Amber needs either a therapist, a punching bag, or both. Cheezus, both of them seem to have made an equal and concerted effort to fuck their friendship up the asshole.
I’ve found fighting crime by punching homeless and insane people is very theraputic. It releases a lot of the inner tensions resulting from my unresolved chilhood trauma.
Yeah, that’s good for you. Thanks, by the way, for inspiring the Joker to terrorize the motherfucking city while you were at it, you underwear-on-the-outside jackass.
It was the other way around, neh? The Joker would have been just as crazy without Batman. There was this big court thing where the DA proved that his entire rogue’s gallery would have been just as criminally insane without Batman ever being a thing.
Mind showing what proves that Batman is innocent of such guilt?
I think it goes against many parts of the Batman mythos, where it’s clearly established that Batman presence potentially increased the criminally insane while greatly reducing the small thievery/assault/etc.
He strikes fear in the heart of criminals and criminals are a superstitious lot. So most of them quit. A few take it as a challenge, and decide to one-up the bats themselves.
The current Year Zero re-origin of Batman clearly establishes that folks like the Riddler and other extravagant criminals predated Batman, partly in a way to clear Batman of such bad mojo. They created him, rather than the other way around.
I honestly stopped keeping track of both DC and Marvel comics in the new millennium. So I really don’t have any idea what you people are talking about. It’s killing my soul.
Also, even before the New 52 there was an episode of BtAS where the Arkham inmates and a sympathetic [read: misguided] lawyer put Bats on trial for all the “misfortunes” that led to them going to crime. Long crime spree short, the sane people concluded that even without Batman the nutters woulda wound up crime-spreeing anyway. *Maybe* without the colorful personas, but the crime and violence would still be there.
Also, if there are still unwillingly homeless people that Batman sees every night and there aren’t a ton of homeless shelters popping around Bruce Wayne’s a massive tool.
tenn – because people used to make jokes about extremely uncool shit and now we’ve learned a little better – why can’t we learn better here that things like homeless people dying, which actually happens, all of the time less of a punchline and more of a thing that we can all give a damn about?
@rachel: You seem to believe that “Batman’s” joke trivializes or ridicules the suffering of homeless people. That it somehow denies that homeless people dying is a real thing, or that it somehow prevents us from giving a damn about it. It doesn’t. It’s not even a joke about the homeless. It’s a joke about an alleged hero being an immoral asshole.
LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING BROTHER, THE BEST THERAPY IS A YAPPAPI INDIAN STRAP MATCH!
YOU’LL HIT ETHAN WITH THAT INDIAN STRAP UNTIL HE’S ON HIS KNEES SAYING “PLEASE AMBER I CAN’T TAKE ANYMORE”. AND BROTHER THATS WHEN YOU’LL MAKE YOUR TRANSFORMATION INTO HOLYWOOD AND HIT HIM UNTIL THE STRAP HITS THE BONE AND HE’LL START BEGGING “PLEASE HOLYWOOD.NO MORE OF THE YAPPPAPI INDIAN STRAP.” BUT YOU’LL NEVER STOP. FOR ALL THE LITTLE AMBERMANIACS OUT IN THE WORLD YOU CAN NEVER STOP.
Not that Ethan coming to terms with being gay is an easy path, but let’s look at what Amber is dealing with again:
Asshole abusive father.
Ethan’s parents, his mom blames her for him turning gay.
Fighting all summer – the above is because Amber fought Ethan’s parents on his behalf.
The complete rejection on prom night. The feminine version of emasculation.
Mike’s little mind bomb. I like the guy, but his stuff can’t be easy to digest on ground zero.
Danny (of all people) rejecting her and calling her a user.
A lack of space to decompress from all of the above. How is the friendship supposed to heal if he doesn’t give her the space to do the same?
After all that, all the abuse she went through Ethan is crawling back into the closet (again, not saying easy on him, but see her perspective).
A similar scene from her spring/summer playing out in front of her in spite of her warnings.
So yes, Amber is a little tightly wound. Not all her fault.
I love and thank you for saying all of this. I get so frustrated with so many people saying that Amber needs to mind her own business and acting like she’s completely in the wrong.
Oh come on. I love Amber, I do, but let’s look at this again:
Ethan’s asshole parents have been giving her the cold shoulder, but what do you think they’ve been acting like with Ethan, who obviously would care way more what they think about him, than Amber does?
And I know people in the comments love to hate on Danny, but Amber honestly behaved quite badly with Danny and his parents – specially since it’s clear that Clark Kenting does work in this universe. Sure, Danny’s no saint in all of this, but neither is Amber, and of the two, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Danny’s behaved better.
Ethan otoh also dealing with asshole parents and pretty much no support structure, except for people who want him to “stop being gay”.
has he had Amber on his lap? I think it’s like that spiderman thing; to recognize a superhero you have to make out with them at exactly the same angle you made out with their other persona.
Also, more seriously, there’s pretty good reason to think that either the comic’s night shots are colored brigher than they actually are, or that Danny had poor night vision. (Or both.) And on a less-mentioned not, Danny may not realize that the campus only has fifteen students attending. Yes, we know that, but he may not realize that every superhero he meets has a %50 chance of being one of the three girls he’s spoken to. Because you totally know that if you went out and randomly met two different people of the same gender and roughly similar physical type, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume they’re actually the same person.
Ethan’s parent’s acted considerably better towards him than Amber, as seen on Parent’s day.
If Amber fought with them on his behalf, that means he was hiding.
They blame Amber for turning him gay, but not Ethan for being gay.
They still have anger at Amber, but certainly not Ethan. Mom’s line translated to “My anger was only my love for you because of how society will treat you, now fuck pussy until you’re straight.”
Amber has had no time to process this. Her time line went:
Rejected on prom night
Fight Ethan’ parents
Have no support from Ethan, because otherwise he could fight
Ethan crowding in, giving no emotional space.
As for Danny & parents, remember that it started with finding cover from her dad. She did not purposely act badly, but at dinner her feelings she had been developing came out. Sure Danny didn’t know, though his fantasy of being Lois Lane requires him to date two women. So I only blame his continual lack of spine. But Amber isn’t acting in the same space and after dealing with her father, she was very near her negative emotions. The very stuff she can’t deal with in real life, the reason why she became Amazi-Girl.
So if you need to blame anybody there, blame Amber’s father. He set up the conditions and reasons for that meeting. She did not set out to have that dinner, she was looking for help and protection.
The real problem here is that you must assign primary blame. There are really just two damaged people having to cope while in close proximity.
Ethan is the bad guy in Amber’s story because of what she gave up for him.
Ethan still hasn’t dealt with being gay and just wants his old future back, so Amber is the friend he can’t talk to, potential hazard for closeting, and angry bongo at the moment.
Now we know what happened in yesterday’s strip — Riley wasn’t just randomly annoying Sarah, she was trying to hide behind her, to avoid being collateral damage in Amber’s rage-fest. When Sarah shooed her off, she had no choice but to flee the impending amber-pocalypse.
“Figured out”? What, were your cafeteria chairs made of plastic or something?
I dunno what you sat in, but our cafeteria chairs are metal and fabric at best, and mostly metal at worst. Heavy enough to break the glass walls (kinda surprised it hasn’t happened yet to be honest).
Seriously, If Amber doesn’t change herself she could end up like Blaine. Blaine probably didn’t start off as abusive, but instead grew that way. I’ve heard that children from abusive families are more likely to be abusive
The word you’re looking for is “has”. She HAS ended up like Blaine. Her hobby involves running around hitting people, and she’s literally physically abusing her friend just because when he did exactly what she blackmailed him into doing it didn’t ruin his life enough for her.
She’s already an abusive asshole, there’s not actually any more slope to slip off of here.
It’s more that Ethan’s current actions are shitting all over Amber’s efforts to defend his sexuality from his parents and other people from over the summer.
I think there’s a hefty helping of, “Goddammit, if you can pretend to be straight with this random chick at college, why the hell couldn’t you keep pretending to be straight with me long enough to wrong me until I had a good scapegoat just the once?!” in there, too.
Yeah, I think Amber feels betrayed that he’s willing to try for Joyce, while the revelation during prom night scarred her emotionally. It wasn’t fair to Amber, nor was it fair to Ethan. Victims of circumstance.
I know that’s a big thorn in Amber’s side, but I don’t think that’s what is making her so angry right now. Ethan is flat out denying who he is, and she still cares about him. On top of that, he’s basically “praying the gay away” or trying to, which is enormously harmful.
Being gay isn’t a choice. Ethan is still grappling with depression and low self-esteem due to the way his parents handled him coming out. By being gay, he feels like he’s lost control over his own life. Him choosing to go against it is not just because he’s afraid of being alone and thinking he’d never find a guy who would like him, but also as an attempt to have control over his life again.
Being gay isn’t a choice, but how you deal with it is (kinda like Amber’s bad temper, in a way). Ethan’s still trying to figure out how he wants to deal with it, and he’ll probably go through a number of methods, some healthy, some not healthy, before he settles on one he’s comfortable with. College is a time for experimentation, right? The point being, it has to be *Ethan* who comes to the conclusion, Amber can’t do it for him or force him to come to a realization before he’s ready. THAT’S unhealthy.
Usually it’s the Russian judge that is so problematic. So you throw out the low and the high, and add the rest together for a score of…26.4 points out of a possible thirty.
On to the next round!
I’m guessing Amber sees Ethan’s mom’s hand in this. She ran interference all summer and now Ethan is giving in anyway. She’s struggling not to turn out like her dad and Ethan is buckling under familial pressure. Her secrets are destroying her relationship, while Ethan is somehow able to be honest about something that should be way worse, and still has a girlfriend anyway.
Yeah, I can see why she would be this frustrated, though obviously this is a terrible and counterproductive reaction. Poor Amber is going to a really dark place lately.
…I would pay twenty dollars American money* for M. Willis to draw Joyce going through the full armor sequence from Bibleman.
(* Payment would only be made post Christmas when money was a going concern again. Not that it would be an issue, since M. Willis is unlikely to be commissionable at that amount. Offer not valid in OH, AK or the District of Columbia.)
Can I just say that, in my head, the “breastplate of righteousness” had a whole different flavor? I won’t even mention the “shoes of peace” . . . Now I see more clearly what Paul had in mind. Obviously, my mistake was the misquote: it’s the “full armor of GOD” — not Christ. You remember God: the one who smited everything that moved in the Old Testament . . .
I don’t think it matters at this point, I mean if the table used to be nailed to the floor or not. She didn’t appear to notice. Awesome artwork.
Yes Saffaftsa, the ‘aggression’ business is part of reason why Amber does Amizigirl-to give her rage an outlet.
Raises the question? Who else’s decision would it be, if both he and the girl he is going out with agree?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Ethan is a total dick the way he has been acting, and is playing Joyce in the worse way. Another type of girl maybe a more sophisticated one (or one with no self-esteem whatever), would beard for him with no entanglements. But, Joyce is just not worldly enough to handle the situation she is in with him: still lives in fantasy world that she may be able to convert him. So yeah Sarah, run.
I keep thinking something similar though the comment section is against me. I mean, its Ethan’s choice to date a girl, though being gay wasn’t. He’d be HAPPIER dating a guy but I mean, he’s CHOOSING not to at this point. Joyce is going along with it (though I seriously hope she’s not really looking up wedding chapels) and is choosing to date a guy she knows is gay. That doesn’t really make either of them wrong, IMO, and Amber flipping crap (and tables) should be more because she didn’t get that option than forcing him to be gay, I’d say. He didnt choose who he likes, but he can choose who he dates, can’t he?
Obviously he gets to choose who he dates. No one’s discounting that. The problem is saying that it’s a good choice. He’s “praying the gay away”, which has been proven to be harmful and ineffective. He is denying a core part of himself by doing this. He’s not asexual or aromantic, so dating someone he doesn’t actually have any interest in boning is not fair to himself nor to Joyce, even though both of them think they know what they’re doing.
Is Joyce trying to “pray the gay away” any worse than Ethan’s parents, who both seem to think that if he starts screwing women he can “fuck the gay away”?
This. My main problem with the relationship is that Joyce really really -is- thinking that this will work out, and that the gay can be prayed away. She has lived a sheltered life surrounded by a bubble of fundamentalists who have constantly reinforced the notion that homosexuality can be driven away by devotion to God. I don’t feel like she has the world experience necessary to know how this will turn out. I DO feel that Ethan does, but that he’s preoccupied with his short term selfish sense of comfort.
Poor Amber. Nothing’s working out for her, is it? This rage she’s showing right now is going to hurt Ethan and that’s just going to be too much for Amber to take. No amount of Joyce punchlines can make me feel happy after a panel like that.
Joys are felt more strongly because of the pain we have felt. Victories are more meaningful to those who have lost. And vice versa.
Also, no character growth only through punchlines and jokes.
Good writing uses both sides of the human experience to play off each other. Ethan accepting himself will feel like more of a break through and triumph for his weakness of the moment.
Your suffering makes the buffer grow.
In the little shop of horrors metaphor, Willis is Seymour, the Buffer is the plant, your suffering is the blood-must be fresh.
Ive decided, I think I’m just going to let the entire Ethan/Joyce go, I’ve became a hater just filled directionless anger for no reason at all, so I’m just going to chill and watch everything work itself out and if shipping goes down the fucking drawn that would be a score, just going to let things play out
Amber is right. He is scared. It’s easier as a gay man to hide in the closet and play pretend even if you are being completely open. Ethan so obviously just wants to be “normal” while being open as a gay man that he will bury himself in a straight relationship so that he can be like what is around him.
We grow up in a straight world. The only gay men are in shows we aren’t allowed to watch or are jokes. Will and Grace was a good show but it still felt like “if you are gay you can’t act like every other guy acts”
He is choosing Joyce kind of out of fear. He came out in high school but now he has a chance to jump back in the closet. If someone doesn’t do an Amber level freak out on him then he could wind up not only ruining his and Joyce’s lives but their kids if it goes that far when he finally grows brave enough to venture out for real.
Joyce is using Ethan for her fears too, pretty much confirmed when he came out and also in her odd sex dream. Her fundamentalism plays a part too, but a gay boyfriend is as sexually neutral as a boy band.
I think Ethan was acting disrespectful of her considering what he put her through, she fought for him and was denied sex on prom night. She thought they were going to get married and then it crashed apart all around her and she had to emotionally labor for him at the same time it happened. All so he could be himself, be out of the closet, and I’m sure she believed be with men. Now he’s just shutting down and hiding behind Joyce. Pretending he is someone he isn’t and that he can have what he needs from her even when he sees it in other places like Joyce’s sibling.
All that said flipping a table over is not an acceptable way to act regardless.
I see a lot of parallels with her and the Street Fighter character Ryu. Ryu struggles against a consuming rage and indiscriminate violence as well, but most of the time is under control and only fights as a hero. He keeps on fighting as a hero in search of a means to control his rage, and that just seems a lot like Amber to me.
Would someone please refresh my memory, why is Ethan acting like a dick to his supposedly best friend?
Also I guess we’re now witnessing the theory of “you are inevitably becoming like one of your parents in a relatinship”. Because that is how people work. Alright.
A.) Ethan is rationally choosing to remind Amber that a decision, mutually agreed upon by both him and Joyce, that Amber herself was unable to even try to make, is his and Joyce’s business, not Amber’s, and she’s trying to make it her business against his wishes. This doesn’t seem like friend-like behavior.
B.) Amber has admitted already that she has tons of emotional issues. Honestly, she should be seeking counseling for this sort of thing. As evident in panel 3, where she proceed to flip a table (and her shit) over Ethan choosing to defend his decisions, and apparently trying to tell him that his life is not his own to rule, but hers. Again, this is very not-friend-like behavior.
You’re forgetting the part where Ethan has been unreasonably arrogant for the past few times we’ve seen them together. Arrgant with the girl who’s her best friend, who supoorted him and stayed with him even after being practically dumped. Who then betrayed her by starting to date a girl even after coming out. On the campus they’re both attending. So that Amber doesn’t even have the chance not to see it.
When it gets to the point in panel 3, being “a big rude meanie” is not justification for Amber’s behavior. Nothing Ethan’s done warrants Amber’s reaction. It is uncalled for in any similar scenario.
And Amber gets no moral high ground here, having a relationship with Danny in another identity. She had her chance to come clean with him and didn’t. Hell, she’s had every chance in the world to tell him since they met. I’m sure the friendship between Amber and Ethan can survive this. I’ve had friendships survive worse…
He isn’t intentionally.
See, if kissing Joyce was spiteful Ethan would be ready and even fired up for a fight.
Yes, I agree that Amber went through a lot for Ethan when Ethan seemed to run from his issues.
But Ethan gave up a lot too, see his conversation with Mike at Chik-fil-a.
He’s still running. He wants the normal life he had in front of him. He wants to go back.
So he went into the closet, which comes off as looking like being a jerk towards Amber.
The point of this arc should be that there are two hurt people here trying to deal with their issues while living in proximity to each other. They are only accidental villains to the other’s respective story.
Plus Joyce, who seems to be teflon, who uses Ethan to avoid her own fears and keep her self deceptions.
Thanks. Had this arc taken a different turn, my choice was
“Been away, haven’t seen you in a while.
How’ve you been?
Have you changed your style and do you think
That we’ve grown up differently? Don’t seem the same
Seems you’ve lost your feel for me
So let’s leave it alone, ’cause we can’t see eye to eye.
There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”
Forgot to say – Amber also left Ethan standing in a world so cold.
She wants her space, but as far as Ethan knows, the world is rather hostile to gays.
Although if anybody would get off campus (beyond the beach and the mall) he might find otherwise.
I’ll be honest, it’s hard to like Amber or Ethan right now. Both are hypocrites in that Amber won’t tell Danny who she is and Ethan is refusing to deal with the potential social stigma of being gay.
Ethan, under considerable pressure from Amber, has at least admitted he’s gay to Joyce. However, he has essentially thrown away all of the help that Amber had given him over the summer, which is just a huge slap in the face to her. Until he finds some self-respect and makes things right, the situation between him and Amber and him and Joyce is only going to get more complicated and probably more awful.
Amber’s situation is a bit more complicated. I feel she has been nothing but awful to Ethan since the beginning of college, which has only worsened with his recent hijinks. She abandoned him as a friend, leaving him with MIKE as emotional support. I understand that she’s probably emotionally drained from supporting him that summer, but there are probably better ways to deal with that than to binge on WoW and act as a vigilante. Let’s move on to her issues stemming from her father’s abuse. This is something that she needs help with ASAP. SO many of her issues are due to this. If she can start to get help with this, it would definitely help her in a lot of other stuff. I understand that what she’s dealt with her father is absolutely awful, but that doesn’t make it any better when she inflicts her pain on others. Furthermore, her interactions with Danny have been irresponsible. Danny is a complete idiot, but by ‘romancing’ him through two different identities without telling him that she is both is just asking for trouble. Now Danny is going to probably be abandoned by both identities and be VERY confused.
Amber uses Amazi-Girl as an outlet for the side she feels she cannot safely let out in normal life. She met Danny this way and did most of her bonding in character.
When we start a relationship, we want to be seen as the best of what we can be, not all that stuff we know/fear ourselves to be. Amber just has an extra layer of ickey-ness there.
It’s hard enough to open up to another, but it might be harder to reconcile your dark side to another.
What, no he hasn’t thrown away all the help she gave him. Just because she helped him deal with misery for a while doesn’t mean he’s obligated to be miserable forever. What an incredibly twisted way of looking at things.
That this aid has been pointedly withdrawn makes it all the more nonoffensive that he’s trying not to put himself in need of it again.
….He’s going to make himself miserable by dating someone he isn’t romantically or sexually attracted to, and it’s gross that you don’t understand that.
Of course he is. Of course it’s not gonna work. That’s so not the point. He had a problem. He’s trying to solve it. That doesn’t mean he’s throwing away that help Amber gave him in dealing with that problem.
I think you’re missing gangler’s point, in that Ethan THINKS he is trying to solve the problem. What he can’t see is what he’s actually doing, which is running away from something that he can’t change.
My best friend in high school was gay, and he had a terrible time coming to terms with it. When you grow up in an atmosphere where gay = pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you, “solving” your “gay problem” can turn into “figure out a way not to be gay” in your head, because you can’t always quite imagine a world where you would be allowed to openly live as yourself without a significant dose of loathing from the community and from yourself. Ethan probably doesn’t see it the way that Amber does; he sees it through a film of what his parents think and what people in his hometown thought. (I forget where Ethan and Amber are from, but I grew up near where many of these characters are from.. so I’m familiar with the mindset.)
Yes, this.
Ethan isn’t purposely trying to throw away Amber’s help. He’s groping through the issue alone.
His friends are Mike and Amber. I like Mike, but his help is rough at best. Amber wants her space.
I just want to shout at her, “SHUT THE FUCK UP! Nobody cares!”
Seriously, even if Joyce and Ethan are on a slow collision course, it’s their life and their choice to learn from, if they have anything to learn from. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t.
Nobody cares that he’s totally taking advantage of her? He knows better than to try this kind of shit because he already has. With Amber. And now he’s doing it again.
Joyce is a willing participant. They are using each other, because she is hiding from her own hang-ups. Given the amount of her self-deception it’s hard to say she is entirely being used as such things are self re-enforcing.
Joyce is a willing participant in something she absolutely doesn’t understand and won’t understand (at least for the time being) because she’s terrified of everything outside of her limited world view. A willful choice made from ignorance while Ethan definitely knows what he’s doing. That’s fucked up, and that sort of mash-up of ignorance and manipulation is why age of consent laws exist.
I don’t get why some people are so ready to look at certain characters history and psychology and try and understand their actions, rather than judge them, but refuse to do the same for other characters in the cast.
You can both analyze someone’s history and psychology to understand them and think they’re making a very poor choice. I know precisely why Ethan is doing what he’s doing, I empathize with him completely. He’s in a really unfortunate situation. However, that does not remove culpability from what he’s doing to another person. Nor am I implying by any of this that Joyce is completely faultless in this interaction.
Taking advantage of her in much the same way that a knife salesman might take advantage of your desire for quality kitchenware at affordable prices. She’s hardly being swindled here.
But he is taking advantage of the fact that appearing to be in a relationship with a woman gives people the impression that you’re straight. In Ethan’s mind, being straight will give him the “normality” he once had, and he associates his homosexuality with all the struggles he had in the recent past. This notion was false from the start, because if he had established that he was gay from the start, and acted as himself the whole time, the normality he sought would’ve been right in front of him, with the included benefits of being accepted by his peers and possibly finding a male partner that he can be satisfied with. Instead, he decided that he could try to bury his past and put up a front so that others can look at him and think, “Hey, he’s straight like me! I don’t need to fear him! I’ll be friends with him!” In doing so, he is compromising the very essence of what a romantic relationship is supposed to be, which is built upon mutual desire, love, and trust; the kind of relationship that Joyce wants to have with someone.
And the knife salesman takes advantage of the fact that money can be exchanged for goods and services. Neither is in any way a negative thing, so long all parties are fully informed.
Your analogy is flawed in that it fails to take into account the full range of human consciousness. There is way more to this issue than what you’re making it out to be.
The difference here is that when things are said and done, the knife salesman has sold you knives. Nothing Ethan does will give her the straight husband she thinks she’s “buying”. He’s gay. He’s -really- gay. He’s incapable of suppressing that. He couldn’t sleep with a girl he legitimately cared for on their prom night. He couldn’t go -one- -fucking- encounter with a cute guy without blowing Joyce off entirely, and the guy was her BROTHER. (Jocelyn’s sexual identity notwithstanding, we’re talking about Ethan’s perceptions at the time)
Ethan may or may not know better than to believe that he can make this thing with Joyce work. But he SHOULD. The experiences and evidence are RIGHT THERE.
If we were going to liken this to a knife salesman, I’d liken it more to a huckster that sells low quality knives that chip and dull easily while claiming that they’re Ginsu.
She cares because Ethan is still her friend, and she doesn’t want him to get hurt. Pretty straight-forward and understandable why she’s upset. She’s not handling it correctly at all, but it doesn’t invalidate her point or her concern.
Is that why she’s reacting like this? Amber told Ethan to tell Joyce he was gay, he did so and they both decided to keep dating.
Amber might by upset with Ethan for staying in the closet, but she’s flipping her shit because Ethan seems to be happy and relaxed and was sitting with a group of friends (to Amber’s eyes) while Amber is isolated from the only friend she’s made, Danny. I think that Amber is even more angry with herself currently for all the lying and deception in her relationship, and she’s redirecting that anger at Ethan. Why does he get to ostensibly be happy because of the lies he’s telling, while Amber does not? etc etc.
Amber needs to calm down. If she keeps up with these destructive outbursts, then people will start to realize that she’s the secret identity of super hero Sarah Clinton!
This is the Platonic ideal of “relationship trainwreck”. Right here. Especially, of course, Amber’s third-panel rage.
…Ethan, considering what you know about Amber, you…you really should’ve been more aware that she’s been walking around covered in the “DO NOT CROSS – A (WO)MAN WITH NOTHING TO LOSE” police tape from the Max Payne box art since she got here.
You did have a lot to deal with, though. Oh well. You’re going to realize that NOW whether you want to or not.
What? She’s got plenty to lose. She lives an overall happy life with. She’s got friends. She’s got hobbies. She’s got romance. She’s got academic pursuits. Hell, she’s even got a secret identity. She’s got more to lose than a lot of people ever gain.
For that matter he’s hardly crossed her. He did exactly as she asked, then he politely informed her of the latest developments in the situation. That she doesn’t agree with his decisions does not mean that he’s acted against her in any way.
…Weeeellll yes, she has or had all those things, but given her development and how things have gone for her, do you think Amber notices that she has them? I would wager that she really, really doesn’t. Especially since things just fell apart with Danny and just yesterday, her father waltzed back into her life and brought out the darkness in her like he’d just discovered the Sith Code. I think to Amber’s eyes, what she has is a world made mostly of shadows and cardboard, and it’s been crumbling quickly the last couple days.
There’s also the fact she sorely needs emotional/mental support, preferably of a professional variety.
And um, well, Ethan absolutely did cross her. That spite-kiss with Joyce was pretty intentional, dogg, and while he didn’t expect it to cause a Reapable Whirlwind, he did kind of instigate this. Intention, as they say, isn’t magic, and Ethan may not have intended this as a major offense, but it’s gonna be one.
Yeah, pretty sure she notices. She noticed she had a friend in Dina today while they discussed social things. Not like she was stuck brooding about how nobody likes her and all that jazz. She clearly notices her academic pursuits. Not like she’s stopped attending her classes because “What’s the point”. She noticed her romance just last night when she saw Danny waiting for her, though she’s certainly stuck on how to navigate that situation right now.
I’m not seeing this interpretation of her where she’s walking by all the great things in her life not realizing that she’d like to keep them. She’s very much aware of what she has to lose and what she’s in the process of losing.
As you say intention is not magic. Ethan kissing Joyce was not in any way an act committed upon Amber and as such cannot be considered an act of crossing Amber. You have not crossed somebody simply because they saw something you were doing, ran across the room and made an issue of it. Might as well say Sarah crossed Raidah by making new friends. That Raidah doesn’t like it does not make it an act of crossing.
…I…Erm. Do you really think that all people in a state of extreme psychological distress “brood because no one likes them and all that jazz”? Because if you do, then, well, here is a teachable moment: they don’t. They really don’t, in fact, with much emphasis.
That’s without even mentioning that seeing Danny isn’t going to remind her of her romance, it’s going to be incredibly unpleasant, because as much as I love the guy, he just all but told her that the only part of her he finds worthwhile is her vigilante identity.
Y’know, the one she uses as an outlet for pain and rage.
And finally, while I appreciate that this debacle isn’t all Ethan’s fault–he had no way of knowing about some of it and no real way of changing what he did know about, because Amber’s acting totally on emotion rather than logic–the situation isn’t the same. Ethan kissed Joyce, while glaring at Amber, intending to make a nasty point to her about how he Could make his own decisions, so THERE. Willis confirmed he was looking at Amber quite intentionally!
Now, does this deserve what he’s getting? Hell no, this is disproportionate retribution at its finest! But he did instigate this, so…he gotta live with it.
There’s a big difference between “In a state of psychological duress” and “Does not notice the good things in her life”
She notices she has friends. Plain and simple. She notices she has school. This is cut and dry. She is aware that she has good things in her life which she does not want to lose.
You yourself said intention is not magic. I will not argue about the meaning of any glares, as they are irrelevant. Any spite or nasty points that were intended do not change the act.
…Well I mean if you want to keep moving the metaphorical goalposts I guess I have no choice but to concede the debate?? :/
I would think it’s pretty well-documented that people in a state of emotional distress/depression are really fucking bad at noticing the good things in their life–I know when I hit low points I’m pretty sure everyone who loves me resents my existence, but maybe Amber is totally different?????
And I meant “intention isn’t magic” in terms of Ethan didn’t intend to initiate Amber going fucking nuclear, not that we should discard all emotional provocation, but I mean if you want to twist the meaning who am I to stop you.
I’ve been using the same goalpost from the beginning. I challenge you to go through my comments and find a point where I said Amber wasn’t in a state of psychological duress.
She is however specifically acting to preserve the good things in her life. So again, your whole “Woman with nothing to lose” thing, which I have been arguing against from the beginning, is wrong. Both in the sense that it is factually inaccurate, and also in the sense that Amber doesn’t feel that it is accurate.
I legitimately thought you meant that if Ethan didn’t intend for the kiss to be a spiteful thing that wouldn’t change anything. It has been confusing talking to you when on the one hand you say that his spiteful intentions are super important, but on the other hand you say that his intentions could not make the act one nonagression.
He didn’t cross a woman with nothing to lose. The crossing portion of that didn’t happen, the woman has plenty to lose and knows it.
Technically speaking, yes, that’s absolutely correct. However, the outcome that she desired was that instead of going back into the closet and having a relationship with a girl that she thinks will most likely not end well, he would finally confront his sexuality and accept himself for who he truly is. Furthermore, she is his closest friend with history and a failed relationship between them, and she doesn’t want to see her friend feign romantic interest just so they can reclaim a false sense of self; in that way, Ethan’s relationship with Joyce is very self-serving.
On the other hand, Joyce’s part in this relationship is also very self-serving, as she is not emotionally or psychologically ready to handle an actual romantic relationship, but needs an outlet for her self-repressed sexual desires. Ethan, being gay, cannot reciprocate those desires, which means that she won’t have to deal with full-blown sex at all, or have to deal with the pressure of Ethan wanting to have sex with her. She is kept within a safe, sterile environment that leaves her free to explore her own sexuality. On the whole, it’s mostly a win-win situation.
Or so you would think.
Ethan has shown sexual desire towards other males, including Jacob and Joyce’s transgendered brother Joshua/Jocelyn. Because Ethan is officially in a “straight relationship” with Joyce, it would be rather rude of him to lose control of his repressed desires and actually hook up with another guy behind Joyce’s back. And because he currently hates being gay, he will probably deny doing so at first before finally admitting to it, making Joyce pissed because she hates liars. In any kind of romantic relationship, cheating is a rather shitty thing to do to someone, and I am sure Joyce will see it as a huge betrayal of trust and have it in her head that she and Ethan actually had a genuine thing going on; however, this is the pressure that Ethan will have to deal with if he is to have a sexually unfulfilling relationship with Joyce.
On the opposite end, Joyce may actually want to try something sexual, but because she has been told that sex is only for married couples, she will most likely try to get married with Ethan. Technically, this is, in itself, not a bad thing; however, getting married under false pretenses and without genuine, mutual feelings is bad because it undermines the whole concept of what a religious marriage is supposed to be. And even if they do get married, she won’t EVER be able to have any fulfilling sexual experiences with Ethan because, again, he is gay. And because Ethan at that point has become married to Joyce, he also will never have any opportunity to accept his sexuality or have any fulfilling sexual experiences, furthering his self-loathing and increasing the risk of him cheating on Joyce.
So overall, the benefits for both of them in this relationship is merely a short-term thing, and will eventually lead to shitty situations in the long term. The benefits can never become long term unless Ethan deludes himself even further than he has now. In the end, Joyce will more than likely be the one who benefits the most from the relationship as it is now, as she will probably be more enlightened and experienced for her next relationship.
Conclusion: Life would most probably be better for Ethan if he merely stayed friends with Joyce and saw a therapist to help him confront and accept his homosexuality. Joyce may not be as well-off, but it would surely be a greater step towards emotional maturity if she let him go and found a straight guy with Ethan’s kindness and understanding.
Really the only point of that was that Joyce isn’t being victimized here. She’s been informed well enough that it doesn’t fall on the salesman if she regrets the transaction.
No, I’m sure I replied to that one just now. But you really haven’t addressed my arguments in the above comment at all.
Furthermore, I would argue that no one is really being victimized here; like you said, Ethan and Joyce had an agreement and are acting upon it. However, the decisions they have made could not possibly be considered well-thought out or “good” decisions to the outside observer based on all the variables that the comic has given us. Following them out into their logical possibilities, as I have done so in the above post, is proof of that. There are several other variables that I haven’t even touched upon in my post, such as the religious differences between Ethan and Joyce, and both of their parents’ points of view, all of which help to inform and influence the decisions that these individuals make.
I’m really not sure how your points relate to anything I said though. The decisions aren’t well thought out or good. This arrangement isn’t going to work and they’re both gonna regret this by the time it’s over.
It’s not that I disagree with you. I’m just not sure where all this is coming from. I posted a comment about how Amber still has a lot of good things in her life that she wants to preserve and Ethan hasn’t crossed her. You responded to that with a summary of why Ethan’s relationship with Joyce may seem like a good idea but isn’t.
Then I probably just overelaborated on the last sentence of that first paragraph, which I tend to do by accident. My mistake At the least, that whole first paragraph is relevant, lmao.
Ah, as far as that goes I’d say that choosing a solution other than the one that your helper wanted is also not a slap in the face. Help is genuinely given with the understanding that the problem still belongs to the helpee, and they are free to choose to solve it as they wish without that reflecting poorly on those who have helped.
For example, somebody might seek to help a loved one with financial troubles while they pursue their dreams. One should still not get offended if they decide to put their dreams on hold in order to acquire financial stability. Even if one thinks this is a really bad decision, one should remember that both the issue of dream fulfillment and the issue of financial stability belong to the loved one, and they are just trying to do what’s right for them as best they can. They do not owe one financial instability simply because one assisted with that.
I appreciate that it can be difficult to watch somebody you helped not get where you wanted them to be, but it’s not a slap in the face. It’s just a shitty thing that’s happening, centered entirely around them and their problems.
I guess it’s just a matter of bias on my part then. I’ve always been taught that loving and accepting yourself is most important if you plan on loving others, so for Ethan to create this fake relationship given the issue of his sexuality and his poor sense of self runs completely contrary to that, lol.
He’s not in control, as he said he wanted to be back out in front of the pizza place. He’s in denial.
I think that the religious angle has been ignored here. Ethan isn’t a Christian, he’s Jewish, and he’s only going to church to please Joyce and have fun. He’s not going through a serious crisis of faith and considering conversion. His actions there are all part of his denial and he has not really dealt with anything.
The reason we’re ignoring the religious angle is because he has no reason to be considering conversion. Failing to do so isn’t denial; it’s normality. People don’t just up and change religions for no reason, and doing so isn’t dealing with things, it’s demonstrating a mercurial and unstable grasp of theology.
You could argue that he shouldn’t be going to a Christian service at all if he’s not planning to convert, but since every other aspect of his relationship with Joyce is a lie, why shouldn’t he complete the set?
This really isn’t how the whole “Let’s take a break and recoup” thing should work.
You can’t withdraw from all the friend stuff, but still make a point of showing up again whenever you’re pissed off about what they’re doing.
None of this would even be a surprise to her if she was still hanging out with Ethan. She would’ve been like “How’d the night go. Did Joyce take it alright?” and he would’ve been like “Yeah, she says she can help fix me.” and she would’ve been like “Uhh… and you think that’s a good idea?” and they would’ve talked it out like friends do.
And, you know that’s understandable if she’s not up for that right now, but if she’s not then she really needs to just let him work through his shit on his own. For both of them, really, since I have to imagine that just showing up to deal with his problems without enjoying the accompanying recreational social interaction is only accelerating her exhaustion rather than providing rest.
See this is all true, but you’re looking at this through the lenses of a rational human being for whom her relationship with Ethan isn’t an open wound she refuses to address, and who isn’t a psychological shipwreck.
I’m wondering how long before the adult layer of this verse decides Amber/Amazi-Girl is a big problem, maybe a bigger problem than IU needs right now. I mean I got hauled in front of the conduct board for a lot less than this.
What ever happened to “Friends don’t let friends make bad decisions that could negatively affect them for the rest of their lives?” 😛 Would you say the same thing about Billie forcing Ruth to give up drinking? That “her bad drinking problem is unhealthy in the long term, but like she says, it’s her decision”? I definitely wouldn’t.
If it had been a calm ‘you will regret this, you should stop this, you are letting your mother and social pressures of the world put you into a position where you will be more miserable, please remember that there are people who will love and care for you regardless of your sexual orientation’ then sure, that would work out.
But Amber is just showing some of her ugly inner rage and flipping a table. It’s not the goal that people are taking issue with, it’s the method.
Pretty sure it was the goal that was being disagreed upon, in this case. Others may be taking issue with her method, and rightfully so I think, but there are also people here who disagree with her goal outright, which is where I disagree with them.
But I do agree that the emotionally-charged outburst was primarily unwarranted, but it’s understandable given the shit she’s been put through thus far. Not excusable, mind you, but understandable.
Fair enough. And in the end it SHOULD be his decision . . . not telling him that it would lead to suffering and awful would make amber a bad friend. Flipping a table at him might ALSO make her a bad friend. It’s like, different flavors of bad.
Unless I’m mistaken, we don’t know what Ethan’s part was in helping Amber deal with her issues in this continuity, so I think this point is rather moot.
I seem to have missed the strip where Ethan and Joyce were planning to drop out of college and get married.
This is no more going to negatively effect the rest of Ethan’s life (or Joyce’s) than any of the myriad other ill-thought out relationships either of them could be having (and is likely to have in future years) would.
Is the relationship a good idea? No, it’s not. But, since Ethan and Joyce are both going into it with open eyes – albeit with blinders – it is totally their mistake to make. Amber’s said her peace, and pointed out when he was doing something horrible…now it’s her turn to butt out.
I agree. I don’t agree with what he’s doing, but it’s his decision. I agree with Amber’s frustration, but I don’t agree with her trying to control him or doing other than saying “I disagree with your position, and am not comfortable being around you while you are going forward with this line of action.” Thing is, she’s already asked for a break from him, so she shouldn’t even do that, just keep avoiding him.
I understand her anger. I honestly can’t blame her for it. But she needs to deal with it and realize that it’s her problem, not his.
People are discussing this as if there were a bunch of rational adults involved. This is Ethan, whose life is a confused mess. This is Amber who recently punched her dad, fled her dorm, was rejected by the only person who provided any human contact and whose roommate is Dina. Amber is violent. It is what she knows. She is terribly alone. At this point , Ethan is just the last straw. All this has happened to her in the last few days, though we have had months to comment on it. The strip is Dumbing of Age, so it doesn’t feature adults making wise decisions.
Is this going to be good for Ethan or Amber? Of course not. It is like me at 18? Sure is.
I was watching the adventure time episodes “Return to the Nightosphere” and “Daddy’s Little Monster” right before I came in to check in on the wacky world of Willis. Two things: 1) Not so wacky right now, is it? and (2) Amber’s seething rage, color inverted text and red demonic background make me think that she could do a terrific job in the nightosphere.
Okay, now Amber’s crossed a line for me. The correct response, Amber, is “If you are going to continue to repress your feelings until you snap and break this girl’s heart, we aren’t friends anymore.” Flipping tables is not okay.
I brought this up in an old one by mistake instead of the new comic people will see.
Ok. So Amber has a hamburger, or some other kind of burger veggie, chicken ect. Dina and Riley have cereal. Jacob had an apple with his meal or maybe an apple for his meal. What was the yellow mush Ethan has. Pudding? Extra buttery mashed potatos? It’s very important.
No so sure I like Amber anymore…I get where she’s coming from, and someone NEEDS to have this talk with Ethan…but the violence and screaming is overkill and will probably just make Ethan want to continue doing what he’s doing, as well as destroy the friendship.
Does anyone have an idea of how much time has passed here since the beginning of school?
My point it . . . I went to a tiny (~3,400 students), one-stoplight-town, private college in the northern midwest run by a conservative restorationist Christian church with that denomination’s only seminary on campus. Even then, there were openly gay dudes on campus. Not many, but there was the gay white guy, the gay black guy, the gay Asian guy, the lesbian English professor, the lesbian volleyball coach, and a bunch more of us who weren’t so obvious . . .
Indiana University-Bloomington is about 12.5 times larger. How has Ethan not yet met/seen/heard of other attractive young gay guys on campus? Aren’t there any LBGTQQIA alphabet soup organizations?
[In other news, Amber-rage is the best kind of rage! Although other commenters disagree with me, every time Amber rages, I fall in love with her a little more.]
P.S. I’m not implying that what Amber is doing would be good for her or Ethan if they were real, living people. It’s kinda like completely not-scripted-at-all drama on “reality” TV
The description you gave of ” the gay white guy, the gay black guy, the gay Asian guy, the lesbian English professor, the lesbian volleyball coach” sounds like they were meeting a secret quota given to them by church elders that went something like “IF WE GET ONE OF EACH KIND, THEY WON’T NOTICE OUR TRUE GOALS” and on a giant war room screen behind is “OPERATION GEE-HAD (but not the Muslim kind)”
It did kinda feel like that. I didn’t come out until my second year, and the other out gay black guy and out gay white guy came in the following years. (That doesn’t count the closeted gays or those who thought they were closeted but weren’t fooling anyone.)
Yeah, that’s roughly what I’ve been thinking. I didn’t want to put too much emphasis on what Joyce said about how long she’s been in a relationship, but nearly to double or triple the amount of time? Yikes! (And I couldn’t remember how much of a built-in time lapse, if any, there between Walky discovering pajama-jeans and Walky receiving them from Mike).
That’s about when my university always has its Clubs Night, where you can go find out about organizations on campus, if you missed out during Frosh Week.
I’ve kind of been wondering about that, because it seems a little odd that with all the variety of characters we’ve got, the only extracurriculars any of them are involved in are Dorothy and Billie with the paper. (And Dorothy’s ditching that to study, while Billie’s… Billie.) Not just no LGBT organizations for Ethan, but no D&MM fan club for Walky or Campus Crusade for Christ for Joyce or Amazi-Girl fan club for Danny or intramural hockey for Ruth (though I guess it wouldn’t be time for that yet anyway) or anything she can cram into her schedule that might look good on a transcript for Dorothy (seriously, I’m not on the Yale admissions board, but I’m thinking the right extracurriculars would help her more than more studying)…
Judging by IU’s 2013 schedule, though, their club fair has probably already gone by without notice.
No Amber is completely right. Ethan Dumped Her because he was gay. Amber stood by him as a friend and supported him Through. He started dating another Girl. As a friend she told him it wasn’t ok and that he needed to be honest with his new girlfriend. Now he says that he’s going to try to be straight with this new girl instead of her. Instead Of Her. This is not telling you that you are making a huge mistake rage this is Rejection and betrayal rage. Ethan was instrumental in Screwing up her life and in return she was gracious and accepting all through high-school up until college and she realized she needed to spend some time on herself because she was kinda going crazy. Then Ethan stuck a fork in the Crazy and hit a nerve.Amber may not be behaving as someone should but she has every right to act like this. Ethan Deserves Everything he gets.
This isn’t really about Ethan being in the closet, or out of the closet, or because Amber thinks Ethan is going to hurt Joyce, or Joyce is going to hurt Ethan. Amber may be irritated at Ethan about those things, and those may be the parts of it that she’s willing to talk about, but that’s not why she’s so pissed that she’s flipping tables.
The reason she’s that pissed is that Ethan broke off a long-term relationship with her, one that she expected to end with “’til death do we part”, just before they consummated it, by telling her that he was gay and so couldn’t have a relationship with a woman. And then, after she spent the entire summer dealing with the fallout from Ethan coming out – and we got a hint with Amber’s confrontation with Naomi (which was just yesterday for Amber) what that must have been like – and still trying to protect and defend and be friends with her fiancé in all but name who just dumped her ass, they’ve gone away to college, and Mr. “I can’t date you because you’re a woman and I’m gay” is dating a woman who isn’t Amber. And given that kiss and glare, rubbing her face in it.
This campus must have a GSA. The tiny fundamentalist college in my home town even has a GSA. This huge state school where students are allowed to be out must have one. Someone drag Ethan (and Joyce) there and let Amber get a break from being his only cheerleader.
It wouldn’t hurt Amber to go and learn a little more about the coming out process and how you really can’t rush somebody with it no matter how incredibly frustrating they’re being, but I think she could stand to spend some time not thinking about Ethan or his issues at all.
It’s a Big 10 campus. There has to be a bunch of gay lesbian friendly hangouts on the main drag, a number of students who are already out, and other such things.
However, Joyce will not go in. She sees gay-ness as something to be saved from. Accepting it would be accepting the Devil. It’s okay to save somebody from the Devil and hide from your own sex fears, but not to take it as normal.
It would attack her beliefs to directly, causing most to hold on to their beliefs more strongly.
Well, Ethan has said he doesn’t want people to think of him as ‘the gay guy’, even in a place where people would be more positive about it, so that could be a handwave there, at least for the moment (he’ll probably check such an organization out when he’s more comfortable about his sexuality, though he’d probably rather join a Transformers club or something).
Sure everybody is worried about Ethan and Amber, but no one cares about the poor sap that has to clean that mess up. No one cares about the middle guy.
Flipping a table is a little over the top, and guaranteed to attract attention to the table-flipper. So why is everybody else in the dining room not staring at Amber and Ethan?
He could have noticed that Amber=AG, not dumped her, and therefore she would be mentally in a better place. That could at least result in fewer flipped tables.
Wait, are you implying that Amber is responsible for her own actions and might actually bear partial responsibility for their outcomes? That’s crazy talk. We all know that Danny’s responsible for every bad thing that ever happens in Dumbiverseville.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. It’s obvious that Amber’s starting the decent of the fallen hero. She is going the way of Sayaka.
But I know from (repeated!) personal experience that investing that much emotional energy in someone, only to have them shit all over it and RUB IT IN YOUR GODDAMN FACE is infuriating to the point of bloodlust. Even if the person isn’t being a shit, watching a friend make a decision that can only end in tears and/or not fixing a glaring problem is horrible in how helpless it makes you feel to save this person you care about from themselves. And given her super alter-ego, that has to be especially horrible for Amber!
It’s ultimately Ethan’s choice to ruin his life. But he’s just being goddamn petty right now. And being petty to a person who has the the history she has, who fought for you in the way Amber has, in a way you know would hurt them a lot (also known as gaslighting), is stupid beyond belief.
I’m not trying to say Amber is totally in the right here. Flipping tables is not how you deal with anything that isn’t an actively burning table, and ultimately she CAN’T control what Ethan does. But Ethan is being amazingly gross and self-centered right now.
Don’t worry citizens. Under normal circumstances Amber’s table flipping rampage would probably seriously injure someone (Ethan) but before that happens I’m sure the day will be saved once again with the arrival of the mysterious and heroic Amazi-gi…oh….uhhhh…. RUN ETHAN RUN!!!!!!!
I wrote this starting off making the joke “I didn’t know Jesus was a transformer”, because of the table flipping. But then I envisioned a transformer Joyce would love. A van thing, like for a parade, with a giant crucifix coming off the top that transforms into Jesus. That thought distracted me largely from the original joke because…well mostly I just wish I could draw it and send it to Willis…
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HOLY SHIT AMBER!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!1!
Amber needs either a therapist, a punching bag, or both. Cheezus, both of them seem to have made an equal and concerted effort to fuck their friendship up the asshole.
Professional Punching Bag Therapist
Holy shit that’s not a bad idea, no no really THINK about it
Sounds like the perfect job for masochists. Or Faz.
I’ve found fighting crime by punching homeless and insane people is very theraputic. It releases a lot of the inner tensions resulting from my unresolved chilhood trauma.
Yeah, that’s good for you. Thanks, by the way, for inspiring the Joker to terrorize the motherfucking city while you were at it, you underwear-on-the-outside jackass.
It was the other way around, neh? The Joker would have been just as crazy without Batman. There was this big court thing where the DA proved that his entire rogue’s gallery would have been just as criminally insane without Batman ever being a thing.
… well, naturally.
Mind showing what proves that Batman is innocent of such guilt?
I think it goes against many parts of the Batman mythos, where it’s clearly established that Batman presence potentially increased the criminally insane while greatly reducing the small thievery/assault/etc.
He strikes fear in the heart of criminals and criminals are a superstitious lot. So most of them quit. A few take it as a challenge, and decide to one-up the bats themselves.
The current Year Zero re-origin of Batman clearly establishes that folks like the Riddler and other extravagant criminals predated Batman, partly in a way to clear Batman of such bad mojo. They created him, rather than the other way around.
@Tenn, correctamundo.
I honestly stopped keeping track of both DC and Marvel comics in the new millennium. So I really don’t have any idea what you people are talking about. It’s killing my soul.
Also, even before the New 52 there was an episode of BtAS where the Arkham inmates and a sympathetic [read: misguided] lawyer put Bats on trial for all the “misfortunes” that led to them going to crime. Long crime spree short, the sane people concluded that even without Batman the nutters woulda wound up crime-spreeing anyway. *Maybe* without the colorful personas, but the crime and violence would still be there.
I guess you’re joking and stuff but it’s not like people who don’t have a place to sleep are worthless 🙁
If you get that he’s joking, why are you replying as if he was serious?
I think that was more of a comment on Batman.
Also, if there are still unwillingly homeless people that Batman sees every night and there aren’t a ton of homeless shelters popping around Bruce Wayne’s a massive tool.
tenn – because people used to make jokes about extremely uncool shit and now we’ve learned a little better – why can’t we learn better here that things like homeless people dying, which actually happens, all of the time less of a punchline and more of a thing that we can all give a damn about?
^ That. Except you accidentally typed “used to” in that sentence, rachel.
saltchocolate – : ) yeah you are totally right. such a good comment section this is, man!!
@rachel: You seem to believe that “Batman’s” joke trivializes or ridicules the suffering of homeless people. That it somehow denies that homeless people dying is a real thing, or that it somehow prevents us from giving a damn about it. It doesn’t. It’s not even a joke about the homeless. It’s a joke about an alleged hero being an immoral asshole.
She needs Hulk Hogan.
LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING BROTHER, THE BEST THERAPY IS A YAPPAPI INDIAN STRAP MATCH!
YOU’LL HIT ETHAN WITH THAT INDIAN STRAP UNTIL HE’S ON HIS KNEES SAYING “PLEASE AMBER I CAN’T TAKE ANYMORE”. AND BROTHER THATS WHEN YOU’LL MAKE YOUR TRANSFORMATION INTO HOLYWOOD AND HIT HIM UNTIL THE STRAP HITS THE BONE AND HE’LL START BEGGING “PLEASE HOLYWOOD.NO MORE OF THE YAPPPAPI INDIAN STRAP.” BUT YOU’LL NEVER STOP. FOR ALL THE LITTLE AMBERMANIACS OUT IN THE WORLD YOU CAN NEVER STOP.
Or you could like talk to a therapist.
WHATCHA GONNA DO, ETHAN SIEGEL, I SAID TELL ME WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO WHEN AMBERMANIA RUNS WILD ON YOUUU?!?
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/funny-gifs-my-dreams.gif
Okay you’re hired. *Hits GoldStarz over the head* Welcome to employment.
Not that Ethan coming to terms with being gay is an easy path, but let’s look at what Amber is dealing with again:
Asshole abusive father.
Ethan’s parents, his mom blames her for him turning gay.
Fighting all summer – the above is because Amber fought Ethan’s parents on his behalf.
The complete rejection on prom night. The feminine version of emasculation.
Mike’s little mind bomb. I like the guy, but his stuff can’t be easy to digest on ground zero.
Danny (of all people) rejecting her and calling her a user.
A lack of space to decompress from all of the above. How is the friendship supposed to heal if he doesn’t give her the space to do the same?
After all that, all the abuse she went through Ethan is crawling back into the closet (again, not saying easy on him, but see her perspective).
A similar scene from her spring/summer playing out in front of her in spite of her warnings.
So yes, Amber is a little tightly wound. Not all her fault.
It’s a little bit weird hearing all that from Joe… can… can you come back and say this all again when you’re not Joe?
I should have ended that with saying her issues make her a patient needing Dr Dong and probably a wild cat in bed.
I love and thank you for saying all of this. I get so frustrated with so many people saying that Amber needs to mind her own business and acting like she’s completely in the wrong.
Oh come on. I love Amber, I do, but let’s look at this again:
Ethan’s asshole parents have been giving her the cold shoulder, but what do you think they’ve been acting like with Ethan, who obviously would care way more what they think about him, than Amber does?
And I know people in the comments love to hate on Danny, but Amber honestly behaved quite badly with Danny and his parents – specially since it’s clear that Clark Kenting does work in this universe. Sure, Danny’s no saint in all of this, but neither is Amber, and of the two, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Danny’s behaved better.
Ethan otoh also dealing with asshole parents and pretty much no support structure, except for people who want him to “stop being gay”.
… He had Amazigirl on his lap. HOW DO YOU NOT RECOGNIZE HER.
has he had Amber on his lap? I think it’s like that spiderman thing; to recognize a superhero you have to make out with them at exactly the same angle you made out with their other persona.
Also, more seriously, there’s pretty good reason to think that either the comic’s night shots are colored brigher than they actually are, or that Danny had poor night vision. (Or both.) And on a less-mentioned not, Danny may not realize that the campus only has fifteen students attending. Yes, we know that, but he may not realize that every superhero he meets has a %50 chance of being one of the three girls he’s spoken to. Because you totally know that if you went out and randomly met two different people of the same gender and roughly similar physical type, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume they’re actually the same person.
Ethan’s parent’s acted considerably better towards him than Amber, as seen on Parent’s day.
If Amber fought with them on his behalf, that means he was hiding.
They blame Amber for turning him gay, but not Ethan for being gay.
They still have anger at Amber, but certainly not Ethan. Mom’s line translated to “My anger was only my love for you because of how society will treat you, now fuck pussy until you’re straight.”
Amber has had no time to process this. Her time line went:
Rejected on prom night
Fight Ethan’ parents
Have no support from Ethan, because otherwise he could fight
Ethan crowding in, giving no emotional space.
As for Danny & parents, remember that it started with finding cover from her dad. She did not purposely act badly, but at dinner her feelings she had been developing came out. Sure Danny didn’t know, though his fantasy of being Lois Lane requires him to date two women. So I only blame his continual lack of spine. But Amber isn’t acting in the same space and after dealing with her father, she was very near her negative emotions. The very stuff she can’t deal with in real life, the reason why she became Amazi-Girl.
So if you need to blame anybody there, blame Amber’s father. He set up the conditions and reasons for that meeting. She did not set out to have that dinner, she was looking for help and protection.
The real problem here is that you must assign primary blame. There are really just two damaged people having to cope while in close proximity.
Ethan is the bad guy in Amber’s story because of what she gave up for him.
Ethan still hasn’t dealt with being gay and just wants his old future back, so Amber is the friend he can’t talk to, potential hazard for closeting, and angry bongo at the moment.
That is what crime fighting is for
Run, she has yet to figure out how the world works, much less the fact that she has issues to work out.
0_0
Amber scares me…
Somebody hide me from her.
I’ll hide you!
It’s no use! She can sense fear!
My god… berserker!
She even transported Ethan to a red pocket dimension.
The flames and pitchforks can’t be far behind.
Amber be firing her lasers!
Nah, that’s a pretty standard rage-empowered table-flip. Lasers are a level 10 superpower at least.
Amber is Hulking up.
And this isn’t even her final form.
She went from being Hulk Hogan….And is now “The Hulk”
RAGE FACE!
No, rage FAAAAAAAAAAACE
Someone explain “FAAAAAAACE” to me… I see it all the time on these boards… and have no idea where it came from.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/face/
That table flip was the 3rd most epic thing in this comic ever….
Somewhere off to the side IDW Prowl is taking notes.
Until it landed on Riley…
“Why does everyone here hate me?? I just wanted some cereal!”
Now we know what happened in yesterday’s strip — Riley wasn’t just randomly annoying Sarah, she was trying to hide behind her, to avoid being collateral damage in Amber’s rage-fest. When Sarah shooed her off, she had no choice but to flee the impending amber-pocalypse.
Especially when you realize that the tables are bolted down.
You would think that I would eventually learn to read further down before I post a comment. You would think that, but noooooooo.
Wouldn’t the tables in a cafe like that be nailed down? And is Ethan’s favourite Chromedome?
Ours never were, because people moved them around all the time to form
cliquesgroupsFLIPTOP LOL
Had to replace all ours after someone figured out how to do grievous harm with a cafeteria chair.
“Figured out”? What, were your cafeteria chairs made of plastic or something?
I dunno what you sat in, but our cafeteria chairs are metal and fabric at best, and mostly metal at worst. Heavy enough to break the glass walls (kinda surprised it hasn’t happened yet to be honest).
That table WAS nailed down.
Bolted to the floor actually.
And the floor is kept in place by prayer. Or gravity.
Hence the red background. You know shit’s serious.
I feel like the tags should include Blaine.
If she breaks his back the tags should include Bane.
Wow. Good one.
That was insensitive.
Oh, go dedicate your life to crimefighting to avoid dealing with your grief.
Does anyone else remember that whole “aggression” business involving Amber’s dad?
Or Mike’s point.
Seriously, If Amber doesn’t change herself she could end up like Blaine. Blaine probably didn’t start off as abusive, but instead grew that way. I’ve heard that children from abusive families are more likely to be abusive
The word you’re looking for is “has”. She HAS ended up like Blaine. Her hobby involves running around hitting people, and she’s literally physically abusing her friend just because when he did exactly what she blackmailed him into doing it didn’t ruin his life enough for her.
She’s already an abusive asshole, there’s not actually any more slope to slip off of here.
Wait, did something happen with Amber’s dad? (sarcasm font)
Go back to reading your scooter mags, Jack.
got to get that Mod thing figured out, right?
Amber is having a Historial Jesus moment.
“You have turned this campus into a den of horrible relationships!”
Mark 12: 28
I cannot like this enough! ^_^
Is there any other kind of campus?
You mean it wasn’t already?
Hm, last summer she sacrificed herself to absorb Ethan’s parent’s anger of his sin of being gay.
Table flip FTW!
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
We can’t be leaving the comments section in complete disarray, can we?
┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ┬─┬
This place is messy enough with tables being upturned everywhere… what are we, animals?
┻━┻ ︵ヽ(^ΦωΦ^)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) ┬─┬
Why are so many of you depicting the Bunny Cat (who is a dick) from Madoka standing between tori gates?
／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
And now magical girls everywhere are running for their lives.
I heard the Mortal Kombat theme song when I read this.
TEST YOUR MIGHT.
Flipping a table that was more than likely bolted to the floor would be something Shao Kahn would be impressed with.
Flipping a table that’s bolted to the floor is something Kahn’s sex slaves could do, he wouldn’t even notice.
Wow. First time I’ve seen someone so angry they LITERALLY did a table flip.
LITERALLY in this fictional internet comic.
Literal and fictional are not mutually exclusive.
WHOOOAAAAA
So Amber’s favorite transformer is starSCREAM?
MEGATROOOOOOOOOOOOOOON.
TETSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
KAKAROOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT
SPOOOOOOOOOOON!
LEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOY
JENKINNNNNNNNSSSSSSSS
GOOOOOOODDDDDDDAAAAMMMIIIITTTTTTT
NAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPAAAAA
Geeeeerrrrrroooooonnnnnniiiiiimmmmmmoooooooooooooooooooo
KAGOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
KEEEEEEEEEEEBLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IIIIIIIIZAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
KANEEEEEEEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT!
Quite why KHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!! has been missed off this list I don’t know…
METAL GEARRRR?!
No but seriously, is it Megatron? I’m not very hip with the transformers.
WIIIIIIILMAAAAAAAA!
WAAAAAAAAAAAZZUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPPP
COOOooooooOOooooBbbbRRrrrAaaaa!
Snake? Snake? SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!
KAKAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!
HIYOOOOOOOOOO!
and because I can’t edit…
http://www.hiyoooo.com/
Gary?
Kanedaaaaaa
YAAAHOOHOOHOOIEEEEEEE
No, there was one transformer in the comics who liked flipping tables.
There we go DamnYouWillis has posted an image from said comic on his tumbler.
I think Amber is suffering from Danny withdrawls (or Danny DTs)….bigtime!
So much time without a straight man!! Oh gosh.
Wait, do you mean sexuality or character trait?
Probably sexuality, since Danny is way too incompetent at everything to be the straight man of the comic.
Dina is the straight man of this comic.
I actually did mean the character trait.
DDT is not good for your health.
DDT usually leads to STF, which is much more painful.
Yeah, no one wants shortpacked transformer fever. You become an amalgam of Ethan and Willis, only in the sense of your devotion to transformers.
Wouldn’t that result in this campus becoming known as “Shortpacked Transformer Fever University”? 😀
I saw what you did there.
I’d rather follow it up with a Camel Clutch.
ARMBAR!!!!
I’m starting to think that Danny may have gotten out in time.
I’m not too surprised, considering that the whole Ethan-coming-out-pre-prom-coitis was one of the major catalysts for Amber becoming Amazi-Girl.
And Ethan kissed Joyce while starring Amber down…not too swift.
The 3rd panel looks like Ethan is copping a feel.
Turns out he’s not attracted to women. He’s attracted to violence.
I thought we already knew he wasn’t attracted to women.
But the violence is what drew him to Amber!
Go Amber you good thing!
No…I really don’t think she is.
She’s bad trouble.
“IT’S MY DECISION, DAMN IT!!!”
Wait, what?
It’s more that Ethan’s current actions are shitting all over Amber’s efforts to defend his sexuality from his parents and other people from over the summer.
I think there’s a hefty helping of, “Goddammit, if you can pretend to be straight with this random chick at college, why the hell couldn’t you keep pretending to be straight with me long enough to wrong me until I had a good scapegoat just the once?!” in there, too.
Yeah, I think Amber feels betrayed that he’s willing to try for Joyce, while the revelation during prom night scarred her emotionally. It wasn’t fair to Amber, nor was it fair to Ethan. Victims of circumstance.
I know that’s a big thorn in Amber’s side, but I don’t think that’s what is making her so angry right now. Ethan is flat out denying who he is, and she still cares about him. On top of that, he’s basically “praying the gay away” or trying to, which is enormously harmful.
He just kissed another girl in front of her, when the last she knew he was going to come clean and break up.
Being gay isn’t a choice. Ethan is still grappling with depression and low self-esteem due to the way his parents handled him coming out. By being gay, he feels like he’s lost control over his own life. Him choosing to go against it is not just because he’s afraid of being alone and thinking he’d never find a guy who would like him, but also as an attempt to have control over his life again.
Being gay isn’t a choice, but how you deal with it is (kinda like Amber’s bad temper, in a way). Ethan’s still trying to figure out how he wants to deal with it, and he’ll probably go through a number of methods, some healthy, some not healthy, before he settles on one he’s comfortable with. College is a time for experimentation, right? The point being, it has to be *Ethan* who comes to the conclusion, Amber can’t do it for him or force him to come to a realization before he’s ready. THAT’S unhealthy.
I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. However, this is *Dumbing* of Age and they’re all around 18 so prepare for a lot of poor choices.
And thus Amazi-Girl becomes a supervillain.
When Amber turns the background red, you know her Blaine-chromosome is flaring up.
I’ve said it before; she’s the Ravager to his Deathstroke.
Except Deathstroke is significantly more deadly than Blaine, and Amber is decidedly more nerdy than Ravager.
…dang it, now I want to write a crossover between the two. Somehow.
Amazi-Girl becomes A-menacing-Girl
+1
And now the judge’s score on that table flip:
USA 9.2
FRA 8.8
SWE 9.1
CHI 8.5
GER 5.3
That German judge is a bit strict…
Usually it’s the Russian judge that is so problematic. So you throw out the low and the high, and add the rest together for a score of…26.4 points out of a possible thirty.
On to the next round!
The Russian judge would award extra points for the epic red background.
In Soviet Russia, table flips you?
Either that, or in a massage parlor run by the Hulk.
Must be an old East German leftover. Those DDR aparatchiks were notorious.
I thought the joke was always the French judge with the unusually low score towards the American?
Well now, this looks fun.
I think the thing that truly shows the extent of Amber’s anger is the reverse-colored speech bubble.
I’m guessing Amber sees Ethan’s mom’s hand in this. She ran interference all summer and now Ethan is giving in anyway. She’s struggling not to turn out like her dad and Ethan is buckling under familial pressure. Her secrets are destroying her relationship, while Ethan is somehow able to be honest about something that should be way worse, and still has a girlfriend anyway.
Yeah, I can see why she would be this frustrated, though obviously this is a terrible and counterproductive reaction. Poor Amber is going to a really dark place lately.
I love this comment, and you deserve a +1.
Joyce, you’d better put on the armor of Christ, because you’re about to walk into Armageddon.
…I would pay twenty dollars American money* for M. Willis to draw Joyce going through the full armor sequence from Bibleman.
(* Payment would only be made post Christmas when money was a going concern again. Not that it would be an issue, since M. Willis is unlikely to be commissionable at that amount. Offer not valid in OH, AK or the District of Columbia.)
Everyone who is wondering what Eric is talking about, here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEKwrI5MYIM
Wow. I’d make Eric’s $20 real.
Can I just say that, in my head, the “breastplate of righteousness” had a whole different flavor? I won’t even mention the “shoes of peace” . . . Now I see more clearly what Paul had in mind. Obviously, my mistake was the misquote: it’s the “full armor of GOD” — not Christ. You remember God: the one who smited everything that moved in the Old Testament . . .
OR….
….the venture bros variant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_QGEmoFhDk
God help me, the first thing I thought when I saw panel three was “huh, Amber’s got a pretty awesome rack.”
God help us for not thinking as you do…
Truly Amber has Boobs Of Steel.
I approve this message.
Amazing. It’s Amazing.
(In other words, yeah, me too.)
She also makes the rockin’ world go ’round.
+1 for your awesomeness!
I don’t think it matters at this point, I mean if the table used to be nailed to the floor or not. She didn’t appear to notice. Awesome artwork.
Yes Saffaftsa, the ‘aggression’ business is part of reason why Amber does Amizigirl-to give her rage an outlet.
Raises the question? Who else’s decision would it be, if both he and the girl he is going out with agree?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Ethan is a total dick the way he has been acting, and is playing Joyce in the worse way. Another type of girl maybe a more sophisticated one (or one with no self-esteem whatever), would beard for him with no entanglements. But, Joyce is just not worldly enough to handle the situation she is in with him: still lives in fantasy world that she may be able to convert him. So yeah Sarah, run.
I keep thinking something similar though the comment section is against me. I mean, its Ethan’s choice to date a girl, though being gay wasn’t. He’d be HAPPIER dating a guy but I mean, he’s CHOOSING not to at this point. Joyce is going along with it (though I seriously hope she’s not really looking up wedding chapels) and is choosing to date a guy she knows is gay. That doesn’t really make either of them wrong, IMO, and Amber flipping crap (and tables) should be more because she didn’t get that option than forcing him to be gay, I’d say. He didnt choose who he likes, but he can choose who he dates, can’t he?
Obviously he gets to choose who he dates. No one’s discounting that. The problem is saying that it’s a good choice. He’s “praying the gay away”, which has been proven to be harmful and ineffective. He is denying a core part of himself by doing this. He’s not asexual or aromantic, so dating someone he doesn’t actually have any interest in boning is not fair to himself nor to Joyce, even though both of them think they know what they’re doing.
Is Joyce trying to “pray the gay away” any worse than Ethan’s parents, who both seem to think that if he starts screwing women he can “fuck the gay away”?
Nope. Equally fucked up.
When did Joyce ever try to “pray the gay away”? If anything, ETHAN is the one who’s try to “pray the gay away”.
No, but I don’t see any point that actually makes? It doesn’t suddenly make what Ethan and Joyce are doing okay.
Joyce is really looking up wedding chapels. Yes, she is.
This. My main problem with the relationship is that Joyce really really -is- thinking that this will work out, and that the gay can be prayed away. She has lived a sheltered life surrounded by a bubble of fundamentalists who have constantly reinforced the notion that homosexuality can be driven away by devotion to God. I don’t feel like she has the world experience necessary to know how this will turn out. I DO feel that Ethan does, but that he’s preoccupied with his short term selfish sense of comfort.
Joyce kinda has Faz-face in that last panel. :/
Faz is designed to look smug, and sometimes other characters look smug.
Faz is the Coke of smug.
Poor Amber. Nothing’s working out for her, is it? This rage she’s showing right now is going to hurt Ethan and that’s just going to be too much for Amber to take. No amount of Joyce punchlines can make me feel happy after a panel like that.
You’re not supposed to always feel happy. This isn’t that type of comic, just sayin. It’s actually about a gamut of emotions that make up real life.
“Joy and pain
Sunshine and rain”.
Joys are felt more strongly because of the pain we have felt. Victories are more meaningful to those who have lost. And vice versa.
Also, no character growth only through punchlines and jokes.
Good writing uses both sides of the human experience to play off each other. Ethan accepting himself will feel like more of a break through and triumph for his weakness of the moment.
Your suffering makes the buffer grow.
In the little shop of horrors metaphor, Willis is Seymour, the Buffer is the plant, your suffering is the blood-must be fresh.
I thought this was a Drama-Free Zone! Or is that just within a certain distance of Sarah?
Within bat swinging distance of Sarah.
“If this is more drama I will punch it in the face.”
I like Amber more now.
k[Boobage]^(dT/dA) = ass kicking capability
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoobsOfSteel
The comment here is in relation to a deleted comment. The joke no longer has context, and in retrospect, seems crass. Apologies.
I have deleted nothing! You’re probably looking for Eric Burns-White’s post a few threads up.
You really DO read every comment…
oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!
Simmer down na.
seriously though, Amber needs to seek help for her anger problems.
Is the hovertext referring to Hardhead?
Prowl:
http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/69948140386
I’ll take “Psychobongo” for $400, Alex………………….
You wouldn’t hail from Augusta GA would you Gordon Blvd?
Meep!!! Amber smash!! ((0))¿((0))
Wow, I think amber and Sarah might get along
Ive decided, I think I’m just going to let the entire Ethan/Joyce go, I’ve became a hater just filled directionless anger for no reason at all, so I’m just going to chill and watch everything work itself out and if shipping goes down the fucking drawn that would be a score, just going to let things play out
Amber smash puny Ethan!
I’m kinda wondering what happened with Dina. If Riley left, and Amber is freaking out……
She’s just sitting there, off panel, incredibly confused by all of this.
She’ll stay out of it as long as it doesn’t deteriorate into paleontology-bashing.
Panel 3 is my favorite panel of all time.
Amber: “Violence is who I am!”
Amber is right. He is scared. It’s easier as a gay man to hide in the closet and play pretend even if you are being completely open. Ethan so obviously just wants to be “normal” while being open as a gay man that he will bury himself in a straight relationship so that he can be like what is around him.
We grow up in a straight world. The only gay men are in shows we aren’t allowed to watch or are jokes. Will and Grace was a good show but it still felt like “if you are gay you can’t act like every other guy acts”
He is choosing Joyce kind of out of fear. He came out in high school but now he has a chance to jump back in the closet. If someone doesn’t do an Amber level freak out on him then he could wind up not only ruining his and Joyce’s lives but their kids if it goes that far when he finally grows brave enough to venture out for real.
But maybe if that happens they will birth a Marten-esque child (from QC). 😀
See Mike & Ethan at Chik-fil-a.
Joyce is using Ethan for her fears too, pretty much confirmed when he came out and also in her odd sex dream. Her fundamentalism plays a part too, but a gay boyfriend is as sexually neutral as a boy band.
That is one thing I do like about Brooklyn 99.
I am strangely aroused by panel 3.
Ok. Can I vote again and let Amber be my favorite?
Only if you didn’t vote for Dina.
Are there people like that?
Apparently so. According to the recent poll 56% of voters did not vote for Dina.
If this were a race between Dina and “everyone besides Dina” Dina would have lost!
I did not vote for Dina. She’s great, but there are others who are greater (including, in my vote, Amber)!
HOLY SHIT!!!!
Did Ethan just Dan it up or is Amber being really high and mighty because she fought for him in the past?
I think Ethan was acting disrespectful of her considering what he put her through, she fought for him and was denied sex on prom night. She thought they were going to get married and then it crashed apart all around her and she had to emotionally labor for him at the same time it happened. All so he could be himself, be out of the closet, and I’m sure she believed be with men. Now he’s just shutting down and hiding behind Joyce. Pretending he is someone he isn’t and that he can have what he needs from her even when he sees it in other places like Joyce’s sibling.
All that said flipping a table over is not an acceptable way to act regardless.
I see a lot of parallels with her and the Street Fighter character Ryu. Ryu struggles against a consuming rage and indiscriminate violence as well, but most of the time is under control and only fights as a hero. He keeps on fighting as a hero in search of a means to control his rage, and that just seems a lot like Amber to me.
Would someone please refresh my memory, why is Ethan acting like a dick to his supposedly best friend?
Also I guess we’re now witnessing the theory of “you are inevitably becoming like one of your parents in a relatinship”. Because that is how people work. Alright.
Or…
A.) Ethan is rationally choosing to remind Amber that a decision, mutually agreed upon by both him and Joyce, that Amber herself was unable to even try to make, is his and Joyce’s business, not Amber’s, and she’s trying to make it her business against his wishes. This doesn’t seem like friend-like behavior.
B.) Amber has admitted already that she has tons of emotional issues. Honestly, she should be seeking counseling for this sort of thing. As evident in panel 3, where she proceed to flip a table (and her shit) over Ethan choosing to defend his decisions, and apparently trying to tell him that his life is not his own to rule, but hers. Again, this is very not-friend-like behavior.
You’re forgetting the part where Ethan has been unreasonably arrogant for the past few times we’ve seen them together. Arrgant with the girl who’s her best friend, who supoorted him and stayed with him even after being practically dumped. Who then betrayed her by starting to date a girl even after coming out. On the campus they’re both attending. So that Amber doesn’t even have the chance not to see it.
When it gets to the point in panel 3, being “a big rude meanie” is not justification for Amber’s behavior. Nothing Ethan’s done warrants Amber’s reaction. It is uncalled for in any similar scenario.
And Amber gets no moral high ground here, having a relationship with Danny in another identity. She had her chance to come clean with him and didn’t. Hell, she’s had every chance in the world to tell him since they met. I’m sure the friendship between Amber and Ethan can survive this. I’ve had friendships survive worse…
He isn’t intentionally.
See, if kissing Joyce was spiteful Ethan would be ready and even fired up for a fight.
Yes, I agree that Amber went through a lot for Ethan when Ethan seemed to run from his issues.
But Ethan gave up a lot too, see his conversation with Mike at Chik-fil-a.
He’s still running. He wants the normal life he had in front of him. He wants to go back.
So he went into the closet, which comes off as looking like being a jerk towards Amber.
The point of this arc should be that there are two hurt people here trying to deal with their issues while living in proximity to each other. They are only accidental villains to the other’s respective story.
Plus Joyce, who seems to be teflon, who uses Ethan to avoid her own fears and keep her self deceptions.
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what is sounds like when doves cry.
WHOA.
Seeing a parallel between that song and Amber/Ethan.
Amber is being much like her father (too bold) while Ethan is being like his mother (never satisfied).
Mind blown.
Thanks. Had this arc taken a different turn, my choice was
“Been away, haven’t seen you in a while.
How’ve you been?
Have you changed your style and do you think
That we’ve grown up differently? Don’t seem the same
Seems you’ve lost your feel for me
So let’s leave it alone, ’cause we can’t see eye to eye.
There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”
Forgot to say – Amber also left Ethan standing in a world so cold.
She wants her space, but as far as Ethan knows, the world is rather hostile to gays.
Although if anybody would get off campus (beyond the beach and the mall) he might find otherwise.
Flipping a table seems a bit much….even for college level drama. =P
Agreed!
Eeyup, Ethan sure is dead here. I’d say I feel bad for him, but he does have it coming.
Amber is diplaying in panel 3 what we in the spanish-speaking world call “encojonado/a”….
I’m just imagining a Godzilla roar is coming out of Amber’s mouth in panel 3.
Fanart of Amberzilla needs to happen
Not gonna lie, this is going far better than i expected. Amber hasn’t began breathing fire
-David Willis on Twitter-
“Oh hey remember way back when I said that you have eight weeks of mostly wacky hijinks? Yeah, um, the eight weeks is over.”
I saw that. And I shuddered.
Hijinks cease.
It looks like Joyce is staring at Sarah’s rack.
It’s cos she misses Billie’s rack.
How? Her eyes are closed!
She’s imitating “Brock” from Pokemon
…that’s how!
Even if they were open, her face is pointing upwards, so she’d be looking Sarah in the eyes. People have issues following eye paths, apparently.
Now that I look again, if you think of the blush spots on her cheeks as eyes and her eyes as eyebrows, it’s a pretty freaky face… haha
It’d be a pretty freaky face period if her blush spots were her eyes…
Amber is either Prowl or Whirl. Oh please let it be Whirl.
I’d say Whirl. But I can see Prowl too now that you mention it.
Is Ethan going to die?
I’ll be honest, it’s hard to like Amber or Ethan right now. Both are hypocrites in that Amber won’t tell Danny who she is and Ethan is refusing to deal with the potential social stigma of being gay.
Ethan, under considerable pressure from Amber, has at least admitted he’s gay to Joyce. However, he has essentially thrown away all of the help that Amber had given him over the summer, which is just a huge slap in the face to her. Until he finds some self-respect and makes things right, the situation between him and Amber and him and Joyce is only going to get more complicated and probably more awful.
Amber’s situation is a bit more complicated. I feel she has been nothing but awful to Ethan since the beginning of college, which has only worsened with his recent hijinks. She abandoned him as a friend, leaving him with MIKE as emotional support. I understand that she’s probably emotionally drained from supporting him that summer, but there are probably better ways to deal with that than to binge on WoW and act as a vigilante. Let’s move on to her issues stemming from her father’s abuse. This is something that she needs help with ASAP. SO many of her issues are due to this. If she can start to get help with this, it would definitely help her in a lot of other stuff. I understand that what she’s dealt with her father is absolutely awful, but that doesn’t make it any better when she inflicts her pain on others. Furthermore, her interactions with Danny have been irresponsible. Danny is a complete idiot, but by ‘romancing’ him through two different identities without telling him that she is both is just asking for trouble. Now Danny is going to probably be abandoned by both identities and be VERY confused.
Amber uses Amazi-Girl as an outlet for the side she feels she cannot safely let out in normal life. She met Danny this way and did most of her bonding in character.
When we start a relationship, we want to be seen as the best of what we can be, not all that stuff we know/fear ourselves to be. Amber just has an extra layer of ickey-ness there.
It’s hard enough to open up to another, but it might be harder to reconcile your dark side to another.
What, no he hasn’t thrown away all the help she gave him. Just because she helped him deal with misery for a while doesn’t mean he’s obligated to be miserable forever. What an incredibly twisted way of looking at things.
That this aid has been pointedly withdrawn makes it all the more nonoffensive that he’s trying not to put himself in need of it again.
….He’s going to make himself miserable by dating someone he isn’t romantically or sexually attracted to, and it’s gross that you don’t understand that.
Of course he is. Of course it’s not gonna work. That’s so not the point. He had a problem. He’s trying to solve it. That doesn’t mean he’s throwing away that help Amber gave him in dealing with that problem.
He isn’t trying to solve it though. His “solving” involves throwing everything that’s a problem under the bed and trying to forget about it.
I think you’re missing gangler’s point, in that Ethan THINKS he is trying to solve the problem. What he can’t see is what he’s actually doing, which is running away from something that he can’t change.
My best friend in high school was gay, and he had a terrible time coming to terms with it. When you grow up in an atmosphere where gay = pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you, “solving” your “gay problem” can turn into “figure out a way not to be gay” in your head, because you can’t always quite imagine a world where you would be allowed to openly live as yourself without a significant dose of loathing from the community and from yourself. Ethan probably doesn’t see it the way that Amber does; he sees it through a film of what his parents think and what people in his hometown thought. (I forget where Ethan and Amber are from, but I grew up near where many of these characters are from.. so I’m familiar with the mindset.)
Yes, this.
Ethan isn’t purposely trying to throw away Amber’s help. He’s groping through the issue alone.
His friends are Mike and Amber. I like Mike, but his help is rough at best. Amber wants her space.
Uh oh! You can see Amber’s gums! You KNOW she means business!
I just want to shout at her, “SHUT THE FUCK UP! Nobody cares!”
Seriously, even if Joyce and Ethan are on a slow collision course, it’s their life and their choice to learn from, if they have anything to learn from. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe it won’t.
Nobody cares that he’s totally taking advantage of her? He knows better than to try this kind of shit because he already has. With Amber. And now he’s doing it again.
Joyce is a willing participant. They are using each other, because she is hiding from her own hang-ups. Given the amount of her self-deception it’s hard to say she is entirely being used as such things are self re-enforcing.
yeah, doesn’t make it not extremely fucked up
Joyce is a willing participant in something she absolutely doesn’t understand and won’t understand (at least for the time being) because she’s terrified of everything outside of her limited world view. A willful choice made from ignorance while Ethan definitely knows what he’s doing. That’s fucked up, and that sort of mash-up of ignorance and manipulation is why age of consent laws exist.
I don’t get why some people are so ready to look at certain characters history and psychology and try and understand their actions, rather than judge them, but refuse to do the same for other characters in the cast.
You can both analyze someone’s history and psychology to understand them and think they’re making a very poor choice. I know precisely why Ethan is doing what he’s doing, I empathize with him completely. He’s in a really unfortunate situation. However, that does not remove culpability from what he’s doing to another person. Nor am I implying by any of this that Joyce is completely faultless in this interaction.
Taking advantage of her in much the same way that a knife salesman might take advantage of your desire for quality kitchenware at affordable prices. She’s hardly being swindled here.
But he is taking advantage of the fact that appearing to be in a relationship with a woman gives people the impression that you’re straight. In Ethan’s mind, being straight will give him the “normality” he once had, and he associates his homosexuality with all the struggles he had in the recent past. This notion was false from the start, because if he had established that he was gay from the start, and acted as himself the whole time, the normality he sought would’ve been right in front of him, with the included benefits of being accepted by his peers and possibly finding a male partner that he can be satisfied with. Instead, he decided that he could try to bury his past and put up a front so that others can look at him and think, “Hey, he’s straight like me! I don’t need to fear him! I’ll be friends with him!” In doing so, he is compromising the very essence of what a romantic relationship is supposed to be, which is built upon mutual desire, love, and trust; the kind of relationship that Joyce wants to have with someone.
And the knife salesman takes advantage of the fact that money can be exchanged for goods and services. Neither is in any way a negative thing, so long all parties are fully informed.
Your analogy is flawed in that it fails to take into account the full range of human consciousness. There is way more to this issue than what you’re making it out to be.
The difference here is that when things are said and done, the knife salesman has sold you knives. Nothing Ethan does will give her the straight husband she thinks she’s “buying”. He’s gay. He’s -really- gay. He’s incapable of suppressing that. He couldn’t sleep with a girl he legitimately cared for on their prom night. He couldn’t go -one- -fucking- encounter with a cute guy without blowing Joyce off entirely, and the guy was her BROTHER. (Jocelyn’s sexual identity notwithstanding, we’re talking about Ethan’s perceptions at the time)
Ethan may or may not know better than to believe that he can make this thing with Joyce work. But he SHOULD. The experiences and evidence are RIGHT THERE.
If we were going to liken this to a knife salesman, I’d liken it more to a huckster that sells low quality knives that chip and dull easily while claiming that they’re Ginsu.
“I’d like to buy a knife. But I’m afraid of sharp things.”
“Ah, I have just the knife for you!” *hands Joyce a spoon*
And it’ll be fine until Joyce decides she’s finally ready to dig into that T-bone she’s been drooling over.
She cares because Ethan is still her friend, and she doesn’t want him to get hurt. Pretty straight-forward and understandable why she’s upset. She’s not handling it correctly at all, but it doesn’t invalidate her point or her concern.
Is that why she’s reacting like this? Amber told Ethan to tell Joyce he was gay, he did so and they both decided to keep dating.
Amber might by upset with Ethan for staying in the closet, but she’s flipping her shit because Ethan seems to be happy and relaxed and was sitting with a group of friends (to Amber’s eyes) while Amber is isolated from the only friend she’s made, Danny. I think that Amber is even more angry with herself currently for all the lying and deception in her relationship, and she’s redirecting that anger at Ethan. Why does he get to ostensibly be happy because of the lies he’s telling, while Amber does not? etc etc.
My point is, Amber’s fury is not righteous, brah
Yeah, I don’t think she would be this angry if it was just Ethan making stupid decisions.
I’m impressed; nobody has tried to blame this on Danny.
But the night is not over.
Never underestimate the DoA fandom’s ability to blame Danny for other people’s shortcomings.
Amber you put that table back. It didn’t do anything.
Strike him down with all your anger.
Peace is a lie; there is only passion.
The cake is a lie.
What about a peace of cake?
Amber needs to calm down. If she keeps up with these destructive outbursts, then people will start to realize that she’s the secret identity of super hero Sarah Clinton!
Careful amber…you are becoming your father!
This is the Platonic ideal of “relationship trainwreck”. Right here. Especially, of course, Amber’s third-panel rage.
…Ethan, considering what you know about Amber, you…you really should’ve been more aware that she’s been walking around covered in the “DO NOT CROSS – A (WO)MAN WITH NOTHING TO LOSE” police tape from the Max Payne box art since she got here.
You did have a lot to deal with, though. Oh well. You’re going to realize that NOW whether you want to or not.
What? She’s got plenty to lose. She lives an overall happy life with. She’s got friends. She’s got hobbies. She’s got romance. She’s got academic pursuits. Hell, she’s even got a secret identity. She’s got more to lose than a lot of people ever gain.
For that matter he’s hardly crossed her. He did exactly as she asked, then he politely informed her of the latest developments in the situation. That she doesn’t agree with his decisions does not mean that he’s acted against her in any way.
…Weeeellll yes, she has or had all those things, but given her development and how things have gone for her, do you think Amber notices that she has them? I would wager that she really, really doesn’t. Especially since things just fell apart with Danny and just yesterday, her father waltzed back into her life and brought out the darkness in her like he’d just discovered the Sith Code. I think to Amber’s eyes, what she has is a world made mostly of shadows and cardboard, and it’s been crumbling quickly the last couple days.
There’s also the fact she sorely needs emotional/mental support, preferably of a professional variety.
And um, well, Ethan absolutely did cross her. That spite-kiss with Joyce was pretty intentional, dogg, and while he didn’t expect it to cause a Reapable Whirlwind, he did kind of instigate this. Intention, as they say, isn’t magic, and Ethan may not have intended this as a major offense, but it’s gonna be one.
Yeah, pretty sure she notices. She noticed she had a friend in Dina today while they discussed social things. Not like she was stuck brooding about how nobody likes her and all that jazz. She clearly notices her academic pursuits. Not like she’s stopped attending her classes because “What’s the point”. She noticed her romance just last night when she saw Danny waiting for her, though she’s certainly stuck on how to navigate that situation right now.
I’m not seeing this interpretation of her where she’s walking by all the great things in her life not realizing that she’d like to keep them. She’s very much aware of what she has to lose and what she’s in the process of losing.
As you say intention is not magic. Ethan kissing Joyce was not in any way an act committed upon Amber and as such cannot be considered an act of crossing Amber. You have not crossed somebody simply because they saw something you were doing, ran across the room and made an issue of it. Might as well say Sarah crossed Raidah by making new friends. That Raidah doesn’t like it does not make it an act of crossing.
…I…Erm. Do you really think that all people in a state of extreme psychological distress “brood because no one likes them and all that jazz”? Because if you do, then, well, here is a teachable moment: they don’t. They really don’t, in fact, with much emphasis.
That’s without even mentioning that seeing Danny isn’t going to remind her of her romance, it’s going to be incredibly unpleasant, because as much as I love the guy, he just all but told her that the only part of her he finds worthwhile is her vigilante identity.
Y’know, the one she uses as an outlet for pain and rage.
And finally, while I appreciate that this debacle isn’t all Ethan’s fault–he had no way of knowing about some of it and no real way of changing what he did know about, because Amber’s acting totally on emotion rather than logic–the situation isn’t the same. Ethan kissed Joyce, while glaring at Amber, intending to make a nasty point to her about how he Could make his own decisions, so THERE. Willis confirmed he was looking at Amber quite intentionally!
Now, does this deserve what he’s getting? Hell no, this is disproportionate retribution at its finest! But he did instigate this, so…he gotta live with it.
There’s a big difference between “In a state of psychological duress” and “Does not notice the good things in her life”
She notices she has friends. Plain and simple. She notices she has school. This is cut and dry. She is aware that she has good things in her life which she does not want to lose.
You yourself said intention is not magic. I will not argue about the meaning of any glares, as they are irrelevant. Any spite or nasty points that were intended do not change the act.
…Well I mean if you want to keep moving the metaphorical goalposts I guess I have no choice but to concede the debate?? :/
I would think it’s pretty well-documented that people in a state of emotional distress/depression are really fucking bad at noticing the good things in their life–I know when I hit low points I’m pretty sure everyone who loves me resents my existence, but maybe Amber is totally different?????
And I meant “intention isn’t magic” in terms of Ethan didn’t intend to initiate Amber going fucking nuclear, not that we should discard all emotional provocation, but I mean if you want to twist the meaning who am I to stop you.
I’ve been using the same goalpost from the beginning. I challenge you to go through my comments and find a point where I said Amber wasn’t in a state of psychological duress.
She is however specifically acting to preserve the good things in her life. So again, your whole “Woman with nothing to lose” thing, which I have been arguing against from the beginning, is wrong. Both in the sense that it is factually inaccurate, and also in the sense that Amber doesn’t feel that it is accurate.
I legitimately thought you meant that if Ethan didn’t intend for the kiss to be a spiteful thing that wouldn’t change anything. It has been confusing talking to you when on the one hand you say that his spiteful intentions are super important, but on the other hand you say that his intentions could not make the act one nonagression.
He didn’t cross a woman with nothing to lose. The crossing portion of that didn’t happen, the woman has plenty to lose and knows it.
Technically speaking, yes, that’s absolutely correct. However, the outcome that she desired was that instead of going back into the closet and having a relationship with a girl that she thinks will most likely not end well, he would finally confront his sexuality and accept himself for who he truly is. Furthermore, she is his closest friend with history and a failed relationship between them, and she doesn’t want to see her friend feign romantic interest just so they can reclaim a false sense of self; in that way, Ethan’s relationship with Joyce is very self-serving.
On the other hand, Joyce’s part in this relationship is also very self-serving, as she is not emotionally or psychologically ready to handle an actual romantic relationship, but needs an outlet for her self-repressed sexual desires. Ethan, being gay, cannot reciprocate those desires, which means that she won’t have to deal with full-blown sex at all, or have to deal with the pressure of Ethan wanting to have sex with her. She is kept within a safe, sterile environment that leaves her free to explore her own sexuality. On the whole, it’s mostly a win-win situation.
Or so you would think.
Ethan has shown sexual desire towards other males, including Jacob and Joyce’s transgendered brother Joshua/Jocelyn. Because Ethan is officially in a “straight relationship” with Joyce, it would be rather rude of him to lose control of his repressed desires and actually hook up with another guy behind Joyce’s back. And because he currently hates being gay, he will probably deny doing so at first before finally admitting to it, making Joyce pissed because she hates liars. In any kind of romantic relationship, cheating is a rather shitty thing to do to someone, and I am sure Joyce will see it as a huge betrayal of trust and have it in her head that she and Ethan actually had a genuine thing going on; however, this is the pressure that Ethan will have to deal with if he is to have a sexually unfulfilling relationship with Joyce.
On the opposite end, Joyce may actually want to try something sexual, but because she has been told that sex is only for married couples, she will most likely try to get married with Ethan. Technically, this is, in itself, not a bad thing; however, getting married under false pretenses and without genuine, mutual feelings is bad because it undermines the whole concept of what a religious marriage is supposed to be. And even if they do get married, she won’t EVER be able to have any fulfilling sexual experiences with Ethan because, again, he is gay. And because Ethan at that point has become married to Joyce, he also will never have any opportunity to accept his sexuality or have any fulfilling sexual experiences, furthering his self-loathing and increasing the risk of him cheating on Joyce.
So overall, the benefits for both of them in this relationship is merely a short-term thing, and will eventually lead to shitty situations in the long term. The benefits can never become long term unless Ethan deludes himself even further than he has now. In the end, Joyce will more than likely be the one who benefits the most from the relationship as it is now, as she will probably be more enlightened and experienced for her next relationship.
Conclusion: Life would most probably be better for Ethan if he merely stayed friends with Joyce and saw a therapist to help him confront and accept his homosexuality. Joyce may not be as well-off, but it would surely be a greater step towards emotional maturity if she let him go and found a straight guy with Ethan’s kindness and understanding.
Was that meant to reply to the salesman comment?
Really the only point of that was that Joyce isn’t being victimized here. She’s been informed well enough that it doesn’t fall on the salesman if she regrets the transaction.
No, I’m sure I replied to that one just now. But you really haven’t addressed my arguments in the above comment at all.
Furthermore, I would argue that no one is really being victimized here; like you said, Ethan and Joyce had an agreement and are acting upon it. However, the decisions they have made could not possibly be considered well-thought out or “good” decisions to the outside observer based on all the variables that the comic has given us. Following them out into their logical possibilities, as I have done so in the above post, is proof of that. There are several other variables that I haven’t even touched upon in my post, such as the religious differences between Ethan and Joyce, and both of their parents’ points of view, all of which help to inform and influence the decisions that these individuals make.
I’m really not sure how your points relate to anything I said though. The decisions aren’t well thought out or good. This arrangement isn’t going to work and they’re both gonna regret this by the time it’s over.
It’s not that I disagree with you. I’m just not sure where all this is coming from. I posted a comment about how Amber still has a lot of good things in her life that she wants to preserve and Ethan hasn’t crossed her. You responded to that with a summary of why Ethan’s relationship with Joyce may seem like a good idea but isn’t.
Then I probably just overelaborated on the last sentence of that first paragraph, which I tend to do by accident. My mistake At the least, that whole first paragraph is relevant, lmao.
Ah, as far as that goes I’d say that choosing a solution other than the one that your helper wanted is also not a slap in the face. Help is genuinely given with the understanding that the problem still belongs to the helpee, and they are free to choose to solve it as they wish without that reflecting poorly on those who have helped.
For example, somebody might seek to help a loved one with financial troubles while they pursue their dreams. One should still not get offended if they decide to put their dreams on hold in order to acquire financial stability. Even if one thinks this is a really bad decision, one should remember that both the issue of dream fulfillment and the issue of financial stability belong to the loved one, and they are just trying to do what’s right for them as best they can. They do not owe one financial instability simply because one assisted with that.
I appreciate that it can be difficult to watch somebody you helped not get where you wanted them to be, but it’s not a slap in the face. It’s just a shitty thing that’s happening, centered entirely around them and their problems.
I guess it’s just a matter of bias on my part then. I’ve always been taught that loving and accepting yourself is most important if you plan on loving others, so for Ethan to create this fake relationship given the issue of his sexuality and his poor sense of self runs completely contrary to that, lol.
I think there are enough Amber ragefaces now to start collecting them as a hobby.
He’s not in control, as he said he wanted to be back out in front of the pizza place. He’s in denial.
I think that the religious angle has been ignored here. Ethan isn’t a Christian, he’s Jewish, and he’s only going to church to please Joyce and have fun. He’s not going through a serious crisis of faith and considering conversion. His actions there are all part of his denial and he has not really dealt with anything.
The reason we’re ignoring the religious angle is because he has no reason to be considering conversion. Failing to do so isn’t denial; it’s normality. People don’t just up and change religions for no reason, and doing so isn’t dealing with things, it’s demonstrating a mercurial and unstable grasp of theology.
You could argue that he shouldn’t be going to a Christian service at all if he’s not planning to convert, but since every other aspect of his relationship with Joyce is a lie, why shouldn’t he complete the set?
This really isn’t how the whole “Let’s take a break and recoup” thing should work.
You can’t withdraw from all the friend stuff, but still make a point of showing up again whenever you’re pissed off about what they’re doing.
None of this would even be a surprise to her if she was still hanging out with Ethan. She would’ve been like “How’d the night go. Did Joyce take it alright?” and he would’ve been like “Yeah, she says she can help fix me.” and she would’ve been like “Uhh… and you think that’s a good idea?” and they would’ve talked it out like friends do.
And, you know that’s understandable if she’s not up for that right now, but if she’s not then she really needs to just let him work through his shit on his own. For both of them, really, since I have to imagine that just showing up to deal with his problems without enjoying the accompanying recreational social interaction is only accelerating her exhaustion rather than providing rest.
See this is all true, but you’re looking at this through the lenses of a rational human being for whom her relationship with Ethan isn’t an open wound she refuses to address, and who isn’t a psychological shipwreck.
That’s not Amber, right now.
I’m wondering how long before the adult layer of this verse decides Amber/Amazi-Girl is a big problem, maybe a bigger problem than IU needs right now. I mean I got hauled in front of the conduct board for a lot less than this.
Completely on Ethan’s side, here. His relationship is unhealthy in the long term, but like he say, it’s his decision.
I agree, I wrote a few big comments about it last night but the site refused to post them.
What ever happened to “Friends don’t let friends make bad decisions that could negatively affect them for the rest of their lives?” 😛 Would you say the same thing about Billie forcing Ruth to give up drinking? That “her bad drinking problem is unhealthy in the long term, but like she says, it’s her decision”? I definitely wouldn’t.
If it had been a calm ‘you will regret this, you should stop this, you are letting your mother and social pressures of the world put you into a position where you will be more miserable, please remember that there are people who will love and care for you regardless of your sexual orientation’ then sure, that would work out.
But Amber is just showing some of her ugly inner rage and flipping a table. It’s not the goal that people are taking issue with, it’s the method.
Pretty sure it was the goal that was being disagreed upon, in this case. Others may be taking issue with her method, and rightfully so I think, but there are also people here who disagree with her goal outright, which is where I disagree with them.
But I do agree that the emotionally-charged outburst was primarily unwarranted, but it’s understandable given the shit she’s been put through thus far. Not excusable, mind you, but understandable.
Fair enough. And in the end it SHOULD be his decision . . . not telling him that it would lead to suffering and awful would make amber a bad friend. Flipping a table at him might ALSO make her a bad friend. It’s like, different flavors of bad.
Friends don’t abandon you to play masked vigilante to work off their rage issues.
Unless I’m mistaken, we don’t know what Ethan’s part was in helping Amber deal with her issues in this continuity, so I think this point is rather moot.
That was a shot at Amber, not Ethan.
I seem to have missed the strip where Ethan and Joyce were planning to drop out of college and get married.
This is no more going to negatively effect the rest of Ethan’s life (or Joyce’s) than any of the myriad other ill-thought out relationships either of them could be having (and is likely to have in future years) would.
Is the relationship a good idea? No, it’s not. But, since Ethan and Joyce are both going into it with open eyes – albeit with blinders – it is totally their mistake to make. Amber’s said her peace, and pointed out when he was doing something horrible…now it’s her turn to butt out.
you are my favorite
Agreed 100%
I agree. I don’t agree with what he’s doing, but it’s his decision. I agree with Amber’s frustration, but I don’t agree with her trying to control him or doing other than saying “I disagree with your position, and am not comfortable being around you while you are going forward with this line of action.” Thing is, she’s already asked for a break from him, so she shouldn’t even do that, just keep avoiding him.
I understand her anger. I honestly can’t blame her for it. But she needs to deal with it and realize that it’s her problem, not his.
I didn’t know that Amber was a Jersey girl… :p
People are discussing this as if there were a bunch of rational adults involved. This is Ethan, whose life is a confused mess. This is Amber who recently punched her dad, fled her dorm, was rejected by the only person who provided any human contact and whose roommate is Dina. Amber is violent. It is what she knows. She is terribly alone. At this point , Ethan is just the last straw. All this has happened to her in the last few days, though we have had months to comment on it. The strip is Dumbing of Age, so it doesn’t feature adults making wise decisions.
Is this going to be good for Ethan or Amber? Of course not. It is like me at 18? Sure is.
No Amber, don’t give into the anger! That’s just the amazi-girl symbiote talking!
I was watching the adventure time episodes “Return to the Nightosphere” and “Daddy’s Little Monster” right before I came in to check in on the wacky world of Willis. Two things: 1) Not so wacky right now, is it? and (2) Amber’s seething rage, color inverted text and red demonic background make me think that she could do a terrific job in the nightosphere.
$00.02
RUN ETHAN! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIFE!!
Ooh, Amber snaps again. Funky beans.
What has Willis done to me? I saw Funky beans, thought Funky Winkerbean, and then read it as Funky Cancercancer.
Cancer cancer incest cancer?
Okay, now Amber’s crossed a line for me. The correct response, Amber, is “If you are going to continue to repress your feelings until you snap and break this girl’s heart, we aren’t friends anymore.” Flipping tables is not okay.
Your avatar’s human form did it. 😉
I brought this up in an old one by mistake instead of the new comic people will see.
Ok. So Amber has a hamburger, or some other kind of burger veggie, chicken ect. Dina and Riley have cereal. Jacob had an apple with his meal or maybe an apple for his meal. What was the yellow mush Ethan has. Pudding? Extra buttery mashed potatos? It’s very important.
It was a sponge.
There’s not a lot of detail – for all we know it’s macaroni and cheese.
I hope it’s the mac and cheese and not the sponge. Unless it’s a giant plate of pudding because that is also okay.
No so sure I like Amber anymore…I get where she’s coming from, and someone NEEDS to have this talk with Ethan…but the violence and screaming is overkill and will probably just make Ethan want to continue doing what he’s doing, as well as destroy the friendship.
The truth is people are not always rational or calculating actors in their lives.
Does anyone have an idea of how much time has passed here since the beginning of school?
My point it . . . I went to a tiny (~3,400 students), one-stoplight-town, private college in the northern midwest run by a conservative restorationist Christian church with that denomination’s only seminary on campus. Even then, there were openly gay dudes on campus. Not many, but there was the gay white guy, the gay black guy, the gay Asian guy, the lesbian English professor, the lesbian volleyball coach, and a bunch more of us who weren’t so obvious . . .
Indiana University-Bloomington is about 12.5 times larger. How has Ethan not yet met/seen/heard of other attractive young gay guys on campus? Aren’t there any LBGTQQIA alphabet soup organizations?
[In other news, Amber-rage is the best kind of rage! Although other commenters disagree with me, every time Amber rages, I fall in love with her a little more.]
P.S. I’m not implying that what Amber is doing would be good for her or Ethan if they were real, living people. It’s kinda like completely not-scripted-at-all drama on “reality” TV
The description you gave of ” the gay white guy, the gay black guy, the gay Asian guy, the lesbian English professor, the lesbian volleyball coach” sounds like they were meeting a secret quota given to them by church elders that went something like “IF WE GET ONE OF EACH KIND, THEY WON’T NOTICE OUR TRUE GOALS” and on a giant war room screen behind is “OPERATION GEE-HAD (but not the Muslim kind)”
It did kinda feel like that. I didn’t come out until my second year, and the other out gay black guy and out gay white guy came in the following years. (That doesn’t count the closeted gays or those who thought they were closeted but weren’t fooling anyone.)
It’s been exactly three weeks since move-in day.
Yeah, that’s roughly what I’ve been thinking. I didn’t want to put too much emphasis on what Joyce said about how long she’s been in a relationship, but nearly to double or triple the amount of time? Yikes! (And I couldn’t remember how much of a built-in time lapse, if any, there between Walky discovering pajama-jeans and Walky receiving them from Mike).
That’s about when my university always has its Clubs Night, where you can go find out about organizations on campus, if you missed out during Frosh Week.
I’ve kind of been wondering about that, because it seems a little odd that with all the variety of characters we’ve got, the only extracurriculars any of them are involved in are Dorothy and Billie with the paper. (And Dorothy’s ditching that to study, while Billie’s… Billie.) Not just no LGBT organizations for Ethan, but no D&MM fan club for Walky or Campus Crusade for Christ for Joyce or Amazi-Girl fan club for Danny or intramural hockey for Ruth (though I guess it wouldn’t be time for that yet anyway) or anything she can cram into her schedule that might look good on a transcript for Dorothy (seriously, I’m not on the Yale admissions board, but I’m thinking the right extracurriculars would help her more than more studying)…
Judging by IU’s 2013 schedule, though, their club fair has probably already gone by without notice.
No Amber is completely right. Ethan Dumped Her because he was gay. Amber stood by him as a friend and supported him Through. He started dating another Girl. As a friend she told him it wasn’t ok and that he needed to be honest with his new girlfriend. Now he says that he’s going to try to be straight with this new girl instead of her. Instead Of Her. This is not telling you that you are making a huge mistake rage this is Rejection and betrayal rage. Ethan was instrumental in Screwing up her life and in return she was gracious and accepting all through high-school up until college and she realized she needed to spend some time on herself because she was kinda going crazy. Then Ethan stuck a fork in the Crazy and hit a nerve.Amber may not be behaving as someone should but she has every right to act like this. Ethan Deserves Everything he gets.
Why are random words capitalized? Makes no fucking sense.
back away slowly
This isn’t really about Ethan being in the closet, or out of the closet, or because Amber thinks Ethan is going to hurt Joyce, or Joyce is going to hurt Ethan. Amber may be irritated at Ethan about those things, and those may be the parts of it that she’s willing to talk about, but that’s not why she’s so pissed that she’s flipping tables.
The reason she’s that pissed is that Ethan broke off a long-term relationship with her, one that she expected to end with “’til death do we part”, just before they consummated it, by telling her that he was gay and so couldn’t have a relationship with a woman. And then, after she spent the entire summer dealing with the fallout from Ethan coming out – and we got a hint with Amber’s confrontation with Naomi (which was just yesterday for Amber) what that must have been like – and still trying to protect and defend and be friends with her fiancé in all but name who just dumped her ass, they’ve gone away to college, and Mr. “I can’t date you because you’re a woman and I’m gay” is dating a woman who isn’t Amber. And given that kiss and glare, rubbing her face in it.
This campus must have a GSA. The tiny fundamentalist college in my home town even has a GSA. This huge state school where students are allowed to be out must have one. Someone drag Ethan (and Joyce) there and let Amber get a break from being his only cheerleader.
It wouldn’t hurt Amber to go and learn a little more about the coming out process and how you really can’t rush somebody with it no matter how incredibly frustrating they’re being, but I think she could stand to spend some time not thinking about Ethan or his issues at all.
It wouldn’t hurt Amber to walk past the GSA. wave to Ethan, and keep going until she reached the mental health service IMHO.
It’s a Big 10 campus. There has to be a bunch of gay lesbian friendly hangouts on the main drag, a number of students who are already out, and other such things.
However, Joyce will not go in. She sees gay-ness as something to be saved from. Accepting it would be accepting the Devil. It’s okay to save somebody from the Devil and hide from your own sex fears, but not to take it as normal.
It would attack her beliefs to directly, causing most to hold on to their beliefs more strongly.
Well, Ethan has said he doesn’t want people to think of him as ‘the gay guy’, even in a place where people would be more positive about it, so that could be a handwave there, at least for the moment (he’ll probably check such an organization out when he’s more comfortable about his sexuality, though he’d probably rather join a Transformers club or something).
At first I looked forward to Ethan’s ass-kicking, but now I am not so sure … Damn you Willis for messing with my emotions
FUCK YO TABLE, ETHAN!
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, TOMATOE SOUP?! FUCK YO TOMATOE SOUP, ETHAN!
Yeah, “down”… Like, when a ship is down.
Sarah seems to be thinking, “Why are you touching my navel? This is making me a little uncomfortable.”
Joyce doesn’t have a thing to give Sarah’s tummy, so she has to use her hand.
Sure everybody is worried about Ethan and Amber, but no one cares about the poor sap that has to clean that mess up. No one cares about the middle guy.
fourth eh
Ethan gives Amber a hug just in time for his g/f to walk back in on him. wacky threesome sex insures.
This is why you are stuck with shitty plastic plates. Corelle stuff is fairly sturdy, but it is no match for amber’s rage.
Flipping a table is a little over the top, and guaranteed to attract attention to the table-flipper. So why is everybody else in the dining room not staring at Amber and Ethan?
This got extremely dangerous, extremely fast. You better run.
Aww cute, this little girl is growing up to be just like daddy.
Now, how can we pin this on Danny?
He could have noticed that Amber=AG, not dumped her, and therefore she would be mentally in a better place. That could at least result in fewer flipped tables.
Or she could have told him. Call me crazy.
Wait, are you implying that Amber is responsible for her own actions and might actually bear partial responsibility for their outcomes? That’s crazy talk. We all know that Danny’s responsible for every bad thing that ever happens in Dumbiverseville.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. It’s obvious that Amber’s starting the decent of the fallen hero. She is going the way of Sayaka.
Chabudai gaeshi!
Flipping a table is not the correct answer.
But I know from (repeated!) personal experience that investing that much emotional energy in someone, only to have them shit all over it and RUB IT IN YOUR GODDAMN FACE is infuriating to the point of bloodlust. Even if the person isn’t being a shit, watching a friend make a decision that can only end in tears and/or not fixing a glaring problem is horrible in how helpless it makes you feel to save this person you care about from themselves. And given her super alter-ego, that has to be especially horrible for Amber!
It’s ultimately Ethan’s choice to ruin his life. But he’s just being goddamn petty right now. And being petty to a person who has the the history she has, who fought for you in the way Amber has, in a way you know would hurt them a lot (also known as gaslighting), is stupid beyond belief.
I’m not trying to say Amber is totally in the right here. Flipping tables is not how you deal with anything that isn’t an actively burning table, and ultimately she CAN’T control what Ethan does. But Ethan is being amazingly gross and self-centered right now.
holy crapp amber !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t worry citizens. Under normal circumstances Amber’s table flipping rampage would probably seriously injure someone (Ethan) but before that happens I’m sure the day will be saved once again with the arrival of the mysterious and heroic Amazi-gi…oh….uhhhh…. RUN ETHAN RUN!!!!!!!
Flipping tables never gets old.
Gravatar’d!
Amber, not cool man o.O
*shiver*
I wrote this starting off making the joke “I didn’t know Jesus was a transformer”, because of the table flipping. But then I envisioned a transformer Joyce would love. A van thing, like for a parade, with a giant crucifix coming off the top that transforms into Jesus. That thought distracted me largely from the original joke because…well mostly I just wish I could draw it and send it to Willis…