o/` Could it be that you need me
To keep you out, to run you faster
Promise me you’ll let me be
The one, the worst of all your enemies
Pretending you’re a friend to me
Say that we’ll be nemeses o/`
Joyce is there to explain Sal’s role in this. By the time the cops get around to talking to her, they’ll know she’s not a threat, and things will also have cooled down enough that they won’t be in “OMG SHE HAS DARK SKIN TAKE HER DOWN” mode.
The real tragedy about the problem with racism in police departments is that it makes african americans defensive and paranoid around law enforcement, which makes cops more suspicious of them, which makes them treat them unfairly, which makes them more paranoid and defensive, and it just keeps going like that until a riot happens somewhere.
I’m not black, but I am trans and there’s a very toxic combination of things that happen to your sense of safety and how you feel when in presence of people who are ostensibly there to serve and protect when that has frequently come with harassment. And it’s not all paranoia based. I’ve had traffic pullovers escalate when the officer noticed I was trans.
Sal, being black, and living in a world like ours where there is an inordinate amount of unarmed black kids gunned down by cops without much in the way of official rebuke is going to affect how she views them without the lifetime of being harassed for the way she is and how she looks. It’s sadly a critical piece of safety for young black people to be nowhere near a police crisis situation.
Yeah, it’s not paranoia when they’re actually out to get you. I wasn’t trying to use the word “paranoid” to dismiss those feelings, I was just trying to convey that there’s a feedback loop at play there which just makes a bad situation worse.
The way you behave when you interact with a police officer influences their perception of you, and if you’re (possibly justified in) worrying about how they’re going to respond to you, they’re more likely to think something’s up. On the other hand, cops actually do have built in personal biases that might lend to them legitimately treating you badly. It’s a messy, awful situation to be in, whether you’re black, trans, or any other group that stands a non-zero chance of being on the bad side of whoever pulled you over for a broken taillight.
It -also- doesn’t help that law enforcement is a popular choice of career for dickheads with authority complexes, because it means that peppered in among the people who actually want to protect and serve are a bunch of assholes on power trips.
All of it, but that last paragraph doesn’t get nearly as much attention. If there is a gun and any level of authority involved, you can bet a percentage of the people in that position are asshats. They may not all be narcissistic, but something in their history or psyche draws them to those fields. (See also firefighters with arsonist tendencies.)
It’s not just that the position attracts assholes, it’s also about the best way to turn someone racist I can think of. You’ve got cops from mostly-white neighborhoods commuting to mostly-black areas for their job. So you’ve got white dudes who have white neighbors, white family members, white co-workers, and white friends whose only interaction with black people is when they’re arresting a black person for a crime. It’s absolutely no surprise that these dudes think every black person they meet is a criminal, what has ever happened in their lives to challenge that assumption?
Very true on every point. And equally true for elebenty and Viktoria’s extensions. Mix unchallenged assumptions with confirmation bias, people who have good reason to be nervous around you, and unchecked authoritarian streaks and that’ll lead to badness even before the bad actors start fucking it up even worse.
This. Sal isn’t worried that long-term this mess will get pinned on her. She’s worried that if she’s there while police are responding to “a shooter kidnapped a kid” that that’s asking for a free bullet shower or at the very least, some very rough physical harassment on the part of the cops.
I have a question that might be really dumb. Are avatars somehow randomly assigned to people that haven’t selected one? I don’t think I ever had that option. I’ve always wondered how that worked.
If you did not setup an avatar at the Gravatar-site, it will be “randomly” assigned based on your email-address. It will stay the same until either you use a different email-address or Willis uploads new avatars.
Sal got stabbed through the hand and she got an even bigger chip on her shoulder and an absolute unwillingness to admit she’s done anything wrong even after two counts of armed robbery.
Amber got threatened by Sal and became so severely traumatized that she developed a split personality and is violently triggered just by SEEING Sal.
The onus is on Sal to apologize. She’s done far more than Amber has and she still has the gall to play the victim. It’s disgusting.
Which is why I’m desperately hoping that Amber is about to tell Sal everything and then Sal will shamefully admit she’s gone too far. It’ll be incredibly cathartic at this point.
Yes she is. She panniced when she first saw Sal, went to Ethan to tell him “she’s here”, and then confronted them in a WalMart parking lot when they were drinking beer.
To be fair, Sal 1) probably never realized she’d traumatized young Amber, and 2) hasn’t realized that current Amber is young Amber. ( And 3) hasn’t realized Amazi-girl is either Amber. ) So regardless of onus it would be silly of us to expect her to make an apology she has no idea at all should be made.
All of that. She might not even fully register the importance of the event to Amber even if she was to be told, because while to her it was the formative moment at the beginning of her disassociation, it was just a bad mistake-laden day she’s spent her childhood recovering from for Sal.
And the other thing is that Sal is the one the trauma is fixated on. The one who Amazi-girl has settled on being her nemesis and the sole symbol of her transformation as a person. But, she is not the mother of Amazi-girl. Blaine is. Blaine was the one beating her while she was down, blaming her personally for the incident and giving her the complex that it was up to her to fight through her anxiety and protect her friends “no matter what”. It was Blaine that gave her the crippling fear of doing the wrong thing with his constant emotional abuse. And Blaine denied her proper trauma-related mental health care afterwards, instead feeding that “you need to toughen up so you can stop things like that” mindset with things like martial arts and continued emotional abuse.
Sal was just the inciting incident. It’s genuinely unfair of Amber to be pinning a whole slew of “you made me” baggage on her, because she really didn’t and Sal has gone out of her way time after time to try and de-escalate things with Amazi-girl and give her good advice as one woman dealing with her anger to another.
But, Amazi-girl is not quite ready to fully give up the mythology of her creation and place full blame where it belongs because that ties too deeply into her fears about being “her father’s daughter” and has the extra disabilities of her DID and her panic disorder.
+1!!!! I think it’s also important to note that Sal went through the criminal justice system. She paid her debt, however harsh or light it might have been. Amber doesn’t have to forgive her or feel warm & fuzzy towards her, but Sal fucked up, paid for it, and has changed her ways.
Sal does not associate Amber with the robbery. She doesn’t remember their faces, even after meeting Ethan. She didn’t *see* Amber stab her hand, as she approached from behind. She just thinks Amber is weird, and Amazi-Girl is nuts. Sal doesn’t associate the with each other, or with her past.
It’d be disgusting if Sal knew that Amber was the girl in the convenience store and refused to apologize, but she doesn’t know yet. And her comment about being a black kid with a record and not wanting to meet up with police is valid, considering things that have been happening in the last couple years.
In Indiana, the records are expunged after you petition the court (which takes a while and can cost money). It isn’t automatic and can be opposed by an agency. Considering Sal’s problems with authority, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t done this yet.
And honestly, after being in contact with the juvenile justice system, kids and young adults have a valid fear of being profiled. Youth of color don’t even need to have that contact to have the fear – they are profiled, they do have non criminal behavior treated as criminal, they are policed more.
The “things that have been happening the last couple years” have been blown way out of proportion. Over half (not talking about the man that was shot in the back, that was horrific and I hope the cop burns) these incidents are over-exaggerated and under-reported. Michael Brown was not an innocent victim. Nor was Trayvon Martin (even though his attacker is a dick).
These “things” have been happening for the last couple of *centuries*—so you’re right about them being “under-reported,” in that sense. As for whether the victims are “innocent” or not, that’s beside the point. The issue isn’t whether black angels are being shot; it’s that black people get murdered for behaving in ways that would *not* get other people killed, because black lives are seen as less valuable (and less “innocent”), by definition.
In both of the cases that have been brought up here, a white person absolutely would have been shot in self defense… assuming that the facts which are alleged are true, of course. Not being trained in forensics, I suppose it’s possible someone is lying to me about that.
In both the case of Trayvon Martin and of Michael Brown, it is alleged that they escalated a simple case of, “Whoa there, stop where you are, I need you to answer some questions” into a desperate fight for the lives of both parties. Both seem to have managed to close to melee range and attack before being fired upon, which displays hesitation on the part of the other to fire and to kill.
Instructing young black men that the police and the justice system are their enemy, and therefore that they should do whatever possible to stay out of police custody, is setting them up for failure and pain. No matter what color your skin is, you should be courteous and cooperative when being arrested. You do not, nor should you, have an option at that point; if you attempt to use force, you will get hurt.
Trayvon Martin was hunted by some asshole with a gun who was repeatedly told to stop chasing after him. And you ever fucking notice that whenever a young black man is shot we always try to build a narrative on why it was okay to do so?
And more importantly, cops are there to protect us. I could literally call them every name in the book and it should still be expected they protect me because that is their goddamn job. We shouldn’t expect members of the population to be extra careful around those jackbooted thugs under fear of getting shot for not being contrite enough.
And not to drag us too far down the rabbit hole, but you both might want to spend a goodly portion of time examining why you happen to believe that every gunned down unarmed black teenager did something to deserve it (and why you believe a white person would have been treated the same) when we’ve seen how cops will go out of their way with white criminals to talk them down even when they are pointing loaded firearms at cops.
I won’t argue in defense of Brown, but I will for Martin. I ask you to consider the following scenario:
You are walking to your grandmother’s house when you notice someone following you in his car. He is clearly trailing you and has a look that gives the impression that he has ill intentions for you. You have very good reason to believe that you are about to get assaulted. What do you do? Do you confront him or run?
Let’s say you run rather than confront the guy stalking you. The guy starts chasing you, which probably confirms your impression that he wishes to harm you. You run hard for several minutes and think that you got away, so you stop for a minute to catch your breath and try to reorient yourself (you are in a strange neighborhood, after all). As you are recovering you notice that your stalker has caught up to you. What do you do? Do you run again in a neighborhood that you do not know? Bear in mind that he has a car, so outrunning him is unlikely and he has just proven that. With that in mind, what do you do?
Well, in that case 99.99% of all people will go on the attack in their own defense. It’s not like you would be randomly attacking someone; you would be attacking the guy that stalked and chased you, all without ever identifying himself as someone who was part of the neighborhood watch. You would be defending yourself, as did Martin. He just defended himself against someone who chased him with a gun.
Martin was an innocent victim – If Martin and Zimmerman both been white, Martin would *STILL* have a nigh-undefeatable self-defense charge, because Martin was being stalked by an unknown assailant who was threatening them (I specify both because ‘white person gets off for attacking brown man’ doesn’t mean much). And keep in mind, Zimmerman ONLY had a case with SYG! Martin’s case is strong under NORMAL self defense laws – he didn’t need SYG’s expansion of the definition! So no, Martin is literally an innocent victim.
Brown was a petty, unarmed thief. It literally does not matter whether he’s ‘innocent’. He was not a threat, and shouldn’t have been shot to death – period. But you know, white people are always looking for every excuse to strip protections from us that they expect daily.
I don’t believe Sal has ever been unwilling to admit she’s done wrong. At most, she got angry at Walky for repeatedly bringing the robbery up against her (reasonable since she’s done her time, so to speak). I’m also not sure Sal has ever played the victim in regards to her injury from Amber. She’s even done Amber a favor here (besides saving her life), in spite of the fact that Amber tried to attack her in a parking lot the last time they met.
Amber, on the other hand stabbed Sal after she was already in custody. Aggravated assault; not cool. And then she repeated this behavior by targeting Sal for beat downs.
I’d say apologies from both are in order, but Amber would have to start if only because she’s the only one “in the know” regarding their shared past. Admittedly, it would also be fine if Amber could just play it cool and they never interact again beyond bare minimum. As we learned, however, Amber continues to escalate…
Has Sal even mentioned the injury on panel yet? It seems the whole point of the motorcycle gloves worn at all times is so she can not ever have to explain that whole incident to anyone.
And yeah on the aggrieved assault. It’s also worth noting how callous that “record, how annoying” comment really is. Sal committed a petty theft and was duly arrested and went through a good chunk of the system for it. Amber committed grievous assault causing enough damage to result in permanent scarring in front of police officers and based on the flashbacks seems to have been de-escalated by the police and then she was immediately turned back over to her (admittedly abusive) guardian, with little in the way of official punishment.
So, intentional or not, Amazi-girl is claiming a sense of smug superiority over a situation where Sal got a stricter punishment and Amber got off for a worse crime largely due to Amber’s race and possibly overly shy demeanor. And this is not to mention that she committed this same crime of aggravated assault earlier this month, again, with no arrest (this time due to not being at the scene of the crime when cops arrived).
And ignoring that Amazi-girl is probably stumbling into a thicket of systemic messages Sal has been probably hearing half of her life about the general value of “criminals”, and especially black kids with records, not to mention the general racist harassment she has likely sustained by cops and other authority figures over the years for being black and a bit of a counterculture rebel.
So if we’re talking about serving as each other’s triggers, these two really are. For Amazi-girl, Sal is the ultimate red flashback panel that causes her brain to shut down and go into stupid jerk mode. For Sal, Amazi-girl is the embodiment of the judgmental white authority that has flooded her with microaggressions her whole life.
It is somewhat telling about their relative progresses with their triggers that Sal still tries to reason and de-escalate and offer good advice and Amber actively refuses any outreach so as to continue justifying the personal conflict. (And it makes sense, Sal had to confront those and sort them early on to not end up in jail, while Amber is only just starting to sort through her mental baggage and is only first starting to make the mistakes of her recovery).
Has Sal actually talked to anybody onscreen about the robbery? And she has no idea that Amber=Amazi Girl, or Amber was the one in the convenience store that day. All she knows is that someone in a costume seems to have a grudge against her for underage drinking.
Billie and the twins are from the same hometown. (At least they went to school together…) She probably has a better picture of Sal’s past than any of the other main characters.
Kinda sounds like Sal’s the racist. Not Walky. Cause look at the way they’re drawn. Neither is whiter or blacker. Though it bothers me that such a thing should matter in today’s world.
So by suggesting that their parents treated them differently based on certain traits associated with race (notice the difference between Walky’s hair and Sal’s hair before she murders the curls out of it), Sal’s the real racist? Uh…
It’s about behavior. Black people in society are treated better by general society the more “unthreatening they are” and this is usually defined by a host of characteristics that are seen as “whiter behavior”, specifically, straightened hair, non-southern or non-slang vernacular, academic success, not calling people out on racism, and so on.
It’s why studies have shown that black individuals who are seen as having “black names” or having what is seen as having “black modes of dress” are often treated as less professional, less capable, and more dangerous than those who are not. It’s why things like “hoodies” became national dog-whistles for White America.
Yup. Also, funny enough, true of anyone who points out any axis of oppression or source of inequality. Noticing things and pointing it out makes you doubleplus hitler ungood. And this is obviously true for reasons other than the fact that honestly deconstructing complex systems of bigotry and inequality in this country makes those with privilege uncomfortable owing to the way they equate noticing things like that and not being a part of the problem as critical to being a “good person” and so are more likely to get defensive and dismiss observations out of hand rather than accept that we’re all swimming in a toxic mess of culture and systemic oppression and that recognizing and processing that is a crucial step for our entire culture to grow and move past it, solving the inequities of what has gone before and that this enriches both minority group and privileged group both.
(For this last point, note how the world hasn’t collapsed when women were no longer kept out of most jobs outside the home and how that has helped both men and women create healthier relationships and more stable households).
Me, I don’t really have a life. (Nor a hyper-rational unforgiving code, for that matter.)
As for the people you’re describing, I don’t disagree with the point you’re trying to make. Everyone could use a little more understanding and forgiveness.
But I think it’s good that everyone discusses their opinions here. Exchanging ideas is the best way to reach a better understanding of other perspectives, which in turn I think makes people more forgiving.
In other words, I don’t mind people who make these comments. They’re posting them here, where others will disagree and counter-argue, which is an opportunity to learn for everyone.
Still not sure if I’m clear. TL;DR live and let live I guess? XD
This is a great strip. But can we all just stop taking it so seriously? As if it’s a real drama or something. It’s David Willis working his tooning and having fun. We’ve already defied the laws of physics, completely changed characters he established because we’re in a “new universe” and watched Head Alien. Come on folks. It’s not the next greatest drama. It’s a comic strip. Relax.
Just out of curiosity, how do you define a real drama? Is it automatically not a drama because it’s on a comic strip? Because that’s what your last sentence implies.
And you can have physics defying action, but still have real character drama. I mean a good deal of science fiction and fantasy manages to do that.
I think it’s a little unreasonable to blame Sal for the extremeness of Amber’s reaction. Being freaked out, sure, but if there hadn’t been a Blaine to respond to her trauma by making fun of her, not to mention the whole lifetime of abuse thing backing it, having some dumb kid threaten you with a knife probably wouldn’t result in shoving your anger issues into a split personality. I mean, objectively, that WAS when she snapped. Hell, if it weren’t for Blaine, maybe she would’ve gone into therapy by now.
Sal is clearly not the same person she was when she was thirteen-ish. She’s now an adult. I don’t think “admitting she’s done something wrong” is really… relevant? Apologize to Amber if and when it ever actually comes up, sure, but I doubt that would make any real difference to Amber at this point anyway…
I don’t know what exactly you typed in, but it’s worth mentioning that for security reasons, many websites do not allow you to simply add HTML to your comments or forum posts, but have their own way of including a link in your post.
Amber doesn’t have a split personality. She has a second -persona-, but it’s a role she plays, that she is aware of and consciously regards as a compartmentalized part of herself.
Respectfully – that is 10 pounds of horsecrap in a 5-pound container. You are absolutely right that they need to talk, and both of them have things to understand and actions to apologize for.
Bottom line? Sal needs to understand the ramifications of her actions. And Amber needs psychological help. Desperately. But that isn’t ALL on Sal.
It always freaks me out when people claim that causing more pain somehow ‘balances out’ previous pain. They really don’t understand how societal balance works. Pain always goes on the same side of the scale. More pain makes the system more unbalanced, not less. Easing pain restores the balance. While this can mean death, it doesn’t have to.
I don’t think Amber has even pieced together that Sal saved her life. Her rescure was quite hectic, came from behind, and she passed out immediately after.
Also there’s the fact Amber stabbed her hand back then, so they’re technically more than’even’ at this point after saving her life. Amber got her ‘revenge’ that day and really doesn’t even have the desire for revenge as a justification for any of her actions. She’s internally taking in bs from her dad and lashing out at Sal as if she’s an acceptable target (when she’s not). She already ‘got hers’ on the very same day it happened and her continuing like a bloodhound after Sal in earlier comics was more then a little uncomfortable for various reasons.
Like I kind of get it because Amber is messed up in so many ways- and is incapable of thinking objectively on this issue- like most people probably would in similar wacked out circumstances- but like it’s not even remotely right despite that. /shrug/ Someone can be understandable/someone you feel sorry for but still be wrong after all.
Honestly I think Sal quite possibly /would/ apologies to Amber first if she knew- even if she doesn’t technically ‘deserve it’ (for lack of a better term) given all that happened afterwards. It seems like it would be something that Sal could do at least with Marcie support or something. Or perhaps even without it. Sal’s pretty interesting all in all. She could go down either path. Either call Amber out, apologies or heck even both- I’d like both tbh. That would probably be the most satisfying.
Though only Ethan is the one Sal perhaps ‘has’ to apologies for in the cast because he was the guy she threatened- but that’s just me. /shrug/
It is growing up. It’s just… impacted. She’s got DID and panic disorders and making mistakes on how to treat that and manage it. And honestly, given her lack of mental health care, those mistakes are easy ones to make, given social narratives about DID and what you’re supposed to do with negative emotions when you are a girl or a survivor of domestic violence.
And at least on DID, it’s mistakes I’ve made back when I was a wee lass. I just had the benefit of making those mistakes back in middle school when the stakes were not so high.
She doesn’t compromise with anyone and anything, least of all her own fears. After all, if there is one thing Amazi-Girl exists to do, it is to act as a shield between this world and Amber’s perpetual terror and rage.
And Amber has built a mythology of bad behavior around Amazi-girl. Amazi-girl must be inflexible so as “not to be corrupted” or let her anger spill out to Amber’s daily life. And so, she must not change her mind and must be extremely narrow minded about legality except for when she doesn’t care about the legality of her own actions (see her tearing down Danny or her internal speech to herself about how Amber is allowed inconsistency but Amazi-girl isn’t).
These are actively making the Amazi-girl alter more narrowly focused (and less effective), creating more strain between the alters as they disassociate, and leads her to give in to more judgmental black or white behavior while in the Amazi-girl alter.
And it’s a pathway she’s eventually going to have to recognize and resolve, but that’s going to require not thinking that Amazi-girl is a receptacle for poison that must not touch Amber.
Cause treating an alter as a toxic waste dump never ends well (learned that one the hard way).
I was, too, but I was was thinking of that one that goes “let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” (There’s a line that ends “…and live each moment in peace eternally.”)
“Let there be peace on Earth/And let it begin with me/Let there be peace on Earth/The peace that was meant to be/To take each moment/And live each moment/In peace e-ter-nal-ly”
Now read the entire strip that way:
“Where is this you’ve taken me?”
“Is Becky O.K., answer me”
“Whoa relax, Becky is fine.”
“Are you always this high-strung?”
“I only moved us off the road.”
“Place is crawling with police.”
“I am way too smart to be…”
“…the black kid with a record…”
“…caught up in some sorta…”
“…school shooting and car chase deal.”
“And you, well you wear a mask.”
“Thought I’d do you a solid.”
“Sounds annoying to live with.”
“Good good good good good good good.”
“Glad to know we won’t pals.”
“I was genuinely worried.”
I’ve noticed with many beings (Cybertronian or Human), once they get in a mood, it can be hard to pull them out of it. They even fight against obvious points. You point out you just stopped them from getting fired for almost setting up a dangerous situation, they blast you for interfering…
Amazigirl was at least partially created to allow Amber to confront & deal with the girl who held up the petrol station she was at & held her only friend at the time hostage, Sal. Panel 2, Amber’s switched to Amazigirl, gone on the offensive verbally, then learns the target for her vengeance “did her a solid” & got her away from people who would remove her mask & ask her too many questions. Still in verbal-offensive mode, Amazigirl’s first reaction to to approve of the difficulties of living with a record.
Gonna take a few minutes for Amazigirl to wind down out of offensive mode, & that’s if nothing happens to intensify it, such as either girl becoming more aggressive…
She’s still recovering from a severe head injury annnnnnd getting thrown into a car , I think we can cut her some slack for not being overjoyed for someone that traumatized her being in her face the moment she wakes
She has no idea Sal just did anything good. Given what Amazi-Girl says in panel 2, she seems to be imagining that Sal (as her fantasy world’s own personal Joker) is working with Ross. So, I would expect that she would be incapable of believing that Sal just saved her unless Joyce were to verify it.
Except they’re not different people, Amazi-Girl is an artificial construct Amber uses as a coping mechanism, not a genuine separate personality. She acts like they’re different, they’re not. She’s actively trying to give herself DID.
DID isn’t an ‘on or off’ thing, it’s a spectrum. Amber may not be fully ‘split’, but she considers them two people, and she heavily compartmentalizes her feelings into them. That’s DID, if not in the most extreme form.
This. Alters are… complicated. They’re different people (to each other), but key parts to the same overall whole (the full person). The most extreme form is full disassociation, where the alters can’t access each other’s piece of the memories. But in ideal form, is just them talking to each other and working with each other to put together a cohesive whole person (known as integration).
Amber is pushing disassociation with her alters and treating one of her alters as a dumping ground for all her “negative emotions”. That’s not going to end well as the recommended treatment protocol for DID is integration, communication, and empathy for what each alter is emotionally going through and thinks (even if that alter is just a scared kid trapped in an abusive moment).
Speaking from personal experience, the grammar of explaining this stuff sometimes gets… messy.
Hey, I don’t care how violent a vigilante you are, it’s always in bad taste when someone plays the race card and your first response is, “Good.”
Again, I know that’s not what she intended to say, but there’s a difference between having a thirst for justice and deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others.
It’s not like Batman sits around and fantasizes about how bad Two-Face has it in Arkham.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel like popping open a can of cool, refreshing Justice(c)! It’s the taste you crave! 😉
Yeah, definitely. Oh, what’s that, you have legitimate fears owing to your race and your past? Well, all I heard was criminal, so, good that you’re suffering said oppressions due to who you are.
Amber probably doesn’t register just how messed up what she is saying really is given Sal’s race and life experiences.
Considering the abuse she got from her father, the trauma that never got fixed, and the fact that Sal is in a way a ghost that still haunts her? I wouldn’t quite call it even quite yet.
“Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metrics or form of measure.” If it were even possible for them to be even, I think Amber stabbing Sal in the fucking hand would shove things past even and into Sal’s favor; Amber’s terrible dad is in no way Sal’s fault. Really, the entire situation is fucked.
Blaine’s abuse and the general failure to attend to Amber’s mental health isn’t Sal’s burden to bear. Not only has Amber already taken her pound of flesh, but Sal just saved her friggin’ life.
What’s even if not that? An apology from Sal? Amber doesn’t want that. Otherwise she’s say something about the store….she just wants to punish and punish and punish ….and dare I say it, that might be a bad habit she picked up from Blaine.
Yes, Sal is a point of triggers for Amber, but having a whole bevy of triggers myself, there’s value in taking ownership for said triggers (not to the point where you ignore things that are hurting you, but rather to the point of recognizing when an innocent party or an old ghost are what is haunting you).
When a partner touches me in a way that triggers a flashback to my sexual assault, that’s not a deliberate wrong on the part of my partner (unless they were to make a habit of doing that repeatedly when I tell them to stop). Similarly, flashes of fear caused by discrimination or abuse isn’t fully on the people who make a callous statement not aware of what they are digging up.
It deserves a mention certainly, so people are aware of what’s going on and why one is out of whack, but those triggers are ghosts of traumas caused by past actors and should be noted as such.
Initial trauma Sal was a tween or early teenager who didn’t even directly attack Amber. It is definitely time for Amber to start taking ownership of how badly Sal triggers her and recognize that’s not Sal’s fault.
It is possible to own one’s own triggers while also commenting on problematic behavior that exacerbates them and not forgiving serial abusers who are toxic to be around.
But that takes a lot of time and healing and Amber is kind of on Step 1… maybe Step 1/19th.
She doesn’t care if Sal saved her life, or didn’t hold HER hostage, Amber thinks her life is worthless, she’s being a furious, hurt, and raging dog because Sal in her mind attacked ETHAN, held ETHAN hostage, the one person she considers herself close to.
People keep going “She SAVED YOUR LIFE! YOU ARE EVEN”
Not really, not in Amber’s mind, in her mind she is worth literally nothing =(
You get the next strip sent to your email a day early if you pledge on Patron. Of course, then you’ll just be staying up until midnight to get your next fix.
Amazi-Girl isn’t real, Amber creates and maintains her deliberately to try and separate herself from the parts of her she doesn’t like. That’s how she confuses herself because there is no actual separation.
The confusion and fear in the first panel are replaced with confidence in the second. That can be either a willful act (this is who I want to be for a while), or a subconscious act (this is who I have to be to survive) depending on the need. Splits like that occur when a weaker personality is faced with a situation they can’t handle, such as persistent physical or emotional abuse. Amber certainly qualifies. The weaker personality basically says “Fuck it, I’m outta here” and a new, stronger, personality takes over. I’m curious to see how much control Amber really has over Amazi-Girl.
She’s still somewhat communicative and integrated, but she’s pushing behaviors that will lead to more disassociations and potentially more internal conflict between the alters.
I’m just noting that Sal considers herself black? I mean I guess she and Walky are technically one-quarter black, but maybe either it’s easier to just say the common perception of her skin tone, or her parents’ preferential treatment has rubbed off on her subconscious.
I thought their dad was full, but yeah, she’s called herself black before. Walky for his part doesn’t as much, but he still does have it as part of his identity, such as his irritation at the “colored people” mention in that weird Christian song Joyce had once.
Not disagreeing with you, but I don’t think you need to be black to be irritated by that. I’m mostly Scottish, and I can get sunburned standing in front of the microwave, but bizarre, casual bigotry still riles me.
I’d eventually like to see Sal interact with more/other black people. If the black community is more accepting of her, then I can see why she would identify as such, even though she has the “privilege” of being as generically beige as Walky.
Okay see I always thought that line was just a joke on Walky’s part, because, y’know, the Walkerton twins literally have the same skin colour. He was just screwing with Joyce.
I don’t get why everyone took that line seriously.
I think she means culturally as well as genetically? Like she might have grown up with stronger ties with her black side of the family and thus feels a stronger connection to the culture and people.
As for genetically, we’re pretty all-inclusive, us black people. There are negatives to the ‘one drop rule’ perception of course, but I can say that one positive is that even if you’re just a quarter, we will still claim you (I believe Halle Berry said her own quarter-black daughter Nahla will have to eventually decide how she identifies herself, but in Halle’s eyes, she believes her daughter is just as black as herself).
What matters in this case is the perception of the cops. Most racists subscribe to the single-drop-of-blood standard of race. I think Sal is mindful of this, and that’s why she hid.
That having been said, in the hair salon scene, Sal seemed to mourn the loss of her natural hair texture.
This. She’s treated as black by society. Is viewed as black by the majority of people she interacts with. And society in America still views that one drop rule as overriding a lot of things. So yeah, Sal is black. She’s being treated as a black woman. Has life experiences of a black woman, even if she has lighter skin.
Overall, I imagine it’s pretty similar to the life experiences of my cousins who are black and seen as black even though technically they have one black parent and one white parent.
No, you don’t understand. This makes it even better. They can have hate sex.
Kidding aside, this doesn’t necessarily sink it. There’s plenty of ships out there where the two characters involved hate each other. (Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara is the first example that comes to mind.) AND us optimists won’t give up on the possibility that one day, these two -will- become pals. Or at least stop hating each other.
Amber actually shares a lot of parallels with Toedad if you think about it. Especially a fundamentalistic dogma used as a coping mechanism to deal with her own strife. It is only by the grace of luck and friends that she didn’t make things a lot worse..(and some determination).
“Like the lie about masks.”
“What lie about masks?”
The way people say they hide faces.”
“They do hide faces,” said Nanny Ogg.
“Only the one on the outside.”
–Terry Pratchett, “Maskerade”
“There’s a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness. I bet you could do just what you liked, behind a mask…?”\ ….. also from the writings of Sir Pterry
Dina is not irreversibly harmed, as she has been shown in a preview panel. Exactly how she is at this particular moment and her whereabouts are unknown.
To be fair she really doesn’t know ANYTHING about Sal besides the fact she threatend her best friends life and let alone she has one idea that she just saved her ass.
She actually doesn’t have strong feelings about it, really. She didn’t give Billie crap about it when she could have. She went after Sal because she was Sal. The drinking wasn’t a reason, it was an excuse.
Do you not remember how she freaked out on Danny for drinking? She has strong feelings about that, though she does tend to act more mellow about the things she has feelings about when she’s Amber.
It’s true that when she attacked Sal on that parking lot, the underage drinking thing was just an excuse she gave to justify the violence.
But the point I was trying to make was that given how little Amber knows about Sal, the fact that one of those few details is that she drinks alcohol, which is a big negative in Amber’s eyes, doesn’t help her see Sal in a good light.
She’s not obligated to. It is not the job of the victim to go out of their way to find the good in the person that victimized them. Forgiveness is not a right it is a rarely earned privilege.
Amber stopped being just a victim when she drove a knife through Sal’s hands because her father taunted her. She became both victim and oppressor – the fact that she didn’t see any time or other consequences from assaulting a black woman means she benefited directly from racism.
Oh, it’s nice to know that attacking your hostage taker just after having been TRAUMATISED BY THEM makes you an “oppressor”, just because the criminal who held your best friend hostage and traumatised you happens to be black.
Yes, using violence on a perpetrator in police custody, well after they stop being a threat, and getting away with it because of the color of your skin and the color of her’s, means you are part of the oppression based on raace.
Fucking White People. It’s like they stop understanding how self defense works the second a non-white person is involved.
In fairness, if a young black girl assaulted a white girl who took her and her friend hostage at knifepoint after the attacker had been disarmed and taken into police custody, I personally wouldn’t really expect any serious legal repercussions, because hey, traumatized _child_. (although I would say she should be put into therapy, which is also what SHOULD have happened with Amber)
(Mind you, I have no idea if that lack of expectation is realistic, because It’d probably be hard to get enough examples of this to make a statistic out of it)
Your expectation is probably not realistic given tht young black people existing is often considered sufficiently threatening behavior, much less them committing actual battery – and this leeway is not given solely to police.
And while I certainly don’t think a 13 year old should have their life entirely ruined for one mistake, there should certainly some form of censure – I’m not clear on whether Juvenile Hall is actually useful off the top of my head, but the state can stand to recognize that a crime was committed, even if the most useful answer in general is simply therapy (Which, given tht it’s kids, seems likely)
If the races were reversed, it’s a guarantee that they would halt arresting the white girl to pin down and arrest the black girl. Heck, a group of TWOC defended themselves from a hate crime and were arrested for assault for it. And there’s all the excuses law enforcement and white culture made for George Zimmerman. Black people aren’t really allowed to “defend themselves”, much less be traumatized and freaking out.
In Amber’s defense, Sal threatened her best friend’s life and then completely forgot about it. That’s all Amber knows, I would hold a grudge as well if someone threatened someone I care about. Wouldn’ you?
That’s NOT all Amber knows. She knows Sal threatened her best friends life, and that then she stabbed her in the hand for it. Seriously Amber was not -just- a victim that day, even if she’s convinced she’s the only one who suffered and bore scars.
She’s holding a grudge when arguably Sal has as much a reason for holding one. Hell, wheres Amber’s record? For illegally assaulting an unarmed girl who was already in police custody with a knife?
I get that Amber’s emotions are making her irrational. It makes sense for her to feel that way. Doesn’t mean we still can’t point out she’s acting like a jerk to the woman who just saved her life.
No. Being hurt by someone you victimized does not absolve you of victimizing them. The only thing Sal was a victim of was her own shitty decisions. As for Amber having any obligation to forgive her under any circumstances; also no. That’s not how forgiveness works. You are never owed forgiveness because you “made up for” how you hurt someone. You can do everything in your power to try and make amends but at the end of the day they are still perfectly justified in saying “Fuck you, I will never forgive you” and it is not an inherently inferior decision to granting forgiveness.
I’m sorry, are we going to sit here and pretend that racism didn’t aggravate things? Because Amber would see something for stabbing someone who was white when they were in police custody in such a flagrantly unjustified (legally speaking) manner. Sal isn’t just a victim of her poor decisions. She’s also a victim of easily traced racism that Willis has gone out of his way to say is not just some flawed perception on her part. I don’t really care about forgiveness, but she literally owes it to Sal to not commit violence against her – period, end of discussion. We’ve monopolized violence for good fucking reason. Even if we hadn’t, Sal has literally done her time – she has paid her debt to society, and to Amber personally (Assuming, quite boldly, that being stabbed didn’t cover the latter on its own merits – generally, a threat is considered a less grave offense than ACTING on that same threat, after all).
Forgiveness isn’t something Amber needs to do in some grand sense, but Amber distinctly owes things that she hasn’t given as of yet. They have nothing to do with ‘forgiveness’ and everything to do with ‘not being a fucking violent criminal’.
I love this comment and would gently add that the consequences of institutionalized racism are what makes Amber’s comment that a record “sounds like an annoying thing to live with. Good.” So especially shitty.
Incredibly so. I wrote yesterday that to Sal, Amazi-girl must come off as extremely racist and that’s definitely still true, but it’s also true that Amber is not fully aware of just how much affordance her race has given her. There’s a reason she can do superhero antics without fearing that cops will gun her down if they see her. There’s a reason she can feel comfortable breaking into other people’s dorm rooms without fearing arrest. There’s a reason that Sal has a criminal record, while she was immediately just handed back to her guardian. And there’s a reason that she believes that the legal system and its laws are just and worth upholding.
And I would love Amber to start having to grapple with that on a real level sometime.
It’s not a binary scenario. You don’t either hold a grudge or let it go. There are multiple other paths you can take, like maybe finding out the circumstances behind the actions. Amber’s response is black and white, with no attempt at discerning deeper cause. That’s shitty, and no, I would not do that. Would you?
Someone in the comments was speculating the other day that race was a factor in Sal’s getting the hell out of there before the cops showed up. While I completely understand why she needed to leave, I really hope she remembers to check in with Joyce at some point, because if I recall correctly, Sal is the only person who knows Joyce was having a panic attack BEFORE the incident, and it would be poor form for Sal not to make sure she was okay, in one form or another.
I’ve a feeling Sal will in fact check in with Joyce. She had enough of a conscience to turn around and walk Joyce to the fountain just before the incident, and that was when Sal still didn’t think much of her. Now, however, Joyce has–as Sal sees it–more than earned her respect, so I think she’ll be sure to follow up with her.
That may have been me. And I suspect that Sal will circle back and check in with Joyce after the sirens and the cop swarm die down. So, either tonight or sometime tomorrow, depending on if they need to get checked over by hospital staff or EMTs for trauma response.
Because Sal threatened Ethan’s life. Of course she completely forgot about Amber and Ethan. Which Amber doesn’t know, and in my opinion, just makes it worse.
I don’t think she forgot them so much as doesn’t recognize them. She hasn’t interacted with them very much, and even if she had, their appearances have changed a lot with time and puberty.
Yeah, it has been years, and they all look completely different. Hell, part of the only reason Amber ever recognized Sal is because she saw her in basically the same outfit she was wearing all those years ago. Possibly also because, unlike them, she never moved on from that trauma.
But isn’t Ethan basically over the whole incident with Sal? It seems like even stronger evidence that the real trauma was Blaine, NOT Sal, because Ethan didn’t really seem to have lingering issues beyond, oh, yeah, that sucked. Prior trauma makes PTSD much more likely.
I wonder if the societal rejection (for looking like a punk, for being black in majority white communities, for having a criminal record, for being standoffish) is part of why she actively doesn’t try to cultivate new friendships. Like, if you dodge the relationships forming in the first place, you don’t have to be rejected by them.
Something that occurs to me: did Amber suffer ANY sort of blowback for stabbing an unarmed girl who was already being handcuffed, in full view of the police and multiple other witnesses? Didn’t get arrested for that display of violent assault? Nothing in the local paper? Anything?
Her dad may be an abusive piece of shit, and I sure as hell don’t envy her for having suffered through it, but man, she doesn’t have ANY idea how much her white privilege saved her that fateful day, does she.
This would have been only four or five years ago, and the cops/courts would probably have written it off as a form of PTSD. Not to mention she was a juvenile at the time so what’s the worst that could have happened?
And it’s not like Sal or the Walkerton family was going to file a countersuit.
A quick googling reveals that a teen non-fatally stabbing another teen can result in a sentence of years in a correctional facility. It could have been pretty friggin’ bad. (Then again, the example that turned up was for a 15 year old. I’m not sure how much sentencing is altered for someone who’s 13, since searches around that age range just bring up the recent murder in Wisconsin.)
Considering that she’d been one of the perceived victims of the apprehended criminal, Sal, even though she wasn’t a hostage like Ethan, I think she’d get a considerable amount of slack. It’s really not a comparable situation to a run-of-the-mill stabbing.
Not without race playing a factor – the laws on self defense are abundantly clear – when someone stops being a threat, you have no right to then commit violence against them. Had it been done mid-hold up, it would rightly be self defense, but when the suspect is in custody? It’s simply battery. And had it been Amber holding up the store and Sal stabbing her after being traumatized, you can bet your bippy a prosecutor would have been saying this very thing, while defense tries to mitigate (not avoid) a sentence.
This whole “Amber didn’t get punished cause she’s white” thing is dumb, it belittles real racism and is frankly just straight up conspiracy nut BS.
You cannot attack an unarmed individual, a minor at that, in police custody and get away because your white. In real life, not some badly researched web comic, there would be so many people involved that sweeping it under the rug is impossible.
Just because there are some aholes who wear a badge doesn’t mean every last cop and law enforcement agent on the planet is an ahole.
…Yeah, black people aren’t injured while in police custody. Yer not SERIOUSLY going to try this tack given what happened to Sandra Bland, are you?
‘This demeans real racism’. Fool, the fact that black and brown people can be straight up offed with no repercussions IS THE STARKEST EXAMPLE OF RACISM WE HAVE IN THE STATES! What constitutes ‘real racism’ IF NOT FUCKING MURDER ON THE BASIS OF ONE’S SKIN. You think this is a fucking conspiracy nut territory? No, COINTELPRO is conspiracy nu – oh wait no that happened The murder of Fred Hampton was conspiracy nu – oh wait, no, THAT happened too. We’re discussing a phenomena FINALLY getting some fucking press, and you’re acting like this is some novel phenomenon and the rest of us are crazy for considering it? Seriously, just bloody go.
Calm your roll there kid, sit back and think. At what point did I say that stuff doesn’t happen? All I said is that being white doesn’t allow you to get away with attempted murder.
This is the problem with SJW’s they don’t think they just react, often with the same hatred and bigotry they claim to be against.
Yer probably younger than me, kid. When you state (Not even imply) that people are in the realm of conspiracy nuts, you STATE (not even imply) that things didn’t happen. You want to walk away from that now? Maybe walk back your own bloody statements.
“Being white doesn’t let you get away with murder”? Certainly not all the time, but white people (not just white cops, but ALSO white cops) have literally gotten away with murder when their victims were black. It’s by no means foolproof, but it absolutely STILL happens.
This is why I despise White People. I can’t be exposing you to the same bigotry and hatred I claim to be against – you’re still breathing. This is not a state of affairs I’m particularly in favor of correcting either. But hey, don’t let that stop you from claiming there’s a lynch mob – that’d be a perfect capper.
Though it’s extra precious you’re going into “you’re the/a REAL racist :(” territory when the worst thing I said about YOU was that you were being a fool. Primarily, I said that the things you were saying were wrong – as in, factual incorrect. Really, nobody in the USA is as thinskinned as the privileged.
(Oh, and since I forgot earlier – the sheer weight of numbers makes it implausible that all cops are murderous racists. However, many cops are racist in less overwhelming ways, and the simple fact is, the ‘nonracist’ cops will not actually try to stop their brethren, and since it falls to them, this means that ultimately, they too are racist, if not in their heart of little hearts. I have no patience for this pitying nonsense – their jobs are not particularly more dangerous than that of delivery drivers, and they’re not generally protecting MY rights except in that their existence makes average white people less inclined to believe that they need to engage in Self Help against me.)
There is this, yeah, but there’s also the way that racism seems to be viewed in America by white culture. There’s “real racism” where it’s KKK, pointy hoods, literal hangings and there’s nothing else. Not systems where white people are allowed to kill black people for being “not where they’re supposed to be”, not systems of mass incarceration for non-violent offenses, not literally being maneuvered out of voting access, not even racial slurs or overall discriminatory treatment.
And that all-or-nothing way of looking at an endemic system of oppression that ties into literally every facet of how our current economic and social system operates is really limiting and poisonous to any effort to fix things. And that type of all-or-nothing gatekeeping pops up in a lot of other oppressions to a lot of harm.
Content warning (bigotry and sexual assault):
Oh, were you not assaulted as a virgin by a man in a mask in an alley? Then it wasn’t “real rape”. Oh, were you sent death threats, but no one actually physically assaulted you? Then you weren’t “really threatened”. Oh, were you fired from your job or denied housing because of your queer identity, but weren’t actually left strung up on a fence post? Then it wasn’t really “homophobia”.
Bigotry and violence is not only its most extreme or media-depicted forms. And ignoring the vast majority of experiences of oppression as “not real”, does far more damage to how aiding bigotry operates than someone noting how a microaggression or instance of oppression affects them.
I thinks its been said that Sal was 13 at the time she robbed the store.
I’m not sure of Ambers age but she was about the same age I would guess.
They may have noted that Amber was in shock and striking back out of fear and perhaps a deal was cut to get her a bit of mental help. But it is also very likely that because she was a minor, white, victim, it was just
brushed over.
Yeah, I think it would require a lot of overlooking to see Amber run up from a fair distance away, steal a knife from a police officer, and then stab an unarmed prisoner.
We don’t even know the extent of the damage she did. Scarring? Nerve damage? Loss of motor function?
Yep. That’s what’s so scary about institutionalised racism: a lot of it is based on subconscious preconceived ideas and assumptions, which makes it all the harder to combat.
It comes down to the DA.
If it was an election year, then prosecuting a traumatized little girl for stabbing a criminal would be a political suicide.
Especially in “tough on crime” states, since she stabbed a criminal who held her hostage.
With a good lawyer she could have ended up with psych treatments and expunged record on reaching 18.
Not to mention that the police had already confiscated the knife from Sal and they supposedly had it securely in their custody. There would have been some very embarrassing questions as to how Amber had been able to get her hands on it.
Below the belt on that one AG, but if you did recognize Sal it would be understandable. The backpeddling when AG woke up sorta hinted at that.
And the speech pattern indicated she was Amber.
But now, she is definitely AG, and she’s acting like she’s not quite aware of what’ happened. Once she knows Becky is okay, she’s back in over-the-top vigilante rudeness mode.
Too bad. On the other hand I think there is gonna be an explosion when they recognize each other from robbery.
AG still has those ‘white dots’ over her head, she ought to stop trying to throw her weight around, thank Sal for getting her off the cops line of sight.
Getting to a dr. may be a good idea.
Your comment makes it sound like it’s uncertain whether Amber/AG is fully aware that Sal is the one from the robbery. It’s obvious that she knows who Sal is.
I do wonder when Sal will finally realise Amber/AG is the girl that stabbed her. Will Ambs have to tell her? Or will she guess from her behaviour and dialogue?
I kind of doubt Sal was aware of any of the customers (and she probably didn’t see Amber stab her hand), so it would probably take some pretty clear references to it for her to see (and Sal might first assume that somehow vigilante lady had looked at her record)
It’s impossible for her not to have been aware of any of the customers considering she held one of them hostage. ^^ Here’s the strip for reference: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hostage/
She may or may not have noticed Amber when she grabbed Ethan. I don’t expect her to specifically remember Amber (especially since she didn’t even recognise Ethan), much less what she looked like.
But assuming their conversation doesn’t end with today’s strip, depending on what Amazi-girl says, Sal could conceivably guess she was involved in the robbery. Maybe by thinking “why does this vigilante hate me so much, did I do something to her”, or something like that. Then again, Sal could assume that AG’s grudge is entirely based on that time she caught her underage-drinking.
Either way, I don’t really expect things to be resolved “today” (in-universe time), the way things are going. Especially since I doubt Willis would miss the opportunity to milk the Amber/Sal drama by using Danny’s friendship to Sal as a breakdown trigger for Amber.
Aware of them as individuals/people, I mean, not aware of their existence (which if she was unaware of would have possibly been pretty dangerous for her)
The last strip showed us amber waking up and immediately back peddling at the sight of Sal. She’s more scared of Sal – or rather what her mind tells her Sal is – than she was of Toedad. So it’s rather to be expected, she assumes the worst, i.e. that Sal has taken her somewhere to hurt her.
This totally makes no sense in Sal’s reality, so they talk right now from different realities.
I can rather imagine that Sal doesn’t recognize her as the girl from then. Sal was totally freaked out already when she started the robbery – we still haven’t heard some convincing backstory of why she tried it in the first place, and if you look at those strips she looks absolutely desperate from the start so ambers knife attack was in the middle of a traumatic day that never really got better.
That said, I just realize how insidious it was of Ross to mock Amber for not being able to defend Ethan. In wanting to subdue Sal, Amber still directs anger that should belong to Ross at Sal.
Amber recognized Sal a long time ago, the first time she ever saw her. It’s been the focal point of every reaction AG has HAD to Sal in this entire comic. It dumbfounds me that anybody could read to this point and not get that.
I would have liked to see Amber and Sal become unlikely allies. I suppose it could still happen, but if it does, there are going to be some significant bumps on the road leading there.
I could condemn Amber for her behavior. She is being a bongo to Sal, and Sal doesn’t deserve that. However, I can understand Amber’s point of view. Clearly, Sal is a trigger for Amber due to the trauma surrounding that robbery. Sometimes, when one has negative associations with a particular person, place, or thing, said negative associations aren’t so easy to turn off. Human emotions are often irrational, and under certain circumstances, they can overpower rational thought and cloud judgement.
I’m not saying I approve of Amber’s behavior here. I’m just saying I understand why she’s responding like this. To quote the “Fixer-Upper” song from Frozen, “People make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed.” We’ve all said and done things we end up regretting later. Amber may very well later regret her behavior in this situation.
Also, even if she were somehow able to be perfectly rational, she would still be weighing stopped-the-cops-from-catching-me against traumatized-me-and-held-a-knife-to-my-best-friend’s-throat. As much as I love Sal, I think AG is sort of justified in completely disregarding her feelings here, at least for now.
I can’t wait til Amber hears how Sal saved her. Probably from Joyce’s account of it, since she is the only one who actually saw/knew that part.
Or, if Maggie-red-car checks on Amazi-Girl, and mentions that incredible sight.
She doesn’t want to solve her issues she wants to beat her issues into submission till it cries for mercy. She wants to crush her issues and hear the limitations of their weman.
But ya the last thing that would probably do is help.
A part of me hopes Sal never finds out. She has really grown into one of the more responsible people in the cast, and reliving the worst day of her life is something she doesn’t need right now.
That’s probably just superficial. Serious injury would be intracranial bleeding (not visible from the outside) or a fractured skull. I’d be more worried if AG/Amber were bleeding from the ears or nose.
Still, she ought to be in an ER, and since she blacked out I’m pretty sure that the ED doc in a well-funded US hospital would order a CT, just to be sure.
Daniel here. If I remember my first aid right, a possible sign of bleeding on the brain would be if it was also coming out the ears. Since we’re seeing no sign of that, she most likely just has a facial scratch, those bleed more than other locations…
Scalp wounds tend to bleed quite profusely, apparently. That’s actually not a lot of blood for a scalp wound – I’ve heard of cases where a small scalp cut coats the face in blood.
It’s actually a technique, in swordfighting, to aim for the face – not to injure an eye (not considered an ‘honorable’ wound), but to cut the scalp. The blood from the wound can distract your opponent.
I’m half expecting that AG will just walk off possibly to go treat her injuries and won’t learn about how Sal saved her until she overhears Joyce mentioning it some other day.
I think Joyce will do a whole lot more than mention it. Her fangirling over Sal after this will be x10000. She’ll tell anyone who’ll listen and everyone who won’t about awesome bike-driving, car-chasing, vigilante-catching, metaphorically ass-kicking Sal. XD
I don’t know. After all her discoveries about how horrible the people she grew up with are, and the shock of having cursed, plus various other issues, I suspect it will be a while before Joyce is up to fangirling again.
Ah, good point. I may have been projecting. After an experience like that, I would bury it all by turning the fangirling up a thousand so I wouldn’t have to think about all the things that suck. Joyce may have other, hopefully healthier, ways to deal with stuff.
HOWEVER, Sal might have a few nice things to say about Joyce, now. Sal doesn’t let just anyone ride on her bike – her respect for Joyce has clearly gone up a few notches.
True! Since Marcie “advised” her to hang with her other friends, (because she has been working double shifts) Sal was bleakly realizing she had *a* friend.
Now, she has Joyce, who curses and knows how to “passenger” on a bike!
I’m sorry but we are never getting the “it was Tuesday for me” the day you got stabbed in the hand ,and to this day alway wear gloves to cover the scar, would be pretty memorable.
How does Amber not have a record if Sal does? Sal may have robbed a store and threatened people, but Amber severely injured someone who was in police custody, she should have some sort of arrest record.
The police may have swept that under the rug so to speak. Possibly because they just thought of it as just a scared little girl lashing out. Or as others have commented, her being white could have had a part to play in it.
yeah no, being white isn’t a magic get out jail free card, you don’t get to stab someone and people go
“I want to arrest you…but your just so darn white that I cant”
A person in police custody is pretty much a ward of the state, the cops would have to take Sal to the hospital, a report would be made, DCFS would be contacted, as would Internal Affairs.
Doesn’t matter, attacking a person with a deadly weapon doesn’t require someone to press charges only witnesses. Also since Sal was under arrest, that means it would be up to the state or city on whether to press charges or not.
You are operating in Letter of the Law Logic. This often encounters an error message when running a Real World System.
See…the thing is…gawd, I hate even writing this. Sal was a black girl holding up a convenience store in a small town, with a weapon. Amber was the traumatized white girl who was held hostage. She stabbed Sal and…well, the cops probably chalked it up as an injury sustained during the hold-up, and Sal likely never contradicted them out of self-hatred and her other various issues, nor did Amber or her father.
The city can only press charges if they know there are charges to press.
Okay, I get that racist cops is the big thing now, but thats taking things way into outer space. You might as well say white people never get arrested.Sal was stabbed. THROUGH THE HAND, even if that ignorant theory were true, it wouldn’t explain how the hospital looked the other way, DCFS looked the other way, IA looked the other way. Surely there was one person who wasn’t a racist aholeTrust me when a kid is brought to the hospital by cops there are very few people not involved.
Bicycle Bill made a great point above about how it is possible that, since the cops were supposed to have the knife in their custody as evidence, they covered up the fact that Amber took it to stab Sal (by lying about how the injury occurred) to cover their asses, because they might get in trouble with superiors for that kind of screw-up.
‘the big thing now’, implying it wasn’t a thing for the last, you know, century? I mean, your big evidence agaainst is “But hospitals aren’t racist”, which is… kinda fuckin’ laughable? It’s not as sexy or as harmful, since hospitals aren’t really complicit in the murder of black people, but health care workers are also racist – quality of care, speed of care and its prioritization, and the seriousness paid to black people’s claims of illness have established this pretty well actually!
I mean, DCFS and IA are still “the fucking police”. They’re allegedly less racist, but.
The only thing that’s remotely confusing is how there isn’t video tape, but thta seems like the sort of thing tht would really only come up if Sal’s parents pushed for it – and knowing Mrs. Walkerton, she might not have taken it seriously at all.
“Prosecutorial discretion refers to the fact that under American law, government prosecuting attorneys have nearly absolute powers. A prosecuting attorney has power on various matters including those relating to choosing whether or not to bring criminal charges, deciding the nature of charges, plea bargaining and sentence recommendation. This discretion of the prosecuting attorney is called prosecutorial discretion.”
Christ, dude, nobody is saying that Amber walked because she was white. They’re saying that the fact that she was white was one of many factors that MAY have contributed to the police officers on the scene looking at her in a more sympathetic light. As others have pointed out, a traumatized 13 year old whose best friend had just been held at knifepoint lashed out at the person that threatened them. That story by itself is sufficient to explain why charges weren’t pressed, to say nothing of the other details people have pointed out. Curb your defensive reactions to perceived assaults on your white privilege for two freaking seconds.
The cops can’t chalk that up as “injury sustained during the holdup” unless they’re, I dunno, all overtly corrupt or something. They were all there to see Amber stab Sal in the hand, they were literally pulling her off, and there would be no evidence at all of Sal being injured during the holdup.
More likely, what would happen is that Blaine found an attorney who drew up a neato plea deal that got Amber out of court and kept this out of her record, and Sal didn’t. It gives Sal a reason to be pissed off at The Man and his subtle racism (“how come the white girl gets this all taken off her record and I don’t?”). It gives Blaine a reason to be all pissed off at Amber (“the one time you stand up for yourself, it doesn’t matter and it makes a big mess that I have to clean up”). It doesn’t assume that all of the sudden Sal finds some reason in herself to cover up for the girl who stabbed her in the hand (wtf?). And it doesn’t require an abnormal degree of corruption, racism, incompetence, and/or malice on the part of the cops and the legal system; these kind of deals happen all the time.
The prosecutor always gets to decide whether to proceed with the case, and this one is ripe for a plea deal.
Cops have never stood by and watched violence perpetrated by white people against black people, each holding their tongues when it came time to investigate, nor haave they lied under oath about it.
The only vaguely unbelievable part of it is that Amber isn’t actually a cop. Racism is not the only thing that sustains the blue wall.
…what, you mean aside from the fact that amber has suffered no consequences of her attack, and that it’s a pretty safe assumption of police in general?
” Sal was a black girl holding up a convenience store in a small town, ”
I wonder, how “black” is Sal supposed to actually look, vs. what she believes herself ? I mean, it’s difficult to tell because of the art style, I had no idea she was even of mixed race until it came up as a plot line in DoA, and I’ve been reading the Walkyverse since almost the beginning.
Same with Billie.
Individuals do not generally decide which cases are prosecuted. They apply for charges and then the State’s Attorney/District Attorney/Prosecutor’s office review the application and decide whether or not there is enough to proceed on. I can just imagine the face of the DA, with no corresponding information or application from law enforcement, reading the application which starts, “I was in police custody immediately after holding up a convenience store at knife-point…”
My guess….Amber did end up in legal trouble but her Dad, knowing that a court trial would drag his own abusive ass through the mud, hired a really good lawyer.
The Lawyer worked out a Plea Bargain that kept Amber out of Court and without a Record. Amber may have been too shaken up to remember all the details.
While juvenile records may be sealed (not accessible by the public), they are not necessarily expunged or destroyed. There are also situations in which they can be unsealed or made available to law enforcement/the Court. It would depend on the state laws.
And then there’s the fact that colleges usually require you to disclose charges, even if they aren’t really entitled to the information, and will sometimes take disciplinary action if they find out later…
The Doylist explanation is: Willis had a poor understanding of how the law works when he wrote that and its kind of late to fix it even if he’s amended that lack of knowledge.
The important thing to remember is “in police custody.” I doubt if the officers involved wanted to do the paperwork to explain how that happened. It would be easier to process Sal for the attempted robbery and get some half-assed medical attention for her hand, and divert attention away from the embarrassing facts as soon as possible.
You know whats odd? I’m surprised they don’t run into each other more frequently like at the gym, and you can’t tell me Amber wouldn’t be at the gyear I mean she hast to keep herself at top shape to do all the superhero stuff.
Everybody’s talking about how amber should apologize for the past or sal should apologize, or amber’s being a jerk about the past and should let it go, but even with all of that resolved, amazi-girl would still be an ass towards sal. Amazi-girl HATES rule breakers.
Well, I published this a few comments ago, but it seems even more appropriate here. Also, only Benjy commented on it before, and while I really do appreciate his (or her?) flattery I’m afraid I’m far too much of an attention whore to satisfied with just that. So, once again, I present Amazigirl’s impending existential crisis in the form of a bad song parody.
Who is this Sal,
What sort of devil is she?
To find me caught in a crash,
And choose to help to save me?
It was her hour at last,
To put a seal on my defeat!
Not to drive quite so fast,
And let me be a stain on the street!
All it would take,
Is for the truck to Jackknife,
Vengeance was hers,
Instead she helped to save my life!
Damn me for living in the debt of a thief.
Damn her for yielding to Joyce’s demand!
I am the Girl utterly immune to critique!
I’ll shove her shiv right back in her hand!
There is nothing on Earth we share.
It is either Sall-e or Amber.
And my thoughts fly apart.
Can this Sal be believed?
Should her crimes be forgiven?
Or am I being deceived?
And must I now begin to doubt?
After wearing these clothes all of this year?
My face is masked, my cape it flutters,
The words I have spoke are white on azure.
Is she from heaven or from hell?
And does she know….
That saving me and my life today…
Have just confused me, that damned bongo!
I am standing, but I sway,
My bones can break despite my claim,
As I stare off down the street,
At the police that finally came,
I’ll escape now from those cops,
Man, these cops are really lame,
There is a spider that I must kill,
In the silence of my dorm- shit Sal still has my GAMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEE
Damn that one line got me Sal ges it. She knows she’d be blamed and punished despite not being involved in thism that lie I’m too smart to be the black kid with a record cought up in an incident. That hit me good job Willis
I….I understand where Amber is coming from, I understand /why/ she is being irrational, but knowing them both the way we as readers do, this just feels so one-sided and awkward. And even understanding where Amber is coming from, like…she stabbed Sal through the hand. I’m not saying Sal did nothing wrong (she very much did), but…IDEK where I’m going with this. It’s just such a weird situation to see.
Agreed, but remember that amazi is a coping mechanism for a woman with ptsd, social anxiety issues, and who knows what else. A measured and rational approach is not likely. Also, amazi seems a lot like Amber’s dad at times. Not great.
It kind of has to be one sided. Despite Amber’s hatred of Sal being fairly justified, she’s still approaching it in the absolute worst, most destructive way possible.
Sal did awful shit to Amber and Ethan and I could have done without her actually saving Amber’s life, but Amber’s always been wrong in how she’s been dealing with that hatred, and she’d be wrong even if she hadn’t snapped and stabbed Sal when she was already detained.
Amber/Amazi-Girl doesn’t yet realize/understand that Sal saved her life. Sal might not admit to it, and most likely will leave to avoid confrontations now that AG is awake.
AG will probably only find out later, when Joyce tells Dorothy, then Dorothy tells Amber. Or something liek that.
I will be very much surprised if this resolves it’s self right here and now.
It will take a while and I expect Amber to go on a long holiday cruise down Deriver Denial before she admits that Sal has any good qualities. It may take Ethan publicly telling Sal (in front of Amber) that he remembers that night at the convenience store and that he has forgiven her to get Amber to shift. Remember, at least a part of her messed-up head is telling her that she’s doing this to protect him.
Okay, I get that racist cops is the big thing now, but thats taking things way into outer space. You might as well say white people never get arrested.
Sal was stabbed. THROUGH THE HAND, even if that ignorant theory were true, it wouldn’t explain how the hospital looked the other way, DCFS looked the other way, IA looked the other way. Surely there was one person who wasn’t a racist ahole
Trust me when a kid is brought to the hospital by cops there are very few people not involved.
Racism is a thing. Racism by cops is a thing. Racism has been tracked and measured and shown to be a thing that affects everything from how someone is perceived to how they are treated by law enforcement to how their deaths are treated. We have an ever-growing number of unarmed black kids being gunned down in ways unarmed white kids or even armed grown-ass white adults aren’t. And we have the testimony of countless black Americans who can tell about their mistreatment by cops and community.
I could tell you the direct experiences of people like my uncle and the very different way he’s treated in public compared to his wife simply because he is black and she is white or how they’ve gone through an epic level of shit simply being a mixed-race couple in the 80s. Or how my cousins have had all manner of racist harassment that white kids in the same communities don’t go through.
You talk a mean game about conspiracy theories, but the only one ranting provably false claims and acting like noticeable reality is just some big gotcha moment by Big Race is you.
Just for the love of Bob, stop. You don’t have to examine yourself or your arguments if you don’t want, but you can at least stop digging your hole, man.
I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but given their first encounter with each other, it’s an interesting detail that this reunion is happening while Amber is bleeding from the head and Sal is wearing gloves with a big red spot over the middle of her hand.
This might be how she categorizes all of Amazi-Girl’s aggression in her direction because from Sal’s point of view, there is no discernible reason why Amazi-Girl tries to pick a fight again and again. Even now.
I was thinking that yesterday and meaning to list it out a bit.
-Attacks in a parking lot for pretty much no reason (they weren’t rowdy and AG pretty much said ‘that’ll do’ to her face)
-Snaps her fingers at her, AmaziGirl scuttles back (probably excusable at first because AG just woke up, but stacks against the next things)
-AmaziGirl takes one look at her (only two noticeable things are race and clothes), then accuses Sal of kidnapping her and possibly harming Becky, and aggressively so (that’s two counts each now of ‘saw I’m black, got aggressive’ and ‘got fearful’)
-Reassures AG, mentions she got out because she’s black and has a record, AG says “good, bet that fucks up your life”
As an aside, Sal is probably especially pissed about racist law enforcement (more than racists in general, I mean), which a vigilante attacking her for drinking a beer (and following up with this) is close enough to, so she probably is pretty disgusted with AG now.
Am I terrible for hoping that Sal gives Amazi-girl a few sharp comments for that dangerous stunt? We’re lucky no one got killed (despite ominous comments from the last strips).
Okay. This is the one I forgot yesterday because I was talking about T but, it fits here more.
Like this…
*foley: wind/rustling bushes
*panel 7, copy of 5
AG: “…”
*panel 8, copy of 6
Sal: “…”
*60mm wide, long take push of POV 4
Sal: “Amazo?”
AG (gritted teeth:) “Yes?”
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
*foley: (fade out) bushes
*cue: kindred (mixed in reprise of AG’s theme)
Sal (neutral dialect:) “When I was 13, I robbed a place. I used a knife. I took…”
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “…a hostage.”
*Amber flashback: cowering
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “That part ended… with a girl stapling my hand to the hood of a police car…”
*Amber flashback: knife strike
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
AG (angry:) “Criminals get what they deserved.”
Sal (neutral dialect:) “For a long time, I hated that girl.”
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
Sal (neutral dialect:) “Then, for a while, I’d have agreed with you… Now… this Sal knows…”
AG (angry:) “What do you think you know?”
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “Normal little girls don’t stab people with knives…”
*Amber flashback: Blaine’s delight
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
Sal (knowing, neutral dialect:) “This Sal know that girl needed a hug. Long before we ever met… It must take a lot to cover her wounds…”
*Amber flashback: Stopped by Danny from hitting Blaine on the ground
*60mm wide, long take POV 4
*foley: (fade in)wind/rustling bushes
*music: (fade out)
Sal: “…The hospital is that way.”
AG: *walking* “What I need is at the school…”
Thanks but, it’s David’s story.
I just explained what I see in it.
The above started out as a joke, because people were talking about wanting to see these two kiss.
In the joke, extending from the strip’s panel 6 led to “You need a hug,” went into descriptions of embracing someone with breasts but, tangentially jumped into a “stop starin’ at mah tits. If I didn’t do for my best friend, ah sure-in-the-hell am not gonna do it for you” to which AG cops out with “No… It’s the concuss-” *faints*
When I got into why, the lead-in to Sal saying “hug,” in particular, it was too painful.
You see, AG does funny things but, AG is not funny.
__________
“I cried when I wrote this song.”
Signed: Big, tough dude who went out to lift weights and fix his transmission and shit…
i have a hard time figuring out Amazi-girl’s moral consistency. i mean, i know this is here so we can later see her development. will she eventually forgive Sal and herself? in anything not involving Sal, her morality is based on what is harmful to people, screw the law, so Good Neutral or even Good Chaotic. when it comes to Sal, she’s some super strict Lawful Neutral.
The problem that distorts Amazi-Girl’s reaction to Sal is that she is not basing her actions on reality or anything that would objectively make sense. In her head, Sal is the Joker of her personal comic book – a force of chaotic evil that cannot do good. So, what we’re seeing is her responding to a completely-hallucinatory existential threat that only exists in her mind.
“You’re welcome, bongo.”
Yes, Amber has good reason to be angry at Sal, but that doesn’t excuse her from being a total jerk.
When you think about it, Amber only succeeded because of dumb luck. She went after a target with little to no preparation. And even if she hadn’t interfered, the police would’ve caught up with Toedad eventually. Sure, you could argue that such event would’ve ended up with Toedad being shot dead, as Becky predicted (which he deserves), but Amber nearly killed all three of them because of her guilt complex. Like I said, she was just lucky.
It’s not for sure that the police would ever find either Becky or her dad. There are people who would shelter him, thinking he was in the right. Also, even if they did, yeah it might end with him being gunned down, but probably not before he killed Becky to “save” her.
True, but the police have hostage negotiators, and Toedad did seem to have second thoughts for a second or two (which he immediately stamped out, but still). There’s a better-than-good chance that this coulda ended with him in prison, and Becky safe, rather than him free (as it is, the main witnesses who know what happened and why are now almost all felons, so toedad might be off the hook).
Definitely!
And I’ve been following superhero comics for over fifty years.
Not something you expect to meet in a webcomic about college kids.
Very well done, Mr Willis!
Ah yes, Amazi-Girl and her arch nemesis, girl-who-did-some-stupid-things-when-she-was-a-kid-and-isn’t-proud-of-it! Never let her live it down, Amazi-Girl.
Do we actually know what Sal thinks of the robbery these days? I mean, we know what her family thinks about it (“It was a stupid thing you did, and you’re lucky it didn’t turn out worse”) and we definitely know what Amber thinks about it (“This was the most important traumatic experience in my life”), but I’m not sure that Sal has mentioned her value judgement on what happened. I haven’t gone back to check, because Sal has been in a lot of comics, but it seems like the sort of thing I would remember better if she had.
It would be interesting to know what she does think about the robbery 5 years later. Does she, as you believe, think that it was a Stupid Teen Decision and wish she’d never done it? Does she still think that it was a justified move? Or does she simply occasionally go “Oh yeah, that was a thing that I did,” and not really care about it except in the ways that she is still affected by it? It could be an interesting look into Sal’s character and comparing and contrasting her with Amber.
My assumption is that she thinks it was a regretful thing, since she’s grown up since being 13, but she probably still believes she was justified, not in that specific action but in acting out when she was perceiving (probably real, but definitely perceiving) prejudice from her own parents as well as outside and her twin wasn’t helping. She probably also regrets getting sent away to Catholic school (which was ‘lahk hell’
But that said, I think that’s when she thinks about the robbery, and she doesn’t probably have cause to think about it specifically that often.
I don’t think she thought it was a good idea when she did it, but she did it anyway because she couldn’t see her way to a better path. Her actions and mannerisms in Amber’s flashbacks don’t scream “someone who feels confident and justified in what they’re doing”, but more, “someone who’s doubling down on what she knows were bad decisions because she thinks she’s in so deep that the only way out is through”.
Good point! I was thinking along the lines of how her personality felt like to ME, but not necessarily how it actually is or based on any previous story evidence. She just seems like she’s trying really hard to play things straight (even if she doesn’t have much reason to, since not many people are giving her good reasons to be any different than she has been). Still: The idea that she is trying is what makes me think she’s not proud of past events.
Like you said, though: I have no evidence. Just rolling with how I felt by her actions and words so far, but I may be injecting thoughts and feelings that may not actually be a part of the story.
Amber: “I got the whole myself that’s annoying to live with.”
Sal pulls off the glove: “I got this.”
Amber pulls off the mask: “I got this. Wanna change?”
Sal: “My jacket is leather, not Spandex. You’d have to swap width and height.”
Not expunged… just sealed. So, she still has a record, and if police see a sealed juvenile record, she could have jaywalked, but they’ll assume the same as a violent crime.
I would have replaced it with “sane people” or “non-assholes” OR “totally awesome folks”, but either way, SJWes are awesome and I would be nothing but flattered if someone called me a SJW.
For what it’s worth, I’d like to thank you for writing about Sal’s struggles with institutionalized, ingrained racism. It made me realize that a lot of my thought process on the topic was severely lacking, and it made me more aware.
So at this point I am genuinely at a loss to pin down Amazi-Girl’s D&D alignment. Is she Chaotic Good? Lawful Neutral? If there’s a pattern I’m not seeing it.
Amazi-girl is too bound by the rules to be anything but the lawful catagory. Her speech to Danny after the underage drinking incident proves that she follows the law to a T – excluding her own existence as an ILLEGAL vigilante.
I would categorize her as either a lawful good or a lawful neutral, depending on your viewpoint. She means well, but can be misguided and her grudges get the best of her.
Its a bad sign when one of the more psychologically healthy people (as well as the one with the most stable inter-personal relationships) here is a psychopath who will do your mom for a nickle.
Honestly I don’t blame Sal from making this remark. Amber has to learn that what she does is actually dangerous for the whole world. Not saying that she’s incapable but sometimes, you can’t just jump into a fight hoping that you are going to be a superhero here. Especially a radical car chase that could kill someone. Point: Don’t be a hero. Survive and Live.
However….. that point as well is a shit point because people become heroes all the time. Agh, okay scratching that point out. Unless you have the training and all that nice cool stuff such as knowledge, then you can actually do something.
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WEFs FOREVAR
foreverrr
WEF?
Wurst enumeyz 4eva!!!
For-ev-er. And ev-er. And ev-er.
………andever^_^
For he shall draw it for ever and e-e-ever.
:O
Worst Enemy Forever, I think.
There’s a word for that, it’s Nemesis.
o/` Could it be that you need me
To keep you out, to run you faster
Promise me you’ll let me be
The one, the worst of all your enemies
Pretending you’re a friend to me
Say that we’ll be nemeses o/`
When they’re adorable, you can call them Nemmies.
(They REALLY hate that)
IDK, my WEF Amazi-Girl??
“Anyone who dies by my hand, I always consider a friend.”
He was my enemy, but then he did me a solid.
By dying.
And I appreciated that.
Old cellphone commercials ftw
And the song they play
Is by that guy with the messed-up face
Going “precious and few are the moments that you
And your own worst enemy share.”
“Ah mean, there’s barely enough beer t’ go ’round at the Walmart hangouts as it is.”
“Don’t worry about that motorcycle that’s registered to me. They’ll never use that to connect me to this whole mess.”
Joyce is there to explain Sal’s role in this. By the time the cops get around to talking to her, they’ll know she’s not a threat, and things will also have cooled down enough that they won’t be in “OMG SHE HAS DARK SKIN TAKE HER DOWN” mode.
The real tragedy about the problem with racism in police departments is that it makes african americans defensive and paranoid around law enforcement, which makes cops more suspicious of them, which makes them treat them unfairly, which makes them more paranoid and defensive, and it just keeps going like that until a riot happens somewhere.
I’m not black, but I am trans and there’s a very toxic combination of things that happen to your sense of safety and how you feel when in presence of people who are ostensibly there to serve and protect when that has frequently come with harassment. And it’s not all paranoia based. I’ve had traffic pullovers escalate when the officer noticed I was trans.
Sal, being black, and living in a world like ours where there is an inordinate amount of unarmed black kids gunned down by cops without much in the way of official rebuke is going to affect how she views them without the lifetime of being harassed for the way she is and how she looks. It’s sadly a critical piece of safety for young black people to be nowhere near a police crisis situation.
Yeah, it’s not paranoia when they’re actually out to get you. I wasn’t trying to use the word “paranoid” to dismiss those feelings, I was just trying to convey that there’s a feedback loop at play there which just makes a bad situation worse.
The way you behave when you interact with a police officer influences their perception of you, and if you’re (possibly justified in) worrying about how they’re going to respond to you, they’re more likely to think something’s up. On the other hand, cops actually do have built in personal biases that might lend to them legitimately treating you badly. It’s a messy, awful situation to be in, whether you’re black, trans, or any other group that stands a non-zero chance of being on the bad side of whoever pulled you over for a broken taillight.
It -also- doesn’t help that law enforcement is a popular choice of career for dickheads with authority complexes, because it means that peppered in among the people who actually want to protect and serve are a bunch of assholes on power trips.
So true.
All of it, but that last paragraph doesn’t get nearly as much attention. If there is a gun and any level of authority involved, you can bet a percentage of the people in that position are asshats. They may not all be narcissistic, but something in their history or psyche draws them to those fields. (See also firefighters with arsonist tendencies.)
It’s not just that the position attracts assholes, it’s also about the best way to turn someone racist I can think of. You’ve got cops from mostly-white neighborhoods commuting to mostly-black areas for their job. So you’ve got white dudes who have white neighbors, white family members, white co-workers, and white friends whose only interaction with black people is when they’re arresting a black person for a crime. It’s absolutely no surprise that these dudes think every black person they meet is a criminal, what has ever happened in their lives to challenge that assumption?
Very true on every point. And equally true for elebenty and Viktoria’s extensions. Mix unchallenged assumptions with confirmation bias, people who have good reason to be nervous around you, and unchecked authoritarian streaks and that’ll lead to badness even before the bad actors start fucking it up even worse.
This. Sal isn’t worried that long-term this mess will get pinned on her. She’s worried that if she’s there while police are responding to “a shooter kidnapped a kid” that that’s asking for a free bullet shower or at the very least, some very rough physical harassment on the part of the cops.
God dammit Amber, learn a lesson instead of being an ass.
I love the way these avatars turn out.
I have a question that might be really dumb. Are avatars somehow randomly assigned to people that haven’t selected one? I don’t think I ever had that option. I’ve always wondered how that worked.
If you did not setup an avatar at the Gravatar-site, it will be “randomly” assigned based on your email-address. It will stay the same until either you use a different email-address or Willis uploads new avatars.
Oh!
She did Amber a favor, sure, but how many “threatened to stab your best friend with knife” points does that equate to?
I dunno, maybe one “stabbed through the hand with a knife” point.
Sal got stabbed through the hand and she got an even bigger chip on her shoulder and an absolute unwillingness to admit she’s done anything wrong even after two counts of armed robbery.
Amber got threatened by Sal and became so severely traumatized that she developed a split personality and is violently triggered just by SEEING Sal.
The onus is on Sal to apologize. She’s done far more than Amber has and she still has the gall to play the victim. It’s disgusting.
You might have part of a point if Sal had any way to know any of this.
Which is why I’m desperately hoping that Amber is about to tell Sal everything and then Sal will shamefully admit she’s gone too far. It’ll be incredibly cathartic at this point.
I think there is a lot more wreck in these two trains before catharsis time.
+1
You say “catharsis,” but the polls will say “Slipshine…”
That we know of, is Amber aware of who Sal is, WRT the robbery?
Yeah, she figured it out a while back.
Sal still has no idea that “Amazo” is Amber or that Amber is that girl who stabbed her hand, and has not recognized Ethan as the boy she took hostage.
Yes she is. She panniced when she first saw Sal, went to Ethan to tell him “she’s here”, and then confronted them in a WalMart parking lot when they were drinking beer.
And Amber told Ethan that the girl who took him hostage is on campus, but Ethan still hasn’t quite made the connection to Sal.
To be fair, Sal 1) probably never realized she’d traumatized young Amber, and 2) hasn’t realized that current Amber is young Amber. ( And 3) hasn’t realized Amazi-girl is either Amber. ) So regardless of onus it would be silly of us to expect her to make an apology she has no idea at all should be made.
All of that. She might not even fully register the importance of the event to Amber even if she was to be told, because while to her it was the formative moment at the beginning of her disassociation, it was just a bad mistake-laden day she’s spent her childhood recovering from for Sal.
And the other thing is that Sal is the one the trauma is fixated on. The one who Amazi-girl has settled on being her nemesis and the sole symbol of her transformation as a person. But, she is not the mother of Amazi-girl. Blaine is. Blaine was the one beating her while she was down, blaming her personally for the incident and giving her the complex that it was up to her to fight through her anxiety and protect her friends “no matter what”. It was Blaine that gave her the crippling fear of doing the wrong thing with his constant emotional abuse. And Blaine denied her proper trauma-related mental health care afterwards, instead feeding that “you need to toughen up so you can stop things like that” mindset with things like martial arts and continued emotional abuse.
Sal was just the inciting incident. It’s genuinely unfair of Amber to be pinning a whole slew of “you made me” baggage on her, because she really didn’t and Sal has gone out of her way time after time to try and de-escalate things with Amazi-girl and give her good advice as one woman dealing with her anger to another.
But, Amazi-girl is not quite ready to fully give up the mythology of her creation and place full blame where it belongs because that ties too deeply into her fears about being “her father’s daughter” and has the extra disabilities of her DID and her panic disorder.
+1 to Cerberus. (That happens a lot, I appreciate what you write.)
I fully agree on both counts.
+1!!!! I think it’s also important to note that Sal went through the criminal justice system. She paid her debt, however harsh or light it might have been. Amber doesn’t have to forgive her or feel warm & fuzzy towards her, but Sal fucked up, paid for it, and has changed her ways.
Sal does not associate Amber with the robbery. She doesn’t remember their faces, even after meeting Ethan. She didn’t *see* Amber stab her hand, as she approached from behind. She just thinks Amber is weird, and Amazi-Girl is nuts. Sal doesn’t associate the with each other, or with her past.
It’d be disgusting if Sal knew that Amber was the girl in the convenience store and refused to apologize, but she doesn’t know yet. And her comment about being a black kid with a record and not wanting to meet up with police is valid, considering things that have been happening in the last couple years.
Only, it actually isn’t valid now as those should be closed records now, being that it was a juvenile record and all.
I don’t think that she was worried about what was on it, so much as that it existed.
They would be, as long as Sal petitioned the courts to seal her juvenile record after she turned 18.
In Indiana, the records are expunged after you petition the court (which takes a while and can cost money). It isn’t automatic and can be opposed by an agency. Considering Sal’s problems with authority, I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t done this yet.
And honestly, after being in contact with the juvenile justice system, kids and young adults have a valid fear of being profiled. Youth of color don’t even need to have that contact to have the fear – they are profiled, they do have non criminal behavior treated as criminal, they are policed more.
The “things that have been happening the last couple years” have been blown way out of proportion. Over half (not talking about the man that was shot in the back, that was horrific and I hope the cop burns) these incidents are over-exaggerated and under-reported. Michael Brown was not an innocent victim. Nor was Trayvon Martin (even though his attacker is a dick).
These “things” have been happening for the last couple of *centuries*—so you’re right about them being “under-reported,” in that sense. As for whether the victims are “innocent” or not, that’s beside the point. The issue isn’t whether black angels are being shot; it’s that black people get murdered for behaving in ways that would *not* get other people killed, because black lives are seen as less valuable (and less “innocent”), by definition.
In both of the cases that have been brought up here, a white person absolutely would have been shot in self defense… assuming that the facts which are alleged are true, of course. Not being trained in forensics, I suppose it’s possible someone is lying to me about that.
In both the case of Trayvon Martin and of Michael Brown, it is alleged that they escalated a simple case of, “Whoa there, stop where you are, I need you to answer some questions” into a desperate fight for the lives of both parties. Both seem to have managed to close to melee range and attack before being fired upon, which displays hesitation on the part of the other to fire and to kill.
Instructing young black men that the police and the justice system are their enemy, and therefore that they should do whatever possible to stay out of police custody, is setting them up for failure and pain. No matter what color your skin is, you should be courteous and cooperative when being arrested. You do not, nor should you, have an option at that point; if you attempt to use force, you will get hurt.
Trayvon Martin was hunted by some asshole with a gun who was repeatedly told to stop chasing after him. And you ever fucking notice that whenever a young black man is shot we always try to build a narrative on why it was okay to do so?
And more importantly, cops are there to protect us. I could literally call them every name in the book and it should still be expected they protect me because that is their goddamn job. We shouldn’t expect members of the population to be extra careful around those jackbooted thugs under fear of getting shot for not being contrite enough.
Roch and Starscreamer-
Ew, no.
And not to drag us too far down the rabbit hole, but you both might want to spend a goodly portion of time examining why you happen to believe that every gunned down unarmed black teenager did something to deserve it (and why you believe a white person would have been treated the same) when we’ve seen how cops will go out of their way with white criminals to talk them down even when they are pointing loaded firearms at cops.
I won’t argue in defense of Brown, but I will for Martin. I ask you to consider the following scenario:
You are walking to your grandmother’s house when you notice someone following you in his car. He is clearly trailing you and has a look that gives the impression that he has ill intentions for you. You have very good reason to believe that you are about to get assaulted. What do you do? Do you confront him or run?
Let’s say you run rather than confront the guy stalking you. The guy starts chasing you, which probably confirms your impression that he wishes to harm you. You run hard for several minutes and think that you got away, so you stop for a minute to catch your breath and try to reorient yourself (you are in a strange neighborhood, after all). As you are recovering you notice that your stalker has caught up to you. What do you do? Do you run again in a neighborhood that you do not know? Bear in mind that he has a car, so outrunning him is unlikely and he has just proven that. With that in mind, what do you do?
Well, in that case 99.99% of all people will go on the attack in their own defense. It’s not like you would be randomly attacking someone; you would be attacking the guy that stalked and chased you, all without ever identifying himself as someone who was part of the neighborhood watch. You would be defending yourself, as did Martin. He just defended himself against someone who chased him with a gun.
Martin was an innocent victim – If Martin and Zimmerman both been white, Martin would *STILL* have a nigh-undefeatable self-defense charge, because Martin was being stalked by an unknown assailant who was threatening them (I specify both because ‘white person gets off for attacking brown man’ doesn’t mean much). And keep in mind, Zimmerman ONLY had a case with SYG! Martin’s case is strong under NORMAL self defense laws – he didn’t need SYG’s expansion of the definition! So no, Martin is literally an innocent victim.
Brown was a petty, unarmed thief. It literally does not matter whether he’s ‘innocent’. He was not a threat, and shouldn’t have been shot to death – period. But you know, white people are always looking for every excuse to strip protections from us that they expect daily.
I don’t believe Sal has ever been unwilling to admit she’s done wrong. At most, she got angry at Walky for repeatedly bringing the robbery up against her (reasonable since she’s done her time, so to speak). I’m also not sure Sal has ever played the victim in regards to her injury from Amber. She’s even done Amber a favor here (besides saving her life), in spite of the fact that Amber tried to attack her in a parking lot the last time they met.
Amber, on the other hand stabbed Sal after she was already in custody. Aggravated assault; not cool. And then she repeated this behavior by targeting Sal for beat downs.
I’d say apologies from both are in order, but Amber would have to start if only because she’s the only one “in the know” regarding their shared past. Admittedly, it would also be fine if Amber could just play it cool and they never interact again beyond bare minimum. As we learned, however, Amber continues to escalate…
Has Sal even mentioned the injury on panel yet? It seems the whole point of the motorcycle gloves worn at all times is so she can not ever have to explain that whole incident to anyone.
And yeah on the aggrieved assault. It’s also worth noting how callous that “record, how annoying” comment really is. Sal committed a petty theft and was duly arrested and went through a good chunk of the system for it. Amber committed grievous assault causing enough damage to result in permanent scarring in front of police officers and based on the flashbacks seems to have been de-escalated by the police and then she was immediately turned back over to her (admittedly abusive) guardian, with little in the way of official punishment.
So, intentional or not, Amazi-girl is claiming a sense of smug superiority over a situation where Sal got a stricter punishment and Amber got off for a worse crime largely due to Amber’s race and possibly overly shy demeanor. And this is not to mention that she committed this same crime of aggravated assault earlier this month, again, with no arrest (this time due to not being at the scene of the crime when cops arrived).
And ignoring that Amazi-girl is probably stumbling into a thicket of systemic messages Sal has been probably hearing half of her life about the general value of “criminals”, and especially black kids with records, not to mention the general racist harassment she has likely sustained by cops and other authority figures over the years for being black and a bit of a counterculture rebel.
So if we’re talking about serving as each other’s triggers, these two really are. For Amazi-girl, Sal is the ultimate red flashback panel that causes her brain to shut down and go into stupid jerk mode. For Sal, Amazi-girl is the embodiment of the judgmental white authority that has flooded her with microaggressions her whole life.
It is somewhat telling about their relative progresses with their triggers that Sal still tries to reason and de-escalate and offer good advice and Amber actively refuses any outreach so as to continue justifying the personal conflict. (And it makes sense, Sal had to confront those and sort them early on to not end up in jail, while Amber is only just starting to sort through her mental baggage and is only first starting to make the mistakes of her recovery).
Has Sal actually talked to anybody onscreen about the robbery? And she has no idea that Amber=Amazi Girl, or Amber was the one in the convenience store that day. All she knows is that someone in a costume seems to have a grudge against her for underage drinking.
Her brother had thrown it up in her face once while Billie (Sal’s original roommate) was present, so I suppose it’s safe to assume that Billie knows.
Billie and the twins are from the same hometown. (At least they went to school together…) She probably has a better picture of Sal’s past than any of the other main characters.
Billie was not aware the reasons Sal was sent away to Catholic school until Walky told her on the first day of class.
Wrong link. Try this one instead.
Kinda sounds like Sal’s the racist. Not Walky. Cause look at the way they’re drawn. Neither is whiter or blacker. Though it bothers me that such a thing should matter in today’s world.
So by suggesting that their parents treated them differently based on certain traits associated with race (notice the difference between Walky’s hair and Sal’s hair before she murders the curls out of it), Sal’s the real racist? Uh…
Everyone knows the racism-pointer-outer is always the worstest person everer!
This statement is facetious.
There are traits that are associated with “being black” and “being white”, and they are not all physical.
It’s about behavior. Black people in society are treated better by general society the more “unthreatening they are” and this is usually defined by a host of characteristics that are seen as “whiter behavior”, specifically, straightened hair, non-southern or non-slang vernacular, academic success, not calling people out on racism, and so on.
It’s why studies have shown that black individuals who are seen as having “black names” or having what is seen as having “black modes of dress” are often treated as less professional, less capable, and more dangerous than those who are not. It’s why things like “hoodies” became national dog-whistles for White America.
Angry Black Woman had a good article on some of the ways that all mixes in with general internalized racism: http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/07/28/internalized-racism-the-silent-face-of-bigotry/
Nightsbridge-
Yup. Also, funny enough, true of anyone who points out any axis of oppression or source of inequality. Noticing things and pointing it out makes you doubleplus hitler ungood. And this is obviously true for reasons other than the fact that honestly deconstructing complex systems of bigotry and inequality in this country makes those with privilege uncomfortable owing to the way they equate noticing things like that and not being a part of the problem as critical to being a “good person” and so are more likely to get defensive and dismiss observations out of hand rather than accept that we’re all swimming in a toxic mess of culture and systemic oppression and that recognizing and processing that is a crucial step for our entire culture to grow and move past it, solving the inequities of what has gone before and that this enriches both minority group and privileged group both.
(For this last point, note how the world hasn’t collapsed when women were no longer kept out of most jobs outside the home and how that has helped both men and women create healthier relationships and more stable households).
She also saved Amber’s life.
Guys, it’s a comic strip.
With 24 hours of excruciating wait in between each one. We have to find -some- ways to pass the time. This is just one. 🙂
Iunno, maybe use those 24-hour increments to live your lives by the hyper-rational, unforgiving code most of y’all would impose on these characters?
Me, I don’t really have a life. (Nor a hyper-rational unforgiving code, for that matter.)
As for the people you’re describing, I don’t disagree with the point you’re trying to make. Everyone could use a little more understanding and forgiveness.
But I think it’s good that everyone discusses their opinions here. Exchanging ideas is the best way to reach a better understanding of other perspectives, which in turn I think makes people more forgiving.
In other words, I don’t mind people who make these comments. They’re posting them here, where others will disagree and counter-argue, which is an opportunity to learn for everyone.
Still not sure if I’m clear. TL;DR live and let live I guess? XD
This is a great strip. But can we all just stop taking it so seriously? As if it’s a real drama or something. It’s David Willis working his tooning and having fun. We’ve already defied the laws of physics, completely changed characters he established because we’re in a “new universe” and watched Head Alien. Come on folks. It’s not the next greatest drama. It’s a comic strip. Relax.
Just out of curiosity, how do you define a real drama? Is it automatically not a drama because it’s on a comic strip? Because that’s what your last sentence implies.
And you can have physics defying action, but still have real character drama. I mean a good deal of science fiction and fantasy manages to do that.
Noo, I think you will find that It was Blaine who caused most of the trauma and the split personality.
I think it’s a little unreasonable to blame Sal for the extremeness of Amber’s reaction. Being freaked out, sure, but if there hadn’t been a Blaine to respond to her trauma by making fun of her, not to mention the whole lifetime of abuse thing backing it, having some dumb kid threaten you with a knife probably wouldn’t result in shoving your anger issues into a split personality. I mean, objectively, that WAS when she snapped. Hell, if it weren’t for Blaine, maybe she would’ve gone into therapy by now.
Sal is clearly not the same person she was when she was thirteen-ish. She’s now an adult. I don’t think “admitting she’s done something wrong” is really… relevant? Apologize to Amber if and when it ever actually comes up, sure, but I doubt that would make any real difference to Amber at this point anyway…
Amber stabbed Sal through the hand, AFTER she had already been subdued and arrested.
Sal saved Amber from getting hit by a truck, not even by way of apology for threatening Ethan, but because it was the right thing to do.
If the burden of apology is on anyone at this point, it’s Amber, but Sal doesn’t even remember getting stabbed in the hand so it’s kind of a moot point.
Aw, what? What caveman version of HTML is this site using?
That was a valid link.
I don’t know what exactly you typed in, but it’s worth mentioning that for security reasons, many websites do not allow you to simply add HTML to your comments or forum posts, but have their own way of including a link in your post.
This place uses the standard a href=”” title=”” linking tags & attributes. What did you use?
Amber doesn’t have a split personality. She has a second -persona-, but it’s a role she plays, that she is aware of and consciously regards as a compartmentalized part of herself.
I’m curious – has Willis ever commented specifically on the nature of the Amber-Amazigirl division?
Respectfully – that is 10 pounds of horsecrap in a 5-pound container. You are absolutely right that they need to talk, and both of them have things to understand and actions to apologize for.
Bottom line? Sal needs to understand the ramifications of her actions. And Amber needs psychological help. Desperately. But that isn’t ALL on Sal.
It always freaks me out when people claim that causing more pain somehow ‘balances out’ previous pain. They really don’t understand how societal balance works. Pain always goes on the same side of the scale. More pain makes the system more unbalanced, not less. Easing pain restores the balance. While this can mean death, it doesn’t have to.
Considering Amber would have been a hood ornament… I’d say they’re even.
Very.
That’s what I was going to post – Sal saved her freakin’ *life*. Maybe that should be sufficient to earn being treated like a human being? Sheesh.
I don’t think Amber has even pieced together that Sal saved her life. Her rescure was quite hectic, came from behind, and she passed out immediately after.
*rescue
I love the fact that your name is Durandal and you’re talking about treating people like human beings 😉 That cracks me up. You win one internets.
I’m guessing you think they mean Gilbert Durandal from Gundam Seed Destiny? apparently there is another famous Durandal out there, a sword apparently…
I was forged from the same steel as Joyuse and Cortana, you know
-Replaying the toe’s stomp, yours’ insanely, Durandal.
There are several Durandals, but there’s only one Durandal_1707.
Yeah, he’s not exactly known for treating people like human beings at all, so I guess I’m not very much in character here, am I. 😀
Also there’s the fact Amber stabbed her hand back then, so they’re technically more than’even’ at this point after saving her life. Amber got her ‘revenge’ that day and really doesn’t even have the desire for revenge as a justification for any of her actions. She’s internally taking in bs from her dad and lashing out at Sal as if she’s an acceptable target (when she’s not). She already ‘got hers’ on the very same day it happened and her continuing like a bloodhound after Sal in earlier comics was more then a little uncomfortable for various reasons.
Like I kind of get it because Amber is messed up in so many ways- and is incapable of thinking objectively on this issue- like most people probably would in similar wacked out circumstances- but like it’s not even remotely right despite that. /shrug/ Someone can be understandable/someone you feel sorry for but still be wrong after all.
Honestly I think Sal quite possibly /would/ apologies to Amber first if she knew- even if she doesn’t technically ‘deserve it’ (for lack of a better term) given all that happened afterwards. It seems like it would be something that Sal could do at least with Marcie support or something. Or perhaps even without it. Sal’s pretty interesting all in all. She could go down either path. Either call Amber out, apologies or heck even both- I’d like both tbh. That would probably be the most satisfying.
Though only Ethan is the one Sal perhaps ‘has’ to apologies for in the cast because he was the guy she threatened- but that’s just me. /shrug/
Yup, this. Especially the bit about them being more than even and Amber using her as a convenient enemy of her mind.
Amber’s done things she’s not proud of too. They’ve both grown up a lot since that incident.
If only she were able to give Sal enough of a chance to see she’s not the same person that held Ethan hostage all that time ago. : /
Well, if you can call what Amber’s been doing “growing up.”
It is growing up. It’s just… impacted. She’s got DID and panic disorders and making mistakes on how to treat that and manage it. And honestly, given her lack of mental health care, those mistakes are easy ones to make, given social narratives about DID and what you’re supposed to do with negative emotions when you are a girl or a survivor of domestic violence.
And at least on DID, it’s mistakes I’ve made back when I was a wee lass. I just had the benefit of making those mistakes back in middle school when the stakes were not so high.
To be fair, Amber has no real idea of the extent of Sal’s imvolvement and Sal is too busy being cool to go into detail.
She doesn’t compromise with anyone and anything, least of all her own fears. After all, if there is one thing Amazi-Girl exists to do, it is to act as a shield between this world and Amber’s perpetual terror and rage.
And Amber has built a mythology of bad behavior around Amazi-girl. Amazi-girl must be inflexible so as “not to be corrupted” or let her anger spill out to Amber’s daily life. And so, she must not change her mind and must be extremely narrow minded about legality except for when she doesn’t care about the legality of her own actions (see her tearing down Danny or her internal speech to herself about how Amber is allowed inconsistency but Amazi-girl isn’t).
These are actively making the Amazi-girl alter more narrowly focused (and less effective), creating more strain between the alters as they disassociate, and leads her to give in to more judgmental black or white behavior while in the Amazi-girl alter.
And it’s a pathway she’s eventually going to have to recognize and resolve, but that’s going to require not thinking that Amazi-girl is a receptacle for poison that must not touch Amber.
Cause treating an alter as a toxic waste dump never ends well (learned that one the hard way).
hey if Sal doesn’t have to learn lessons neither does Amber 🙂
I mean it’s pretty understandable. She doesn’t know Ms. Walkerton like we do.
But you will become pals, Sal. MWAHAHA!!!!!!
It is known!
i read that alt text to the tune of that fucking nationwide jingle
whyyyyyyyyy
noooooooo
i thought that was your intent when you separated out all the syllables
NOW THERE IS NO GOING BACK
I read now there is no going back to the jingle.
Nooooo! Why must you spread the virus!
Too late, we are all infected.
Spread the Virus:
http://wearebecomepals.tumblr.com/
I have no idea what else this could be.
I thought of a church camp tune, I think it’s called Saved by Grace? In our version, we put extra syllables in that line. “Eter-na-na-na-ly.”
I was, too, but I was was thinking of that one that goes “let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” (There’s a line that ends “…and live each moment in peace eternally.”)
“Let there be peace on Earth/And let it begin with me/Let there be peace on Earth/The peace that was meant to be/To take each moment/And live each moment/In peace e-ter-nal-ly”
*relives Quaker school memories*
See, I was hearing Monkey vs. Robot.
Hero hate cigs and drinking
Biker hate the Hero
they will fight eternally
Hero Versus Biker
Hero Versus Biker
Ah. That… actually makes a lot of sense.
Heroooooooooo versus Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiker
Now read the entire strip that way:
“Where is this you’ve taken me?”
“Is Becky O.K., answer me”
“Whoa relax, Becky is fine.”
“Are you always this high-strung?”
“I only moved us off the road.”
“Place is crawling with police.”
“I am way too smart to be…”
“…the black kid with a record…”
“…caught up in some sorta…”
“…school shooting and car chase deal.”
“And you, well you wear a mask.”
“Thought I’d do you a solid.”
“Sounds annoying to live with.”
“Good good good good good good good.”
“Glad to know we won’t pals.”
“I was genuinely worried.”
Damn you Willis, DoA…
Oh my God, I cannot stop.
*”Glad to know we won’t BE pals.”
And I proofread that too.
willis is not on your side
What jingle ?
Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” was running through my head because of this strip. It inoculated me against any other ear worms.
And soon Sal will be cast as the Road Worrier (if you remember the Fina ad, you watched too much TV in the Eighties).
Sal: she makes roads worry.
Same way a dog worries a scrap of leather.
No, guys, you’re supposed to fight and then team up, not the other way around. Don’t you read comic books?
Sal? Hell no, that’s her brother’s gig. As for Amber, she’s too scared to remember the tropes right now!
Amber? She just saved your LIFE. You would be road splatter without her right now.
Show a little gratitude.
Is it established that Amber is aware that Sal saved her? She seems pretty confused about what happened right now, she might not know.
She might not know that but she did learn that Sal at least moved her so the cops don’t see her. That’s something she could show gratitude towards.
I’ve noticed with many beings (Cybertronian or Human), once they get in a mood, it can be hard to pull them out of it. They even fight against obvious points. You point out you just stopped them from getting fired for almost setting up a dangerous situation, they blast you for interfering…
Amazigirl was at least partially created to allow Amber to confront & deal with the girl who held up the petrol station she was at & held her only friend at the time hostage, Sal. Panel 2, Amber’s switched to Amazigirl, gone on the offensive verbally, then learns the target for her vengeance “did her a solid” & got her away from people who would remove her mask & ask her too many questions. Still in verbal-offensive mode, Amazigirl’s first reaction to to approve of the difficulties of living with a record.
Gonna take a few minutes for Amazigirl to wind down out of offensive mode, & that’s if nothing happens to intensify it, such as either girl becoming more aggressive…
She’s still recovering from a severe head injury annnnnnd getting thrown into a car , I think we can cut her some slack for not being overjoyed for someone that traumatized her being in her face the moment she wakes
She has no idea Sal just did anything good. Given what Amazi-Girl says in panel 2, she seems to be imagining that Sal (as her fantasy world’s own personal Joker) is working with Ross. So, I would expect that she would be incapable of believing that Sal just saved her unless Joyce were to verify it.
How’s that high horse holding up?
C’mon Amazi-gir you can have another ally, forget the past.
If Amber could forget the past, she wouldn’t be Amazi-Girl.
Forgetting is overrated, but a little forgiveness would be healthy.
Whoa. Amber’s a little insensitive, even.
I mean, I know that was unintentional, but maybe her masked vigilante thing is in danger of going too far?
So, how far was far enough? When Amazi-Girl was putting her father in the hospital, or when she was hanging off the back of a gunman’s speeding car?
Or when she attacked a bunch of college kinds in a parking lot?
Yeah, she’s off the rails for sure.
The former wasn’t Amazi-Girl, and the latter was awesome.
Wasn’t Amazi-Girl? Then who?
Amber. Check the tags. Amazi-Girl checked out before the first kick.
Except they’re not different people, Amazi-Girl is an artificial construct Amber uses as a coping mechanism, not a genuine separate personality. She acts like they’re different, they’re not. She’s actively trying to give herself DID.
DID isn’t an ‘on or off’ thing, it’s a spectrum. Amber may not be fully ‘split’, but she considers them two people, and she heavily compartmentalizes her feelings into them. That’s DID, if not in the most extreme form.
This. Alters are… complicated. They’re different people (to each other), but key parts to the same overall whole (the full person). The most extreme form is full disassociation, where the alters can’t access each other’s piece of the memories. But in ideal form, is just them talking to each other and working with each other to put together a cohesive whole person (known as integration).
Amber is pushing disassociation with her alters and treating one of her alters as a dumping ground for all her “negative emotions”. That’s not going to end well as the recommended treatment protocol for DID is integration, communication, and empathy for what each alter is emotionally going through and thinks (even if that alter is just a scared kid trapped in an abusive moment).
Speaking from personal experience, the grammar of explaining this stuff sometimes gets… messy.
Cerberus – that makes me look at your user name in a whole new light…
Same person.
Hey, I don’t care how violent a vigilante you are, it’s always in bad taste when someone plays the race card and your first response is, “Good.”
Again, I know that’s not what she intended to say, but there’s a difference between having a thirst for justice and deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others.
It’s not like Batman sits around and fantasizes about how bad Two-Face has it in Arkham.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel like popping open a can of cool, refreshing Justice(c)! It’s the taste you crave! 😉
It’s always in bad taste when someone plays the race card and your first response is, “Good.””
^^^ This.
(first time using the cite html, hope I’m doing it right)
Not the result I was expecting but I guess it still works.
I don’t think Sal was playing the race card as much as she was playing the “person with two strikes on them because they have a police record” deck.
And since Amber knows first-hand about the reason for the police record, her automatic response is “good”.
She doesn’t have a thirst for justice, she has a thirst for scapegoats for her violent urges.
Yeah, definitely. Oh, what’s that, you have legitimate fears owing to your race and your past? Well, all I heard was criminal, so, good that you’re suffering said oppressions due to who you are.
Amber probably doesn’t register just how messed up what she is saying really is given Sal’s race and life experiences.
So, we’ve come full circle. 🙂
Anyway, I think Sal would be totally justified in clocking her one, once her head wounds heal…
AmaziGirl looks so much like grumpy cat in that fifth panel.
Come on Amazi-Girl, you can say “thank you” at least.
Not until she gets an Alfred analogue who can remind her to be polite with a gentle and discreet disapproving cough.
Ugh! Not liking you right now Amber.
I bet the hole you punched in her hand is pretty annoying to live with too Amber. Maybe you could just call it even?
Nah, it’s cool. Stigmata were all the rage at Sal’s Catholic school, and when she gives someone a high five it whistles.
ow. dammit. You need a Beverage Alert on that post.
Considering the abuse she got from her father, the trauma that never got fixed, and the fact that Sal is in a way a ghost that still haunts her? I wouldn’t quite call it even quite yet.
“Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metrics or form of measure.” If it were even possible for them to be even, I think Amber stabbing Sal in the fucking hand would shove things past even and into Sal’s favor; Amber’s terrible dad is in no way Sal’s fault. Really, the entire situation is fucked.
Blaine’s abuse and the general failure to attend to Amber’s mental health isn’t Sal’s burden to bear. Not only has Amber already taken her pound of flesh, but Sal just saved her friggin’ life.
What’s even if not that? An apology from Sal? Amber doesn’t want that. Otherwise she’s say something about the store….she just wants to punish and punish and punish ….and dare I say it, that might be a bad habit she picked up from Blaine.
Yes, Sal is a point of triggers for Amber, but having a whole bevy of triggers myself, there’s value in taking ownership for said triggers (not to the point where you ignore things that are hurting you, but rather to the point of recognizing when an innocent party or an old ghost are what is haunting you).
When a partner touches me in a way that triggers a flashback to my sexual assault, that’s not a deliberate wrong on the part of my partner (unless they were to make a habit of doing that repeatedly when I tell them to stop). Similarly, flashes of fear caused by discrimination or abuse isn’t fully on the people who make a callous statement not aware of what they are digging up.
It deserves a mention certainly, so people are aware of what’s going on and why one is out of whack, but those triggers are ghosts of traumas caused by past actors and should be noted as such.
Initial trauma Sal was a tween or early teenager who didn’t even directly attack Amber. It is definitely time for Amber to start taking ownership of how badly Sal triggers her and recognize that’s not Sal’s fault.
It is possible to own one’s own triggers while also commenting on problematic behavior that exacerbates them and not forgiving serial abusers who are toxic to be around.
But that takes a lot of time and healing and Amber is kind of on Step 1… maybe Step 1/19th.
She doesn’t care if Sal saved her life, or didn’t hold HER hostage, Amber thinks her life is worthless, she’s being a furious, hurt, and raging dog because Sal in her mind attacked ETHAN, held ETHAN hostage, the one person she considers herself close to.
People keep going “She SAVED YOUR LIFE! YOU ARE EVEN”
Not really, not in Amber’s mind, in her mind she is worth literally nothing =(
Girl needs help bad
I am getting too old to wait up for comics! I need my ix earlier in the evening, I really do. Also, that is a solid — Sal deserves a medal.
I need my comic fix, too, not just the roman #9
You get the next strip sent to your email a day early if you pledge on Patron. Of course, then you’ll just be staying up until midnight to get your next fix.
Yes and then I will want to see how much I can pay to get the buffer. Now there is a perk for you! Willis would be a millionaire overnight.
I’m beginning to wonder just how deep the split between Amazi-Girl and Amber really is.
Amazi-Girl isn’t real, Amber creates and maintains her deliberately to try and separate herself from the parts of her she doesn’t like. That’s how she confuses herself because there is no actual separation.
The confusion and fear in the first panel are replaced with confidence in the second. That can be either a willful act (this is who I want to be for a while), or a subconscious act (this is who I have to be to survive) depending on the need. Splits like that occur when a weaker personality is faced with a situation they can’t handle, such as persistent physical or emotional abuse. Amber certainly qualifies. The weaker personality basically says “Fuck it, I’m outta here” and a new, stronger, personality takes over. I’m curious to see how much control Amber really has over Amazi-Girl.
About a goodly distance into this separated:
http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/dissociativeliving/2015/10/forming-relationships-with-alters-in-dissociative-identity-disorder/
She’s still somewhat communicative and integrated, but she’s pushing behaviors that will lead to more disassociations and potentially more internal conflict between the alters.
I’m just noting that Sal considers herself black? I mean I guess she and Walky are technically one-quarter black, but maybe either it’s easier to just say the common perception of her skin tone, or her parents’ preferential treatment has rubbed off on her subconscious.
I’d say her conscious, not her subconscious. When even your parents make a big deal out of your hair, why wouldn’t you consider yourself black?
I thought their dad was full, but yeah, she’s called herself black before. Walky for his part doesn’t as much, but he still does have it as part of his identity, such as his irritation at the “colored people” mention in that weird Christian song Joyce had once.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/whitelady/
Mr. Walkerton is half-black.
Not disagreeing with you, but I don’t think you need to be black to be irritated by that. I’m mostly Scottish, and I can get sunburned standing in front of the microwave, but bizarre, casual bigotry still riles me.
Walky said once that Sal is black and he is generically beige.
I’d eventually like to see Sal interact with more/other black people. If the black community is more accepting of her, then I can see why she would identify as such, even though she has the “privilege” of being as generically beige as Walky.
Okay see I always thought that line was just a joke on Walky’s part, because, y’know, the Walkerton twins literally have the same skin colour. He was just screwing with Joyce.
I don’t get why everyone took that line seriously.
Because Walky meant it seriously? That his sister identifies as black whereas he does not?
Yep. At the least, Walky feels the need to differentiate his sister as black and himself as something different.
It’s a joke with a point on it.
I think she means culturally as well as genetically? Like she might have grown up with stronger ties with her black side of the family and thus feels a stronger connection to the culture and people.
As for genetically, we’re pretty all-inclusive, us black people. There are negatives to the ‘one drop rule’ perception of course, but I can say that one positive is that even if you’re just a quarter, we will still claim you (I believe Halle Berry said her own quarter-black daughter Nahla will have to eventually decide how she identifies herself, but in Halle’s eyes, she believes her daughter is just as black as herself).
What matters in this case is the perception of the cops. Most racists subscribe to the single-drop-of-blood standard of race. I think Sal is mindful of this, and that’s why she hid.
That having been said, in the hair salon scene, Sal seemed to mourn the loss of her natural hair texture.
This. She’s treated as black by society. Is viewed as black by the majority of people she interacts with. And society in America still views that one drop rule as overriding a lot of things. So yeah, Sal is black. She’s being treated as a black woman. Has life experiences of a black woman, even if she has lighter skin.
Overall, I imagine it’s pretty similar to the life experiences of my cousins who are black and seen as black even though technically they have one black parent and one white parent.
Say thank you!
Looks like the AG/Sal ship is well and truly sunk.
It sunk faster than the Titanic.
You’re a pessimist.
Pessimism is a perfectly rational response to a Willis comic, but there is always hope. Sal’s already demonstrated a mighty capacity for hatefucks.
Amber’ known for epic hatefucks too, for that matter, even if it was in another universe.
Hatefuck, sounds like some kind of band.
The hearts ship, maybe. But this is totally fuel for the spades ship.
……damn not going to lie that’s would be hot, to bad.
No, you don’t understand. This makes it even better. They can have hate sex.
Kidding aside, this doesn’t necessarily sink it. There’s plenty of ships out there where the two characters involved hate each other. (Shizuo and Izaya from Durarara is the first example that comes to mind.) AND us optimists won’t give up on the possibility that one day, these two -will- become pals. Or at least stop hating each other.
the keel hadn’t even been laid yet! this thing was canceled before construction
I have hopes. They both have a lot of healing to go through before that ship can sail.
Can always hold out hope for Hate-F*ck Part 2: Alternate Dumbension.
Amazi-girl: if I wasn’t barely able to keep myself out of unconsciousness I’don’t drop you right now.
Amber actually shares a lot of parallels with Toedad if you think about it. Especially a fundamentalistic dogma used as a coping mechanism to deal with her own strife. It is only by the grace of luck and friends that she didn’t make things a lot worse..(and some determination).
That’s chillingly accurate.
This is kind of beautiful. I mean, in an effed up way, but I love how they’re both written here.
All we wear a mask, Sal.
“A mask is not to disguise who you are but to show who you really are.”
Some are satin, some are steel, some are silk and some are leather.
They’re the faces of the Stranger, but we love to try them on.
(Billy Joel)
“We are who we pretend to be. So we had better be careful who we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut
“Like the lie about masks.”
“What lie about masks?”
The way people say they hide faces.”
“They do hide faces,” said Nanny Ogg.
“Only the one on the outside.”
–Terry Pratchett, “Maskerade”
“There’s a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness. I bet you could do just what you liked, behind a mask…?”\
….. also from the writings of Sir Pterry
So…. Dina’s current status is still an unknown quantity, right?
Dina is not irreversibly harmed, as she has been shown in a preview panel. Exactly how she is at this particular moment and her whereabouts are unknown.
Quick! Someone open a door!
Maybe she’ll be hiding behind it.
No, we saw what happened to her. She jumped Ross, got tossed off and left behind.
Starting to really dislike Amber.
To be fair she really doesn’t know ANYTHING about Sal besides the fact she threatend her best friends life and let alone she has one idea that she just saved her ass.
And the underage drinking doesn’t help given the strong feelings Amber has about that.
She actually doesn’t have strong feelings about it, really. She didn’t give Billie crap about it when she could have. She went after Sal because she was Sal. The drinking wasn’t a reason, it was an excuse.
Do you not remember how she freaked out on Danny for drinking? She has strong feelings about that, though she does tend to act more mellow about the things she has feelings about when she’s Amber.
It’s true that when she attacked Sal on that parking lot, the underage drinking thing was just an excuse she gave to justify the violence.
But the point I was trying to make was that given how little Amber knows about Sal, the fact that one of those few details is that she drinks alcohol, which is a big negative in Amber’s eyes, doesn’t help her see Sal in a good light.
*no idea
To be fair, if Amber wants to go all Batman, maybe she should do some detecting and actually find out things about Sal.
She hasn’t tried, either.
She’s not obligated to. It is not the job of the victim to go out of their way to find the good in the person that victimized them. Forgiveness is not a right it is a rarely earned privilege.
Amber stopped being just a victim when she drove a knife through Sal’s hands because her father taunted her. She became both victim and oppressor – the fact that she didn’t see any time or other consequences from assaulting a black woman means she benefited directly from racism.
Oh, it’s nice to know that attacking your hostage taker just after having been TRAUMATISED BY THEM makes you an “oppressor”, just because the criminal who held your best friend hostage and traumatised you happens to be black.
Really really cute.
Yes, using violence on a perpetrator in police custody, well after they stop being a threat, and getting away with it because of the color of your skin and the color of her’s, means you are part of the oppression based on raace.
Fucking White People. It’s like they stop understanding how self defense works the second a non-white person is involved.
In fairness, if a young black girl assaulted a white girl who took her and her friend hostage at knifepoint after the attacker had been disarmed and taken into police custody, I personally wouldn’t really expect any serious legal repercussions, because hey, traumatized _child_. (although I would say she should be put into therapy, which is also what SHOULD have happened with Amber)
(Mind you, I have no idea if that lack of expectation is realistic, because It’d probably be hard to get enough examples of this to make a statistic out of it)
Your expectation is probably not realistic given tht young black people existing is often considered sufficiently threatening behavior, much less them committing actual battery – and this leeway is not given solely to police.
And while I certainly don’t think a 13 year old should have their life entirely ruined for one mistake, there should certainly some form of censure – I’m not clear on whether Juvenile Hall is actually useful off the top of my head, but the state can stand to recognize that a crime was committed, even if the most useful answer in general is simply therapy (Which, given tht it’s kids, seems likely)
Rutee-
This.
Heavensrun-
If the races were reversed, it’s a guarantee that they would halt arresting the white girl to pin down and arrest the black girl. Heck, a group of TWOC defended themselves from a hate crime and were arrested for assault for it. And there’s all the excuses law enforcement and white culture made for George Zimmerman. Black people aren’t really allowed to “defend themselves”, much less be traumatized and freaking out.
Forgiveness is at least as much about the person doing the forgiving as it is about the person deemed in need of forgiveness.
Attempting either forgiveness or understanding is a social and moral responsibility. To think otherwise is the path to oppression.
In Amber’s defense, Sal threatened her best friend’s life and then completely forgot about it. That’s all Amber knows, I would hold a grudge as well if someone threatened someone I care about. Wouldn’ you?
*wouldn’t
That’s NOT all Amber knows. She knows Sal threatened her best friends life, and that then she stabbed her in the hand for it. Seriously Amber was not -just- a victim that day, even if she’s convinced she’s the only one who suffered and bore scars.
She’s holding a grudge when arguably Sal has as much a reason for holding one. Hell, wheres Amber’s record? For illegally assaulting an unarmed girl who was already in police custody with a knife?
I get that Amber’s emotions are making her irrational. It makes sense for her to feel that way. Doesn’t mean we still can’t point out she’s acting like a jerk to the woman who just saved her life.
No. Being hurt by someone you victimized does not absolve you of victimizing them. The only thing Sal was a victim of was her own shitty decisions. As for Amber having any obligation to forgive her under any circumstances; also no. That’s not how forgiveness works. You are never owed forgiveness because you “made up for” how you hurt someone. You can do everything in your power to try and make amends but at the end of the day they are still perfectly justified in saying “Fuck you, I will never forgive you” and it is not an inherently inferior decision to granting forgiveness.
I’m sorry, are we going to sit here and pretend that racism didn’t aggravate things? Because Amber would see something for stabbing someone who was white when they were in police custody in such a flagrantly unjustified (legally speaking) manner. Sal isn’t just a victim of her poor decisions. She’s also a victim of easily traced racism that Willis has gone out of his way to say is not just some flawed perception on her part. I don’t really care about forgiveness, but she literally owes it to Sal to not commit violence against her – period, end of discussion. We’ve monopolized violence for good fucking reason. Even if we hadn’t, Sal has literally done her time – she has paid her debt to society, and to Amber personally (Assuming, quite boldly, that being stabbed didn’t cover the latter on its own merits – generally, a threat is considered a less grave offense than ACTING on that same threat, after all).
Forgiveness isn’t something Amber needs to do in some grand sense, but Amber distinctly owes things that she hasn’t given as of yet. They have nothing to do with ‘forgiveness’ and everything to do with ‘not being a fucking violent criminal’.
I love this comment and would gently add that the consequences of institutionalized racism are what makes Amber’s comment that a record “sounds like an annoying thing to live with. Good.” So especially shitty.
Incredibly so. I wrote yesterday that to Sal, Amazi-girl must come off as extremely racist and that’s definitely still true, but it’s also true that Amber is not fully aware of just how much affordance her race has given her. There’s a reason she can do superhero antics without fearing that cops will gun her down if they see her. There’s a reason she can feel comfortable breaking into other people’s dorm rooms without fearing arrest. There’s a reason that Sal has a criminal record, while she was immediately just handed back to her guardian. And there’s a reason that she believes that the legal system and its laws are just and worth upholding.
And I would love Amber to start having to grapple with that on a real level sometime.
It’s not a binary scenario. You don’t either hold a grudge or let it go. There are multiple other paths you can take, like maybe finding out the circumstances behind the actions. Amber’s response is black and white, with no attempt at discerning deeper cause. That’s shitty, and no, I would not do that. Would you?
I wonder how long it will be tell they realize how similar they are
Maybe THAT’s why they can’t get along.
They repel like the same poles of two magnets.
Someone in the comments was speculating the other day that race was a factor in Sal’s getting the hell out of there before the cops showed up. While I completely understand why she needed to leave, I really hope she remembers to check in with Joyce at some point, because if I recall correctly, Sal is the only person who knows Joyce was having a panic attack BEFORE the incident, and it would be poor form for Sal not to make sure she was okay, in one form or another.
I think things have moved past the panic attack issue. Besides, Joyce is with people, so she’s set.
I’ve a feeling Sal will in fact check in with Joyce. She had enough of a conscience to turn around and walk Joyce to the fountain just before the incident, and that was when Sal still didn’t think much of her. Now, however, Joyce has–as Sal sees it–more than earned her respect, so I think she’ll be sure to follow up with her.
Since Sal has the only working vehicle…
Someday, Amazi-cycle. Some day.
Sal knows Joyce is with Becky, so it should be fine.
That may have been me. And I suspect that Sal will circle back and check in with Joyce after the sirens and the cop swarm die down. So, either tonight or sometime tomorrow, depending on if they need to get checked over by hospital staff or EMTs for trauma response.
Poor Sal though the only times she tries to befriend someone they’re like FUCK YOU !
Because Sal threatened Ethan’s life. Of course she completely forgot about Amber and Ethan. Which Amber doesn’t know, and in my opinion, just makes it worse.
I don’t think she forgot them so much as doesn’t recognize them. She hasn’t interacted with them very much, and even if she had, their appearances have changed a lot with time and puberty.
Yeah, it has been years, and they all look completely different. Hell, part of the only reason Amber ever recognized Sal is because she saw her in basically the same outfit she was wearing all those years ago. Possibly also because, unlike them, she never moved on from that trauma.
But isn’t Ethan basically over the whole incident with Sal? It seems like even stronger evidence that the real trauma was Blaine, NOT Sal, because Ethan didn’t really seem to have lingering issues beyond, oh, yeah, that sucked. Prior trauma makes PTSD much more likely.
Sal has never tried to befriend anyone during the comic. She’s just talking to Amber and tried to force Malaya into a role she found acceptable.
I wonder if the societal rejection (for looking like a punk, for being black in majority white communities, for having a criminal record, for being standoffish) is part of why she actively doesn’t try to cultivate new friendships. Like, if you dodge the relationships forming in the first place, you don’t have to be rejected by them.
Because she’s highly strung
Oh, highly strung, she’s undone
Highly strung
Oh, highly strung, she’s undone
Something that occurs to me: did Amber suffer ANY sort of blowback for stabbing an unarmed girl who was already being handcuffed, in full view of the police and multiple other witnesses? Didn’t get arrested for that display of violent assault? Nothing in the local paper? Anything?
Her dad may be an abusive piece of shit, and I sure as hell don’t envy her for having suffered through it, but man, she doesn’t have ANY idea how much her white privilege saved her that fateful day, does she.
This would have been only four or five years ago, and the cops/courts would probably have written it off as a form of PTSD. Not to mention she was a juvenile at the time so what’s the worst that could have happened?
And it’s not like Sal or the Walkerton family was going to file a countersuit.
A quick googling reveals that a teen non-fatally stabbing another teen can result in a sentence of years in a correctional facility. It could have been pretty friggin’ bad. (Then again, the example that turned up was for a 15 year old. I’m not sure how much sentencing is altered for someone who’s 13, since searches around that age range just bring up the recent murder in Wisconsin.)
Considering that she’d been one of the perceived victims of the apprehended criminal, Sal, even though she wasn’t a hostage like Ethan, I think she’d get a considerable amount of slack. It’s really not a comparable situation to a run-of-the-mill stabbing.
Perceived?
Not without race playing a factor – the laws on self defense are abundantly clear – when someone stops being a threat, you have no right to then commit violence against them. Had it been done mid-hold up, it would rightly be self defense, but when the suspect is in custody? It’s simply battery. And had it been Amber holding up the store and Sal stabbing her after being traumatized, you can bet your bippy a prosecutor would have been saying this very thing, while defense tries to mitigate (not avoid) a sentence.
This whole “Amber didn’t get punished cause she’s white” thing is dumb, it belittles real racism and is frankly just straight up conspiracy nut BS.
You cannot attack an unarmed individual, a minor at that, in police custody and get away because your white. In real life, not some badly researched web comic, there would be so many people involved that sweeping it under the rug is impossible.
Just because there are some aholes who wear a badge doesn’t mean every last cop and law enforcement agent on the planet is an ahole.
…Yeah, black people aren’t injured while in police custody. Yer not SERIOUSLY going to try this tack given what happened to Sandra Bland, are you?
‘This demeans real racism’. Fool, the fact that black and brown people can be straight up offed with no repercussions IS THE STARKEST EXAMPLE OF RACISM WE HAVE IN THE STATES! What constitutes ‘real racism’ IF NOT FUCKING MURDER ON THE BASIS OF ONE’S SKIN. You think this is a fucking conspiracy nut territory? No, COINTELPRO is conspiracy nu – oh wait no that happened The murder of Fred Hampton was conspiracy nu – oh wait, no, THAT happened too. We’re discussing a phenomena FINALLY getting some fucking press, and you’re acting like this is some novel phenomenon and the rest of us are crazy for considering it? Seriously, just bloody go.
Calm your roll there kid, sit back and think. At what point did I say that stuff doesn’t happen? All I said is that being white doesn’t allow you to get away with attempted murder.
This is the problem with SJW’s they don’t think they just react, often with the same hatred and bigotry they claim to be against.
Yer probably younger than me, kid. When you state (Not even imply) that people are in the realm of conspiracy nuts, you STATE (not even imply) that things didn’t happen. You want to walk away from that now? Maybe walk back your own bloody statements.
“Being white doesn’t let you get away with murder”? Certainly not all the time, but white people (not just white cops, but ALSO white cops) have literally gotten away with murder when their victims were black. It’s by no means foolproof, but it absolutely STILL happens.
This is why I despise White People. I can’t be exposing you to the same bigotry and hatred I claim to be against – you’re still breathing. This is not a state of affairs I’m particularly in favor of correcting either. But hey, don’t let that stop you from claiming there’s a lynch mob – that’d be a perfect capper.
Though it’s extra precious you’re going into “you’re the/a REAL racist :(” territory when the worst thing I said about YOU was that you were being a fool. Primarily, I said that the things you were saying were wrong – as in, factual incorrect. Really, nobody in the USA is as thinskinned as the privileged.
(Oh, and since I forgot earlier – the sheer weight of numbers makes it implausible that all cops are murderous racists. However, many cops are racist in less overwhelming ways, and the simple fact is, the ‘nonracist’ cops will not actually try to stop their brethren, and since it falls to them, this means that ultimately, they too are racist, if not in their heart of little hearts. I have no patience for this pitying nonsense – their jobs are not particularly more dangerous than that of delivery drivers, and they’re not generally protecting MY rights except in that their existence makes average white people less inclined to believe that they need to engage in Self Help against me.)
There is this, yeah, but there’s also the way that racism seems to be viewed in America by white culture. There’s “real racism” where it’s KKK, pointy hoods, literal hangings and there’s nothing else. Not systems where white people are allowed to kill black people for being “not where they’re supposed to be”, not systems of mass incarceration for non-violent offenses, not literally being maneuvered out of voting access, not even racial slurs or overall discriminatory treatment.
And that all-or-nothing way of looking at an endemic system of oppression that ties into literally every facet of how our current economic and social system operates is really limiting and poisonous to any effort to fix things. And that type of all-or-nothing gatekeeping pops up in a lot of other oppressions to a lot of harm.
Content warning (bigotry and sexual assault):
Oh, were you not assaulted as a virgin by a man in a mask in an alley? Then it wasn’t “real rape”. Oh, were you sent death threats, but no one actually physically assaulted you? Then you weren’t “really threatened”. Oh, were you fired from your job or denied housing because of your queer identity, but weren’t actually left strung up on a fence post? Then it wasn’t really “homophobia”.
Bigotry and violence is not only its most extreme or media-depicted forms. And ignoring the vast majority of experiences of oppression as “not real”, does far more damage to how aiding bigotry operates than someone noting how a microaggression or instance of oppression affects them.
I’ve wondered the same thing, myself. There hasn’t been any mention in-comic about her being punished for stabbing Sal, that I remember.
I thinks its been said that Sal was 13 at the time she robbed the store.
I’m not sure of Ambers age but she was about the same age I would guess.
They may have noted that Amber was in shock and striking back out of fear and perhaps a deal was cut to get her a bit of mental help. But it is also very likely that because she was a minor, white, victim, it was just
brushed over.
Yeah, I think it would require a lot of overlooking to see Amber run up from a fair distance away, steal a knife from a police officer, and then stab an unarmed prisoner.
We don’t even know the extent of the damage she did. Scarring? Nerve damage? Loss of motor function?
I cant see Amber getting off so easily just for being white, this has to be chalked up to Willis not knowing much about law.
Assault with a deadly weapon? to a person in police custody? Yeah, no you’re going to jail, and if you’re lucky they might let you out when you are 18
It’s less that they’d consciously let her off out of whiteness, more that if she weren’t white, they’d be much more likely to see her as a threat.
Yep. That’s what’s so scary about institutionalised racism: a lot of it is based on subconscious preconceived ideas and assumptions, which makes it all the harder to combat.
Willis always does his research.
It comes down to the DA.
If it was an election year, then prosecuting a traumatized little girl for stabbing a criminal would be a political suicide.
Especially in “tough on crime” states, since she stabbed a criminal who held her hostage.
With a good lawyer she could have ended up with psych treatments and expunged record on reaching 18.
Not to mention that the police had already confiscated the knife from Sal and they supposedly had it securely in their custody. There would have been some very embarrassing questions as to how Amber had been able to get her hands on it.
That is a great point.
Below the belt on that one AG, but if you did recognize Sal it would be understandable. The backpeddling when AG woke up sorta hinted at that.
And the speech pattern indicated she was Amber.
But now, she is definitely AG, and she’s acting like she’s not quite aware of what’ happened. Once she knows Becky is okay, she’s back in over-the-top vigilante rudeness mode.
Too bad. On the other hand I think there is gonna be an explosion when they recognize each other from robbery.
AG still has those ‘white dots’ over her head, she ought to stop trying to throw her weight around, thank Sal for getting her off the cops line of sight.
Getting to a dr. may be a good idea.
This is called Dumbing of age though, not smarting of age DX
Your comment makes it sound like it’s uncertain whether Amber/AG is fully aware that Sal is the one from the robbery. It’s obvious that she knows who Sal is.
I do wonder when Sal will finally realise Amber/AG is the girl that stabbed her. Will Ambs have to tell her? Or will she guess from her behaviour and dialogue?
I kind of doubt Sal was aware of any of the customers (and she probably didn’t see Amber stab her hand), so it would probably take some pretty clear references to it for her to see (and Sal might first assume that somehow vigilante lady had looked at her record)
It’s impossible for her not to have been aware of any of the customers considering she held one of them hostage. ^^ Here’s the strip for reference: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hostage/
She may or may not have noticed Amber when she grabbed Ethan. I don’t expect her to specifically remember Amber (especially since she didn’t even recognise Ethan), much less what she looked like.
But assuming their conversation doesn’t end with today’s strip, depending on what Amazi-girl says, Sal could conceivably guess she was involved in the robbery. Maybe by thinking “why does this vigilante hate me so much, did I do something to her”, or something like that. Then again, Sal could assume that AG’s grudge is entirely based on that time she caught her underage-drinking.
Either way, I don’t really expect things to be resolved “today” (in-universe time), the way things are going. Especially since I doubt Willis would miss the opportunity to milk the Amber/Sal drama by using Danny’s friendship to Sal as a breakdown trigger for Amber.
Aware of them as individuals/people, I mean, not aware of their existence (which if she was unaware of would have possibly been pretty dangerous for her)
The last strip showed us amber waking up and immediately back peddling at the sight of Sal. She’s more scared of Sal – or rather what her mind tells her Sal is – than she was of Toedad. So it’s rather to be expected, she assumes the worst, i.e. that Sal has taken her somewhere to hurt her.
This totally makes no sense in Sal’s reality, so they talk right now from different realities.
I can rather imagine that Sal doesn’t recognize her as the girl from then. Sal was totally freaked out already when she started the robbery – we still haven’t heard some convincing backstory of why she tried it in the first place, and if you look at those strips she looks absolutely desperate from the start so ambers knife attack was in the middle of a traumatic day that never really got better.
That said, I just realize how insidious it was of Ross to mock Amber for not being able to defend Ethan. In wanting to subdue Sal, Amber still directs anger that should belong to Ross at Sal.
Surely you mean Blaine and not Ross.
Right, I confused the names. I was talking about that non-parent of Amber.
Name, Gender, Hair, Eye, every-other-body-part change.
Amber recognized Sal a long time ago, the first time she ever saw her. It’s been the focal point of every reaction AG has HAD to Sal in this entire comic. It dumbfounds me that anybody could read to this point and not get that.
Dammit Amber! When are you going to realize that Sal is not your Joker?!
Sal is your Catwoman.
Eh Talia A Ghul
A useless waste of space rapist?
Oh, man, the highlight text just dropped some James Kochalka. DAMN YO- i mean, THANK YOU WILLIS!
I would have liked to see Amber and Sal become unlikely allies. I suppose it could still happen, but if it does, there are going to be some significant bumps on the road leading there.
I could condemn Amber for her behavior. She is being a bongo to Sal, and Sal doesn’t deserve that. However, I can understand Amber’s point of view. Clearly, Sal is a trigger for Amber due to the trauma surrounding that robbery. Sometimes, when one has negative associations with a particular person, place, or thing, said negative associations aren’t so easy to turn off. Human emotions are often irrational, and under certain circumstances, they can overpower rational thought and cloud judgement.
I’m not saying I approve of Amber’s behavior here. I’m just saying I understand why she’s responding like this. To quote the “Fixer-Upper” song from Frozen, “People make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed.” We’ve all said and done things we end up regretting later. Amber may very well later regret her behavior in this situation.
Also, even if she were somehow able to be perfectly rational, she would still be weighing stopped-the-cops-from-catching-me against traumatized-me-and-held-a-knife-to-my-best-friend’s-throat. As much as I love Sal, I think AG is sort of justified in completely disregarding her feelings here, at least for now.
I can’t wait til Amber hears how Sal saved her. Probably from Joyce’s account of it, since she is the only one who actually saw/knew that part.
Or, if Maggie-red-car checks on Amazi-Girl, and mentions that incredible sight.
Especially because Joyce doesn’t know about AG or Amber’s grudge, so she would be completely enthusiastic in saying it too
“Maybe you can team up and fight crime!”
‘Mruugghagph . . .’
What Edupoet said…
Man, I really wish Amazi-Girl had let Amber handle this one. You’re never gonna solve your issues like this darling. : /
She doesn’t want to solve her issues she wants to beat her issues into submission till it cries for mercy. She wants to crush her issues and hear the limitations of their weman.
But ya the last thing that would probably do is help.
I had been hoping the concussion had put Amazi-girl to sleep, but… Guess that was too much for.
So… When is Sal going to learn her relationship to Amazi-girl/Amber?
Depends when are we going to get that Aamzi-girl/Amber vs Sal fight? Because honestly it’s probably going to happen right before or right after that.
*read alt text* DAMN IT !
Followed by the Amber/AmaziGirl/Sal make-up sex. (Would that qualify as a threesome?)
Only if she switches personalities during. ; )
A part of me hopes Sal never finds out. She has really grown into one of the more responsible people in the cast, and reliving the worst day of her life is something she doesn’t need right now.
Noticing blood on the left side of Amazi-Girl’s face too. Methinks she’s hurt worse than she’s letting on.
That’s probably just superficial. Serious injury would be intracranial bleeding (not visible from the outside) or a fractured skull. I’d be more worried if AG/Amber were bleeding from the ears or nose.
Still, she ought to be in an ER, and since she blacked out I’m pretty sure that the ED doc in a well-funded US hospital would order a CT, just to be sure.
Daniel here. If I remember my first aid right, a possible sign of bleeding on the brain would be if it was also coming out the ears. Since we’re seeing no sign of that, she most likely just has a facial scratch, those bleed more than other locations…
Scalp wounds tend to bleed quite profusely, apparently. That’s actually not a lot of blood for a scalp wound – I’ve heard of cases where a small scalp cut coats the face in blood.
It’s actually a technique, in swordfighting, to aim for the face – not to injure an eye (not considered an ‘honorable’ wound), but to cut the scalp. The blood from the wound can distract your opponent.
Holy shit, Amber. STOP.
I’ve said this so. many. times.
Any time now, Joyce will drop by and casually mention Sal having saved AmaziGirl’s bacon.
I doubt that. Right now she’ll be explaining what happened to the cops. If she can still talk coherently, that is.
I’m half expecting that AG will just walk off possibly to go treat her injuries and won’t learn about how Sal saved her until she overhears Joyce mentioning it some other day.
I think Joyce will do a whole lot more than mention it. Her fangirling over Sal after this will be x10000. She’ll tell anyone who’ll listen and everyone who won’t about awesome bike-driving, car-chasing, vigilante-catching, metaphorically ass-kicking Sal. XD
I don’t know. After all her discoveries about how horrible the people she grew up with are, and the shock of having cursed, plus various other issues, I suspect it will be a while before Joyce is up to fangirling again.
Ah, good point. I may have been projecting. After an experience like that, I would bury it all by turning the fangirling up a thousand so I wouldn’t have to think about all the things that suck. Joyce may have other, hopefully healthier, ways to deal with stuff.
HOWEVER, Sal might have a few nice things to say about Joyce, now. Sal doesn’t let just anyone ride on her bike – her respect for Joyce has clearly gone up a few notches.
True! Since Marcie “advised” her to hang with her other friends, (because she has been working double shifts) Sal was bleakly realizing she had *a* friend.
Now, she has Joyce, who curses and knows how to “passenger” on a bike!
I, for one, am eagerly anticipating Sal’s M. Bison moment when Amber spills the beans.
I’m sorry but we are never getting the “it was Tuesday for me” the day you got stabbed in the hand ,and to this day alway wear gloves to cover the scar, would be pretty memorable.
i understand amber but i think im running out of sympathy for her
dang
Question!!
How does Amber not have a record if Sal does? Sal may have robbed a store and threatened people, but Amber severely injured someone who was in police custody, she should have some sort of arrest record.
It is likely that they just wrote it off as the reaction of a traumatised 13 year old and didn’t think she needed to be arrested too.
See also this thread above: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/highstrung/#comment-875374
The police may have swept that under the rug so to speak. Possibly because they just thought of it as just a scared little girl lashing out. Or as others have commented, her being white could have had a part to play in it.
yeah no, being white isn’t a magic get out jail free card, you don’t get to stab someone and people go
“I want to arrest you…but your just so darn white that I cant”
A person in police custody is pretty much a ward of the state, the cops would have to take Sal to the hospital, a report would be made, DCFS would be contacted, as would Internal Affairs.
Amber would be in jail by the end of the night.
There’s always the possibility that Sal simply didn’t press charges
Doesn’t matter, attacking a person with a deadly weapon doesn’t require someone to press charges only witnesses. Also since Sal was under arrest, that means it would be up to the state or city on whether to press charges or not.
You are operating in Letter of the Law Logic. This often encounters an error message when running a Real World System.
See…the thing is…gawd, I hate even writing this. Sal was a black girl holding up a convenience store in a small town, with a weapon. Amber was the traumatized white girl who was held hostage. She stabbed Sal and…well, the cops probably chalked it up as an injury sustained during the hold-up, and Sal likely never contradicted them out of self-hatred and her other various issues, nor did Amber or her father.
The city can only press charges if they know there are charges to press.
Okay, I get that racist cops is the big thing now, but thats taking things way into outer space. You might as well say white people never get arrested.Sal was stabbed. THROUGH THE HAND, even if that ignorant theory were true, it wouldn’t explain how the hospital looked the other way, DCFS looked the other way, IA looked the other way. Surely there was one person who wasn’t a racist aholeTrust me when a kid is brought to the hospital by cops there are very few people not involved.
Bicycle Bill made a great point above about how it is possible that, since the cops were supposed to have the knife in their custody as evidence, they covered up the fact that Amber took it to stab Sal (by lying about how the injury occurred) to cover their asses, because they might get in trouble with superiors for that kind of screw-up.
‘the big thing now’, implying it wasn’t a thing for the last, you know, century? I mean, your big evidence agaainst is “But hospitals aren’t racist”, which is… kinda fuckin’ laughable? It’s not as sexy or as harmful, since hospitals aren’t really complicit in the murder of black people, but health care workers are also racist – quality of care, speed of care and its prioritization, and the seriousness paid to black people’s claims of illness have established this pretty well actually!
I mean, DCFS and IA are still “the fucking police”. They’re allegedly less racist, but.
The only thing that’s remotely confusing is how there isn’t video tape, but thta seems like the sort of thing tht would really only come up if Sal’s parents pushed for it – and knowing Mrs. Walkerton, she might not have taken it seriously at all.
“Prosecutorial discretion refers to the fact that under American law, government prosecuting attorneys have nearly absolute powers. A prosecuting attorney has power on various matters including those relating to choosing whether or not to bring criminal charges, deciding the nature of charges, plea bargaining and sentence recommendation. This discretion of the prosecuting attorney is called prosecutorial discretion.”
http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/prosecutorial-discretion/
Christ, dude, nobody is saying that Amber walked because she was white. They’re saying that the fact that she was white was one of many factors that MAY have contributed to the police officers on the scene looking at her in a more sympathetic light. As others have pointed out, a traumatized 13 year old whose best friend had just been held at knifepoint lashed out at the person that threatened them. That story by itself is sufficient to explain why charges weren’t pressed, to say nothing of the other details people have pointed out. Curb your defensive reactions to perceived assaults on your white privilege for two freaking seconds.
The cops can’t chalk that up as “injury sustained during the holdup” unless they’re, I dunno, all overtly corrupt or something. They were all there to see Amber stab Sal in the hand, they were literally pulling her off, and there would be no evidence at all of Sal being injured during the holdup.
More likely, what would happen is that Blaine found an attorney who drew up a neato plea deal that got Amber out of court and kept this out of her record, and Sal didn’t. It gives Sal a reason to be pissed off at The Man and his subtle racism (“how come the white girl gets this all taken off her record and I don’t?”). It gives Blaine a reason to be all pissed off at Amber (“the one time you stand up for yourself, it doesn’t matter and it makes a big mess that I have to clean up”). It doesn’t assume that all of the sudden Sal finds some reason in herself to cover up for the girl who stabbed her in the hand (wtf?). And it doesn’t require an abnormal degree of corruption, racism, incompetence, and/or malice on the part of the cops and the legal system; these kind of deals happen all the time.
The prosecutor always gets to decide whether to proceed with the case, and this one is ripe for a plea deal.
Cops have never stood by and watched violence perpetrated by white people against black people, each holding their tongues when it came time to investigate, nor haave they lied under oath about it.
The only vaguely unbelievable part of it is that Amber isn’t actually a cop. Racism is not the only thing that sustains the blue wall.
That is true, in general! There is no reason to assume it of the cops we saw in Amber’s flashback.
…what, you mean aside from the fact that amber has suffered no consequences of her attack, and that it’s a pretty safe assumption of police in general?
” Sal was a black girl holding up a convenience store in a small town, ”
I wonder, how “black” is Sal supposed to actually look, vs. what she believes herself ? I mean, it’s difficult to tell because of the art style, I had no idea she was even of mixed race until it came up as a plot line in DoA, and I’ve been reading the Walkyverse since almost the beginning.
Same with Billie.
Individuals do not generally decide which cases are prosecuted. They apply for charges and then the State’s Attorney/District Attorney/Prosecutor’s office review the application and decide whether or not there is enough to proceed on. I can just imagine the face of the DA, with no corresponding information or application from law enforcement, reading the application which starts, “I was in police custody immediately after holding up a convenience store at knife-point…”
It doesn’t actually work that way. Especially since she wasn’t an adult.
My guess….Amber did end up in legal trouble but her Dad, knowing that a court trial would drag his own abusive ass through the mud, hired a really good lawyer.
The Lawyer worked out a Plea Bargain that kept Amber out of Court and without a Record. Amber may have been too shaken up to remember all the details.
Traumatized minor.
They were both 13. In all honesty neither of them deserved a record, Sal just got unlucky.
Actually, it’s pretty weird that Sal would have a record for the robbery at that age.
While juvenile records may be sealed (not accessible by the public), they are not necessarily expunged or destroyed. There are also situations in which they can be unsealed or made available to law enforcement/the Court. It would depend on the state laws.
And then there’s the fact that colleges usually require you to disclose charges, even if they aren’t really entitled to the information, and will sometimes take disciplinary action if they find out later…
Re-reading when Walky told Billie about it, (on first day of school) he mentions it was two hold-ups. I hadn’t remembered that.
The Doylist explanation is: Willis had a poor understanding of how the law works when he wrote that and its kind of late to fix it even if he’s amended that lack of knowledge.
Another possible explanation is that _Sal_ has a poor understanding of how the law works.
No, Willis understands how the law works fine, you just don’t understand how it doesn’t.
Another question:
Why do you assume that Amber doesn’t ? In fact, the way she phrases it seems to indicate that she DOES have a record!
Thats a good point. They probably both had records and court ordered therapy.
I guess it’s possible Amazi-girl doesn’t consider Amber’s record to be hers
Why do you say that ? The reason I believe she has a record is because Amazi-Girl makes it sound like she KNOWS how annoying it is to have a record.
The important thing to remember is “in police custody.” I doubt if the officers involved wanted to do the paperwork to explain how that happened. It would be easier to process Sal for the attempted robbery and get some half-assed medical attention for her hand, and divert attention away from the embarrassing facts as soon as possible.
Monkey vs. Robot!
That is what the background text is referring to, yes?
I’m so glad someone else got the Monkey vs. Robot reference (which I also hope is what the alt text refers to) 😀
I think you and I are destined to do this forever!
Slipshiiiiiiiine.
Total polar opposites. Even their outfits seem kinda opposite-ish.
I don’t know they seem pretty similar to me
“hey, she saved me, let’s sass her instead”
oh, Amber. Err AG.
Well she doesn’t really know that yet, she’s in for a big surprise though.
You know whats odd? I’m surprised they don’t run into each other more frequently like at the gym, and you can’t tell me Amber wouldn’t be at the gyear I mean she hast to keep herself at top shape to do all the superhero stuff.
Sal is too cool for the gym~
I like to think she has a Travis Bickle-style home workout, to the concern of all.
Amber needs her some functional fitness….I’m guessing she hits up a cross fit off campus.
She’s the kind of muscular that would be ripped if there wasn’t a layer of fat on top.
Everybody’s talking about how amber should apologize for the past or sal should apologize, or amber’s being a jerk about the past and should let it go, but even with all of that resolved, amazi-girl would still be an ass towards sal. Amazi-girl HATES rule breakers.
does that include herself
Of course it excludes herself.
No, Amber hates herself worse of all. But that’s a little harder to see.
Amber hates herself so much she becomes someone else as a coping mechanism.
Man if they became like…. actual superheroes later, for whatever reason, this’d be a killer origin story.
Shipping isn’t shipping because it’s logical; in fact, the more ‘crack’ a pairing it is, the better sometimes. 🙂
In any case, I’m fervently hoping this is the start of a ‘reveal’ storyline for their shared history.
Well, I published this a few comments ago, but it seems even more appropriate here. Also, only Benjy commented on it before, and while I really do appreciate his (or her?) flattery I’m afraid I’m far too much of an attention whore to satisfied with just that. So, once again, I present Amazigirl’s impending existential crisis in the form of a bad song parody.
Who is this Sal,
What sort of devil is she?
To find me caught in a crash,
And choose to help to save me?
It was her hour at last,
To put a seal on my defeat!
Not to drive quite so fast,
And let me be a stain on the street!
All it would take,
Is for the truck to Jackknife,
Vengeance was hers,
Instead she helped to save my life!
Damn me for living in the debt of a thief.
Damn her for yielding to Joyce’s demand!
I am the Girl utterly immune to critique!
I’ll shove her shiv right back in her hand!
There is nothing on Earth we share.
It is either Sall-e or Amber.
And my thoughts fly apart.
Can this Sal be believed?
Should her crimes be forgiven?
Or am I being deceived?
And must I now begin to doubt?
After wearing these clothes all of this year?
My face is masked, my cape it flutters,
The words I have spoke are white on azure.
Is she from heaven or from hell?
And does she know….
That saving me and my life today…
Have just confused me, that damned bongo!
I am standing, but I sway,
My bones can break despite my claim,
As I stare off down the street,
At the police that finally came,
I’ll escape now from those cops,
Man, these cops are really lame,
There is a spider that I must kill,
In the silence of my dorm- shit Sal still has my GAMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEE
“Sniff” This, this is just beautiful.
+1
Awesome!!! I don’t even recognize the song, but I recognize the skill.
Winsome.
Damn that one line got me Sal ges it. She knows she’d be blamed and punished despite not being involved in thism that lie I’m too smart to be the black kid with a record cought up in an incident. That hit me good job Willis
I wonder if Sal was perceptive enough to notice the terrified girl who just backed herself into a tree-trunk duck behind Amazi-Girl for protection?
*reads alt text*
For-e-ver…
For-e-ver…
For-e-ver…
I….I understand where Amber is coming from, I understand /why/ she is being irrational, but knowing them both the way we as readers do, this just feels so one-sided and awkward. And even understanding where Amber is coming from, like…she stabbed Sal through the hand. I’m not saying Sal did nothing wrong (she very much did), but…IDEK where I’m going with this. It’s just such a weird situation to see.
Agreed, but remember that amazi is a coping mechanism for a woman with ptsd, social anxiety issues, and who knows what else. A measured and rational approach is not likely. Also, amazi seems a lot like Amber’s dad at times. Not great.
It kind of has to be one sided. Despite Amber’s hatred of Sal being fairly justified, she’s still approaching it in the absolute worst, most destructive way possible.
Sal did awful shit to Amber and Ethan and I could have done without her actually saving Amber’s life, but Amber’s always been wrong in how she’s been dealing with that hatred, and she’d be wrong even if she hadn’t snapped and stabbed Sal when she was already detained.
Amazi-girl’s words in panel five could just as easily be interpreted as “thank you for helping me avoid getting a record”. 🙂
I think you’re being overly generous in your interpretation. 😉
Nah they besties
More like worsties
Amber/Amazi-Girl doesn’t yet realize/understand that Sal saved her life. Sal might not admit to it, and most likely will leave to avoid confrontations now that AG is awake.
AG will probably only find out later, when Joyce tells Dorothy, then Dorothy tells Amber. Or something liek that.
I will be very much surprised if this resolves it’s self right here and now.
It will take a while and I expect Amber to go on a long holiday cruise down Deriver Denial before she admits that Sal has any good qualities. It may take Ethan publicly telling Sal (in front of Amber) that he remembers that night at the convenience store and that he has forgiven her to get Amber to shift. Remember, at least a part of her messed-up head is telling her that she’s doing this to protect him.
Resolution: NONE
Gratification: DELAYED
David M Willis: History’s greatest monster?
Okay, I get that racist cops is the big thing now, but thats taking things way into outer space. You might as well say white people never get arrested.
Sal was stabbed. THROUGH THE HAND, even if that ignorant theory were true, it wouldn’t explain how the hospital looked the other way, DCFS looked the other way, IA looked the other way. Surely there was one person who wasn’t a racist ahole
Trust me when a kid is brought to the hospital by cops there are very few people not involved.
Shit wrong place
Dude. Stop.
Just stop.
Racism is a thing. Racism by cops is a thing. Racism has been tracked and measured and shown to be a thing that affects everything from how someone is perceived to how they are treated by law enforcement to how their deaths are treated. We have an ever-growing number of unarmed black kids being gunned down in ways unarmed white kids or even armed grown-ass white adults aren’t. And we have the testimony of countless black Americans who can tell about their mistreatment by cops and community.
I could tell you the direct experiences of people like my uncle and the very different way he’s treated in public compared to his wife simply because he is black and she is white or how they’ve gone through an epic level of shit simply being a mixed-race couple in the 80s. Or how my cousins have had all manner of racist harassment that white kids in the same communities don’t go through.
You talk a mean game about conspiracy theories, but the only one ranting provably false claims and acting like noticeable reality is just some big gotcha moment by Big Race is you.
Just for the love of Bob, stop. You don’t have to examine yourself or your arguments if you don’t want, but you can at least stop digging your hole, man.
Yeah, I said racism doesn’t exist, that’s what I said.
Man, I dislike Amazi-girl so much. I was hoping that Amber would be caught and would have to give up this persona in this arc.
Aaaaand cut to the Slipshine.
Call it “Mask On, Gloves On.”
So little trust. 🙁
Not without reason! But still.
I wonder what icon I have right now.i think is would be great if amber got her personality stuck in amazi-girl mode
I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but given their first encounter with each other, it’s an interesting detail that this reunion is happening while Amber is bleeding from the head and Sal is wearing gloves with a big red spot over the middle of her hand.
It’s weird when I ask questions in the previous strip and then see them answered right down to the phrasing.
If Amazi-Girl does that turning around and saying thank you thing I will actually scream. The world will hear it.
I think I need to go to sleep.
I just had a fun thought. Sal has no idea about the actual reason Amber backed from her into a tree. To her, it’s probably because she’s black 😀
Nah, Sal will probably just chalk that up to AG being crazy.
This might be how she categorizes all of Amazi-Girl’s aggression in her direction because from Sal’s point of view, there is no discernible reason why Amazi-Girl tries to pick a fight again and again. Even now.
I was thinking that yesterday and meaning to list it out a bit.
-Attacks in a parking lot for pretty much no reason (they weren’t rowdy and AG pretty much said ‘that’ll do’ to her face)
-Snaps her fingers at her, AmaziGirl scuttles back (probably excusable at first because AG just woke up, but stacks against the next things)
-AmaziGirl takes one look at her (only two noticeable things are race and clothes), then accuses Sal of kidnapping her and possibly harming Becky, and aggressively so (that’s two counts each now of ‘saw I’m black, got aggressive’ and ‘got fearful’)
-Reassures AG, mentions she got out because she’s black and has a record, AG says “good, bet that fucks up your life”
As an aside, Sal is probably especially pissed about racist law enforcement (more than racists in general, I mean), which a vigilante attacking her for drinking a beer (and following up with this) is close enough to, so she probably is pretty disgusted with AG now.
Followup, panel 3
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curbstompings/
Does Joyce have the wherewithal to know that she shouldn’t mention Sal to the police? I’m not sure how she’ll explain getting there.
Am I terrible for hoping that Sal gives Amazi-girl a few sharp comments for that dangerous stunt? We’re lucky no one got killed (despite ominous comments from the last strips).
Sal and Amaziegirl share a lot of similarities. Kinda like Sal and Sarah. No wonder they don’t get along.
Please tell me that I’m not the only one who went “Round 1. FIGHT!” at panel 4. XD
I hope they work things out someday.
Okay. This is the one I forgot yesterday because I was talking about T but, it fits here more.
Like this…
*foley: wind/rustling bushes
*panel 7, copy of 5
AG: “…”
*panel 8, copy of 6
Sal: “…”
*60mm wide, long take push of POV 4
Sal: “Amazo?”
AG (gritted teeth:) “Yes?”
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
*foley: (fade out) bushes
*cue: kindred (mixed in reprise of AG’s theme)
Sal (neutral dialect:) “When I was 13, I robbed a place. I used a knife. I took…”
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “…a hostage.”
*Amber flashback: cowering
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “That part ended… with a girl stapling my hand to the hood of a police car…”
*Amber flashback: knife strike
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
AG (angry:) “Criminals get what they deserved.”
Sal (neutral dialect:) “For a long time, I hated that girl.”
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
Sal (neutral dialect:) “Then, for a while, I’d have agreed with you… Now… this Sal knows…”
AG (angry:) “What do you think you know?”
*35mm head of AG, slow push, bottom soft light
Sal (neutral dialect:) “Normal little girls don’t stab people with knives…”
*Amber flashback: Blaine’s delight
*35mm head of Sal, slow push, soft light halo
Sal (knowing, neutral dialect:) “This Sal know that girl needed a hug. Long before we ever met… It must take a lot to cover her wounds…”
*Amber flashback: Stopped by Danny from hitting Blaine on the ground
*60mm wide, long take POV 4
*foley: (fade in)wind/rustling bushes
*music: (fade out)
Sal: “…The hospital is that way.”
AG: *walking* “What I need is at the school…”
* fade to black
that is AMAZING! and i give you all the confetti hearts. ALL of them. i did not realize how much i would ship that.
Thanks but, it’s David’s story.
I just explained what I see in it.
The above started out as a joke, because people were talking about wanting to see these two kiss.
In the joke, extending from the strip’s panel 6 led to “You need a hug,” went into descriptions of embracing someone with breasts but, tangentially jumped into a “stop starin’ at mah tits. If I didn’t do for my best friend, ah sure-in-the-hell am not gonna do it for you” to which AG cops out with “No… It’s the concuss-” *faints*
When I got into why, the lead-in to Sal saying “hug,” in particular, it was too painful.
You see, AG does funny things but, AG is not funny.
__________
“I cried when I wrote this song.”
Signed: Big, tough dude who went out to lift weights and fix his transmission and shit…
How geeky does it make me that I understood — and agree with — all the directorial references in that excerpt?
I like the red filters on the Amber Flashes and I suspect AG’s theme is a symphonic jazz reprise of (TFG1)More Than Meets the Eye…
Amazi-Girl is acting like Sal stabbed her or something.
i have a hard time figuring out Amazi-girl’s moral consistency. i mean, i know this is here so we can later see her development. will she eventually forgive Sal and herself? in anything not involving Sal, her morality is based on what is harmful to people, screw the law, so Good Neutral or even Good Chaotic. when it comes to Sal, she’s some super strict Lawful Neutral.
The problem that distorts Amazi-Girl’s reaction to Sal is that she is not basing her actions on reality or anything that would objectively make sense. In her head, Sal is the Joker of her personal comic book – a force of chaotic evil that cannot do good. So, what we’re seeing is her responding to a completely-hallucinatory existential threat that only exists in her mind.
“You’re welcome, bongo.”
Yes, Amber has good reason to be angry at Sal, but that doesn’t excuse her from being a total jerk.
When you think about it, Amber only succeeded because of dumb luck. She went after a target with little to no preparation. And even if she hadn’t interfered, the police would’ve caught up with Toedad eventually. Sure, you could argue that such event would’ve ended up with Toedad being shot dead, as Becky predicted (which he deserves), but Amber nearly killed all three of them because of her guilt complex. Like I said, she was just lucky.
It’s not for sure that the police would ever find either Becky or her dad. There are people who would shelter him, thinking he was in the right. Also, even if they did, yeah it might end with him being gunned down, but probably not before he killed Becky to “save” her.
True, but the police have hostage negotiators, and Toedad did seem to have second thoughts for a second or two (which he immediately stamped out, but still). There’s a better-than-good chance that this coulda ended with him in prison, and Becky safe, rather than him free (as it is, the main witnesses who know what happened and why are now almost all felons, so toedad might be off the hook).
That was the greatest sequence of action I’ve seen in comics in a long time
Definitely!
And I’ve been following superhero comics for over fifty years.
Not something you expect to meet in a webcomic about college kids.
Very well done, Mr Willis!
Ah yes, Amazi-Girl and her arch nemesis, girl-who-did-some-stupid-things-when-she-was-a-kid-and-isn’t-proud-of-it! Never let her live it down, Amazi-Girl.
Do we actually know what Sal thinks of the robbery these days? I mean, we know what her family thinks about it (“It was a stupid thing you did, and you’re lucky it didn’t turn out worse”) and we definitely know what Amber thinks about it (“This was the most important traumatic experience in my life”), but I’m not sure that Sal has mentioned her value judgement on what happened. I haven’t gone back to check, because Sal has been in a lot of comics, but it seems like the sort of thing I would remember better if she had.
It would be interesting to know what she does think about the robbery 5 years later. Does she, as you believe, think that it was a Stupid Teen Decision and wish she’d never done it? Does she still think that it was a justified move? Or does she simply occasionally go “Oh yeah, that was a thing that I did,” and not really care about it except in the ways that she is still affected by it? It could be an interesting look into Sal’s character and comparing and contrasting her with Amber.
My assumption is that she thinks it was a regretful thing, since she’s grown up since being 13, but she probably still believes she was justified, not in that specific action but in acting out when she was perceiving (probably real, but definitely perceiving) prejudice from her own parents as well as outside and her twin wasn’t helping. She probably also regrets getting sent away to Catholic school (which was ‘lahk hell’
But that said, I think that’s when she thinks about the robbery, and she doesn’t probably have cause to think about it specifically that often.
I don’t think she thought it was a good idea when she did it, but she did it anyway because she couldn’t see her way to a better path. Her actions and mannerisms in Amber’s flashbacks don’t scream “someone who feels confident and justified in what they’re doing”, but more, “someone who’s doubling down on what she knows were bad decisions because she thinks she’s in so deep that the only way out is through”.
Good point! I was thinking along the lines of how her personality felt like to ME, but not necessarily how it actually is or based on any previous story evidence. She just seems like she’s trying really hard to play things straight (even if she doesn’t have much reason to, since not many people are giving her good reasons to be any different than she has been). Still: The idea that she is trying is what makes me think she’s not proud of past events.
Like you said, though: I have no evidence. Just rolling with how I felt by her actions and words so far, but I may be injecting thoughts and feelings that may not actually be a part of the story.
“You always this high-strung?” she asked the masked girl who just used a skateboard and a grappling hook to maneuver herself onto a speeding car.
There is truth in this post.
Amber: “I got the whole myself that’s annoying to live with.”
Sal pulls off the glove: “I got this.”
Amber pulls off the mask: “I got this. Wanna change?”
Sal: “My jacket is leather, not Spandex. You’d have to swap width and height.”
Aren’t minors crimes usually expunged from their record when they turn 18?
Does Sal know that?
Not expunged… just sealed. So, she still has a record, and if police see a sealed juvenile record, she could have jaywalked, but they’ll assume the same as a violent crime.
I think Amber/Amazi-girl is about to get a fast ‘This is your wake-up’ here in regards to her beliefs about Sal
Just read twitter, so off to cover DOA threads with SJW’s!
I would have replaced it with “sane people” or “non-assholes” OR “totally awesome folks”, but either way, SJWes are awesome and I would be nothing but flattered if someone called me a SJW.
Can’t wait for the moment where Amber says (something along the lines of):
‘I’m the reason you wear gloves everywhere you go.’
Only for Sal to just take off both pairs and reveal that she hasn’t got a problem with it. She just likes wearing gloves.
I’ll do a solid, on your face!
Amazi-Girl used pettiness. It is not very effective.
The last panel kinda reminds me of this scene. Sal kinda likes not being friends with anyone, huh?
Inspiral Carpets – Dragging me down – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt4SNfcd72s
Man, these guys are just going to be the bestest of friends, huh. 🙂
Comment system like this for a comic that touched on a race-related subject? Is Willis the only moderator, and if so, how is he still sane?
it’s like trying to hold back a waterfall with my hands
For what it’s worth, I’d like to thank you for writing about Sal’s struggles with institutionalized, ingrained racism. It made me realize that a lot of my thought process on the topic was severely lacking, and it made me more aware.
A sane cartoonist? What a novel concept. The least creative people I know have a glowing ember of insanity, in the most creative, it’s an inferno.
Goddammit Amber, stop being a turd.
There’s this cute girl who plays video games and doodles new operating systems in Computer Science class. I want her back.
(And that really needed the Danny gravatar.)
So at this point I am genuinely at a loss to pin down Amazi-Girl’s D&D alignment. Is she Chaotic Good? Lawful Neutral? If there’s a pattern I’m not seeing it.
Lawful Stupid, maybe?
Chaotic Determined?
Amazi-girl is too bound by the rules to be anything but the lawful catagory. Her speech to Danny after the underage drinking incident proves that she follows the law to a T – excluding her own existence as an ILLEGAL vigilante.
I would categorize her as either a lawful good or a lawful neutral, depending on your viewpoint. She means well, but can be misguided and her grudges get the best of her.
There are reasons that I maintain that alignment is the single worst concept ever introduced to role-playing. This is one of them.
Amazi-Girl has a personality (a couple of them, actually). She doesn’t need an alignment.
Its a bad sign when one of the more psychologically healthy people (as well as the one with the most stable inter-personal relationships) here is a psychopath who will do your mom for a nickle.
Honestly I don’t blame Sal from making this remark. Amber has to learn that what she does is actually dangerous for the whole world. Not saying that she’s incapable but sometimes, you can’t just jump into a fight hoping that you are going to be a superhero here. Especially a radical car chase that could kill someone. Point: Don’t be a hero. Survive and Live.
However….. that point as well is a shit point because people become heroes all the time. Agh, okay scratching that point out. Unless you have the training and all that nice cool stuff such as knowledge, then you can actually do something.
Chaotic good vs lawful good.