this Emo hotness the same way Emperor Zurg is deserves credit for every lost kitten.
Because if she gets the impression that she can succeed with this method, she might be willing to taste this hotness so badly that she’d be willing to BREAK others to do it.
NOTHING should be worth that. 😭
NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF, AMBER!!!
So a thought just occurred to me
Does “we made him, together” imply that she knows about the last conversation Danny and Ethan had?
Because I can’t think of any other reason she’d think Danny had a hand in Ethans current state
Of course it’s also possible that she’s talking to ghost Mike in that last panel
I doubt she knows, maybe just basing it off Ethan’s reaction to him
At least Amber is finally happy to talk with a friend after months of self isolation. They are even having fun! Sure, the conversation is kinda weird, but better than the one with Ethan and more articulate than those with Dina.
What do you mean by “coherent”?
“articulate”, I mean.
Sorry… I may have confused the meaning of the world with another one similar in my lingue. With Articulate I mean more developed, long and with fluency. With phrases that can easily express concepts.
Is this the one you were talking about?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/peakhumanperfection/
Yeah, to me it seems like that on the surface, but yet it makes a lot more sense if you have a basic grasp on speedrunning.
I think it’s high time Amber started caring for people instead of fantasizing about everyone just having sex.
I bet her logic is “Once you care about people they care about you and I am garbage that doesn’t deserve care and only get people hurt”
It’s high time she went to bed and actually got some help but it seems that’s not happening
…Amber.
No! Bad Amber!
*Two spray bottle water squirts*
No.
I don’t think spraying her is a good idea.
She LIKES getting wet.
That’s when you switch to the ice-water hose.
Is that a reference to Ranma ½ ?
someone really needs to talk to amber about her porn addiction
Someone needs to talk to Amber about a LOT of things, if we’d make a list porn addiction would be probably in the second half of it…
Okay. I think I am done with Amber for now. I always kind of related to her social awkwardness and the tendency to self-isolate, especially when in emotional distress, but she is being plain creepy here. And talking about how “”hot”” a supposed friend has become because of their depression and trauma, so disgusting. I am not even going to touch that last line.
I hope ghost-mike is cussing her out.
There is the possibility she does all this knowing it is not okay because she believes that she should not have friends and should be disliked. But either way..Amber NO
It is very much possible (and I very much hope so) that the last line especially is due to her severe lack of sleep.
If this turns out to be a single outlier of a data point, that’s fine.
But if it becomes a TREND, it would be VERY WORRYING.
As much as I love and sympathize with Amber, I have to agree. This is definitely getting into ick territory. :/ It’s one thing to joke about it with close friends who know you’re just kidding, but I’m very much getting “this is not a joke” vibe from this. Amber GENUINELY would like her friends to get carnal for her prurient interests even though they’re clearly not into the idea.
Amber is not wrong.
About Ethan being hot, I mean. She is decidedly wrong about a great many other things.
that’s hella fucking shitty, but also, it would be a massive lie if most people here wouldn’t admit that they shipped their friends at least once in their lives.
This is one of those things that I feel might reflect more on the person saying it than whom they’re saying it about.
Where are you getting this “most” estimate? You’ve made your claim, now show us the numbers.
I’ve shipped a lot of characters, but never anyone I know irl, or for that matter, people I don’t know, other than maybe thinking they’re a cute couple.
What exactly do you mean by “shipped”?
If you mean like random, once in a while thoughts that you entertain for no more than a few seconds and have a giggle, then yes most people have done that I reckon.
But what Amber is doing, where she gets SERIOUS about her ships and DOESN’T keep it ALL to herself and seeks to make them REALITY?
I don’t think most people do that.
I can honestly say I’ve never shipped my friends, mainly because I didn’t have any till I was old enough to know better to not do that kinda crap with IRL people.
Hey, sorry if this is an inappropriate place to ask, but do you have another tasty joke that maybe involves a ship that’s ONLY for shits and giggles?
What do you call a jackalope crossed with family obligations to a wedding?
A cant-elope
I don’t know whether or not others got the joke, but I’ll just say what’s on my mind after reading this just because.
I fucking HATE arranged marriages.
Its… not an arranged marriage joke…
What. I’ve definitely encouraged people to ask out people due to clear feelings between them, but I have never actively shipped irl people as belonging together or for fantasizing.
Characters yes, real people, no. I also really respect people that can take that stuff in stride because I always found it really annoying and it made my friendships awkward.
I think there’s a big difference between “I think you two would both be happy if you got together” and “I want you two to make out because it’s sexy”. The former has the interests of the parties getting together at the forefront, the latter is selfish.
well THIS is healthy
Few things irritate me more than “That’s just how I am.” Grr.
Amber is now the “that’s just what my character would do” douchebag but APPLYING IT TO REAL LIFE.
“that’s just what my character would do”
Okay but this is actually good and important reasoning for events and character interactions in a narrative.
True, but when the narrative is part of a game(or especially real life) and what your character would do is actively taking the fun away from other players for no reason other than the fact that your character is supposed to be an ass, you may want consider acting a little out of character.
…are we talking about a writer creating a fictional universe or playing D&D?
“that’s just what my character would do” is a very common thing in D&D. I’ve never heard it used for characters in a single writer’s fictional universe, so unless someone clearly specifies that’s what they are talking about, I default to D&D.
It’s a D&D thing, generally spoken by people playing Chaotic Neutral characters who fuck up things for everyone for shits and giggles, but who somehow take it personally when, after been given that response, I disintegrate their character’s head and every subsequent character’s they play, because “the last person gave me trust issues.”
if you disintegrate every subsequent character that person plays, then you’re being a bad player yourself. If you don’t get along with another one of the players, you should TALK about it instead of passive/aggressive being shitty to their characters.
The DM and the other players should be able to discuss that you’re not playing a LOLrandom campaign and certain attitudes are not gonna work. Communication and trust between players is key, and if one person refuses to listen, just kick them out of the campaign
A common feature in a lot of people’s bad experiences of this type is that kicking the problem player/person out of the gaming and/or friend group (which are often one and the same, a perfect circle on the Venn diagram) isn’t really a practical option. Yay, Geek Social Fallacies.
The phrase originates from D&D, as a stock excuse used by players to justify being a dick to the other players.
They’re talking about when a player has their character behave obnoxiously with the excuse that “that’s what they would do”, as if their character was a real person outside their control.
I was talking about a person who can perceive a negative issue with themselves,but rather than try to do anything about it, says “that’s just how I am”. they usually don’t extend the same privilege to anyone else.
It’s a counsellor’s favourite phrase! (With sarcasm.) speaking as someone who both trained as a counsellor (/therapist) and has been working with one for a long time… it’s a very recognised choice of words. Because it implies that, on some level or for some reason, this isn’t something a client wants to change.
Recently though I’ve been working with my counsellor on my very legitimate way of using that as I come to understand my ADHD and autism. Things which we’d previously try to work through are sometimes “that really is just how I am”, but it’s never “so I can’t do anything” but rather “since I can’t change my brain function, how do we work with what I am”. And that’s a very important distinction with “that’s how I am”.
God, Amber is such a fucking creeper.
Amber, I don’t care how sleep deprived you are. No. Bad Amber. Your friend needs help, and you do too.
Hey, talking of puppets… Ghost Mike seems to be the puppet master here.
Eh, judging by his last appearance, he seems more like another puppet to me.
Seems more the opposite to me. Head Mike’s purpose in the system seems to be to do what Real Mike thought he was doing until shortly before the end – telling hard truths that Amber needs to hear, and stopping shit like this.
God dammit Amber, this is seriously getting really fucking creepy.
Damn it, Amber. Just please, no.
That single panel to highlight “hey, it’s me”. That’s being primed for an ironic call back. Calling it forward now.
Huh. Apparently Amber has changed a lot since last semester, because when I think of AmberxDanny, I don’t think of Amber lusting over Danny while he sits there saying “stop.”
I think of this.
I’m still holding out hope that someone starts calling him Emothan in story. Maybe Amber’s hallucination of Mike.
I am ashamed to admit that I read this strip 10 times in confusion at the first panel, wondering why Danny claimed not to be in a relationship with Sal. Then my mind finally registered the word “open.” I don’t know if I’ve ever face-palmed so hard in my life.
Okay. This conversation has become uncomfortable.
Danny! Get back in the game. Sure you gave some ground by admitting you find EEE hot too, but you can still rebuke Amber for being proud about it. Well, for feeling proud about a lot of things in this conversation actually.
wowwwww i litcherally shuddered. disturbing.
I don’t know what the third middle panel is supposed to convey. “Hey’s it’s me, Amber, the cisgender straight girl with issues, that makes it okay to be gross about this”?
That’s more or less it, though she’d probably do the same without the “cisgender, straight” part.
The fact that Amber seems to be taking pride in Ethan’s current mental and emotional state, which I am guessing is not a great one, is super fucked up.
She needs to get her ass to therapy, like yesterday.
Therapy seems to make Amber worse. She needs to get back to martial arts!
Or have a fight in a junkyard with Amazi-Girl.
wow ambers rolling in the trash as the dumpster fire just keeps rolling along
amber problematic & fetishising af, but can’t help but think she’s coping with her many layers of fucked up by turning everyone around her into characters/taking nothing seriously/focusing on emotions like lust rather than her own pain/accountability/sympathy for others’ pain. sure there are more specific words for that but they do not live in my empty brain.
amber just needs to go reread all her Hydra Trash Party bookmarks and chill
Ethan mostly is giving a vibe of, “How do I get her to stop this?” with a slip at the end
Also and this is a side thing, but I’m not actually sure what about EEE would be hot. I guess the goth aestetic is nice but he isn’t all in on that, black hair and black clothes isn’t enough for that, and ribs showing on a person is always a little odd for me. To me this seems almost like a strict downgrade in hotness from classic ethan.
The depression made his lose that self-conscious awkwardness that always held him back.
Might just be me but his new attitude from what I’ve seen is way worse for me on that metric as well.
“Amber i super dont ‘ppreciate this and i will KEEP not appreciating it AFTER i get back from my room real quick….”
Wow, that last thing is the worst thing Amber’s ever said, I think. I’ve always empathized with her before but now I’m ashamed to be stuck with her as my avatar right now.
Not sure if Amber in panel or the hover text in Amber’s voice is creepier. Nah, it’s definitely the hover text.