I mean, I think that most of the things Amber does count on self loathing on some level, but that’s just because she has a LOT of self loathing and it has to find a release somewhere.
Regardless, getting mad that somebody changed your sheets because you think you deserve to lie in your own filth should DEFINITELY count as self loathing.
I don’t think Amber would even especially care about walking to her dorm in her undies, but no, pretty sure that’s just her blue shirt hanging down and she’s got some leggings on or something.
I hadn’t even noticed, but my headcanon is now that they are undies, and they’re worn over the leggings, because Amazi-Girl wants to dress as a superhero even if she’s not actually wearing a costume.
People will have you believe Dina is just insightful, that she can notice that Amber walks differently, or perhaps has a different speaking cadence. The truth is more clandestine in nature. No one notices the dino girl with a maxxed out stealth stat when she plants hidden video cameras and listening devices, or that her phone is currently streaming live footage from said hidden cameras. She’s been watching AG for hours. She saw the AG to Amber change briefly after Becky came down from her second orgasm. Those who pay attention know the truth.
The way Amber holds her face – particularly the upper half – is genuinely super different to Amazi-Girl, and it’s really consistent. This storyline in particular, it’s felt kind of exaggerated, even – possibly for this very reason.
Dina doesn’t do well with eye contact so she probably saw who it was out of the corner of her eye and — because of her autism and Dina-ness — went “oh, it is Amber,” and went back to her phone because she doesn’t need to stare now that she’s visually recognized her.
my roommate usuallt cant tell the which SPECIFIC alter is fronting (we have too many for that) but he usually has a pretty good guess on a couple that we could be at any one time. id imagine if there were just two of us it would be super easy. also amber seems to wear her glasses while amazi-girl doesnt.
I believe the real concern that prompted D & W to wash her sheets was the fact that two BOYS had stained them, and that Amber would, in response, refuse to EVER wash her sheets again, knowing this.
It can just be figurative, to express how she’s feeling. It’s fine if she likes her linens smelling like her instead of whatever detergent Dorothy and Walky decided to use. If the smell were as bad as everyone is imagining, then it’s only Amber, AG, and Dina who have a say, and Dina’s say extends as far as saying it has to be washed. Even as far saying she’ll wash them unless Amber says not to. Not doing it without permission.
I’ve had a roommate who was allergic to some detergents. I’ve had a roommate who needed the smell of something as part of their grieving process. I’ve had items ruined by being cleaned wrong, I’ve had detergent or softener whose smell made it hard to sleep.
And finally, it’s treating someone else like a baby. That the fake helper decides they need help and how to help and then does it, without regard to the person they’re fake helping. Because they are using the other person as a prop to make themselves feel like they’re helpful.
It would be very simple for Dorothy to have asked/offered Amber or AG. She asked/prompted Walky instead.
I’m just noting in panel 1 the placement of the speech bubble makes it look like the giant sex raptor is talking and that’s how I’ll be choosing to read this strip from now on. It’s alive. Don’t tell me it’s not. It probably deserves a tag.
It’s happened before:
* In United States of Tara, one of Tara’s alters started killing her other alters, before ultimately being killed by her primary self.
* Fight Club
horrible thought but Amber brought up the subject so it`s not my fault: do we think that her mattress is soaked through with menstrual blood? Because I have met women who have gotten to that point thanks to depression or other mental issues; it ain’t pretty
If her mattress is anything like the mattress I had at my dorm, it’s basically a big ole plastic covered… thing. Kinda looked more like a mattress you’d expect for a potty training kid, but I get it. It’s a mattress that’s gonna have a new person every year, so it needs to be easy to clean and not easy to get dirty. So thankfully, I don’t think it would be soaked. … … Her sheets and blankets on the other hand…
When I was her age, a single night at the wrong point in my cycle, with the largest size pads they made in places, still frequently led to bloodstained mattresses. A few decades, 3 kids, etc, later, I don’t bleed like that any more and can usually contain the flow (occasional smear on sheet, or needing to clean a towel because I didn’t realise the stuff is literally still trickling out of me after a shower…). I am, however, still on daily iron tablets with my iron levels just about maintaining normal. Some people menstruate heavily and yeah, washing your bedding is a decent idea but I was definitely not going to buy a new mattress every 3 weeks as a student to replace a rental one.
One of my exes from many a year ago has PCOS. Yeah, she menstruates somethin’ fierce, and for longer than usual. She always needs all the meat, all the garbanzo and kidney beans, and all the iron supplements.
IUD basically saved my life, by drastically reducing my flow. BOY OH BOY am I glad!!! Wish I had gotten an IUD at 12 and had one ever since! They’re PAINFUL at first, but honestly I wish they were made available to everyone. The hormonal stability you get eventually, after the pain subsides, is life-changing.
But also – fanfic doesn’t need to keep to the character’s stated interests. Sometimes the whole point of it is that it’s an AU where you get to explore queer interests in a nonqueer character (because sometimes representation is where you find it).
I wonder where Amazi-Girl sits on the attraction scale? She seems pretty straight herself but it would be interesting if she differed even slightly in preferences from Amber.
It would have to be one of those extractors they use on car interiors, but even those won’t lift out anything that’s gotten deep into the fiber-fill stuffing.
The only way to get that dinosaur clean would be to gut it, wash the casing, and re-stuff it with new material.
Honestly, maybe Dina has a steam cleaner, has like a bunch of segmented covers, or something that makes it easier. Her parents are pretty well-off and probably wouldn’t buy her a stuffed animal like that to use as a bed simply so that she would accumulate sweat and other various bodily fluids on. They don’t seem particularly neglectful.
There’s gotta be some solution that she figured out there.
I think I’d like to see a strip with Dina lovingly steam-cleaning the velociraptor on quiet morning, no dialogue. Maybe a little bit of birds chirping through the window.
I don’t know why some people are so concerned with the cleanliness of an imaginary dinosaur in a pretend room. It’s a comic, you are way too fixated on heavy realism. Let a gag just be a gag.
Because different people have different kinds of fun. Thinking through and discussing the weird and/or gross ramifications of things meant to be glossed over is a good time for some people.
Not going to lie, it’s getting kind of old seeing you always being the comments police.
Let the report function and moderation via hand of god do their functions- people talking about things that are directly relevant to the strip (e.g. cleaning the pseudobed on a strip referencing clean beds) and people who hold views that are not identical to your own have as much right to comment and be engaged as you do.
not to mention the vast majority of the way therapists “treat” DID like Amber’s case is basically gaslighting you into thinking you don’t have it
i get that therapy helps a lot of people, but like, i don’t like what’s become of this culture where what was once supposed to be positive self-affirmation has been entangled with this peer pressure kinda deal where if you’re not going to therapy for your problems because you KNOW it doesn’t help you, you feel less valid because of this unspoken idea that therapy is SUPPOSED to be THE answer.
“therapists are there to help. they professionals, who ever heard of them being insensitive or even downright racist?”
the idea of therapy as this universal gold standard for mental health repair is something which if we’re not careful can wind up hurting people we intend to help, sometimes in ways we don’t even immediately realize, because of long-ingrained systemic bigotries in our society or otherwise
some of us don’t respond to therapy at all. some of us just don’t wanna gamble on therapy because we are part of demographics where that could risk making things WORSE for us.
when we pressured into therapy because some people are just oblivious to those facts, treating their positive experiences with therapy as some universal human default, that’s not mental health being championed, but being eroded.
DID aside, Amber has some serious self-esteem and self-worth issues (stemming from Blaine’s abuse and Stacy’s paving over said abuse with a Stepford smile) that talk therapy could help with.
What I think Amber could benefit from in her current situation is a friend who also has DID, if not a whole community of DID systems can affirm her and who GET IT.
Only in recent years did I ever reach out to autistic folk online who have affirmed my experiences and even offered help and support, from both around here and on discord and elsewhere, and in my case it helped me literally hundreds of times more than “professional” therapy.
Same goes for friends who also experienced abuse, bigotry and trauma.
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*shits self* “Ahhh, much better“
i got a genuine cackle outta that XD
Love Dares You to Change (Your Sheets)
Sometimes love gets lazy and only dares you to change your pillowcases because they’re easier and when they’re clean everything smells better.
Does this count as self loathing?
Selves loathing.
Amber/AG are Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan levels of ‘self loathing.’
It’s kind of funny and sad that neither alter has anything good to say about the other.
Or themselves if you think about it
Just a big old ball of self loathing those two
I mean, I think that most of the things Amber does count on self loathing on some level, but that’s just because she has a LOT of self loathing and it has to find a release somewhere.
Regardless, getting mad that somebody changed your sheets because you think you deserve to lie in your own filth should DEFINITELY count as self loathing.
Is Amber pants-less?
Just like Becky
Nope, leggings.
No, it doesn’t match her skin tone. I think her shirt is just too long and hanging out, making the whole thing a bit visually misleading
I don’t think Amber would even especially care about walking to her dorm in her undies, but no, pretty sure that’s just her blue shirt hanging down and she’s got some leggings on or something.
I hadn’t even noticed, but my headcanon is now that they are undies, and they’re worn over the leggings, because Amazi-Girl wants to dress as a superhero even if she’s not actually wearing a costume.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/startingup/ based on this it’s part of her outfit?
Thanks – now I can’t unsee the pantless-ness 😉
How does Dina know it’s Amber walking through the door, before she’s said anything?
Different people have different footsteps. IDK if alters would have that level of difference but it’s possible
I could always tell which family member was coming upstairs by their gait.
Maybe Amber walks differently than Amazi-Girl. Also, she used the door.
People will have you believe Dina is just insightful, that she can notice that Amber walks differently, or perhaps has a different speaking cadence. The truth is more clandestine in nature. No one notices the dino girl with a maxxed out stealth stat when she plants hidden video cameras and listening devices, or that her phone is currently streaming live footage from said hidden cameras. She’s been watching AG for hours. She saw the AG to Amber change briefly after Becky came down from her second orgasm. Those who pay attention know the truth.
Is the DoAverse ready for Dark Dina?
She’s ready to become Oracle to Amber’s Batman, only without the whole Killing Joke thing
Dina’s got them autism powers ^^
The way Amber holds her face – particularly the upper half – is genuinely super different to Amazi-Girl, and it’s really consistent. This storyline in particular, it’s felt kind of exaggerated, even – possibly for this very reason.
Amber is clearly within Dina’s line of sight. Glasses, Amber hair, pink patches on her cheeks. Looks like Amber to me.
Dina doesn’t do well with eye contact so she probably saw who it was out of the corner of her eye and — because of her autism and Dina-ness — went “oh, it is Amber,” and went back to her phone because she doesn’t need to stare now that she’s visually recognized her.
my roommate usuallt cant tell the which SPECIFIC alter is fronting (we have too many for that) but he usually has a pretty good guess on a couple that we could be at any one time. id imagine if there were just two of us it would be super easy. also amber seems to wear her glasses while amazi-girl doesnt.
Ah the glasses. That makes sense
Dina has “behind the door” superpowers.
AmaziGirl wears a mask?
Body language. The stance of Amber is different than the stance of AG.
Where were we on that Amber’s sheets were stained in her own juices debate? Cause this seems to corroborate that past info.
Amazi-Girl has complained about waking up at times where Amber just kinda… didn’t attend to cleaning up after, so yeah, probably at least somewhat.
if a mad scientist gets a hold of that they gonna extract her juices and use it to discern the source of Amazi-Girl’s superpowers :0
And it’s somehow MORE sexual that what I sounds.
I believe the real concern that prompted D & W to wash her sheets was the fact that two BOYS had stained them, and that Amber would, in response, refuse to EVER wash her sheets again, knowing this.
Amber would roll around on those sheets like a dog rolling around on a dead skunk. And she might never leave the bed again.
as it turns out, it’s less laying in her own filth and more just laying in filth
It can just be figurative, to express how she’s feeling. It’s fine if she likes her linens smelling like her instead of whatever detergent Dorothy and Walky decided to use. If the smell were as bad as everyone is imagining, then it’s only Amber, AG, and Dina who have a say, and Dina’s say extends as far as saying it has to be washed. Even as far saying she’ll wash them unless Amber says not to. Not doing it without permission.
I’ve had a roommate who was allergic to some detergents. I’ve had a roommate who needed the smell of something as part of their grieving process. I’ve had items ruined by being cleaned wrong, I’ve had detergent or softener whose smell made it hard to sleep.
And finally, it’s treating someone else like a baby. That the fake helper decides they need help and how to help and then does it, without regard to the person they’re fake helping. Because they are using the other person as a prop to make themselves feel like they’re helpful.
It would be very simple for Dorothy to have asked/offered Amber or AG. She asked/prompted Walky instead.
Be jealous that you don’t get the opposite of what she’s being treated.
so then, which characters have skipped a storyline
What?
“Now my outer space doesn’t match my inner space!”
This reminds me I oughta change my sheets……..
Change them into what?
Parachutes are occasionally handy.
The hell crawled up your shirt today, Amber?
Hangover.
So what’s the conflict here Amber? Your headmate holds herself to a higher regard while you want to keep making yourself feel shit?
I’m just noting in panel 1 the placement of the speech bubble makes it look like the giant sex raptor is talking and that’s how I’ll be choosing to read this strip from now on. It’s alive. Don’t tell me it’s not. It probably deserves a tag.
last panel: Dina giving social advice to Amber!
I don’t quite catch what Amber is referring to. What pity does AG receive?
The changing of the sheets, performed by Walkus and Dorothotty.
Would she be more or less upset if we told her the pity was mode directed at her that AG?
And that it wasn’t so much pity as concern that she would in fact enjoy it too much.
It says more about Amber’s self-esteem that she sees kindness and assumes it’s pity.
Ah. Thank you for the clarification!
If she’s so displeased, she could try murdering Amazi-Girl in a jealous rage. I don’t see any way that could backfire.
It’s happened before:
* In United States of Tara, one of Tara’s alters started killing her other alters, before ultimately being killed by her primary self.
* Fight Club
horrible thought but Amber brought up the subject so it`s not my fault: do we think that her mattress is soaked through with menstrual blood? Because I have met women who have gotten to that point thanks to depression or other mental issues; it ain’t pretty
If her mattress is anything like the mattress I had at my dorm, it’s basically a big ole plastic covered… thing. Kinda looked more like a mattress you’d expect for a potty training kid, but I get it. It’s a mattress that’s gonna have a new person every year, so it needs to be easy to clean and not easy to get dirty. So thankfully, I don’t think it would be soaked. … … Her sheets and blankets on the other hand…
When I was her age, a single night at the wrong point in my cycle, with the largest size pads they made in places, still frequently led to bloodstained mattresses. A few decades, 3 kids, etc, later, I don’t bleed like that any more and can usually contain the flow (occasional smear on sheet, or needing to clean a towel because I didn’t realise the stuff is literally still trickling out of me after a shower…). I am, however, still on daily iron tablets with my iron levels just about maintaining normal. Some people menstruate heavily and yeah, washing your bedding is a decent idea but I was definitely not going to buy a new mattress every 3 weeks as a student to replace a rental one.
One of my exes from many a year ago has PCOS. Yeah, she menstruates somethin’ fierce, and for longer than usual. She always needs all the meat, all the garbanzo and kidney beans, and all the iron supplements.
IUD basically saved my life, by drastically reducing my flow. BOY OH BOY am I glad!!! Wish I had gotten an IUD at 12 and had one ever since! They’re PAINFUL at first, but honestly I wish they were made available to everyone. The hormonal stability you get eventually, after the pain subsides, is life-changing.
*Mirena progesterone-only. What a relief!
Between Amber’s unwashed sheets and Dina’s sex plushie, that room has gotta have some funk.
That room doesn’t just have funk, it has the complete James Brown discography.
Tear the roof off the sucker.
@Intangible Matter +1
Okay wait Amber when’s the last time that you did wash/change your sheets? Move-in day?
Amazi-Girl probably does it sometimes, likely while grumbling that she has to.
I think Amber and Amazi-Girl should kiss.
Amber already writes porn in her head, headmate yuri really isn’t that different!!!!
also it’s funny how this strip both officially decanonizes my ambmazigirl fanfic yet also vibes with it thematically. swag
Is Amber into yuri at all? The only time I can recall her having a fantasy that included a woman was at the party but my memory isn’t the best.
She has explicitly said that there needs to be dick involved to get her interested. (At the party when she crashed Dina and Becky’s serious convo)
But also – fanfic doesn’t need to keep to the character’s stated interests. Sometimes the whole point of it is that it’s an AU where you get to explore queer interests in a nonqueer character (because sometimes representation is where you find it).
I wonder where Amazi-Girl sits on the attraction scale? She seems pretty straight herself but it would be interesting if she differed even slightly in preferences from Amber.
I guess she could tape the domino mask to a mirror and make out with it.
That would be physically impossible. Now in their head it might be possible. That would be one strange Slipshine though.
in the Dream World it is certainly possible
or should i say the Midnight Realm
I’d point out that Dina’s bed is FAR filthier than Amber’s ever got, if only because it’s so much harder to clean.
Exactly. At the very least Amber has sheets to change, whereas Dina’s literally sleeping on a giant plush dinosaur.
Steam cleaner with a hand-held attachment?
It would have to be one of those extractors they use on car interiors, but even those won’t lift out anything that’s gotten deep into the fiber-fill stuffing.
The only way to get that dinosaur clean would be to gut it, wash the casing, and re-stuff it with new material.
Honestly, maybe Dina has a steam cleaner, has like a bunch of segmented covers, or something that makes it easier. Her parents are pretty well-off and probably wouldn’t buy her a stuffed animal like that to use as a bed simply so that she would accumulate sweat and other various bodily fluids on. They don’t seem particularly neglectful.
There’s gotta be some solution that she figured out there.
I got confused by the “not particularly neglectful” because I can’t see how it relates to the rest of the comment.
The giant plush is actually a gift from Becky rather than Dina’s parents! https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/finance/ I don’t think Becky realized Dina would use it as a bed when she bought it for her.
Still, Dina’s smart and not terribly depressed, she probably does have some process for cleaning it.
I think I’d like to see a strip with Dina lovingly steam-cleaning the velociraptor on quiet morning, no dialogue. Maybe a little bit of birds chirping through the window.
I don’t know why some people are so concerned with the cleanliness of an imaginary dinosaur in a pretend room. It’s a comic, you are way too fixated on heavy realism. Let a gag just be a gag.
Gag is right.
Because different people have different kinds of fun. Thinking through and discussing the weird and/or gross ramifications of things meant to be glossed over is a good time for some people.
-Azhrei “Some People” Vep
I mean, you do you but at some point that kind of constant nitpicking just becomes annoying.
I think in this case speculating on a plushie’s cleanliness is pretty harmless. At mean at what are we not just policing how people have fun?
You are required to have fun, but you aren’t allowed to enjoy it.
Not going to lie, it’s getting kind of old seeing you always being the comments police.
Let the report function and moderation via hand of god do their functions- people talking about things that are directly relevant to the strip (e.g. cleaning the pseudobed on a strip referencing clean beds) and people who hold views that are not identical to your own have as much right to comment and be engaged as you do.
Noted and disregarded. I’m going to keep doing what I want thx.
Who is driving? Amber is driving how can this be!
spider pillooooowwww
I remember a time when Amber was a main cast member
She still is??
Yeah, but that wasn’t just your filth anymore. That’s why the sheets got washed.
Amber and Dina are probably my favourite friendship in the strip.
Just caught that Dina’s tee says HOMPK! That sound effect is on my list of top ten favorite things I’ve seen in webcomics.
Can someone drag Amber to therapy already.
Pretty sure if you don’t want to engage with the therapy it doesn’t help to be in the building.
not to mention the vast majority of the way therapists “treat” DID like Amber’s case is basically gaslighting you into thinking you don’t have it
i get that therapy helps a lot of people, but like, i don’t like what’s become of this culture where what was once supposed to be positive self-affirmation has been entangled with this peer pressure kinda deal where if you’re not going to therapy for your problems because you KNOW it doesn’t help you, you feel less valid because of this unspoken idea that therapy is SUPPOSED to be THE answer.
“therapists are there to help. they professionals, who ever heard of them being insensitive or even downright racist?”
the idea of therapy as this universal gold standard for mental health repair is something which if we’re not careful can wind up hurting people we intend to help, sometimes in ways we don’t even immediately realize, because of long-ingrained systemic bigotries in our society or otherwise
some of us don’t respond to therapy at all. some of us just don’t wanna gamble on therapy because we are part of demographics where that could risk making things WORSE for us.
when we pressured into therapy because some people are just oblivious to those facts, treating their positive experiences with therapy as some universal human default, that’s not mental health being championed, but being eroded.
DID aside, Amber has some serious self-esteem and self-worth issues (stemming from Blaine’s abuse and Stacy’s paving over said abuse with a Stepford smile) that talk therapy could help with.
What I think Amber could benefit from in her current situation is a friend who also has DID, if not a whole community of DID systems can affirm her and who GET IT.
Only in recent years did I ever reach out to autistic folk online who have affirmed my experiences and even offered help and support, from both around here and on discord and elsewhere, and in my case it helped me literally hundreds of times more than “professional” therapy.
Same goes for friends who also experienced abuse, bigotry and trauma.
That won’t help because she already decided it won’t help.
Probly doesn’t help that you’re the source of their pity
I kinda get it
really really hard to be thankful for pity